Magic Time

by Marc Scott Zicree

  Shango had no doubt that McKay was dead. Had he attempted to push through some program of food distribution that impinged on the Army’s stockpiles? One of those sad-faced, exhausted secretaries had told him, “All sorts of people workin’ for the Army these days”; people who still held power, people who’d possessed stockpiles of food or domestic animals, people who knew people in the government, who owed or were owed favors. People with something to trade. People the military wanted, for one reason or another, to keep on its side.

  If you were good buddies with senators or generals, it probably wasn’t difficult to be enrolled as a “special deputy” or “consultant” in order to cadge a spot at Camp David—or in the government bunkers under the mountains in western Maryland where the center of things now undoubtedly was—and a ration book.

  But the members of the bureaucracy who were still struggling to govern, still trying to sort out the mess—certainly the bulk of the enlisted men, the Reservists, the National Guard—would have remained loyal to McKay. And McKay, for all the compromises he’d made on his way to the Presidency, had lines that he wouldn’t cross.

  And one of those lines had been the one that divided the good-old-boy Us from the scared and hungry and militarily worthless Them.

  Between the epidemic and the evacuation, it wouldn’t have been difficult to put the man himself away but keep his name. Aides and press secretaries and members of the Secret Service could be dealt with, particularly if people were dying on all sides anyway. No need to make a fuss about it: X or Y just hadn’t made it onto the convoy of wagons heading for Maryland, they’ll be along later.

  Only later never came.

  It was fairly easy to find the grave. It was in a rose bed about thirty feet from the fountain, just behind a bench. Maybe the same bench where McKay and Bilmer had sat, when McKay had asked her to go look for the Source. Shango almost laughed as he started to dig in the still-soft earth—they hadn’t even replaced the uprooted rose bushes, just dumped them in a crude pile on top. Some of the blossoms, brown and withered, still had a little color in their hearts. After all that, all that had survived was a list of names of people who were at the Source, people you couldn’t get to anyway.

  Mosquitoes whined in a cloud around the nearly empty basin, sang in Shango’s ears as his shovel bit the soil. The whole lower two-thirds of the Mall, from the Air and Space Museum to the river, was marshy with standing water and humming with insects, as Washington returned to the stagnant wetland it had been before the introduction of drainage pumps and reflecting pools. Sometimes a soldier’s voice carried from the redoubts of the central command post or footfalls passed along Pennsylvania Avenue—armed bands in quest of forage or fuel—but the stillness and hush were like a leaden shroud. The shovel blade made a harsh hissing crunch in the dirt.

  It wasn’t quite dark when Shango found the body. He scraped and scooped at the dirt, knelt in the shallow depression—it wasn’t more than a yard deep—and cracked his little fireplace striker patiently over a tuft of dry lint until a spark took. The yellow glow expanded to show his dirt-clotted fawn-and-black fur, a black leather collar.

  It was Jimmy, the big German shepherd whom the newspapers had delighted to call the First Dog.

  He had been clubbed to death.

  With him in the grave, like isolate fragments of bone, were a pair of broken, owlish glasses—a little blood and hair still adhering to a bent-in temple piece—and a woman’s pink-and-white Nike, stained black with blood. Nothing more. They were the kind of thing you’d find on the scene of a killing during clean-up, after the bodies had been taken away, particularly if the killings had taken place at night.

  Shango blew out his little scrap of kindling and carefully refilled the grave.

  No mistaking the dog’s crushed skull, the broken ribs and back. Jimmy had been thin with scant rations, but quite clearly nobody had thought it a good idea to blow the cover story by cooking him.

  He had died trying to defend McKay and Jan.

  As Shango himself had promised he would do.

  He sat for a long time on the grave of his canine brother, while the last traces of the time of the dog faded into the time of the wolf.

  And what now? he thought, his mind relaxed and clear— aware of his anger, like an acid-bath of rage, but not really feeling it, any more than a fish feels wet. Stars made their appearance overhead, hundreds of them, thousands, beautiful with a beauty that had not been seen in this place since men had first learned to burn coal gas to chase away the night. The blue flicker of witchlight reappeared along the Capitol rampart, a cold phosphor glow, and Shango wondered how many people had what his granny had simply called Power.

  How many people—like the fear-caster in Albermarle County, and the firestarter in Spotsylvania and crazy Herman Goldman—who would be willing to use that power, for good or for what they conceived to be good, or at least to be good for them? Of course Christiansen, and the men behind him, would be gathering them into their service as Cadiz had gathered Brattle.

  They’d be up in Maryland, too.

  Shango found that the idea of going along with Christiansen, riding with the convoy to the government’s new headquarters, strongly appealed to him. Finding the men who’d tossed Jan McKay’s glasses and shoe so casually into the nearest hole in the ground.

  Finding the men who’d ordered McKay’s death.

  Find them and what?

  Shango’s mission was over. He had done what McKay had asked of him, found what he needed to find, and it was empty, useless. A weapon that broke in his hand.

  And it dawned on him that he was thinking about vengeance—even at the cost of his own life—not because of his anger, but because it was another job. And if he didn’t get another job, another task to absorb him, as he’d let McKay’s life and safety absorb him, as he’d let being the best in the service absorb him . . .

  He’d have to get a life.

  A life with people in it. People like Czernas and Griffin and the lady in the green sweatsuit. People who ran around and did what they wanted and went crazy and talked to God and couldn’t get their acts together and dissipated their energies when they should have been helping their children get out of the projects.

  Messy, chaotic people. People whose problems and demands frightened him because there was nothing he could do about them. Because if he made a choice, and that choice turned out to be wrong, there’d be more chaos and anger and hurt.

  He felt as if he’d put his hand to his side and brought it away bloody from some ancient, seeping wound. A wound whose pain he’d forgotten because he’d lived with it daily, hourly, pretending there wasn’t pain as he’d pretended there wasn’t anger.

  He was afraid to choose, he understood then. And he was afraid to live with choice.

  It was easier to be the best, to be a weapon in someone else’s hand.

  He remembered the fear-caster, staring at him with cold eyes like ball bearings, filling him with terror that only his anger could quell. He had run toward the fear, howling his rage . . . and the fear had been defeated.

  Shango drew in his breath and let it out. He felt dizzy and disoriented, as he had after anger had burst through both fear and the self-imposed bonds of the job; shaky, as he’d heard men were, after they’ve been imprisoned for years, at the sight of wall-less places and sky.

  He thought, I could get another job. There were plenty of them around. A job such as Griffin had chosen, to find the weak point of the Source. A job like the ones McKay had done, struggling to keep help and life flowing to those that needed them, until death overtook him.

  Shango shook his head. Most times, he’d learned that the windmill was bigger and tougher than the knight.

  And the windmill didn’t care.

  The stars moved, leaving the question: What now? South to New Orleans? The town would be underwater by now, of course, with the pumping stations dead. The local military authorities would be in charge. Mother, brother, sisters would b
e somewhere nearby, surviving, he was sure, probably in the middle of a giant gaggle of cousins and neighbors and church ladies, hanging together as they always hung together.

  His family. His people. You have family in town? Czernas had asked, and he wondered, for the first time, what message Czernas had left for his own family, and whether they had ever gotten it. Shango parked his own family like baggage, years ago. Maybe it was time to go back.

  West to the Source? It had been a week since he’d spoken to Griffin and his friends, since he’d sent them on toward Boone’s Gap. Whatever that young man and those around him were going to try to do when they found the Source— or the fragment of it in the South—it had not altered the horrible change wrought in the world. Had they been obliterated? he wondered. Or had they only failed?

  McKay had known the truth, even in that first moment. The lights were not going to come back on. And he, Larry Shango, might be the only person now who had the clue that might lead to its location.

  For what that clue was worth. Evidently it hadn’t gotten Griffin anything.

  But there was another thing that only he knew: that McKay was dead. And almost certainly, with McKay’s death, any concern for retrieving that little boy from the wilds of Maine had vanished.

  Did his road lie north, then? To make sure, at least, that the child lived, in this shaky and increasingly perilous world? To do what he could to help him, if necessary, as he had been unable to help McKay and Jan?

  The sense of calm he felt in his heart told him that his choice—the first real choice he’d made in a long time— was the right one for him, for now; it also told him, a little to his surprise, what a right choice felt like. Maybe it’s not so hard.

  He sat for a long while in thought, between dog and wolf, turning his fragment of paper, his memories and his choices, over in his mind: Who he was, and what he was, and what he might or could be. At last, he got to his feet and walked silently along the empty street, north past Lafayette Square and on up New York Avenue by starlight.

  By dawn, he was far away.

  Darkness clung to the mountains.

  Again, Cal watched Tina being wrenched away from him, vanishing into that blinding whirlwind that was neither light nor darkness, woke up crying her name. Suddenly, he wasn’t certain if it was his mother’s face he’d seen, or Tina’s, or his own.

  I’ll find her, he thought, and knew it was true.

  But he shivered a little at the thought of what it might be that he found.

  Giving up on sleep, he rose and dressed. He found Hank sitting on Wilma’s porch, where Cal had heard them talking quietly far into the night.

  He drew up at the sight of cans of tuna, loaves of bread, bags of rice and assorted sundries that had been piled high.

  Hank smiled. “Happy trails.”

  “We can’t take this,” Cal said, knowing Boone’s Gap would need every bit.

  “It’s not charity; it’s an investment. Where you’re goin’ . . . well, everyone here kinda wants to be in on the fight.”

  Without apparent effort, Hank lifted the entire pedicab onto the porch, and together they began to load.

  “Some people say we’re given what we deserve,” Hank said, tying down a ration of sweet corn. “Maybe it’s just what we need.”

  And what did Cal need, for the road ahead, for the Big Kahuna? Strength? Strength to endure whatever might come in the hard days, to endure loss and pain and not falter.

  Lights moved in the house behind them, and Cal heard voices. Wilma’s and Doc’s. Goldie. Colleen making some disparaging comment about greedy overfed butter-stealing cats.

  The question of his strength faded into nothing. Cal knew he wasn’t strong enough, he didn’t have to be.

  He had the strength of others.

  Wilma, Hank and Bob walked them to the edge of town. Cal realized that Boone’s Gap was in fact exactly that: a pass through the mountains. Dawn was paling the sky, and Hank blinked and flinched.

  “Here,” Goldie said and handed the grunter a pair of raffish blue sunglasses.

  Sunlight broke over the crests of the mountains, golden on the tips of the trees, dew transforming the grass to a silver ocean. Riding the thermals, a single hawk cried its song of challenge. Cal and his party started down the road, into the blue shadows that still lay to the west.

  Acknowledgments

  MAGIC TIME has been a long time coming, and there have been many midwives and cheering sections along the way. First and foremost in making this happen was Elaine Zicree, who created the original two-hour pilot with Marc and then jumped in with total devotion throughout the writing of the novel whenever we strayed and found ourselves without a compass in the dark woods.

  Early encouragement was vital and was provided by Brian Henson, Michael Robins, Les Landau, Halle Stamford, John Copeland, Bruce Sallan, Jim Botko and many others.

  Our editor Diana Gill was a gift and a guiding light to us, as was Jennifer Brehl, also of HarperCollins. Special thanks to you both.

  Steve Saffel, Shelly Shapiro, John Douglas and John Silbersack all provided invaluable assistance in creating this book. Chris Lotts, agent extraordinaire, was our guardian angel and got us out of numerous tight spots. Our dear friend and lawyer Susan Schaefer battled the remaining forces of darkness.

  Vital research into ballet, physics, mountaineering, law, New York geography and other arcane disciplines was provided by Tiekka Schofield, Steve Zicree, Christina Zicree, Mitch Suskin, Alan Favish, Robert Ramos, Nick Roberts, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Jesse Olsen, Robert McWilliams, Kerry Ashcroft, Ira Brady Rubin, Paul Witcover, Joe Rodriguez and the staff at the Beverly Hills library.

  Those who read the manuscript, gave notes, suggestions, invaluable assistance, wise counsel, artwork or general good fellowship include Aaron Iverson, Michael Reaves, Mark Lungo, Winston Engle, Floyd Kephart, Beth Sullivan, Merlin M. Stone, Derrell Abbey, Peter Roth, Alice Hautvast, Armin Shimerman, Leonard and Alice Maltin, Brannon Braga, Rockne S. O’Bannon, J. Michael Straczynski, Kathryn Drennan, Kim Stanley Robinson, Orson Scott Card, Frank Darabont, Ray Bradbury, Theo Siegel, Bobby Israel, Joe Haldeman, Harry Turtledove, Kevin Anderson, Mel Raab, Pat Pedersen, Dave Mino, Dennis Etchison, Norman Corwin, Lisa Jackowiak, Judy and Bob Browning, Donato Giancola, Sheila Stone, Chris Lacson and John Vourlis.

  Iain McCaig, designer of Darth Maul and Queen Amidala, has long been a torch bearer for this project. His magnificent concept art for Magic Time has inspired us and filled us with gratitude, as have his powerful ideas and good, pure self.

  Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff provided endless inventive details and backstory that added richness and texture to this book, and Robert Charles Wilson added his own special magic. Laurie Perry did the copyediting to make sure we wouldn’t look like wolf-children raised in the wild.

  Heartfelt thanks to all of you, for the help on this book and for the countless favors and blessings you bring to our lives.

  To those we’ve inadvertently neglected to mention, our apologies. Drop us a line at sliderutv@aol.com and we’ll rectify the situation.

  “Our whole life is regeneration.”

  Vaslav Nijinsky

  If you enjoyed reading

  MAGIC TIME, then read the following selection from

  MAGIC TIME: ANGELFIRE,

  by Marc Scott Zicree and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  available soon in hardcover from Eos.

  Goldie

  I have that dream every night. The day the wheels came off the world. Bye-bye physics. Natural laws, who needs ’em?

  And every morning I wake, realizing it’s all real.

  Okay, no buildings literally melted, nor did the sidewalks and streets actually roll like ocean waves. But the whole world experienced it, this moment of cosmic mayhem, this thing most of us refer to simply as the Change. At least, we think it did. Nothing we’ve seen in the intervening weeks has suggested otherwise.

  I have other dreams too, also terrifying, also rooted in so-called reality. O
ne of them is about a girl named Tina Griffin. Like our world, she changed—or began to change—in that Moment of upheaval. So did a lot of other people. But Tina’s in my nightmares because I know her. She is the reason we left New York, the reason we head inexorably west— because her brother Cal has the same nightmare, and because that’s where the Megillah has taken her.

  The Megillah is my pet name for what all evidence points to as the cause of the Change. No one else calls it that. They have their own pet names for it: Armageddon, Doomsday, Kali Yuga, the Day of Judgment, the Real Thing.

  Ek velt, grandmother would’ve said: the end of the world.

  Apparently in elite government circles, it was known simply as The Source. A science project of sorts. Funny, the words “science project” usually bring to mind papier-mâché volcanoes and ant farms, not something that has the power to rip the world apart and put it back together all wrong.

  But it appears that the Megillah has that power.

  Tina Griffin, all of twelve years old, was one of the things it reassembled. And after it warped her body, clothed her in light, and granted her the power of levitation, it sorted her from among its over various types of “makeovers” and simply took her. And others like her. Where or why, we have no idea. Sort of a perverted take on the Evangelical Christian Rapture.

  Before she was wrenched, screaming, out of her brother’s arms in the tiny back bedroom of a rundown house in Boone’s Gap, VA, the changeling Tina spoke of Something in the West—a power, an entity, an Enigma. Something that came into the world with a roar and that now grows in it like a malevolent cancer.

  And so, a Quest. Or a monumental game of hide and seek. We seek the Enigma and it . . . . well, it doesn’t so much hide as it evades. It’s that thing you’re certain is behind you in the dark. But a swift about-face only nets you empty air and a dark slither out the corner of one eye.

  And whispers.

  Since that moment in Manhattan when buildings did not melt and sidewalks did not ripple, I’ve heard its whispers. Which makes (lucky) me the only one with half a clue about what part of the West the Megillah inhabits. And that’s about all I have—half a clue. I listen for it; I hear its Voice and we go. Tag, I’m it. Marco Polo. Games. Rough, deadly games.