“And what are we supposed to do if one of these is actually in our house? What then?” He spoke with more aggression than he had intended. Atasoy raised an eyebrow.
“Then I would say…”
A loud knock on the office door interrupted him. The person knocking didn’t wait for an answer—the door opened immediately. Derek recognized the receptionist, a young Indian woman.
“Doctor Atasoy,” she said, “you have to see this. Come quickly.”
“Now slow down, Gita, what’s the problem? I’ve asked you before not to simply barge in here,” the doctor said.
Creases appeared in Atasoy’s forehead. The receptionist looked as if a tornado were racing toward the hospital. Derek wouldn’t have been surprised by that, even if it wasn’t tornado season right now. The weather and all its unpredictability didn’t seem to follow the old farmers’ rules anymore. He heard excited shouts from the corridor and the waiting room.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Dr. Atasoy didn’t answer. He was no longer in his chair. Mary was sitting there as if she were frozen. Derek tried to give her an encouraging smile. Then he left the room through the open door. Gita, the receptionist, said something behind him, but he couldn’t understand her, because everyone out here was shouting over each other. The patients in the waiting room had all pressed themselves against the window. Something must be happening outside.
The light streaming in was just as bright as before. There can’t be a bad storm coming. The people were pressing their faces against the window and pointing upward at something straight above them, where the sun should be. There was no more room at the window, so he simply pushed a skinny, accountant-type guy to the side. The man grumbled a little, but went silent after he had given Derek a mean look. Derek knew that his intimidating stature and red hair made him look like an Irish brawler, and sometimes he deliberately used that to his advantage.
He looked out the window. The sky was shining in the prettiest shade of blue. Why was everyone so worked up? Derek tilted his head back. And then he saw it. He rubbed his eyes because it was so unbelievable. A black stripe ran across the sky. It resembled a giant ribbon blowing in the wind, but was entirely motionless, its jagged edges glowing red. It looked as if the heavens had been slashed, opened up in order to consume all of creation.
Derek was not an active churchgoer. He believed what his mother had taught him and what was in the Bible, but it had all seemed something like a fairy tale before, something that didn’t really concern him. He started feeling hot. Could it be some prophecy was being fulfilled? Would a supernatural being descend to render its last judgment?
Derek reached for his heart with his left hand. It felt like it wanted to jump out of his chest. At least the emergency room wasn’t far, he thought. His heart and circulation had always been strong and stable. He turned around. Where was Mary? He didn’t see her anywhere. He started to worry and gave up his spot at the window. She wasn’t in the corridor and also not in the waiting room. He finally found her in the doctor’s office. The doctor, receptionist, and Mary were all standing next to each other, their noses pressed flat against the window. Of course. The phenomenon stretched across the entire sky—it must be visible from there too.
Derek came up behind Mary and rested his arms on her shoulders. She flinched, but didn’t try to squirm away.
“What is that?” she asked, turning her face to the side.
He looked at her delicate nose and her thin eyelashes. It had been a long time since he had looked at her from such a close distance.
“I have no idea,” he answered. “Doctor, do you have any idea what that is?”
The man to his left had been to college, so surely he must know more than the rest of them.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Atasoy said.
Derek carefully wedged himself between Mary and the receptionist. His wife was slim, but Gita had a rather full figure. Maybe her wide hips only caught his attention because she was so small. Five feet, if that, Derek estimated, then forced himself to do the conversion to meters in his head. So one-and-a-half meters. He should really stop using those old units. He leaned with his right hip against the window sill and bumped against an indoor plant. It was green was all he noticed. Plants were only interesting to him if they were in fields.
Then he lifted his gaze back to the sky. The black stripe was still there. It looked like it was rigidly glued to a blue background. No, that wasn’t right, it wasn’t glued on, it had torn apart the background. That’s what it was—a rip. Their world had been torn apart. A shiver ran down his back. He didn’t feel afraid. No, it was something more like awe. It was much like the moment when his mother had brought him to church for the very first time and organ music had suddenly filled the gigantic space. The music had seemed to come from everywhere at the same time.
A swelling murmur of many voices jolted him out of his thoughts. People were suddenly pointing up at the sky. Was there some creature descending from above? Derek rubbed his eyes because he couldn’t see anything. Then he noticed it, a small, shining arrow. An airplane, at 30,000 feet, he estimated. Derek squinted. A four-engine Boeing, surely a passenger plane. The pilot was headed straight toward the rip. Hadn’t he seen it? Derek had a pilot’s license himself.
The plane was still far enough away that an evasive maneuver could probably be done without any problem. Why wasn’t the pilot turning around? Was the crew asleep, perhaps, and the autopilot clueless? Didn’t they see what they were racing toward at 600 miles per hour?
Derek wanted to scream to them and warn them. He made his hands into fists. The airplane’s metallic fuselage flashed silver in the sunlight. He imagined the passengers looking out of their windows, maybe feeling sorry for the Kansas farmers because of the vast sea of never-ending brownness. Or maybe they were thinking about their destination, a beach in Florida, the sweetheart they were going to embrace in their arms, or the business partner they were going to rip off. Life is short and can end so suddenly. He opened his fists again.
From his perspective, the airplane was only a few millimeters away from the rip. It was already turning a reddish color. Even if the pilots noticed what was in front of them, it would be too late now. Derek heard the people behind him shouting loudly. Everyone wanted to warn the pilots. Maybe at least some of those on the plane could still be saved with parachutes! But Derek was skeptical. Could anything save them? What would happen to it when it touched the rip? Would it explode, or crash against an invisible wall and then break apart completely? Or would the plane simply pass through it?
The moment came. The nose of the Boeing touched one of the jagged spikes of the black stripe. Gone! It was gone!
Derek shook his head. Why were the people behind him so upset? All at once it became very quiet. He turned around. People were standing in front of the window with open mouths, as if they had forgotten what they were going to say. Had they all gone crazy? Sure, a dark rip had split apart the sky. It was probably the end of the world. That was a feasible theory, Derek decided, until someone thought of something else. But no supernatural creature had descended upon the earth yet. They had been watching the rip and the sky now for several minutes, without anything happening. If that continued, it wouldn’t support his theory. If God had decided to start His Last Judgment today, why would He drag it out so long?
Or maybe it had already happened. Maybe the judgment had been rendered long ago and he had ended up in Hell. He had certainly killed enough men as a soldier for that to be a distinct possibility. Hell... what else were his dried-up fields to him? But Mary, no, she wouldn’t be here too. Mary was innocent.
Behind him it was getting loud again. People were pointing up to the sky. What was there to see? They all knew the rip was there. He craned his neck, but all he saw was glaring bright light. Oh, there was an airplane, approaching from the south. It was small, probably a two-seater, light sport aircraft, but it was flying surprisingly high. Either the pi
lot hadn’t noticed the rip, or he was curious about it and wanted to get a closer look. Derek clenched his teeth. The pilot was really getting close. How could anyone be so crazy? The patients behind him were loudly shouting warnings. Was there no way to send him a signal to turn away?
Mary turned toward him, and for the first time he noticed that he’d been gripping her shoulders very tightly. He apologized and started to carefully massage her shoulders. She tilted her head back and gave him a smile. Derek felt warmth on his cheeks. That must be from the sun, he thought. It was gradually moving toward the west. He had to shade his eyes with his hand to see the small airplane. It was not turning around. The pilot had probably missed his last chance. Derek knew from his training what an airplane was capable of. It wouldn’t be able to avoid the rip now. Was he seeing things, or had the red fringes at the edge of the rip gotten bigger?
The airplane touched the rip.
“Oh man, oh man, oh man,” Derek said involuntarily. The knuckles on his right hand cracked. The airplane disappeared.
Derek listened to the echo of his words. Had he just said something, and why?
“Did I just say something?” he asked Mary.
“You said the words ‘oh man’ three times,” she answered.
He remembered. But he no longer knew why. He must have been upset about something.
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Translator: Roderich Bott
Editing Team: Marcia Kwiecinski, A.A.S. and Stephen Kwiecinski, B.S.
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Technical Advisors: Dr. Lutz Hillmann, Hauke Sattler
Cover design: Haresh R. Makwana
Silent Sun: Hard Science Fiction Page 30