Douglas Preston - Mount Dragon

As he was pouring the coffee he stopped, catching his reflection in the mirror above his desk. He frowned, remembering how dubious de Vaca had looked when he’d insisted he was Anglo. In Cambridge, women had often found something exotic in his black eyes and aquiline nose. Occasionally, he’d told them about his ancestor, Kit Carson. But he never mentioned that his maternal ancestor was a Southern Ute. The fact that he still felt secretive about it, so many years removed from the schoolyard taunts of “half-breed,” annoyed him.

He remembered his great-uncle Charley. Even though he was half white, he looked like a full-blood and even spoke Ute. Charley had died when Carson was nine, and Carson’s memories of him were of a skinny man sitting in a rocking chair by the fire, chuckling to himself, smoking cigars and spitting bits of tobacco off his tongue into the flames. He told a lot of Indian stories, mostly about tracking lost horses and stealing livestock from the reviled Navajos. Carson could only listen to his stories when his parents weren’t around; otherwise they hustled him away and scolded the old man for filling the boy’s head with lies and nonsense. Carson’s father did not like Uncle Charley, and often made comments about his long hair, which the old man refused to cut, saying it would reduce rainfall. Carson also remembered overhearing his father tell his mother that God had given their son “more than his share of Ute blood.”

He sipped his coffee and looked out the open window, rubbing his back absently. His room was on the second floor of the residency quarters, and it commanded a view of the stables, machine shop, and perimeter fence. Beyond the fence the endless desert began.

He grimaced as his fingers hit a sore spot at the base of his back where the spinal tap had been inserted the evening before. Another nuisance of working in a Level-5 facility, he’d discovered, were the mandated weekly physical exams. Just one more reminder of the constant worry over contamination that plagued workers at Mount Dragon.

The Bomb Picnic was his first day off since arriving at the lab. He’d discovered that the inoculation of the chimps with his neutralized virus was just the beginning of his assignment. Although Carson had explained that his new protocol was the only possible solution, Scopes had insisted on two additional sets of inoculations, to minimize any chance of erroneous results. Six chimpanzees were now inoculated with X-FLU. If they survived the inoculations, the next test would be to see if they had been, given immunity to the flu.

Carson watched from his window as two workmen rolled a large galvanized stock tank over to a Ford 350 pickup and began wrestling it onto the bed. The water truck had arrived early and the driver was idling in the motor pool, too lazy to shut off his engine, sending up clouds of diesel smoke. The sky was clear—the late-summer rains wouldn’t begin for another few weeks—and the distant mountains glowed amethyst in the morning light.

Finishing his coffee and going downstairs, he found Singer standing by the pickup, shouting directions at the workmen. He was wearing beach sandals and Bermuda shorts. A flamboyant pastel shirt covered his generous midriff.

“I see you’re ready to go,” Carson said.

Singer glanced at him through an old pair of Ray-Bans. “I look forward to this all year,” he said. “Where’s your bathing suit?”

“Under my jeans.”

“Get in the spirit, Guy! You look like you’re about to round up some cattle, not spend a day at the beach.” He turned back to the workmen: “We leave at eight o’clock sharp, so let’s get moving. Bring up the Hummers and get them loaded.”

Other scientists, technicians, and workers were drifting down to the motor pool, burdened with beach bags, towels, and folding chairs. “How did this thing ever start?” Carson asked, looking at them.

“I can’t remember whose idea it was,” Singer said. “The government opens the Trinity Site once a year to the public. At some point we asked if we could visit the site ourselves, and they said yes. Then someone suggested a picnic, and someone else suggested volleyball and cold beer. Then someone pointed out what a shame it was we couldn’t bring the ocean along. And that’s when the idea of the cattle tank came up. It was a stroke of genius.”

“Aren’t people worried about radiation?” Carson asked.

Singer chuckled. “There’s no radiation left. But we bring along Geiger counters anyway, to reassure the nervous.” He looked up at the sound of approaching motors. “Come on, you can ride with me.”

Soon a dozen Hummers, their tops down, were jostling over a faint dirt track that led like an arrow toward the horizon. The water truck followed last, trailing a firestorm of dust.

After an hour of steady driving, Singer pulled the lead Hummer to a halt. “Ground zero,” he said to Carson.

“How can you tell?” Carson asked, looking around at the desert. The Sierra Oscura rose to the west: dry, barren desert mountains, run through with jagged sedimentary outcrops. It was a desolate place, but no more desolate than the rest of the Jornada.

Singer pointed to a rusted girder, twisting a few feet out of the ground. “That’s what was left of the tower that held the original bomb. If you look carefully, you’ll see that we’re in a shallow depression scooped out by the blast. Over there”—Singer pointed to a mound and some ruined bunkers—“was one of the instrument observation posts.”

“Is this where we picnic?” Carson asked a little uncertainly.

“No,” said Singer. “We continue another half mile. The scenery’s nicer there. A little nicer, anyway.”

The Hummers halted at a sandy flat devoid of brush or cactus. A single dune, anchored by a cluster of soapweed yucca, rose above the flat expanse of desert. While the workmen wrestled the stock tank off the pickup, the scientists began staking out positions in the sand, setting up chairs and umbrellas and laying out coolers. Off to one side, a volleyball net was erected. A wooden staircase was shoved up against the tank; then the water truck maneuvered up to its rim and began filling it with fresh water. Beach Boys harmonies blared from a portable stereo.

Carson stood to one side, watching the proceedings. He’d spent most of his waking hours in Lab C, and he still did not know many of the people by name. Most of the scientists were well into their tours and had been working together for close to six months. Looking around, he noticed with relief that Brandon-Smith had apparently stayed behind in the air-conditioned compound. The previous afternoon, he’d stopped by her office for an update on the chimps, and she’d practically taken his head off when he accidentally disturbed the little knickknacks she’d obsessively arranged along the edge of her desk. Just as well , he thought, as the unwelcome image of the scientist in her bathing suit intruded into his imagination.

Singer caught sight of him and waved him over. Two senior scientists that Carson barely knew were sitting nearby.

“Have you met George Harper?” Singer asked Carson.

Harper grinned and held out his hand. “We bumped into each other in the Fever Tank,” he said. “Literally. Two bio-suits passing in the night. And, of course, I heard your fetching description of Dr. Brandon-Smith.” Harper was lanky, with thinning brown hair and a prominent hooked nose. He slouched in his deck chair.

Carson winced. “I was just testing the global function of my intercom.”

Harper laughed. “All work stopped for five minutes while everyone shut off their own intercoms to, ah ...” He glanced at Singer. “Cough.”

“Now, George,” Singer smiled. He indicated the other scientist. “This is Andrew Vanderwagon.”