She tossed the coin, caught it, slapped it down on her forearm. Heads. "Crud," she said, and handed the bright Book to Kit.
He took it uneasily, but with a glitter of excitement in his eye. "Don't worry," he said. "You'll get your chance."
"Yeah, well, don't hog it." She looked over at him and was amazed to see him regarding her with some of the same worry she was feeling. From outside the fence of trees came a screech of brakes, the sound of a long skid, and then a great splintering crashing of metal and smashing of glass as an attack-ing cab lost an argument with some tree standing guard. Evidently reinforcements from that other, darker world were arriving.
"I won't," Kit said, "You'll take it away from me and keep reading if—
He stopped, not knowing what might happen, Nita nodded. "Fred," she said, "we may need a diversion. But save yourself till the last minute."
fl will. Kit—) The spark of light hung close to him for a moment. (Be careful.) Suddenly, without warning, every tree around them shuddered as if Vl°" lently struck. Nita could hear them crying out in silent anguish, and cried out in terror herself as she felt what they felt — a great numbing cold that smote at the heart like an axe. Kit, beside her, sat frozen with it, aghast. Fred went dim with shock. (Not again!) he said, his voice faint and horrified. (Not here, where there's so much life!)
"The Sun," Nita whispered. "He put out the Sun!" Starsnuffer, she thought. That tactic's worked for him before. And if the Sun is out, pretty soon there won't be moonlight to read by, and he can—
Kit stared up at the Moon as if at someone about to die, "Nita, how long jo we have?" "Eight minutes, maybe a little more, for light to get here from the Sun. gight minutes before it runs out "
Kit sat down hurriedly, laid the bright Book in his lap, and opened it. The light of the full Moon fell on the glittering pages. This time the print was not vague as under the light of Nita's wand. It was clear and sharp and dark, as easily read as normal print in daylight. The Book's covers were fading, going clear, burning with that eye-searing transparency that Nita had seen about Kit and herself before. The whole Book was hardly to be seen except for its printing, which burned in its own fashion, supremely black and clear, but glistening as if the ink with which the characters were printed had moonlight trapped in them too. "Here's an index," Kit whispered, using the Speech now. "/think — the part about New York—"
Yes, Nita thought desperately, as another cab crashed into the trees and finished itself. And what then? What do we do about— She would not finish the thought, for the sound of those leisurely, deadly hoofbeats was getting closer, and mixing with it were sirens and the panicked sound of car horns. She thought of that awful dark form crossing Madison, kicking cars aside, crushing what tried to stop it, and all the time that wave of blackness wash-ing alongside, changing everything, stripping the streets bare of life and light. And what about the Sun? The Earth will freeze over before long, and he'll have the whole planet the way he wants it— Nita shuddered. Cold and darkness and nothing left alive — a storm-broken, ice-locked world, full of twisted machines stalking desolate streets forever., .
Kit was turning pages, quickly but gently, as if what he touched was a live thing. Perhaps it was. Nita saw him pause between one page and the next, holding one bright-burning page draped delicately over his fingers, then let-ting it slide carefully down to He with the others he'd turned. "Here," he whispered, awed, delighted. He did not look up to see what Nita saw, the wave of darkness creeping around them, unable to pass the tree-wall, passing onward, surrounding them so that they were suddenly on an island of grass in a sea of wrestling naked tree limbs and bare-seared dirt and rock. "Here—"
He began to read, and for all her fear Nita was lulled to stillness by wonder. Kit's voice was that of someone discovering words for the first time arter a long silence, and the words he found were a song, as her spell to free the trees had seemed, She sank deep in the music of the Speech, hearing the story told in what Kit read.
Kit was invoking New York, calling it up as one might call up a spirit; and °°edient to the summons, it came. The skyline came, unsmirched by any 'ackness — a crown of glittering towers in a smoky sunrise, all stabbing points n<J jeweled windows, precipices of steel and stone. City Hall came, brooding ill over its colonnades, gazing down in weary interest at the people who came and went and governed the island through it. The streets came, hot, dirty crowded, but flowing with voices and traffic and people, bright lifeblood surging through concrete arteries. The parks came, settling into place one by one as they were described, free of the darkness under the night — from tiny paved vest-pocket niches to the lake-set expanses of Central Park, they all came, thrusting the black fog back. Birds sang, dogs ran and barked and rolled in the grass, trees were bright with wary squirrels' eyes. The Battery came, the crumbling old first-defense fort standing peaceful now at the southernmost tip of Manhattan — the rose-gold of some remembered sunset glowed warm on its bricks as it mused in weedy silence over old battles won and nonetheless kept an eye on the waters of the harbor, just in case some British cutter should try for a landing when the colonists weren't looking. Westward over the water, the Palisades were there, shadowy cliffs with the Sifn behind them, mist-blue and mythical-looking though New Jersey was only a mile away. Eastward and westward the bridges were there, the lights of their spanning suspension cables coming out blue as stars in the twilight. Seabirds wheeled pale and graceful about the towers of the George Washing-ton Bridge and the Verrazano Narrows and the iron crowns of the 59th Street Bridge, as the soft air of evening settled over Manhattan, muting the city roar to a quiet breathing rumble. Under the starlight and the risen Moon, an L-1011 arrowed out of LaGuardia Airport and soared over the city, screaming its high song of delight in the cold upper airs, dragging the thun-er along behind— Nita had to make an effort to pull herself out of the waking dream. Kit read on, while all around the trees bent in close to hear, and the air flamed clear and still as a frozen moment of memory. He read on, naming names in the Speech, describing people and places in terrifying depth and detail, making them real and keeping them that way by the Book 's power and the sound of the words. But no sign of any terror at the immensity of what he was doing showed in Kit's face — and that frightened Nita more than the darkness that still surged and whispered around them and their circle of trees. Nita could see Kit starting to burn with that same unbearable clarity, becoming more real, so much so that he was not needing to be visible any more. Slowly-subtly, the Book's vivid transparency was taking him too. Fred, hanging bA side Kit and blazing in defiance of the dark, looked pale in comparison. Even Kit's shadow glowed, and it occurred to Nita that shortly, if this kept up; h6 wouldn't have one. What do I do? she thought He's not having trouble, he seems to be getting stronger, not weaker, but if this has to go on much longer— Kit kept reading. Nita looked around her and began to see an answer Th* darkness had not retreated from around them. Out on the Fifth Avenue side r Ae tree-wall, the crashes of cabs were getting more frequent, the howls of vrvtons were closer, the awful clanging hoofbeats seemed almost on top of the'rn. There was nowhere to run, and Nita knew with horrible certainty that not all the trees in the park would be enough to stop the Starsnuffer when he came there. Keeping New York real was one answer to this problem, but not the answer. The darkness and the unreality were symptoms, not the cause. Something had to be done about him.