the doctor in the navy uniform. How cautiously optimistic all the others had seemed. Exulting over the four survivors, while claiming not to know the final tally of all the dead.
This man was the only one behind the microphones who seemed to think there might be more to this than a malfunctioning aircraft full of dead passengers.
From the disease control center, the one in Atlanta. Setrakian didn’t know, but he thought his best chance might be with this man. Maybe his only chance.
He looked out again at the glowing black disk in the sky. Like staring at an eye blinded by a cataract.
Like staring into the future.
Stoneheart Group, Manhattan
THE HELICOPTER touched down on the helipad of the Stoneheart Group’s Manhattan headquarters, a building of black steel and glass in the heart of Wall Street. Its top three floors were occupied by Eldritch Palmer’s private New York residence, a regal penthouse constructed with onyx floors, its tables laden with Brancusis, its walls papered with Bacons.
Palmer sat alone in the media room with the shades all drawn, the glowing black eyeball rimmed in fierce crimson and ringed with flaming white staring out at him from a seventy-two-inch viewing screen. This room, like his home in Dark Harbor and the cabin of his medical helicopter, was kept regulated at exactly sixty-two degrees.
He could have gone outside. It was, after all, cold enough for him; he could have been taken up to the roof to witness the occultation. But technology brought him closer to the event itself—not the resulting shadow, but the image of the sun subordinated to the moon—that was the prelude to the devastation. His Manhattan sojourn would be brief. New York City would not be a very pleasant place to visit, not for much longer.
He placed a few phone calls, a few discreet consultations over his secure line. His cargo had indeed arrived as expected.
Smiling, he rose from his chair, walking slowly but straight at the giant viewing screen, as though it were not a screen at all but a portal he was about to step through. He reached out and touched the LCD screen over the image of the angry black disk, liquid pixels squirming bacteria-like beneath the wrinkled pads of his fingers. As though he were reaching through it to touch the eye of death itself.
This occultation was a celestial perversion, a violation of the natural order. A cold, dead stone deposing a burning, living star. For Eldritch Palmer, it was proof that anything—
Of all the human beings watching the occultation that day, in person or via broadcast around the globe, he was perhaps the only one rooting for the moon.
JFK International Control Tower
THOSE IN THE VIEWING CAB of the air-traffic-control tower 321 feet above the ground glimpsed the eerie sunsetlike twilight way off to the west, out beyond the reach of the great moon shadow, past the edge of the umbra. The brighter penumbra, illuminated by the sun’s blazing photosphere, had turned the distant sky yellow and orange, not unlike the healing edge of a wound.
This wall of light was advancing on New York City, which had now been dark for exactly four minutes and thirty seconds.
“Glasses on!” came the order, and Jim Kent put his on, anxious for sunlight’s return. He glanced around, looking for Eph—everyone from the press conference, including the governor and the mayor, had been invited up into the tower cab for the viewing—and, not seeing him, assumed that Eph had slipped back to the maintenance hangar.
In fact, Eph had used this enforced time-out in the best way he knew: by grabbing a chair as soon as the sun had disappeared and going through a packet of construction diagrams showing cutaway views and schematics of the Boeing 777, ignoring the occultation altogether.
The End of Totality
THE END WAS MARKED BY an extraordinary phenomenon. Dazzling prominences of light appeared along the western edge of the moon, combining to form a single bead of dazzling sunlight, like a rip in the darkness, giving the effect of a blindingly radiant diamond set upon the moon’s silver ring. But the price for such beauty, despite a vigorous public service campaign dedicated to eye safety during the occultation, was that more than 270 people across the city, 93 of them children, suffered permanent blindness by watching the sun’s dramatic reappearance without wearing proper eye protection. There are no pain sensors in the retina, and the afflicted did not realize they were damaging their eyes until it was too late.
The diamond ring expanded slowly, becoming a band of jewels known as “Baily’s beads,” which merged into the reborn crescent of the sun, essentially pushing the interloping moon away.
On earth, the shadow bands returned, shimmering over the ground like inaugural spirits heralding the passing from one form of existence to another.
As natural light began filling back in, the human relief on the ground was epic. Cheers and hugs and spontaneous applause. Automobile horns sounded all across the city, and Kate Smith’s recorded voice sang over the loudspeakers at Yankee Stadium.
Ninety minutes later, the moon had completely departed from the path of the sun, and the occultation was over. In one very real sense, nothing at all had happened: nothing in the sky had been altered or otherwise affected, nothing had changed on earth except for the few minutes of late-afternoon shade across the northeastern United States. Even in New York itself, people packed up afterward as though the fireworks show was over, and those who had traveled away from home transferred the focus of their dread from the occluded afternoon sun to the traffic awaiting them. A compelling astronomic phenomenon had cast a shadow of awe and anxiety across all five boroughs. But this was New York, and when it was over—it was over.
AWAKENING
Regis Air Maintenance Hangar
Eph returned to the hangar by electric cart, leaving Jim behind with Director Barnes, giving Eph and Nora some breathing room.
The hospital screens had all been wheeled away from beneath the 777’s wing, the tarp pulled up. Ladders were now hung from the fore and aft exit doors, and a gang of NTSB officials was working near the aft cargo hatch. The aircraft was being regarded as a crime scene now. Eph found Nora wearing a Tyvek jumper and latex gloves,
