I hold the sled on its course with unsteady hands. “I delivered the power of a lightning strike to Archbold, as I promised.”
She examines me with dismayed eyes, her face a calm goddess-mask in the instrument lights.
“You enjoyed it.”
“Of course.”
“You enjoyed it too much.”
“I—I don’t understand.” As always, a strange sad weakness is spreading through my limbs.
“I won’t give you children,” she says, with the peacefulness of utter conviction. “You have no instinct for life.”
The storm season is almost over now. I have not seen Selena since that night and I often muse about why she left me. She was right about the nature of my work, of course. There would be no vegetation or animals or human beings on Earth were lightning not there to transform atmospheric nitrogen into soil-nourishing nitric acids. And so by diverting the great discharges into Archbold’s lair I am, in a very small way, opposing my mind and strength to the global tides of life itself. But I suspect that my infinitesimal effect on the biosphere is of no concern to Selena. I suspect she has a more immediate, more personal reason for rejecting me.
There is no time to think about such things now, though. Another storm is coming, perhaps the last of the season—and I must fly to meet it.