A Voice in the Night Read online

  “Sherry Weinberg is at the FEMA base on Lockport Road. What have you got, Sherry?”

  “Paula, this is Anna LeFluer, of Buffalo. She’s a physicist at the Main Cycle Research Lab in Syracuse. And she has an interesting story. Dr. LeFleur?”

  “Hello, Paula. We were able to listen while Professor Harding was talking. I just wanted to add that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. There’s evidence in the geological record of time warps. For example, during the Cretaceous—.”

  “Hold on, Doctor. You’re saying this has happened before?”

  “The evidence suggests it has. Three times that we can pinpoint. Maybe a fourth during the late Paleozoic.”

  “Why haven’t we heard of this before now?”

  “It’s not conclusive. And no one believed a time warp was actually possible. Until today. But if that’s what’s actually happening, it explains some puzzling findings.”

  “How long will it last? The time warp?”

  “We can’t be sure, Sherry. We think the most recent one had a duration somewhere between thirty and seventy thousand years.”

  “Thirty thousand years?” (Another long pause.) “Professor Harding, are you still there?”

  “I’m here, Anna.”

  “You know each other?”

  “Slightly. I know what Dr. LaFleur is referring to. It’s not my field but I wouldn’t be surprised if what she’s saying turns out to be accurate.”

  “Do you think this could last thirty thousand years?”

  “It’s possible. Anna, have you any sense of the geographical size of the earlier events?”

  “I’d prefer to look at the research before getting into specifics.”

  “There might be a correlation that would help us measure what we’re looking at.”

  “Okay. Thank you both.”

  “Paula.”

  “Yes, Whit.”

  “This is Roger Brockner. He’s from the Waycross Research Institute in Rochester.”

  “Whit, I’m not saying it’s true, you understand.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Brockner.”

  “I mean, I’ve never believed it. It’s just that now I’m not so sure.”

  “Please just tell the viewers what you told me.”

  “Well. Ummm. They’re saying the center of the bubble is about a block north of Niagara Street, just off Whirlpool. That’s where she lives.”

  “Where who lives?”

  “Maggie Bennett. She’s been trying to build a time machine for as long as I’ve known her.”

  “You think she succeeded?”

  “Maggie’s a genius. She’s said for years it could be done, there was a way to do it and she was going to make it happen.”

  “And you think she did it?”

  “I think she got close but something went wrong. And look, I know how this sounds. But how crazy is it out there today?”

  “Have you ever seen the time machine, Mr. Brockner?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’ve never seen it work?”

  “No. Of course not. Listen, I’m not one of those UFO morons. I never took it seriously. But now I’m not so sure.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Brockner. Paula, this is Ura Kabele. Ura’s house is inside the bubble. Along with her kids. Ura, what do you think is happening here?”

  “It’s a divine warning. And I think we better pay attention.”

  “Thank you. And that’s it from FEMA. Back to you, Paula.”

  “Thanks, Whit. Stay safe. I don’t know what to make of all this. But we have a map up now. The shaded area is the affected section. Those of our viewers familiar with the area will see that several of the major hotels are inside.

  “We’ve been informed that one of them, the Days Inn, is hosting a science fiction convention. It’s called—I think I have this right—Eeriecon. And considering what’s been happening, it’s certainly got the right name. Yes, Leon, what do you have?”

  “Paula, we’ve got our first reports of brownouts. The power plants have begun cutting back. Large areas of eastern Canada and New York state are already being affected. The Power Commission has issued a statement warning that it could get worse.”

  “Okay, we’re going back to the Falls.” (Sound of helicopter engines and blades.) “Mark Espy is in the newscopter near Rainbow Bridge. Mark, what have you got?”

  “Leon, the gull is moving!”

  “The one that’s been stationary above the bridge all day? It doesn’t look to me as if it’s going anywhere.”

  “Watch its wings.”

  “I think you’re right, Mark. They’re moving. But in ultra-slow motion.”

  “So’s the river. Look! The water’s flowing again.”

  “You couldn’t prove it by me.”

  “That’s the slowest gull I’ve ever seen.”

  “Everything is slow. But look, the little boy’s balloon is moving too. And we’re getting a shot of the Falls now. You’re right. The water’s beginning to flow again. But look at it, Mark. It looks like syrup.”

  “No, it did for a moment. But I think it’s alright now. Paula, are you getting this? The Maid of the Mist is underway again. Maybe it’s over.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “We’re going to try to get a bit closer. If everything looks okay, we’ll set down at the bridge ramp. See how everybody is.”

  “That’s probably not a good idea.”

  “We’ll be careful. Any indication at all of—.” (Helicopter sounds cease.)

  “Mark, are you there? Mark?”

  “We’re good, Paula.”

  “Whit, what’s going on?”

  “I’m on Pine Avenue, Paula, near Main. The people across the street are moving again. It looks as if things are getting back to normal.”

  “Wonderful. Do they seem okay? The people?”

  “They seem fine. The police officers are all right, the driver of the pickup is out of the vehicle now, I guess wondering what happened. There are smiles all around and backslapping, and somebody got some coffee somewhere and he’s carrying it over. Here’s a woman who got caught. Excuse me, ma’m, can we talk for a minute?”

  “Of course. What happened?”

  “That’s what I was going to ask you. You were in there for more than seven hours.”

  “What do you mean, ‘in there’? In where?”

  “Ma’m, you haven’t moved since about eight this morning.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about, young man. It’s only a little after eight.”

  “Take a look at your watch.”

  “Looks fine to me. See? Ten after eight.”

  “Sherry Weinberg, north of Rainbow Bridge. Paula, the WKBW newscopter is just hanging up there.”

  “It’s not falling?”

  “No. Fortunately not. In fact I can see the blades turning. Turning slowly, too slowly to keep the chopper aloft. But they are turning. Maybe one RPM. There’s something else happening. Can you see it?”

  “It looks as if the river is getting smaller. And the Falls. I think we need to calibrate things.”

  “No. That’s what it looks like to me, too. In fact, I think everything is shrinking. As if all of it, the Maid of the Mist, the river, the bridge, as if it’s all pulling away from us.”

  “This is incredible, ladies and gentlemen. More land is appearing inside. The ship’s moving faster.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the cars. They’re roaring across the bridge and out onto the road and north on the highway. It looks as if the entire surrounding countryside is flowing into the bubble and shrinking. Incredible.”

  “It’s an illusion of some kind.”

  “Must be. It can’t really be happening.”

  “The Maid of the Mist is moving faster, passing beneath the bridge, but more of the river has appeared, and it doesn’t look as if it’s gotten any closer to the edge of the bubble. What’s happening? Sherry, are you okay?”


  “We’re fine. I know it looks as if the whole of northern Niagara Falls is inside now, but we haven’t moved.”

  “The gull is gone.”

  “So’s the newscopter.”

  “Sherry.”

  “Yes.”

  “The river’s becoming a torrent.”

  “The good news is that whatever was blocking the Niagara above Goat’s Island seems to have gone away. Here’s where the blockage occurred. And you can see the water’s moving through there now. Moving through the bubble. Maybe the flooding will stop.”

  “More like roaring through the bubble. It’s coming out the other end like a firehose. Hey, it’s getting hard to see.”

  “Everything’s getting blurry. I don’t know what’s happening.”

  “We have Professor Abraham Harding with us. Professor Harding is speaking from the University of Toronto. Professor, have you been watching?”

  “Oh, yes, Leon. No way I’d miss this.”

  “Can you tell us what’s happening?”

  “We talked earlier about the likelihood that time had stopped inside the bubble.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m looking at the picture on your screen now. Everything’s blurred.”

  “Yes. It’s impossible to see what’s going on in there. Are the people in danger?”

  “I don’t know. I was glad to see that the few who got out earlier seemed okay.”

  “Except for memory loss.”

  “I don’t think that’s what it was.”

  “But they couldn’t remember that they’d been trapped for almost eight hours.”

  “Because it didn’t happen to them. When they came out, it was only seconds after they’d gone in.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it, Professor. What happens next?”

  “It looks as if the temporal continuum is trying to compensate for the warp, the breakdown, whatever you want to call it. It obviously returned to the normal flow of time—.”

  “But it hasn’t. We can’t even see into it now.”

  “Well, it more or less snapped back. It had to accelerate. And it looks as if it kept accelerating.”

  “You mean it moved past us?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. Right now, if we can say that, time is moving more quickly inside the bubble than it is in the normal world.”

  “So it would be dangerous to enter the bubble?”

  “I certainly wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “Do you expect it to return to normal, Professor?”

  “Leon, who knows? My instincts tell me that conditions will seek equilibrium. Which is to say yes, eventually it should back up and recalibrate itself with the outside world. But I really don’t know. Before it blurred, the land area inside the bubble seemed to be increasing. As if it was sucking everything around it inside. I don’t want to start a panic now, because we know that’s not what happened. But it is what it looked like. And the river seemed to get longer. It was shrinking to accommodate the new world it was constructing. It’s proceeding into the future. As it does so it needs to recreate its own space/time continuum. It needs a world in which to exist. So it recreated the world it had once been attached to. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Professor, are you making this up?”

  “Yes, of course. But it’s the most reasonable explanation for what’s happening.”

  “This is Wolf Blitzer on Evening Edition. We know a lot of you are watching us on battery-powered sets. We’ve been staying all day with this very strange story out of Niagara Falls. More than forty people were rescued today on both sides of the river from the phenomenon they are now calling the time bubble. Aside from one heart attack, no casualties have been reported. But, more than forty thousand people are believed trapped inside the bubble, in hotels, in the Niagara Casino, on the Maid of the Mist, and along the streets and restaurants looking out over the Falls from both sides. One of many odd things about this story: None of the people who were brought out earlier had any recollection whatever of their experience. This is certainly the wildest story of this, or any other, age.

  “The stretch of river affected by the event is about two and a half miles long. Here’s what it looks like now. You can’t see anything, just a white blur. It’s been like that for more than an hour. The river is still pouring into the bubble beyond Goat Island, but we can see nothing whatever coming out the far end. Professor Abraham Harding, who’s been with us all through this trying day, is standing by. Professor, why aren’t we getting any water out of the north end?”

  “Wolf, from our perspective, time is moving very quickly inside the bubble. That’s why it’s blurred.”

  “How quickly?”

  “Maybe a year or two per minute. There’s really no way to know.”

  “A year or two per minute?”

  “It’s possible. Whatever the true rate is, from our point of view, it’s very fast. But we need to think about things from the interior point of view. From inside the bubble. What’s happening in there is that the Niagara is flowing in, up near Goat island, but instead of entering at, say, what is it, six million cubic feet of water every minute, it might be six million cubic feet every six thousand years. That’s not very much water. Which is why none of it makes it to the other end.”

  “So what’s happened to the Maid of the Mist?”

  “Well, I suspect it’s lying in an ancient and long dry river bed at the moment.”

  “And what of the people?”

  “In that continuum, they would long since have lived out their lives. If time is moving as quickly in there as I suspect, there’ve been a long line of fresh generations since any of the original people set foot on Rainbow Bridge, or registered in the local hotels.”

  “Wolf, this is Bill Hemmer. It’s comforting to see a large silver moon overhead. Almost as if the normal world has returned. I’m standing on Niagara Street, just outside the bubble, just off Main. There’s a large crowd here. It’s gotten cold but they show no signs of going home. They’re carrying candles and praying and sometimes just watching.

  “There are tears, and occasionally you can hear people sing. It’s a somber place. There are two cities called Niagara Falls, this one, and one in Canada, and I’m told this is going on tonight all over both. People have come in from Buffalo and Toronto, and all over New York and Ontario. We’re hearing that the president will be here tomorrow. And the prime minister. I suspect when they arrive, these folks will be waiting.”

  “Paula, this is Sherry Weinberg. We’re getting water downstream again. It’s dribbling out of the bubble.”

  “This is Bill Hemmer from the top floor of City Hall. Paula, I wish I could say we can see things in the bubble, but we can’t. Still, if it means anything, the haze, the blur, whatever you want to call it, has gradually gone from white to blue. Sky blue.”

  “Bill, I think we can see movement in there.”

  “I can see the casino tower! It’s there.”

  “There’s the Bridge. I can’t see anything moving on it, but it’s there.”

  “Paula, the Falls are becoming visible. Hey, do you believe this? Look at them! They’re running backward. The water’s falling up!”

  “Paula, this is Mark Espy. We’re setting the chopper down now. These folks are moving like nothing happened, coming off and going on the bridge. We’ll try to interview some of them. We’re getting some cheers over in the parking lot behind the hotel. Maybe a little premature. But we can see again. There’s Goat Island—And the Days Inn. And the Maid of the Mist. It looks okay. Still headed downstream. And Paula, look! There’s the kid with the balloon.”

  “Professor, why don’t these people remember any of this? You said time was running in there.”

  “Well, yes. It ran forward. And then we must presume it ran backward. Their experiences, whatever they were, theirs and I suspect their descendants, didn’t happen. Not in this continuum.”

  “This is Whit Morrison in downtown Niagara Fall
s with Maggie Bennett. Ms. Bennett, some people think your time machine caused all this. Do you have a time machine?”

  “Yes, I have a time machine. Or at least I did until they hauled it away a few minutes ago.”

  “Was it responsible for what happened here yesterday?”

  “Ridiculous. It’s still in an experimental stage. It doesn’t work. Never has.”

  “Then why did they seize it?”

  “People are scared. I don’t blame them. But anybody thinks I can shut down the Niagara is a damned fool.”

  “Sherry Weinberg reporting from the Days Inn, scene of the annual science fiction convention, Eeriecon. Sir, what can you tell us about the last twenty-four hours?”

  “Ummm. What is this all about again?”

  “There are some physicists saying you’ve probably traveled hundreds of years into the future. That’s pretty much an ideal weekend, isn’t it, for science fiction people? What can you tell us? What was the future like?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. Really.”

  “You’re talking about panels. And the masquerade. Yes, I suppose you could say we spent some time downstream.”

  “Downstream?”

  “In the future. It’s where we’re all headed.”

  “So what did you see?”

  “You got a few minutes?”

  The Adventure of

  the Southsea Trunk

  Henry Cable was, if anything, true to his word. When he told people he was going to do something, they could, as the saying goes, put it in the bank. So alarm bells went off when he failed to show up for the Victorian Club luncheon, at which he’d been the featured speaker. He not only failed to show up, he didn’t warn anyone. The liaison, Mrs. Agatha Brantley, was left to make apologies as best she could.

  For Cable, it was unheard of.

  He didn’t answer his phone. And when, after the luncheon had staggered to a desultory end and a worried Mrs. Brantley went to his house, she got no answer. At that point she called us. “Something’s terribly wrong,” she told the watch officer. There was of course nothing we could do. So she took charge. She got on the phone, located Cable’s maid service, and persuaded them to come early and open up. The place had been ransacked. And there was no sign of Cable. She called us again.