But today was different. Hall wasn’t entirely sure what the demonstration hoped to achieve. Truth was he hadn’t really read the briefing properly, he’d just skimmed it over a cigarette and coffee in bed this morning. Not his bed, either.
Hall grinned to himself and glanced to his left. In front of him, Captain Mary Poole stared out at the rig a mile distant, her brown hair shining as a sliver of light caught it. Hall sniffed, remembering the smell of her hair and wondered whether he could make up another excuse to his wife to stay, as they say, late at the office.
“Sir, ten minutes until test commencement.”
Hall nodded at the adjunct providing the report, but the staffer just nodded in return and didn’t walk away. He kept his eyes on the general, even though Hall was trying to ignore him. The man didn’t move but his lips were quivering.
Hall sighed and wished he had a cigarette. “Spit it out, corporal.”
“Ah, sir,” the man began. “It’s… well…”
“Corporal, you’ll be on duties as yet unimagined by the time we get back to base if you don’t let go of your dick and tell me what the damn problem is.”
At this the corporal came to attention. Hall’s lip curled at the corner. That was better.
“Sir, our guests have yet to arrive. Base reports they haven’t arrived there yet, either. Team needs an A-OK to continue without the VIP.”
Well, wasn’t that typical. A test order arrives with hardly any notice at all from the Department of Defense, with a whole lot of nonsense about a liaison from Atoms for Peace, and then the VIP in question hadn’t even turned up on time.
“Maybe she stopped off at the Statue of Liberty,” said the General.
“Sir?”
Hall shook his head. “The VIP doesn’t arrive at T-minus zero-six we’re closing this circus down. I’ve got better things to do than freeze my fanny in the Lower Bay.”
“Sir,” said the corporal. He slinked away.
Hall glanced around, towards the transport choppers sitting on the other side of the island. He presumed the VIP was coming by helicopter too, but the air was silent. There was no way she was going to arrive in time. He would have a word with the Secretary about this. There was work to be done, important, scare-the-Soviet-shitless work. He didn’t have time for this.
And as for the VIP, well, he wasn’t impressed by the so-called Director of Atoms for Peace. He’d never met her, but she sounded like a right PITA. In all the communications he’d seen that mentioned her, it was always in a strange, almost abstract way, like someone was hiding something. Probably embarrassed some civilian pencil-pusher had managed to land the top job, and a woman at that. If the work of this Atoms for Peace was so important, it should have had some brass in charge, someone from the Pentagon, a man who knew what he was doing. Even the name didn’t gel. Atoms for Peace? Some Commie-appeasing BS from Eisenhower… to think that man had led the US to victory in both Europe and the Pacific less than ten years before, too. Jesus.
Hall went to spit into the grass, but his mouth was dry again. He was going to meet Evelyn McHale and… and he felt nervous. He didn’t like it and he tried to ignore the growing anxiety in his chest. But truth was, he’d heard other things about the Director. Rumors, mostly, tall stories he’d dismissed without a second thought.
Until now.
He coughed and checked his watch.
“OK, show’s over. Pack it up. We can go bird watching some other time.”
“General Fulton Hall?”
The General sucked in a breath and turned. Standing behind him, under the marquee, was a woman in a smart dress suit, hat and veil, like she’d just stepped off Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue, 1947, that is.
She was also blue, monochrome behind a glowing aura that made Hall’s eyes vibrate like he was drilling concrete. A glowing blue woman floating six inches from the ground.
Hall remembered the whispers, the stories, and at the back of his mind something broke. His ears were filled with the roaring of the ocean and the memory of his mother.
He coughed again. Around him, his staff were staring at the woman who had not been there and was then there.
“Ma’am?” General Hall’s voice was a dry croak.
The woman glided around the trestle table at the back of the marquee and looked out across the water, oblivious to the reaction of those around her. There, Swinburne Island was a silhouette, the test rig a dark outline against the pale sky.
“Commence countdown,” she said, her voice full of something that made Hall want to cry and leap off a tall building.
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.