David Gemmell: Bloodstone

Zerah smiled as she took the gun. 'Let's go get some breakfast,' she said.

Beth stood alone. Her son was dead. Clem was dead. Shannow was gone. What was it all for, she wondered? To the left she saw Padlock Wheeler talking to a group of his men, Nestor Garrity among them. Isis was standing close by, and Beth saw Meredith take her hand and raise it to his lips.

Young love. .

God, what was it all for?

Tobe Harris moved alongside her. 'Sorry to bother you, Frey,' he said, 'but the baby is getting fractious and the last of the milk's gone bad. Not to mention the little fellow is beginning to stink the place out, if you take my meaning?'

'You never cleaned up an infant, Tobe?'

'Nope. You want me to learn?'

She met his eyes and caught his infectious grin. 'Maybe I should teach you.'

T'd like that, Beth.' It was the first time he'd used her name, and Beth realised she liked it. Turning towards the house, she saw Amaziga and Sam coming down the hillside. The black woman approached her.

'I was wrong about Shannow,' she said, her voice soft. 'Before he asked me to help him from the house, he gave this to Sam.' From her pocket she took a torn scrap of paper and passed it to Beth. On it was scrawled a single word: Trinity.

'What does it mean?' asked Beth.

Amaziga told her.

909Trinity

New Mexico, July 16, 5. 20 a.m.

The storm was disappearing over the mountains, jagged spears of lightning lashing the sky over the distant peaks. The rain had passed now, but the desert was wet and cool. Shannow fell forward as the violet light faded. Sarento grabbed him, hauling him close.

'If you have tricked me. .' he began. But then he picked up the soul scents, so dense and rich that they almost overwhelmed him. Millions of them. Scores of millions. Sarento released Shannow and spun round and round, the heady mind aroma so dizzying that it almost quelled his hunger just to experience it.

'Where are we?' he asked the old man.

Shannow sat down by a rock and looked around him at the lightning-lit desert. The sky was brightening in the east. 'New Mexico,' he said.

Sarento walked away from the wounded man, climbing a low hill and staring out over the desert.

Glancing to his left he saw a metal lattice tower, like a drilling rig, and below it a tent, its open flaps rippling in the wind.

The twentieth century! His dream. Here he could feed for an eternity. He laughed aloud and swung round on Shannow. The old man limped up behind him and was standing staring at the tower.

'We are a long way from the nearest settlement,' said Sarento, 'but I have all the time in the world to find it. How does it feel, Shannow, to have condemned the entire planet?'

'Today i am become death,' said Shannow. Wearily, the old man turned away and walked back down the hillside. Sarento sensed his despair; it only served to heighten the joy he felt. The sky was clearing, the dawn approaching.

He looked again at the metal tower, which was around one hundred feet high. Something had been wedged beneath it, but from here Sarento could not see what it was.

Who cares, he thought. The largest concentration of people was away to the north. I will go there, he decided. Shannow's words came back to him, tugging at his memory.

Today I am become death.

It was a quote from an old book. He struggled to find the memory. Ah, yes. . The Bhagavad Ghita. I am become death, the shatterer of worlds. How apt.

There was something else, but he couldn't think of it. He sat down to await the dawn, and to exult in his new-found freedom. Atop the metal lattice tower was a galvanised iron box, as large as a shed. As the sun rose it made the box gleam, and light shone down on the tower itself. Now Sarento could see what was wedged below it.

Mattresses. Scores of them. He smiled and shook his head. Someone had laid mattresses twenty feet deep under the tower. How ridiculous!

The quote continued to haunt him.

Today I am become death.

Knowledge flew into his mind with every bit as much power as the distant lightning. With the knowledge came a numbing panic, and he knew without doubt where he was — and when.

The Alamogordo bombing range, New Mexico, 180 miles-south of Los Alamos. Now that his memory was open, all the facts came flashing to his mind. The mattresses had been placed beneath the atomic bomb as servicemen hauled it into place with ropes. They had feared dropping it and triggering a premature explosion.

Swinging round, he sought the old man. There was no sign of him.

Sarento started to run. The facts would not stop flowing into his mind.

The plutonium bomb resulted in an explosion equal to 20, 000 tons of TNT. The detonation of an atomic bomb releases enormous amounts of heat, achieving temperatures of several million degrees in the bomb itself. This creates a large fireball.

On wings of fear Sarento ran.

Convection currents created by the explosion suck dust and other matter up into the fireball, creating a characteristic mushroom cloud. The detonation also produces a shock wave that goes outward for several miles, destroying buildings in the way. Large quantities of neutrons and gamma rays are emitted

— lethal radiation bathes the scene.

I can't die! I can't die!

He was one hundred and seventy-seven yards from the tower at 5. 30 a.m. on July 16 1945. One second later the tower was vaporised. For hundreds of yards around the zero point, that Oppenheimer had christened Trinity, the desert sand was fused to glass. The ball of incandescent air formed by the explosion rose rapidly to a height of 35, 000 feet.

Several miles away, J. Robert Oppenheimer watched the mushroom cloud form. All around him men began cheering. 'Today I am become death,' he said.