Fog enveloped the East River and spilled across the expressway. The bridge rose above the fog, a highway ever the clouds. Alone, Suzy pushed her cart along the middle walkway, hearing the wind and a weird, low humming sound she realized must be the bridge cables vibrating.
With no traffic on the bridge, she heard all kinds of noises she never would have heard before; great metallic moans, low and subdued but very impressive; the distant singing of the river; the deep silence beyond. No horns, no cars, no subway rumbles. No people talking, jostling. She might as well have been in the middle of a wilderness.
“A pioneer,” she reminded herself. Darkness lay everywhere but over New Jersey, where the sun made its final testimony with a ribbon of yellow-green light. The walkway was pitch black. She stopped pushing the cart and huddled next to it, wrapping her coat tighter, then getting up to put on boots and wool socks. For several hours she sat in a stupor beside the cart, one foot wedged against a wheel to keep it from rolling.
Below the bridge, the sound of the river changed. Her neck hair stood on end, though she had no real reason to be spooked. Still, she could feel something going on, something different. Overhead, the stars gleamed still and clear, and the Milky Way blazed unobscured by city lights and dirty air.
She stood and stretched, yawning, feeling scared and lonely and exalted all at once. She climbed up and over the walkway railing, onto the southbound lanes of the bridge, and walked to the edge. Gripping the railing with gloved, cold-numbed fingers, she looked across the East River, toward South Street, then swept her gaze over the no-longer dark to the outlines of the ferry terminals.
It was still a long time to dawn, but wherever the river touched there was light, and wherever the river flowed there was a green and blue brilliance. The water was filled with eyes and pinwheels and ferris wheels and slow, stately burst like fireworks, all speckled against a steady cobalt glow. She might have been looking down on a million cities at nigh twisted and spun around each other.
The river was alive, from shore to shore and past Governors Island, where the Upper Bay became a Milky Way in reverse. The river glowed and moved and every part of it had purpose; Suzy knew this.
She knew that she was like an ant on the street of a big cit now. She was the uncomprehending, the limited, the transient and fragile. The river was even more complex an beautiful than the early evening skyline of Manhattan.
“I’m never going to understand this,” she said. She shook her head and looked up at the dark skyscrapers.
One of them was not completely dark. In the top floors of the south tower of the World Trade Center, a greenish light flickered. “Hey,” she said, marveling more at that light than everything else.
She pushed away from the railing and returned to her cart on the walkway. All very pretty, she told herself, but the important thing was to keep from freezing, and then to move when the dawn was bright enough to see by. She huddle next to the cart.
“I’ll go see what’s in the building,” she said. “Maybe it’s somebody like me, somebody smarter who knows about electricity. Tomorrow morning I’ll go see.”
Asleep or awake, shivering or still, she fancied she could hear something beyond hearing: the sound of the change, the plague and the river and the drifting sheets, like a big church choir with all its members’ mouths wide open, singing silence.
23
Paulsen-Fuchs pulled up a chair in the viewing chamber with a distant scrape of metal and sat on it. Bernard watched him drowsily from the bed. “So early in the morning,” he said.
“It is afternoon. Your time sense is slipping.”
“I’m in a cave, or might as well be. No visitors today?” Paulsen-Fuchs shook his head, but did not volunteer an explanation. “News?”
“The Russians have pulled out of the Geneva U.N. Obviously they see no advantage to a United Nations when they are the sole nuclear superpower on the Earth. But before they left, they tried to get the security council to declare the United States a nation without leadership and hazardous to the rest of the world.”
“What are they aiming for?”
“I believe they are aiming for some consensus on a nuclear strike.”
“Good God,” Bernard said. He sat up on the edge of the cot and held the back of his hands up before his eyes. The ridges had receded slightly; the quartz lamps treatments were making at least cosmetic improvements. “Did they mention Mexico and Canada?”
“Just the United States. They wish to kick the corpse.”
“So what is everybody else saying, or doing?”
“The U.S. forces in Europe are organizing an interim government. They have declared a touring U.S. Senator from California in line of succession for the Presidency. Your Air Force officers at the base here are putting up some resistance. They believe the United States government should be military for the time being. Diplomatic offices are being rearranged into governmental centers. The Russians are asking American ships and submarines to be put into special quarantine stations in Cuba and along the Russian coast in the northern Pacific and the Sea of Japan.”
“Are they doing it?”
“No reply. I think not, however.” He smiled.
“Any more on the bird-fish kills?”
“Yes. In England they are killing all migratory birds, whether they come from North America or not. Some groups want to kill all birds. There is much savagery, and not just against animals, Michael. Americans everywhere are being subjected to great indignities, even if they have lived in Europe for decades. Some religious groups believe Christ has established a base in America and is about to march on Europe to bring the Millennium. But you’ll have your news over the terminal this morning, as usual. You can read about it all there.”
“It’s better if it comes from a friend.”
“Yes,” Paulsen-Fuchs said. “But even a friend’s words cannot improve the news as it is today.”
“Would a nuclear strike solve the problem? I’m no expert on epidemiology—could America actually be sterilized?”
“Highly unlikely, and the Russians are well aware of that. We know something about the accuracy of their warheads, failure rates, and so on. They could at best manage to burn out perhaps half of North America sufficiently to destroy all life forms. That would be next to useless. And the radiation hazard, not to mention the meteorological changes and the hazard of biologicals in the dust clouds, would be enormous. But—” He shrugged. “They are Russians. You do not remember them in Berlin. I do. I was just a boy, but I remember them—strong, sentimental, cruel, crafty and stupid at once.”
Bernard restrained himself from commenting on Germany’s behavior in Russia. “So what’s holding them back?”
“NATO. France, surprisingly. The strong objections of most of the non-aligned countries, especially Central and South America. Now enough talk of that. I need a report.”
“Ay, ay,” Bernard said, saluting. “I feel fine, though a touch groggy. I’m considering going crazy and making a great deal of noise. I feel like I’m in prison.”
“Understandable.”
“Any women volunteers yet?”
“No,” Paulsen-Fuchs said, shaking his head. Perfectly seriously, he added, “I do not understand it. Always they have said fame is the best aphrodisiac.”
“Just as well, I suppose. If it’s any consolation, I haven’t noticed any changes in my anatomy since the day before yesterday.” That was when the lines in his skin began to recede.
“You have decided to continue the lamp treatments?”
Bernard nodded. “Gives me something to do.”
“We are still considering anti-metabolites and DNA polymerase inhibitors. The infected animals are showing no symptoms—apparently your noocytes are not pleased with animals. Not here, at least. All sorts of theories. Are you experiencing headaches, muscle aches, anything of that nature, even though they may be normal for you?”