We realized we’d made a mistake when Gwen got a call from him a few days later. She had formally renounced her title as captain and flown to Hawaii, but she was still acting as our coordinator. Dave had called to find out where the rest of us were, and when she’d asked him why, he would only tell her to warn us away from Cheyenne, Wyoming, or any place downwind of it.
“Downwind?” I asked when Gwen called us to relay his message. “What the hell is he trying this time?”
Jody and I were in the car again, headed north toward Mammoth hot springs. A ghost of Gwen’s face peered at us through the phone’s heads-up windshield display. “He wouldn’t tell me,” she replied. “He just said to keep everyone away from the American Midwest for a while.”
“I bet he’s going to blow up a nuclear bomb,” Jody said. “Cheyenne’s one of the Air Force bases where they stored them.”
“A nuclear bomb?” asked Gwen. “What does that have to do with God?”
I laughed. “Maybe he thinks we just need to knock loud enough to be heard.”
“Yeah, but where’s the door?” Jody asked. “Certainly not in Cheyenne. I’ve been there; it’s a dirty little government town out on the prairie.”
My smile faded. “If physical location matters at all, I’d guess the Grand Teton.”
“He wouldn’t nuke the Tetons, would he?” Jody asked, horrified at the thought.
“I don’t know,” Gwen said. “Probably not for his first shot, at least. He’ll probably just lob one into Nebraska or somewhere. But if that doesn’t work, then he might.”
We’d been passing through a long straight notch cut in an ocean of lodge pole pine; I let off the throttle and the hover car slid to a stop, snow billowing up all around it. “We’re still in Yellowstone,” I told Gwen, “but we could get to Cheyenne in-what, four hours? Five?” We’d been dawdling along on ground-effect until now, but we could fly as high as we liked if we had to.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not,” Gwen said. “I don’t like the idea of you two heading toward a nuclear explosion.”
“I don’t exactly like it either,” I said, “but I’m even less happy about the idea of him blowing up an entire mountain range just to get God’s attention.”
“And screwing up the ecosystem just as it’s starting to straighten out again,” Jody put in.
Snow had quit swirling around us. The car’s fans had blown it all away. I tilted the joystick to the side until the car pivoted halfway around, then pulled upward on it and shoved it forward again. The car rose up above the trees and began accelerating southeast.
I said, “Cheyenne itself should be safe enough. That’s where Dave will be, after all. Do you think we should call and let him know we’re coming, or should we try to catch him off guard?”
“He’ll just hide if we tell him we’re coming,” Jody said.
“But he might not blow the bomb if we make him think you’re near the blast zone,” Gwen said.
“Might not?” I asked. “Just how far around the bend do you figure he’s gone?”
“Maybe not at all,” Gwen said. “I don’t know. This is a very emotionally charged issue for all of us. I doubt if any of us are behaving entirely rationally, but how can we tell if we are or we aren’t? We’re on completely new ground here.”
“I don’t think exploding a nuclear bomb is a rational act,” Jody said.
“Not even if he succeeds in getting God to notice us?”
“Especially not then.”
Gwen smiled wryly. “That’s not entirely rational either, Jody.”
“It’s the way I feel.”
“And Dave no doubt feels he has to get God to come back for him.”
“No doubt. Well I feel like I have to stop him.”
Nodding, Gwen said, “Just don’t get yourself killed in the process.”
Jody laughed. “That would kind of defeat the purpose, now, wouldn’t it?”
We were flying over a windswept basin about a hundred kilometres northwest of Cheyenne when we saw the mushroom cloud peek up over the horizon.
For a second I was too stunned to move, watching the way the shock wave raced inward in a spherical shell and how the surface of the cloud roiled and churned inside it. Then, remembering where we were, I shouted, “Christ!” and yanked the emergency descent handle under the dashboard. It was the first time I’d ever done that in a car; the air bags blossoming out of the doors and roof and dash slammed me back in the seat and completely blocked my view for ten or fifteen terrifying seconds while the automatic landing sequence took over and dropped us like a rock. We bobbed once, hard, like a cork smacking into water, then settled with a crunch on the ground. The air bags sucked back inside their cubbyholes and I fell forward against the dash. We were listing at about a thirty-degree angle toward the front.
Jody had caught herself with her hands before she fell forward. She looked out the window and said, “We’re sitting on a sagebrush.”
I looked out my side. Sure enough, a gnarled, knobby little bush was holding the rear end of the car in the air. Not a good position to be in when the shock wave rolled over us. I started the motor and lifted the joystick to raise us off it, and with a sound like ice cubes in a blender the car chopped the bush to shreds, blowing blue-gray bits of foliage everywhere and sending an eye-watering burst of sage smell in through the vents. We lifted up, though, and the wind shoved us forward a few meters before I could set us back down again. We sat there watching the cloud rise and waited for the blast to reach us.
And waited, and waited. The wind shifted a little, then shifted back, and after a while we realized we weren’t going to feel anything more this far away so I cautiously took us up a few meters and started flying southeast again. The car had picked up a bad vibration from the sagebrush, but it still flew.
The mushroom cloud blew eastward in front of us as we approached, the wind at different altitudes slowly tearing it apart. We were moving faster than the wind, though, and as we approached it we realized the bomb couldn’t have gone off very far out of Cheyenne.
Jody looked at me with a worried expression. “I thought Gwen said he’d lob one into Nebraska.”
I was starting to worry, too. “Maybe it went off in the launch tube.”
“We’d better call and see if he’s okay.”
I didn’t want to blow our chances of surprising him, but if he was hurt I supposed we should know it. “Okay,” I said, and Jody dialled his number.
When it rang half a dozen times without an answer I began worrying in earnest, but then the phone display flickered on and his face appeared before us. “Dave here,” he said.
Jody put on a stern expression. “God called, and He told me to tell you to knock it off.”
For just a moment, I could see hope blossom in Dave’s face. Then he scowled and said, “Very funny. Did you call just to harass me or do you have something important to say?”
“We called to see if you were okay. That blast looked like it was pretty close to town.”
“It was in town,” said Dave.”At the Air Force base, anyway, which is pretty much the same thing. None of the rockets were in shape to fly, so I just blew one of the missiles in place.”
“Where were you?” I asked.
Dave laughed. “Colorado Springs. NORAD control. I’ve got a half mile of mountain over my head right now, in case you were thinking of trying to stop me.”
In a teasing voice, Jody said, “Aren’t you afraid God will miss you again?”
Dave shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe the spy network they’ve got here. I’ve got satellite surveillance all over the world. If He shows up I’ll know it, and I’ll set off another one closer to home. He’ll know I’m here.”