Glimmering

It didn’t work. Instead a dream of burning desert sand edged Trip into wakefulness. He blinked, staring confusedly at the tiny room. Suddenly he sat bolt upright.

“What the—!!”

Flaming columns rose from floor to ceiling. They flickered from crimson to gold to the lambent white of an empty IT disc. With a cry Trip started for the door, then stopped.

The room was filled not with flames but light, so brilliant he had to shade his eyes. Even the floor glowed, plain pine burnished to molten bronze. From the corridor he could hear excited voices.

“What is it?” Trip asked breathlessly as he opened the door. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” Jerry Disney yawned, running a hand across his shaven forehead. He was standing with one of the hostel’s prefects still in her bathrobe. “The glimmering. Sunspots or whatever it does. Everything’s down again. Go back to bed.” He turned and shuffled down the hall to his room.

“Robert’s checking on his shortwave.” The prefect was more excited than Jerry, her face rose pink in the shifting light. “I mean, it’s four A.M., and it looks like broad daylight! Isn’t this terrible? Last month we were without electricity for almost a week. Did you all get that?”

Trip shook his head. “We were in Dallas. But I heard about it.”

“Were you supposed to leave today?”

“Tonight, I think.”

“Well, don’t bother packing. I’ll let you know if Robert patches into any news.” They were stranded for a week. Power was disrupted across the entire northern hemisphere, knocking out computer networks, satellite links, airports from Greenland to Norfolk. The oceanic system of telecom cables was already weakened by an increase in volcanic activity since the Ross Ice Shelf disaster. Now the increased demands for power crippled it still further. Communications were scrambled worldwide. Several air crashes occurred, as the shift in the magnetic field played havoc with automatic flight systems. There were riots on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. In Durham, New Hampshire, seventeen people died in the city hospital when emergency generators failed. Outbreaks of E. coli bacteria left dozens of children dead; in Boston, the National Guard had to assist the Red Cross in getting potable water to the South Side.

Word of the extent of the disaster gradually filtered into the hostel in Cambridge, where they made do with camping equipment left over from happier times. Coleman stoves and lanterns, wool blankets and water purification kits for what they could hand-carry from the green and viscous Charles. Except for a few group forays to the river, Lucius Chappell made the tour members stay inside—he was terrified of riots.

“Scared shitless of Negroes and fellahin,” sniffed Jerry Disney. He looked over at Trip and grinned. “Probably thinks you’ll just book.”

By Thursday rudimentary power was restored in some places. At the hostel they still ate by candlelight, working their way though canned soups, canned beans, freeze-dried pasta dinners. Now the only television station they could pick up was an equal-access cable hookup from MIT, staffed mostly by wild-eyed cranks who could be glimpsed inhaling bluish powder on camera.

“Boil water, avoid brownouts, stay indoors, don’t run that A/C, folks,” a girl said, giggling as she read from a torn page. She glanced at a bearded young man beside her who was shouting into a cell phone. “A/C. What’s that?”

“Air conditioning,” he replied.

“Jesus, air conditioning!” She twirled a plastic Frank Sinatra mask, knocking over a bottle of diet soda and registering more alarm than she had while reporting a fire downtown that had killed six people. “Shit! That was my LAST ONE—”

Through it all, Trip seldom ventured from his room. He slept with a towel over his eyes, to shield them from the glowing crimson ribbons streaming down through the windows day and night. His dreams were troubled. He wanted to dream of Alford Lake. He wanted to dream of the blond girl. He never did, but he thought about her constantly, masturbating even though it left him feeling more depleted and depressed than ever. When they left Stamford, he’d crammed a small canvas bag with lilac blossoms. The flowers had since crumbled into brown fragments, but they retained a sweet faint smell. Hour after hour he lay in bed, pressing handfuls of perfumed dust against his face as he tried to summon up the girl’s wan image, her twilight eyes. He refused meals and company, pleading sickness; but John Drinkwater at least wasn’t fooled.

“You want to talk?” he asked once, standing in Trip’s doorway and staring worriedly at the pale figure hunched beneath the blankets.

“No. Tired, that’s all.” Trip thought of his mother, saying the same thing over and over in the months following his father’s suicide. When she finally got out of bed it was to go to Roque Beach and the whirlpool at Hell Head. “I think maybe I need some time off from touring.”