Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (21 page)

Preparations

Manhattan

“Well, what do you think?” Thompson said as Ernst accompanied him along Central Park West.

He’d called this morning and asked Ernst to join him to discuss “matters of mutual interest.” Having little else to do, now that the Change had begun, Ernst agreed.

Thompson seemed more composed this morning. Perhaps because the “birds” were gone. But they’d certainly left their mark on this part of the city.

“About what?”

Thompson gestured toward the park. “About this. About everything that’s happening.”

The police weren’t letting anybody into the lower end of the park, and they’d closed off the streets adjacent to it. He and Thompson were able to walk down the center of CPW. But yesterday’s carnival atmosphere was gone. Fewer street vendors cluttered the curbs, and far fewer sightseers milled about. Plenty of curious standing outside the yellow tape, yes, but less noisy and jocular than yesterday.

The hole had been an event. What had issued from the hole had been a horror.

The deadly depredations of what were described as new breeds of insects had been all over the news this morning. The fatalities had been carted away but the damage to the buildings overlooking the park remained in evidence—hundreds, perhaps thousands of torn window screens and even some broken glass. All except one building. Ernst noted the number:
34.
It appeared to have suffered not one iota of damage during the night. He wondered why.

The sun was high and warm. His three-piece suit was white, as usual, and reflected some of the heat, but still he wished he’d worn a lighter-weight model.

“We couldn’t have discussed this—whatever it is—in my office at the Lodge?”

Thompson shrugged. “Maybe. But the sun rose even later this morning, and I figure I might as well snag a few rays while I still can.”

Not a bad idea, Ernst supposed.

They passed the barricades and began to see traffic again.

“Well, what’s on your mind?”

Screeching tires and cries of terror brought them up short. Up ahead, a yellow cab began rising off the street, trunk first. The driver opened his door, hung by the seat belt, then dropped to the pavement. A woman and child leaned out the rear window and screamed for help.

“My God!” a nearby woman cried out. “Can’t somebody do something?”

Thompson’s face was a study in vulpine fascination as he watched the cab continue to rise, beginning a slow rotation as it cleared the tops of the surrounding buildings and kept on falling up.

“What the fuck?”

“The laws are changing,” Ernst said, trying to sound calm and composed despite his suddenly dry tongue. “That’s why it’s called ‘the Change.’”

The Order’s lore was skimpy and vague about what exactly would happen during the Change.

Thompson looked at him. “The laws? But—”

“The laws of physics among them.”

Finally the car drifted out of sight past the building tops. Good. Ernst had felt rather ghoulish watching it.

“Stay close to the buildings,” he said as they began to move again. “That way we’ll have something to grab on to if it happens to us.”

Ernst stepped gingerly, wondering if a gravity hole lay in wait a few steps ahead.

Thompson glanced at him as they crossed the sidewalk. “You know what? I don’t care what this One guy promised you, I think he’s gonna fuck us over.”

He had just verbalized Ernst’s greatest unspoken fear.

“He owes us.” He owes
me.
“He couldn’t have done this without us.”

“Yeah, well, maybe, but even if you get an invitation to the party, I got a bad feeling he’s gonna leave me out in the cold. So I gotta consider all possibilities. If he brings me along, cool. But if not, I need a backup plan.”

Thompson wasn’t educated—high school dropout was probably an overestimation of his level of formal education—but Ernst had come to appreciate his native intelligence, and his particularly well-developed survival instinct. He would probably last longer than most in the post-Change world, but eventually he would succumb, no matter how elaborate his strategy.

Ernst had a simpler strategy if he found himself left behind: a hefty dose of cyanide waited at home.

At Eightieth Street they hurriedly entered the park and walked along the traverse past the budding Shakespeare Garden, keeping close to the trees. The sun shone, birds sang, bees hummed … just another spring day in Central Park. Nothing hinted at the changes Ernst knew were coming.

“Any ideas yet?”

Thompson nodded. “Yeah. Been thinking. If the Change works, things’ll be a mess. But even if it fizzles out halfway through—”

Ernst doubted that. “I don’t think—”

He stopped and jabbed a finger at Ernst. “It ain’t over till it’s over, and I don’t hear a fat lady singing yet. Your One fella’s got people and things working against him, right?”

“I suppose, but they haven’t a chance.”

“So you say, but shit happens on both sides of the fence.” He started walking again. “Here’s my point: Even if the Change stops half done, the world’s gonna be messed up. Whether completely messed up or only half messed up, either way I’m gonna need an edge. Part of that edge is someone taking your back. I got a lotta someones.”

“Your followers … of course.”

“Right. Kickerdom’ll do what I say. But that’s not enough.
We’ll
need an edge.”

He stopped again, but this time he looked at the sky through the trees.

“What are you getting at?”

Ernst sensed a strange new intensity about Thompson. His eyes had taken on an almost feverish glow.

“Sunlight, Drexie. What needs sunlight—regular, measured doses of sunlight—more than anything else?”

As much as he loathed the insulting nickname, he wondered where this was going.

“I suppose I would have to say plants.”

“Exactly! And right now, in the spring, they need sunlight for sprouting and seedling growth.” He glanced at Ernst. “I worked a farm with my mother when I was little. So, if the daily dose of sunlight gets smaller and smaller over the next few weeks, we’re gonna see huge crop failures all across the globe.”

“When the Change is over, crop failures will be the least of the world’s problems.”

“But even if the Change fizzles, we’ll still be seeing worldwide food shortages, maybe even famine. You agree?”

“Why … yes.”

The realization startled Ernst. He hadn’t bothered to think that far ahead or consider that contingency. Yes … if the One failed, and the Change—to use Thompson’s term—
fizzled,
billions would starve in the aftermath. Even if the Enemy managed to stop the One, it would be a Pyrrhic victory.

He had to smile through the bitterness:
Otherness über alles.

“Damn right, yes. So I figure I’d better start making plans for that. Those who can suss out the future can profit from it.”

“I hope you’re not thinking of the futures market or anything like that.”

“Shit, no. We lose much sunlight for any length of time, I don’t see there even
being
a stock market. Futures will go through the roof, but what are you going to pay with?”

Ernst saw it all: In the face of worldwide crop failures, money—currency—wouldn’t be worth anything.

“Certainly not money.”

“Damn right. Money’s just paper, and you can’t eat paper. When the crops fail and the grocery shelves are empty, we’re going to see food riots in this city—in every city. The only thing that’ll be worth anything is food. And the guy who’s got the food—and the manpower to protect it—will rule the roost. That’ll be me.”

“That’s your plan?”

He nodded. “Yep. Stock up—canned and bottled stuff, and things that’ll keep a long time, like pasta. Nothing that needs refrigeration. We’ll clean out every store in town.”

“Do you have enough money for that?”

He gave a derisive snort. “Don’t need money. We’ll get a bunch of charge cards and max them out. Buy everything on credit.” He grinned. “Odds are the credit card companies won’t be around to collect.” He glanced at his watch. “Gotta get my people to start stocking up.” He grinned again and winked. “Before the hoarding starts.”

CNN

—same in country after country around the globe: gigantic holes, seemingly bottomless, averaging two hundred feet across, opening one after the other throughout the day. The governments of Iran, North Korea, and China deny the existence of any such holes within their borders, but aerial reconnaissance says otherwise. And the question on everyone’s mind: Is each of these holes going to release a horde of vicious creatures like those that were loosed on Manhattan last night? And if so, what can be done to stop them?

In Manhattan, preparations are under way for—

Wait. This just in from the White House: The President has declared a national state of emergency. Repeat: a national state of emergency. Reserve units of the Army are being activated. Congress has called an emergency session.

Jack sat at the counter of the Isher Sports Shop—one of the few places left on the Upper West Side that spelled shop with one P—and watched the people passing by outside. Amsterdam Avenue was sunny and only slightly less crowded than usual for a Saturday afternoon.

Like nothing’s changed.

But everything had changed. They just didn’t realize it yet. Jack had an urge to run out there and start grabbing people by the collar, to shout in their faces that last night wasn’t an isolated incident or bizarre aberration. It was going to happen again. And worse. Tonight.

Abe Grossman, the owner, bustled from the pantry/storage area behind the counter carrying two cups of coffee. He handed one to Jack and perched himself on the stool behind the cash register. Jack sipped and winced.

“Jeez, Abe. When did you make this?”

“This morning. Why?”

“It’s not like wine, you know. It doesn’t get better with age.”

“I should waste it? With a microwave in the back, I should throw out perfectly good coffee because Mr. Repairman Jack suddenly has a delicate palate?”

The stool creaked as he adjusted the two-hundred-plus pounds he packed into a Humpty Dumpty frame. He had receding gray hair and wore his usual black pleated-front pants, white shirt, and black tie. A bit of egg yolk from breakfast yellowed the breast pocket of his shirt; a red spot that looked like strawberry jelly clung to his tie; he had just finished sprinkling his entire shirt-front with bits of finely chopped onion from the fresh bialys Jack had brought.

“Nu?”
he said when he was settled on his perch. “What have I been saying for so many years to the accompaniment of your derisive laughter? And now it’s finally happening. The Collapse of Civilization. It’s all going to fall apart, right before our eyes, just as I’ve been saying.”

Jack had expected this. He’d known when he told Abe what Glaeken had said that he’d be in for an I-told-you-so lecture. But he had to let Abe know. He’d been Jack’s friend, confidant, and arms supplier for most of his time in New York City. In fact Abe was the one who’d started calling him Repairman Jack, something Jack wished he hadn’t. He’d come to hate the name.

“No offense, Abe, but you’ve been predicting an
economic
holocaust. You know, bank failures, runaway inflation, and so on. Remember?”

“And I pretty much got that already when—”

“This is different.”

Abe stared at him over the rim of his coffee cup. “I checked the sun. It doesn’t look like it’s traveling any faster.”

Jack shook his head. “The sun doesn’t move,
we
do.”

“I know that. But
something
has to be moving faster. I mean, Earth’s tilt on its axis—that’s what determines the varying duration of daylight through the year. Shorter days would mean we’re either rotating faster or the Earth’s shifted on its axis.”

“All the scientific types say neither has happened.”