Blasphemy

out a jacket here, a pair of jeans there, hanging them on racks or laying them out on plastic tables under the hay barn. He worked in the cool of the morning, sorting, racking, folding. The great form of Red Mesa rose up in the background, purple in the early light. His mind continued to orbit around Hazelius, replaying their scene. God had shown him what He would do to a blasphemer like Lorenzo. What more would He do against Hazelius?

He glanced up at the outline of the mesa rising above him, vaguely menacing, and remembered the darkness of the night before, the desolation, the emptiness. The humming and crackling of the power lines, the smell of ozone. He could feel the presence of Satan up there.

A telltale cloud of dust on the horizon indicated an approaching vehicle. He squinted into the rising sun, and soon a pickup materialized out of the dust, lurching and groaning along the potholed road. It came to a shuddering halt. A large Indian woman climbed out, followed by two boys. One carried a Star Wars gun, the other a plastic Uzi. They rushed off through the saltbush, pretending to shoot at each other. Russ followed them with his eyes, thinking of his own son growing up without him, and his internal rage increased.

“Hey, Pastor, how you doing?” asked the woman cheerfully.

“Greetings in Christ, Muriel,” said Eddy.

“What you got today?”

“Help yourself.” His eyes strayed back to the boys, who were shooting at each other from behind clumps of sagebrush.

The bell he had mounted on the outside of the trailer sounded to tell him the phone was ringing inside. He dashed in, searched for the receiver among piles of books.

“Hello?” he asked breathlessly. He almost never got calls.

“Pastor Russ Eddy?” It was Reverend Don Spates.

“Good morning, Reverend Spates. Christ be with—”

“I was wondering if you’d done any more looking around, like I asked.”

“I did, Reverend. I went back up the mesa last night. The houses and village were completely deserted. The high-tension lines, all three of them, were humming with power. My hair was just about standing on end.”

“Is that right?”

“Then around midnight, I heard like a vibration or a singing noise, coming from underground. It lasted about ten minutes.”

“Did you get past the security fence?”

“I . . . I didn’t dare.”

Another grunt and a long silence. Eddy could hear more pickup trucks arriving and someone calling his name. He ignored it.

“Lemme tell you my problem,” Spates said. “I’m doing my television talk show tomorrow evening at six— Roundtable America—and as my guest I’ve got a physicist from Liberty University. I’ve got to have something new on the Isabella project.”

“I understand, Reverend.”

“So like I told you the other day, you need to dig up something good. You’re my man on the scene. This suicide’s a start, but it’s not enough. We need something to scare people. What are they really doing out there? Is radiation leaking out, like those rumors you told me about? Are they going to blow up the earth?”

“I wouldn’t know . . . .”

“That’s the point, Russ! Get in there and find out. Trespass a little, bend the laws of man to serve the Law of God. I’m counting on you!”

“Thank you, Reverend. Thank you. I’ll do it.”

After the call, Pastor Russ stepped back out into the bright sunlight and crossed over to where half a dozen people were sorting through clothes—mostly single mothers with children. He held up his hands. “Folks? I’m sorry, but we have to shut this down. Something’s come up.”

There was a murmur of disappointment, and Eddy felt bad—he knew some of the mothers had driven a long ways to get there, despite the price of gas.

After they’d gone, Russ hung up a notice that clothes day had been canceled and climbed into his pickup. He looked at the gauge: eighth of a tank, not enough gas to get up the mesa and back. Fishing out his wallet, he found three dollars. He already owed a couple hundred dollars at the filling station in Blue Gap and almost as much at Rough Rock. He’d have to pray he could make it to Pinon and fill up there, hoping they’d extend him credit. He was pretty sure they would—Navajos always let you borrow money.

It made no sense to go over to Isabella during the day—they’d see him. He would drive over after sunset, hide his pickup behind Nakai Rock, and poke around in the dark. In the meantime, he might be able to pick up some more information in Pinon about the suicide up on the mesa.

He took a deep, satisfying breath. God had finally called him. Gregory North Hazelius, that bile-spewing Christ hater, had to be stopped.

28

FORD, ENSCONCED IN AN OLD LEATHER chair in the corner of the rec room, watched as the rest of the team arrived from the Bunker, exhausted and demoralized. The first rays of the sun angled down from the horizon and blasted in through the building’s eastern windows, filling the room with a golden light. People sank silently down into chairs, their eyes unfocused. Hazelius was the last to enter. He went to the fireplace and lit the kindling beneath a prelaid fire. Then he, too, sank into a chair.

For a while they sat in silence, the only sound the crackling of the fire. Finally Hazelius rose slowly to his feet. All eyes turned to him. He looked from person to person, his blue eyes rimmed with the pink of fatigue, his lips white with tension. “I have a plan.”

This announcement was greeted with silence. A sap pocket burst in a log, causing everyone to jump.

“Tomorrow, at noon, we ramp up for another run,” Hazelius continued, “at one hundred percent power. Here’s the important thing: we stick with the run until we’ve traced the slag code to its source.”

Ken Dolby took out a handkerchief and wiped his face. “Look, Gregory, you almost wrecked my machine. I can’t let that happen again.”

Hazelius bowed his head. “Ken, I owe you an apology. I know I push too hard sometimes. I was angry and frustrated. I acted like a madman. Forgive me.” He offered his hand.

After a moment Dolby took it.

“Friends?”

“Okay, sure,” said Dolby. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not going to allow any more runs at one hundred percent power until we fix the hacker problem.”

“And how do you propose we fix the problem without runs at one hundred percent?”

“Maybe the time has come to admit failure and report this back to Washington. Let them handle it.”

A long silence followed, until Hazelius said, “Anyone else have an opinion?”

Melissa Corcoran turned to Dolby. “Ken, if we admit failure now, we’ll be flushing our careers down the toilet. I don’t know about the rest of you, but this was the chance of a lifetime for me. No way in hell am I going to let it go.”

“Any other thoughts?” asked Hazelius.

Rae Chen stood up, her diminutive form hardly taller than those who were sitting. But the formal gesture of rising added weight. “I’ve got an opinion.”

Her black eyes circled the table.

“I grew up in the back of a Chinese restaurant in Culver City, California. My mother worked herself half to death to send me to college and graduate school. She’s proud of me because I made it in this country. And now I’m here. The whole world’s watching us.” Her voice began to break. “I’d rather die than give up. That’s what I have to say. I’d rather die. ”

She sat down abruptly.

Into the uncomfortable silence, Wardlaw spoke. “I know how things work at the DOE. If we report this now, we’ll be charged with a cover-up. There could be criminal charges.”

“Criminal charges?” said Innes from the back of the room. “For God’s sake, Tony, let’s not be absurd.”