Ponter smiled politely. “Yes, I—”
But the man, eyes wide, pushed Ponter aside, and said again, “It’s you! It’s you!” He seemed intent on making his way through the crowd, and, for the most part, it was parting to allow him to do so.
“Jesus!” shouted a woman beside Bandra, but Mary couldn’t see what had upset her so. She turned back to look at the man who had pushed past Ponter and, to her astonishment, she saw him go to his knees.
Dick Clark’s voice emanated from the speakers again, sounding panicky. “I can’t do this with him here!”
Mary felt her throat go dry. She reached out with her left hand, hoping to steady herself. Bandra grabbed her arm. “Mare, are you okay?”
Mary forced a small nod.
“Jesus!” shouted the woman again.
But Mary shook her head.
“No,” she said, ever so softly.
No, it wasn’t Jesus.
It was Mary.
It was the blessed Virgin Mary!
“Ponter,” said Mary, her voice shaking. “Ponter, do you see her? Do you see her?”
“Who?” said Ponter.
“She’s right there,” said Mary, pointing—and then, almost at once, she drew her hand back and used it to cross herself. “She’s right there!”
“Mare, there are half a million people here…”
“But she’s glowing,” said Mary softly.
Ponter turned to Louise, and Mary forced herself to look in that direction for a second. Louise’s brown eyes were wide and she was whispering over and over again, too softly for Mary to hear, but she could read Louise’s lips: “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu… ”
“See!” said Mary. “Louise sees her, too!” But even as she said that, Mary had her doubts; the Virgin was indeed holy, but one did not greet her with “My God, my God, my God…”
Mary found her gaze drawn back to the perfect illuminated form in front of her, flanked by towering buildings.
Bandra was still holding on to Mary’s arm. The woman on the other side of Bandra had dropped to her knees. “Mary!” she exclaimed. “The Blessed Virgin Mary!” But she was facing in completely the wrong direction…
“Look,” shouted a voice—just one of tens of thousands of shouts going up now, but one that Mary happened to pick out from the background. “The mothership!”
Mary tilted her head up. Searchlights were crisscrossing the black, empty sky.
“Mare!” It was Ponter’s voice. “Mare, are you okay? What’s happening?”
A man in front of Mary had turned around and was reaching into his coat. For half a second Mary thought he was going for a gun, but what he brought out was a fat wallet, filled with cash. He opened it. “Here,” he said, shoving some bills at Mary. “Here, take it! Take it!” He turned to Ponter and shoved some money at him, too. “Take it! Take it! I’ve got too much…”
From behind Mary came a loud cry of “Allah-o-akbar! Allah-o-akbar! ”
And from in front: “The Messiah! At last! ”
And off to her left: “Yes, yes! Take me, Lord! ”
And to her right, someone singing: “Hallelujah! ”
Mary wished she had her rosary. The Virgin was here—right here!—beckoning her to come forward.
“Mare!” shouted Ponter. “Mare!”
Behind Mary, someone was weeping. In front of her, someone else was laughing uncontrollably. Others were burying their faces in their hands, or clapping their hands together, or raising their hands to heaven.
A man was shouting, “Who’s that? Who’s there?”
And a woman was shouting, “Go away! Go away!”
And yet another person was shouting, “Welcome to Planet Earth!”
A few feet away, Mary saw a man faint, but the crowd was too closely packed for him to fall over.
“It’s judgment day!” shouted a voice.
“It’s first contact!” shouted another.
“Mahdi! Mahdi! ” shouted a third.
Nearby, a woman was intoning, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name…”
And next to her a man was saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry…”
And somebody else was shouting emphatically, “This cannot be happening! This cannot be real!”
“Mare!” said Ponter, taking her by the shoulders and swinging her around, away from the Blessed Virgin. “Mare!”
“No,” Mary managed to say. “No, let me go. She’s here…”
“Mare, the crowd is going wild. We have to get out of here!”
Mary twisted away, finding strength she never knew she had. She’d do anything to be with the Virgin…
“Adikor, Bandra, hurry!” Ponter’s voice, translated, bursting into her brain, drowning out the words of Our Lady. Mary reached up her hands, bending her fingers into claws, trying to tear out the cochlear implants. Ponter continued: “We’ve got to get Mare and Lou out of here!”
The white light—the perfect white light—was shimmering now, prismatic scintillations along its edges. Mary felt her heart expanding, her soul soaring, her—
Gunshots!
Mary looked off to her right. A white man of about forty had a pistol out and was firing it at some unseen demon, his face contorted in terror. In front of him, people were dying, but Times Square was too crowded for them to fall. Mary saw the faces of first one person, then another, as bullets tore into them.
Screams went up, rivaling the shouts of rapture.
“Bandra,” yelled Ponter. “Clear the way! I’ll get Mare. Adikor, get Lou!”
Mary felt sweat pouring down her face, despite the cold. Ponter was going to try to take her away from—
No, thought the rational part of Mary, fighting its way to the front of her consciousness. The Virgin is not here.
Yes! screamed another part of her. Yes, she is!
No—no. There is no Virgin! There is no—
But there was—there must be!—for suddenly, Mary felt herself rising up off the ground, flying up…
Because Ponter was lifting her, high, higher still, swinging her up on his broad shoulders. Bandra, in front of them, was pushing people aside as though they were bowling pins, parting the sea, forcing an opening in the crowd. Ponter barreled forward, occupying the space Bandra was clearing before it was filled again by the crushing humanity. There were still a few areas of lower density—what was left of the lanes that had originally been set aside for emergency vehicles—and Bandra was heading for one of them.
Mary looked left and right, trying to spot the light of the Virgin again—and saw that Louise was now high up on Adikor’s shoulders, and that the two of them were right behind, following Mary and Ponter.
A man came toward them, a crazed look on his face. He swung at Ponter, who easily deflected the blow. But then another man came at Ponter, shouting, “Begone, demon!”
Ponter tried to deflect his blows, as well, but it was no use. The attacker was like—exactly like, Mary realized—a man possessed. He smashed a fist into Ponter’s broad jaw, and Ponter finally struck back, lashing out with the flat of his hand, connecting in the middle of the man’s chest. Even over the cacophony, Mary heard the sound of ribs cracking, and the man went down. The crowd surged in to fill the space cleared by Bandra, and it looked as though the attacker was being trampled, but within seconds Ponter had pushed far enough ahead that Mary could no longer see what was happening to the fallen man.
Mary’s perspective was bouncing wildly as Ponter surged ahead, but suddenly she caught sight of the giant lighted ball starting its descent down the flagpole—a geodesic sphere, six feet wide, covered with Waterford crystal, lit from within and without. Mary couldn’t imagine that anyone had had the presence of mind to send it on its way down; there must have been a computer controlling it.
Strobe lights. Searchlights. Lasers crisscrossing through dry-ice clouds.
More screams. More gunshots. Shattering glass. Alarms wailing. An NYPD officer being bucked
by his horse.
“Mary!” shouted Mary. “Save us!”
“Ponter!” Adikor’s voice, from behind them. “Look out!”
Mary could feel Ponter swinging his head. Another crazed person was pushing toward him, this one brandishing a crowbar. Ponter moved to his right, knocking people over as he did so, to avoid being brained.
Bandra turned around and seized the man’s wrist, closing her hand. Again, Mary heard the ricochet crack of breaking bone, and the crowbar crashed to the pavement.
Mary swung her head, searching for the Virgin. The giant ball was almost all the way down—and they were almost out of Times Square, making their way east on 42nd Street.
Suddenly the sky exploded—
Mary looked up. The heavenly host! The—
But no. No, just as the dropping of the ball must have been computer-controlled, so, too, apparently, was the fireworks display. A great peacock’s tail of light was opening up behind them, followed by red, white, and blue skyrockets rising toward the heavens.
Ponter’s legs were pounding up and down, muscular pistons. The crowd was thinning, and he was making good progress now. Bandra remained out in front; Adikor, with Louise still on his shoulders, fell in beside them, and they continued on, running into the night, into the new year. “Mary,” called Mary Vaughan. “Blessed Mary, come back!”
United Nations headquarters was just over a mile east of Times Square. It took ninety minutes to get there on foot, fighting traffic and crowds all the way, but at last they made it, and got safely inside—a Gliksin security guard recognized Ponter, and let them in.
The visions had ended shortly after midnight, stopping as abruptly as they had begun. Mary had a splitting headache, and felt empty and cold inside. “What did you see?” she asked Louise.
Louise shook her head slowly back and forth, clearly recalling the wonder of it all. “God,” she said. “God the Father, just like on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. It was…” She sought a word. “It was perfect.”
They spent the rest of the night on the twentieth floor of the Secretariat Building, sleeping in a conference room, listening to the wild sounds and sirens far below—the visions were over, but the chaos had only just begun.
* * *
In the morning, they watched the sporadic news coverage—some stations weren’t operating at all—trying to piece together what had happened.
Earth’s magnetic field had been collapsing for over four months now—for the first time since consciousness had emerged on this world. The field’s strength had been fluctuating, lines of force converging and diverging wildly.
“Well,” said Louise, hands on hips, staring at the TV set, “it wasn’t exactly a crash, but…”
“But what?” said Mary. They were both exhausted, filthy, and badly bruised.
“I’d told Jock the biggest problem related to the magnetic-field collapse wouldn’t be ultraviolet radiation getting through, or anything like that. Rather, I said it would be the effects on human consciousness.”
“It was like what I’d experienced in Veronica Shannon’s test chamber,” said Mary, “only much more intense.”
Ponter nodded. “But, as in Veronica’s chamber, neither I nor, I’m sure, any other Barast experienced anything.”
“But everyone else,” said Mary, and she gestured at the television set, “across the whole damn planet it seems, had a religious experience.”
“Or a UFO abduction experience,” said Louise. “Or, at least, some sort of encounter with something that wasn’t really there.”
Mary nodded. It would be days—months!—before they had accurate death tolls and damage estimates, but it seemed clear that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, had perished on New Year’s Eve—or New Year’s Day, in time zones east of New York.
And, of course, the debates would continue for years about what the experience—at least one commentator was already calling it “Last Day”—had meant.
Pope Mark II was to address the faithful later today.
But what could he possibly say? Would he validate the sightings of Jesus and the Holy Virgin while dismissing the reported encounters with deities and prophets and messiahs sacred to Muslims and Mormons, to Hindus and Jews, to Scientologists, Wiccans, and Maori, to Cherokees and Mi’kmaqs and Algonquins and Pueblo Indians, to Inuit and Buddhists?
And what about the UFO sightings, the gray aliens, the bug-eyed monsters?
The Pope had some ’splainin’ to do.
All religious leaders did.
Adikor, Bandra, and Louise were absorbed by a report from the BBC, covering events that transpired yesterday in the Middle East. Mary tapped Ponter on the shoulder, and when he looked at her, she motioned for him to come to the far side of the conference room.
“Yes, Mare?” he said softly.
“It’s all a crock, isn’t it?” she said.
Hak bleeped, but Mary ignored it.
“Look, I’ve changed my mind. About our child…”
She saw Ponter’s broad face fall.
“No, no!” said Mary, reaching out, touching his short, muscular forearm. “No, I still want to have a child with you. But forget what I said in Vissan’s cabin. Our daughter should not have the God organ.”
Ponter’s golden eyes searched for something in her own. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Yes, finally, for once in my life, I’m really sure of something.” She let her hand slide down his arm, and intertwined her fingers with his.
Epilogue
It had been six months since New Year’s Eve, and there had been no repetition of the visions. The magnetic field enclosing that version of Earth continued to fluctuate wildly, though, so there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t stimulate the minds of Homo sapiens in the same way again. Maybe, in fourteen or fifteen years, when the field reversal was complete, the people of Mare’s world—still no consensus on a better name for it—wouldn’t have to worry about a reoccurrence.
In the interim, though, Veronica Shannon, and others doing similar research, had become media celebrities as the world rebuilt, explaining what had happened…at least to those who would listen. In North America, church attendance had hit an all-time high—and then an all-time low. A cease-fire was holding in Israel. Muslim extremists were being ousted throughout the Arab world.
But here, on Jantar, the Barast world, whose field collapse had been over for a decade now, things continued as they always had, devoid of thoughts of gods and demons and alien beings.
Mary Vaughan had always wanted a summer wedding—her first one, to Colm, had been in February. But since Neanderthal bonding ceremonies were held outdoors, it was even more important to her this time that the festivities happen during the warm months.
The bonding ceremony would take place here, in the wilderness between Saldak Center and Saldak Rim. Mary had attended one previous bonding, that of Ponter’s daughter Jasmel Ket to Tryon Rugal. It had been most awkward: Daklar Bolbay, who was Jasmel’s former guardian, Adikor’s accuser, and, for a brief time, Mary’s rival for Ponter’s affection, had shown up unexpectedly. Even with her there, though, it had been a small ceremony, as was the Barast norm.
But Mary had also always wanted a big wedding. When she and Colm had tied the knot, they’d only invited their parents and siblings—simple and, more importantly, inexpensive, an event suited to their grad students’ budget.
But this time out, there were a lot of people on hand, at least by Neanderthal standards. Adikor was there, along with his woman-mate Lurt and son Dab. Also present were Ponter’s parents, two of the nicest 142s you’d ever want to meet. And Ponter’s daughters Jasmel and Mega were on hand, plus Jasmel’s man-mate Tryon. There, too, were Hapnar and Dranna and their man-mates. Because Mary wanted a maid of honor, even though Barasts had no such thing, Louise Benoît was on hand, as well. And, because he’d asked to attend—and nothing could be denied him during the celebrations of the thousandth month since he’d liberated the Barasts by in
troducing Companion technology—also on hand was Lonwis Trob, now a whopping 109, and only slightly worse for wear after having a mechanical heart installed.
None of the women present were showing yet, but they would be soon: generation 149 was on its way, and Mary was expecting, as were Lurt, Jasmel, Hapnar, and Dranna.
Ponter hadn’t yet arrived. It was traditional for the man who was about to be bonded to go hunting, procuring a food offering to bring to his intended. For her part, Mary had gathered a large quantity of pine nuts, roots, vegetables, edible fungi, and more as her offering.
“Here comes Daddy!” shouted little Mega, pointing. Mary looked up. Off to the west, Ponter had appeared on the horizon. He was carrying things in each of his hands, although Mary couldn’t yet make out what they were.
“And here comes Mother!” said Hapnar, pointing to the east. Sure enough, Bandra was approaching from that direction.
Ponter had said that double ceremonies were rare, but Mary had thought it so very appropriate: to be bonded to her man-mate Ponter and her woman-mate Bandra simultaneously. The sky overhead was cloudless, and the air was warm and dry. Mary felt wonderful—in love, loved, loving life.
Ponter and Bandra had equal distances to go, but the terrain was rougher to the west, and Bandra arrived at the clearing first. She hugged her daughters, then greeted Ponter’s parents—her own lived far away, but, Mary knew, were watching transmissions being sent by Bandra’s Companion. She came over to Mary and kissed and licked her face.
Bandra looked so happy, it made Mary’s heart want to burst. It had been ages since Bandra had seen Harb; her man-mate knew Bandra had moved to the other world, but Bandra had taken no steps to dissolve her bond to him—because, she said, if she did, he’d just seek another woman-mate. Perhaps, at some point, he’d dissolve their union himself—but enough about Harb, Mary thought. Today was a day for making, not breaking, bonds.
Bandra was wearing a backpack, which she lowered to the ground. It contained her offering of food for Mary. Mary had brought twice as much, but only half was for Bandra; the rest was for Ponter.
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