Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

Hall didn’t move; he just watched her. After a moment, some of his staff appeared to come to their senses.

“Sir?” The corporal again, his eyes fixed on the Director.

The General nodded, and tried to swallow, but his throat was parched.

The corporal spun on his heel and made a circular motion in the air with his index finger. At once, the assembled team sprang to life, sitting at desks, manning binoculars and telescopes, while several sat themselves behind a large bank of high-powered radio equipment and began murmuring into close-fitting headsets.

A PA squawked.

“T-minus six, zero-six, to test commencement.”

“What exactly am I looking at here?”

Someone had produced coffee out here in the middle of nowhere; General Hall had drained three paper cups of the stuff already, but his throat felt drier than ever.

And worse than that was the fear — it was cold, something deep at the heart of his very being. It came, he knew, from standing next to her . Her, the impossible, the magical, the powerful, the terrifying. Her , the dead woman, the one who didn’t belong here, the one who, Hall had felt deep down — the same place where that heart of ice was threatening to creep up and swallow his whole soul — didn’t want to be here. Hall gulped again, and wondered if maybe the test had something to do with that.

War, she’d said.

T-minus two minutes.

Everything was going as planned, every eye on the rig a mile away, protective goggles ready to be pulled down at the very last second.

All except her. She stood — floated — next to the General, unprotected. Hall wondered if she could even wear the goggles, if she could touch anything at all. She hadn’t yet, she just… hovered, dressed for a busy afternoon trawling Manhattan’s famous stores seven years before.

Hall found himself looking at her again. He couldn’t help it; she was magnetic, powerful, even though Hall knew it was somehow dangerous to be next to her. It was the feeling of incompatibility, the feeling that she didn’t belong, not to here and not to now, and if you got too close to the shimmering blue event horizon that surrounded her you would be dragged down with her, out into the nothing where she really existed.

She turned and met Hall’s eye. He felt ill.

She said, “War is coming,” and Hall barked the order for the countdown to be paused.

He hadn’t read the briefing properly, disregarding as he always did the bullshit that came out of Atoms for Peace. But now she was here and Hall regretted every thought, every rash decision, every casual dismissal he’d made. She was real, and more important, so were the stories about her.

The United States government had a goddess working for them, and suddenly General Hall felt his own work, his job, were insignificant, unimportant.

“What are we testing?” he said, his voice a whisper so low only she could have heard it.

“It’s a… device,” she said, turning back to Swinburne Island. Hall watched her face; it was like she was looking at something else, the way her eyes were unfocused, the way her mouth was open, her lips just a hair apart, like she was watching fireworks on the Fourth of July or admiring a priceless work of art.

“It’s the Russians, isn’t it?” Hall knew it. “The Reds are coming, finally.”

And suddenly he felt… better. Those Communist bastards. This was it. War… the curtain was going up on World War Three, and the United States of America, God bless her, had a goddess on her payroll.

Hot dog .

Now he understood. This was a threat, a very real one, the logical culmination of world events since 1945. And… OK, the Director of Atoms for Peace was a goddess with powers to match, but dammit, she was American, and she was here, asking for his help, here to show him the magic tricks her team had been working on.

“Are you feeling all right, General Hall?”

Hall blinked. She was smiling at him. He straightened his back, and raised his chin.

“Never better, ma’am.” He fought the urge to salute; his hand twitched by his side, and his vision went fuzzy at the edges.

God bless America.

“Now, Madam Director, we’re all eager to watch this demonstration of the… device. Can you fill us in on the specifics?”

The Director’s smile didn’t falter, and after a beat she turned and looked back towards the test rig. Hall followed her gaze, squinting into the bright morning. Then he raised his binoculars again. The device glinted in the sunlight, hardly anything more than a shining star in Hall’s vision.

“It is called a fusor, General,” the Director said. “It’s a portable nuclear fusion reactor, which operates by direct injection of ions into the containment field. The power output approaches maximum when the ion velocity-”

“OK,” said the General, waving a hand. “I’ve got it. You’re here to test a nuclear reactor.”

The Director inclined her head with a smile. “Not exactly, General.”

“A portable reactor, you say? Is it intended as a civilian or military power source?”

“Neither,” said the Director. “The fusor is powerful energy source. But it has another application, one I am here to show you. Recommence the countdown.”

Hall turned to the technicians at the desk behind him, but they were shaking their heads. At the back of the marquee, Hall saw the countdown clock resume even as the technician was giving the directions to his colleagues.

“Sir,” said the technician, “the countdown has recommenced of its own accord. Recommend we-”

Hall held up his hand, and the man stopped. He looked at the Director, but her attention was fixed on the test rig. “Sir?”

“Stand-down. We’re good to go,” said Hall. “I think the Director has this under control.”

“Sir. T-Minus fifty — five-oh — seconds and counting. Goggles down.”

The General and his staff donned their protective eyewear. Through the dark smoky glass it seemed to Hall that Evelyn shone even brighter, her blue glow electric in his eyes. He could see the pulse on her neck quicken as the countdown neared its end.

Hall glanced down at the folder of briefing papers in front of him. He flipped it open and, leafing through, found a summary of the fusor’s blueprints. It was a cylinder, and not a very big one either, about the size of a small artillery shell, no more. The General didn’t know the expected yield of the device, but he had to assume they — and the good people of New York — were far enough away from ground zero.

“Ten… nine… eight…”

Then Hall looked at Evelyn, and she turned to look at him. She stared into his eyes, and he felt the cold spread. Through his goggles her eyes were aflame, glowing, smoking coals, tendrils of energy drifting out of the featureless sockets. Her lips parted as she smiled, and Hall saw she was glowing inside, smoke wafting out of her mouth.

Hall’s chest felt tight. He couldn’t breathe… he couldn’t think… she was beautiful and she was dead and she was… she was incompatible, and she was not here, not really. These thoughts crashed through Hall’s mind. He didn’t know anything about her, but he could feel it, feel her presence like waking up in the middle of the night to find the covers being pulled off and a dead, cold weight sitting on the middle of your chest. The eyes under the bed, the something evil in the closet, the creaking floor downstairs.

Hall wanted to run, to grab a boat and get to Swinburne Island, where he could go up with the test, end it all, his very existence unendurable misery. And still he looked at her, and still she smiled, and Hall remembered the fear and remembered the dark when he’d got lost in the wood when he was four years old.