appeared on top of the Castle. A man began frantically selling telescopes and binoculars evidently hoarded for this occasion. Noah bought a pair with money he’d been going to use for sugarcane.
“Move that damn car!” someone screamed as a Ford honked its way through the crowd, into what was supposed to be a pedestrian area. Shouts, cries, more people rushing from cars to the railings.
Far out in the harbor, the Deneb Embassy , its energy shield dull under the cloudy sky, began to glow. Through his binoculars Noah saw the many-faceted dome shudder—not just shake but shudder in a rippling wave, as if alive. Was it alive? Did his mother know?
“Aaaahhhhh,” the crowd went.
The energy shield began to spread. Either it had thinned or changed composition, because for a long moment—maybe ninety seconds—Noah could almost see through it. A suggestion of floor, walls, machinery . . . then opaque again. But the “floor” was growing, reaching out to cover more territory, sprouting tentacles of material and energy.
Someone on the bridge screamed, “They’re taking over!”
All at once, signs were hauled out, people leaped onto the roofs of cars that should not have been in the park, chanting began. But not much chanting or many people. Most crowded the railings, peering out to sea.
In ten minutes, the Embassy grew and grew laterally, silently spreading across the calm water like a speeded-up version of an algae bloom. When it hardened again—that’s how it looked to Noah, like molten glass hardening as it cooled—the structure was six times its previous size. The tentacles had become docks, a huge one toward the city and several smaller ones to one side. By now even the chanters had fallen silent, absorbed in the silent, awing, monstrous feat of unimaginable construction. When it was finished, no one spoke.
Then an outraged voice demanded, “Did those bastards get a city permit for that?”
It broke the silence. Chanting, argument, exclaiming, pushing all resumed. A few motorists gunned their engine, futilely, since it was impossible to move vehicles. The first of the motorcycle cops arrived: NYPD, then Special Border Patrol, then chaos.
Noah slipped deftly through the mess, back toward the streets north of the Battery. He had to be at work in an hour. The Embassy had nothing to do with him.
MARIANNE
A spore cloud doesn’t look like anything at all.
A darker patch in dark space, or the slightest of veils barely dimming starlight shining behind it. Earth’s astronomers could not accurately say how large it was, or how deep. They relied on Deneb measurements, except for the one fact that mattered most, which human satellites in deep space and human ingenuity at a hundred observatories were able to verify: The cloud was coming. The path of its closest edge would intersect Earth’s path through space at the time the Denebs had said: early September.
Marianne knew that almost immediately following the UN announcement, madness and stupidity raged across the planet. Shelters were dug or sold or built, none of which would be effective. If air could get in, so could spores. In Kentucky, some company began equipping deep caves with air circulation, food for a year, and high-priced sleeping berths: reverting to Paleolithic caveman. She paid no more attention to this entrepreneurial survivalism than to the televised protests, destructive mobs, peaceful marches, or lurid artist depictions of the cloud and its presumed effects. She had a job to do.
On Tuesday she, Evan, and two lab assistants were taken to the submarine bay at UN Special Mission Headquarters. In the sub, Max and Gina huddled in front of the porthole, or maybe it was a porthole-like viewscreen, watching underwater fish. Maybe fish were what calmed them. Although they probably didn’t need calming: Marianne, who had worked with both before, had chosen them as much for their even temperaments as for their competence. Government
“Move that damn car!” someone screamed as a Ford honked its way through the crowd, into what was supposed to be a pedestrian area. Shouts, cries, more people rushing from cars to the railings.
Far out in the harbor, the Deneb Embassy , its energy shield dull under the cloudy sky, began to glow. Through his binoculars Noah saw the many-faceted dome shudder—not just shake but shudder in a rippling wave, as if alive. Was it alive? Did his mother know?
“Aaaahhhhh,” the crowd went.
The energy shield began to spread. Either it had thinned or changed composition, because for a long moment—maybe ninety seconds—Noah could almost see through it. A suggestion of floor, walls, machinery . . . then opaque again. But the “floor” was growing, reaching out to cover more territory, sprouting tentacles of material and energy.
Someone on the bridge screamed, “They’re taking over!”
All at once, signs were hauled out, people leaped onto the roofs of cars that should not have been in the park, chanting began. But not much chanting or many people. Most crowded the railings, peering out to sea.
In ten minutes, the Embassy grew and grew laterally, silently spreading across the calm water like a speeded-up version of an algae bloom. When it hardened again—that’s how it looked to Noah, like molten glass hardening as it cooled—the structure was six times its previous size. The tentacles had become docks, a huge one toward the city and several smaller ones to one side. By now even the chanters had fallen silent, absorbed in the silent, awing, monstrous feat of unimaginable construction. When it was finished, no one spoke.
Then an outraged voice demanded, “Did those bastards get a city permit for that?”
It broke the silence. Chanting, argument, exclaiming, pushing all resumed. A few motorists gunned their engine, futilely, since it was impossible to move vehicles. The first of the motorcycle cops arrived: NYPD, then Special Border Patrol, then chaos.
Noah slipped deftly through the mess, back toward the streets north of the Battery. He had to be at work in an hour. The Embassy had nothing to do with him.
MARIANNE
A spore cloud doesn’t look like anything at all.
A darker patch in dark space, or the slightest of veils barely dimming starlight shining behind it. Earth’s astronomers could not accurately say how large it was, or how deep. They relied on Deneb measurements, except for the one fact that mattered most, which human satellites in deep space and human ingenuity at a hundred observatories were able to verify: The cloud was coming. The path of its closest edge would intersect Earth’s path through space at the time the Denebs had said: early September.
Marianne knew that almost immediately following the UN announcement, madness and stupidity raged across the planet. Shelters were dug or sold or built, none of which would be effective. If air could get in, so could spores. In Kentucky, some company began equipping deep caves with air circulation, food for a year, and high-priced sleeping berths: reverting to Paleolithic caveman. She paid no more attention to this entrepreneurial survivalism than to the televised protests, destructive mobs, peaceful marches, or lurid artist depictions of the cloud and its presumed effects. She had a job to do.
On Tuesday she, Evan, and two lab assistants were taken to the submarine bay at UN Special Mission Headquarters. In the sub, Max and Gina huddled in front of the porthole, or maybe it was a porthole-like viewscreen, watching underwater fish. Maybe fish were what calmed them. Although they probably didn’t need calming: Marianne, who had worked with both before, had chosen them as much for their even temperaments as for their competence. Government
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