7
Don left the restaurant and walked over to the windows. ‘What’s happening?’
‘We don’t know,’ Bethany said. She had managed to coax a flame from another of her matches and was smoking again. When she removed the cigarette from her mouth, Laurel saw she had torn off the filter.
‘They went inside the plane; they’re still inside the plane; end of story.’
Don gazed out for several seconds. ‘It looks different outside. I can’t say just why, but it does.’
‘The light’s going,’ Dinah said. ‘That’s what’s different.’ Her voice was calm enough, but her small face was an imprint of loneliness and fear. ‘I can feel it going.’
‘She’s right,’ Laurel agreed. ‘It’s only been daylight for two or three hours, but it’s already getting dark again.’
‘I keep thinking this is a dream, you know,’ Don said. ‘I keep thinking it’s the worst nightmare I ever had but I’ll wake up soon.’
Laurel nodded. ‘How is Mr Toomy?’
Don laughed without much humor. ‘You won’t believe it.’
‘Won’t believe what?’ Bethany asked.
‘He’s gone to sleep.’
8
Craig Toomy, of course, was not sleeping. People who fell asleep at critical moments, like that fellow who was supposed to have been keeping an eye out while Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, were most definitely not part of THE BIG PICTURE.
He had watched the two men carefully through eyes which were riot quite shut and willed one or both of them to go away. Eventually the one in the red shirt did go away. Warwick, the bald man with the big false teeth, walked over to Craig and bent down. Craig let his eyes close all the way.
‘Hey,’ Warwick said. ‘Hey, you ‘wake?’
Craig lay still, eyes closed, breathing regularly. He considered manufacturing a small snore and thought better of it.
Warwick poked him in the side.
Craig kept his eyes shut and went on breathing regularly.
Baldy straightened up, stepped over him, and went to the restaurant door to watch the others. Craig cracked his eyelids and made sure Warwick’s back was turned. Then, very quietly and very carefully, he began to work his wrists up and down inside the tight figure-eight of cloth which bound them. The tablecloth rope felt looser already.
He moved his wrists in short strokes, watching Warwick’s back, ready to cease movement and close his eyes again the instant Warwick showed signs of turning around. He willed Warwick not to turn around. He wanted to be free before the assholes came back from the plane. Especially the English asshole, the one who had hurt his nose and then kicked him while he was down. The English asshole had tied him up pretty well; thank God it was only a tablecloth instead of a length of nylon line. Then he would have been out of luck, but as it was one of the knots loosened, and now Craig began to rotate his wrists from side to side. He could hear the langoliers approaching. He intended to be out of here and on his way to Boston before they arrived. In Boston he would be safe. When you were in a boardroom filled with bankers, no scampering was allowed.
And God help anyone – man, woman or child – who tried to get in his way.
9
Albert picked up the book of matches he had taken from the bowl in the restaurant. ‘Exhibit A,’ he said.
‘Here goes.’
He tore a match from the book and struck it. His unsteady hands betrayed him and he struck the match a full two inches above the rough strip which ran along the bottom of the paper folder. The match bent.
‘Shit!’ Albert cried.
‘Would you like me to -‘ Bob began.
‘Let him alone,’ Brian said. ‘It’s Albert’s show.’
‘Steady on, Albert,’ Nick said.
Albert tore another match from the book, offered them a sickly smile, and struck it.
The match didn’t light.
He struck it again.
The match didn’t light.
‘I guess that does it,’ Brian said. ‘There’s nothing -‘
‘I smelled it,’ Nick said. ‘I smelled the sulphur! Try another one, Ace!’
Instead, Albert snapped the same match across the rough strip a third time … and this time it flared alight. It did not just burn the flammable head and then gutter out; it stood up in the familiar little teardrop shape, blue at its base, yellow at its tip, and began to burn the paper stick.
Albert looked up, a wild grin on his face. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘You see?’
He shook the match out, dropped it, and pulled another. This one lit on the first strike. He bent back the cover of the matchbook and touched the lit flame to the other matches, just as Bob Jenkins had done in the restaurant. This time they all flared alight with a dry fsss! sound. Albert blew them out like a birthday candle. It took two puffs of air to do the job.
‘You see?’ he asked. ‘You see what it means? Two-way traffic! We brought our own time with us! There’s the past out there … and everywhere, I guess, east of the hole we came through … but the present is still in here! Still caught inside this airplane!’
‘I don’t know,’ Brian said, but suddenly everything seemed possible again. He felt a wild, almost unrestrainable urge to pull Albert into his arms and pound him on the back.
‘Bravo, Albert!’ Bob said. ‘The beer! Try the beer!’
Albert spun the cap off the beer while Nick fished an unbroken glass from the wreckage around the drinks trolley.
‘Where’s the smoke?’ Brian asked.
‘Smoke?’ Bob asked, puzzled.
‘Well, I guess it’s not smoke, exactly, but when you open a beer there’s usually something that looks like smoke around the mouth of the bottle.’
Albert sniffed, then tipped the beer toward Brian. ‘Smell.’
Brian did, and began to grin. He couldn’t help it. ‘By God, it sure smells like beer, smoke or no smoke.’
Nick held out the glass, and Albert was pleased to see that the Englishman’s hand was not quite steady, either. ‘Pour it,’ he said. ‘Hurry up, mate – my sawbones says suspense is bad for the old ticker.’
Albert poured the beer and their smiles faded.
The beer was flat. Utterly flat. It simply sat in the whiskey glass Nick had found, looking like a urine sample.
10
‘Christ almighty, it’s getting dark!’
The people standing at the windows looked around as Rudy Warwick joined them.
‘You’re supposed to be watching the nut,’ Don said.
Rudy gestured impatiently. ‘He’s out like a light. I think that whack on the head rattled his furniture a little more than we thought at first. What’s going on out there? And why is it getting dark so fast?’
‘We don’t know,’ Bethany said. ‘It just is. Do you think that weird dude is going into a coma, or something like that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rudy said. ‘But if he is. we won’t have to worry about him anymore, will we? Christ, is that sound creepy! It sounds like a bunch of coked-up termites in a balsa-wood glider.’ For the first time, Rudy seemed to have forgotten his stomach.
Dinah looked up at Laurel. ‘I think we better check on Mr Toomy,’ she said. ‘I’m worried about him. I bet he’s scared.’
‘If he’s unconscious, Dinah, there isn’t anything we can -‘
‘I don’t think he’s unconscious,’ Dinah said quietly. ‘I don’t think he’s even asleep.’
Laurel looked down at the child thoughtfully for a moment and then took her hand. ‘All right,’ she said.
‘Let’s have a look.’
11
The knot Nick Hopewell had tied against Craig’s right wrist finally loosened enough for him to pull his hand free. He used it to push down the loop holding his left hand. He got quickly to his feet. A bolt of pain shot through his head, and for a moment he swayed. Flocks of black dots chased across his field of vision and then slowly cleared away. He became aware that the terminal was being swallowed in gloom.
Premature night was falling. He could hear the chew-crunch-chew sound of the langoliers much more clearly now, perhaps because his ears had become attuned to them, perhaps because they were closer.
On the far side of the terminal he saw two silhouettes, one tall and one short, break away from the others and start back toward the restaurant. The woman with the bitchy voice and the little blind girl with the ugly, pouty face. He couldn’t let them raise the alarm. That would be very bad.
Craig backed away from the bloody patch of carpet where he had been lying, never taking his eyes from the approaching figures. He could not get over how rapidly the light was failing.
There were pots of eating utensils set into a counter to the left of the cash register, but it was all plastic crap, no good to him. Craig ducked around the cash register and saw something better: a butcher knife lying on the counter next to the grill. He took it and crouched behind the cash register to watch them