Four Past Midnight (37 page)

Pressure.

“What does he mean, Brian?” Nick asked. “I can see he's got
something
—your face says so. What is it?”

Brian ignored him. He looked steadily at the seventeen-year-old music student who might just have thought of a way out of the box they were in.

“What about after?” he asked. “What about after we come through? How do I wake up again so I can land the plane?”

“Will somebody please explain this?” Laurel pleaded. She had gone to Nick, who put his good arm around her waist.

“Albert is suggesting that I use this”—Brian tapped a rheostat on the control board, a rheostat marked CABIN PRESSURE—“ to knock us all out cold.”

“Can you do that, mate? Can you really do that?”

“Yes,” Brian said. “I've known pilots—charter pilots ... who
have
done it, when passengers who've had too much to drink started cutting up and endangering either themselves or the crew. Knocking out a drunk by lowering the air pressure isn't that difficult. To knock out everyone, all I have to do is lower it some more ... to half sea-level pressure, say. It's like ascending to a height of two miles without an oxygen mask. Boom! You're out cold.”

“If you can really do that, why hasn't it been used on terrorists?” Bob asked.

“Because there
are
oxygen masks, right?” Albert asked.

“Yes,” Brian said. “The cabin crew demonstrates them at the start of every commercial jet-night—put the gold cup over your mouth and nose and breathe normally, right? They drop automatically when cabin pressure falls below twelve psi. If a hostage pilot tried to knock out a terrorist by lowering the air pressure, all the terrorist would have to do is grab a mask, put it on, and start shooting. On smaller jets, like the Lear, that isn't the case. If the cabin loses pressure, the passenger has to open the overhead compartment himself.”

Nick looked at the chronometer. Their window was now only fourteen minutes wide.

“I think we better stop talking about it and just do it,” he said. “Time is getting very short.”

“Not yet,” Brian said, and looked at Albert again. “I can bring us back in line with the rip, Albert, and start decreasing pressure as we head toward it. I can control the cabin pressure pretty accurately, and I'm pretty sure I can put us all out before we go through. But that leaves Laurel's question: who flies the airplane if we're all knocked out?”

Albert opened his mouth; closed it again and shook his head.

Bob Jenkins spoke up then. His voice was dry and toneless, the voice of a judge pronouncing doom. “I think you can fly us home, Brian. But someone else will have to die in order for you to do it.”

“Explain,” Nick said crisply.

Bob did so. It didn't take long. By the time he finished, Rudy Warwick had joined the little group standing in the cockpit door.

“Would it work, Brian?” Nick asked.

“Yes,” Brian said absently. “No reason why not.” He looked at the chronometer again. Eleven minutes now. Eleven minutes to get across to the other side of the rip. It would take almost that long to line the plane up, program the autopilot, and move them along the forty-mile approach. “But who's going to do it? Do the rest of you draw straws, or what?”

“No need for that,” Nick said. He spoke lightly, almost casually. “I'll do it.”

“No!” Laurel said. Her eyes were very wide and very dark. “Why you? Why does it have to be you?”

“Shut up!” Bethany hissed at her. “If he wants to, let him!”

Albert glanced unhappily at Bethany, at Laurel, and then back at Nick. A voice—not a very strong one—was whispering that he should have volunteered, that this was a job for a tough Alamo survivor like The Arizona Jew. But most of him was only aware that he loved life very much . . . and did not want it to end just yet. So he opened his mouth and then closed it again without speaking.

“Why you?” Laurel asked again, urgently. “Why
shouldn't
we draw straws? Why not Bob? Or Rudy? Why not me?”

Nick took her arm. “Come with me a moment,” he said.

“Nick, there's not much time,” Brian said. He tried to keep his tone of voice even, but he could hear desperation—perhaps even panic—bleeding through.

“I know. Start doing the things you have to do.”

Nick drew Laurel through the door.

She resisted for a moment, then came along. He stopped in the small galley alcove and faced her. In that moment, with his face less than four inches from hers, she realized a dismal truth—he was the man she had been hoping to find in Boston. He had been on the plane all the time. There was nothing at all romantic about this discovery; it was horrible.

“I think we might have had something, you and me,” he said. “Do you think I could be right about that? If you do, say so—there's no time to dance. Absolutely none.”

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was dry, uneven. “I think that's right. ”

“But we don't know. We
can't
know. It all comes back to time, doesn't it? Time . . . and sleep . . . and not knowing. But I have to be the one, Laurel. I have tried to keep some reasonable account of myself, and all my books are deeply in the red. This is my chance to balance them, and I mean to take it.”

“I don't understand what you mea—”

“No—but I do.” He spoke fast, almost rapping his words. Now he reached out and took her forearm and drew her even closer to him. “You were on an adventure of some sort, weren't you, Laurel?”

“I don't know what you're—”

He gave her a brisk shake. “I told you—there's no time to dance!
Were
you on an adventure?”

“I ... yes.”

“Nick!” Brian called from the cockpit.

Nick looked rapidly in that direction. “Coming!” he shouted, and then looked back at Laurel. “I'm going to send you on another one. If you get out of this, that is, and if you agree to go.”

She only looked at him, her lips trembling. She had no idea of what to say. Her mind was tumbling helplessly. His grip on her arm was very tight, but she would not be aware of that until later, when she saw the bruises left by his fingers; at that moment, the grip of his eyes was much stronger.

“Listen. Listen carefully.” He paused and then spoke with peculiar, measured emphasis: “I was going to quit it. I'd made up my mind.”

“Quit what?” she asked in a small, quivery voice.

Nick shook his head impatiently. “Doesn't matter. What matters is whether or not you believe me. Do you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I don't know what you're talking about, but I believe you mean it.”

“Nick!”
Brian warned from the cockpit.
“We're heading toward it!”

He shot a glance toward the cockpit again, his eyes narrow and gleaming. “Coming just now!” he called. When he looked at her again, Laurel thought she had never in her life been the focus of such ferocious, focussed intensity. “My father lives in the village of Fluting, south of London,” he said. “Ask for him in any shop along the High Street. Mr. Hopewell. The older ones still call him the gaffer. Go to him and tell him I'd made up my mind to quit it. You'll need to be persistent; he tends to turn away and curse loudly when he hears my name. The old I-have-no-son bit. Can you be persistent?”

“Yes.”

He nodded and smiled grimly. “Good! Repeat what I've told you, and tell him you believed me. Tell him I tried my best to atone for the day behind the church in Belfast.”

“In Belfast.”

“Right. And if you can't get him to listen any other way, tell him he
must
listen. Because of the daisies. The time I brought the daisies. Can you remember that, as well?”

“Because once you brought him daisies.”

Nick seemed to almost laugh—but she had never seen a face filled with such sadness and bitterness. “No—not to him, but it'll do. That's your adventure. Will you do it?”

“Yes ... but . . .”

“Good. Laurel, thank you.” He put his left hand against the nape of her neck, pulled her face to his, and kissed her. His mouth was cold, and she tasted fear on his breath.

A moment later he was gone.

“Are we going to feel like we're—you know, choking?” Bethany asked. “Suffocating?”

“No,” Brian said. He had gotten up to see if Nick was coming; now, as Nick reappeared with a very shaken Laurel Stevenson behind him, Brian dropped back into his seat. “You'll feel a little giddy ... swimmy in the head ... then, nothing.” He glanced at Nick. “Until we all wake up.”

“Right!” Nick said cheerily. “And who knows? I may still be right here. Bad pennies have a way of turning up, you know. Don't they, Brian?”

“Anything's possible, I guess,” Brian said. He pushed the throttle forward slightly. The sky was growing bright again. The rip lay dead ahead. “Sit down, folks. Nick, right up here beside me. I'm going to show you what to do ... and when to do it.”

“One second, please,” Laurel said. She had regained some of her color and self-possession. She stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on Nick's mouth.

“Thank you,” Nick said gravely.

“You were going to quit it. You'd made up your mind. And if he won't listen, I'm to remind him of the day you brought the daisies. Have I got it right?”

He grinned. “Letter-perfect, my love. Letter-perfect.” He encircled her with his left arm and kissed her again, long and hard. When he let her go, there was a gentle, thoughtful smile on his mouth. “That's the one to go on,” he said. “Right enough.”

Three minutes later, Brian opened the intercom. “I'm starting to decrease pressure now. Check your belts, everyone.”

They did so. Albert waited tensely for some sound—the hiss of escaping air, perhaps—but there was only the steady, droning mumble of the jet engines. He felt more wide awake than ever.

“Albert?” Bethany said in a small, scared voice. “Would you hold me, please?”

“Yes,” Albert said. “If you'll hold me.”

Behind them, Rudy Warwick was telling his rosary again. Across the aisle, Laurel Stevenson gripped the arms of her seat. She could still feel the warm print of Nick Hopewell's lips on her mouth. She raised her head, looked at the overhead compartment, and began to take deep, slow breaths. She was waiting for the masks to fall . . . and ninety seconds or so later, they did.

In the middle of that thought, her mind drifted away.

“You know . . . what to do?” Brian asked again. He spoke in a dreamy, furry voice. Ahead of them, the time-rip was once more swelling in the cockpit windows, spreading across the sky. It was now lit with dawn, and a fantastic new array of colors coiled, swam, and then streamed away into its queer depths.

“I know,” Nick said. He was standing beside Brian and his words were muffled by the oxygen mask he wore. Above the rubber seal, his eyes were calm and clear. “No fear, Brian. All's safe as houses. Off to sleep you go. Sweet dreams, and all that.”

Brian was fading now. He could feel himself going . . . and yet he hung on, staring at the vast fault in the fabric of reality. It seemed to be swelling toward the cockpit windows, reaching for the plane.
It's so beautiful,
he thought.
God, it's so
beautiful
!

He felt that invisible hand seize the plane and draw it forward again. No turning back this time.

“Nick,” he said. It now took a tremendous effort to speak; he felt as if his mouth was a hundred miles away from his brain. He held his hand up. It seemed to stretch away from him at the end of a long taffy arm.

“Go to sleep,” Nick said, taking his hand. “Don't fight it, unless you want to go with me. It won't be long now.”

“I just wanted to say ... thank you.”

Nick smiled and gave Brian's hand a squeeze. “You're welcome, mate. It's been a flight to remember. Even without the movie and the free mimosas.”

Brian looked back into the rip. A river of gorgeous colors flowed into it now. They spiralled . . . mixed . . . and seemed to form words before his dazed, wondering eyes:

“Is that . . . what we are?” he asked curiously, and now his voice came to him from some distant universe.

The darkness swallowed him.

Nick was alone now; the only person awake on Flight 29 was a man who had once gunned down three boys behind a church in Belfast, three boys who had been chucking potatoes painted dark gray to look like grenades. Why had they done such a thing? Had it been some mad sort of dare? He had never found out.

He was not afraid, but an intense loneliness filled him. The feeling wasn't a new one. This was not the first watch he had stood alone, with the lives of others in his hands.

Ahead of him, the rip neared. He dropped his hand to the rheostat which controlled the cabin pressure.

It's gorgeous,
he thought. It seemed to him that the colors that now blazed out of the rip were the antithesis of everything which they had experienced in the last few hours; he was looking into a crucible of new life and new motion.