it? Because they hoped this wasn’t the beginning of the big blowup? Because if they talked about it and this turned out not to be the big blowup, they’d look even more like fools than they commonly did? Because if this was the start of the supervolcano eruption, nobody could do anything about it anyway?
After a little more weighing, Colin decided any or all of those reasons might be good enough. He wished like hell Kelly would call him back.
Kelly had never been on a snowmobile before. If God was very kind, she told herself, she’d never be on another snowmobile again. Noisy, bouncy… If you combined the worst features of a motorcycle without shocks on a crappy road and a chainsaw motor, you were within screaming distance. And screaming was what she felt like doing.
Screaming was also what she had to do if she felt like talking with Larry Skrtel. The USGS geologist was driving the hideous contraption on which she found herself a reluctant passenger. Daniel Olson piloted another one, with Ruth hanging on to him for dear life. The only way she could communicate with them was by shooting off a flare.
The scenery was beautiful. Most people never got to see Yellowstone like this. Then again, most people never had to worry about whether the ground would give way beneath their feet in the biggest goddamn volcanic eruption since the Paleolithic. Knowing too much could be worse than not knowing enough.
And her colleagues gave her a hard time before they climbed aboard the snowmobiles. Teacher’s pet, they called her, and went on from there. “They should have interviewed Larry-he really knows what he’s talking about.” Ruth was grinning when she said it. Kelly felt the needle even so.
“Hey, c’mon, they’re CNN. You can’t expect them to know who to grab,” Daniel put in. “We’re all probably lucky they didn’t talk to that guy who analyzes leftover nutrients in bison feces.”
“Nah, they know bullshit when they see it,” Kelly said. Everybody groaned. She added, “They crank out enough themselves.”
Now she was zooming past half a dozen bison. The big, shaggy beasts pawed at the snowy ground with their forelegs, working their way down to the dead but still tasty grass under that blanket of white. They didn’t like the noisy snowmobiles. A couple of them trotted away from the mechanical contraptions. That was good. If they’d charged instead, they could run faster than the machines were going.
Then again, maybe the snowmobiles’ flatulent buzz wasn’t the only thing spooking the bison. Kelly needed a little while to realize exhaust from the machine Daniel and Ruth were riding wasn’t all that was fouling Yellowstone’s crisp, cold, clean late-autumn air.
You could smell sulfur almost anywhere in the park if the wind was blowing the right-or the wrong, depending on how you looked t it-way. Some of the ancient Greeks had said quakes were caused by what amounted to earthfarts. Put one of those robed and bearded philosophers here in Yellowstone and he’d be sure he was right.
But what Kelly smelled now seemed harsher-hotter? — than the usual brimstone reek from hot springs or fumaroles. The wind was blowing to the southwest, at a right angle from their approach route toward the eruption, but the new volcano made itself known all the same.
And the farther they went, the less pristine and white the snow seemed. Volcanic ash had started pattering down from the big column of dust and ash ahead. The prevailing wind would sweep more of it across Wyoming and down into Colorado-and who could guess how much farther than that? Nobody could, not yet.
The ash still floating in the air could prove an even bigger nuisance. The eruption in Iceland had screwed up air travel between the States and Europe and from one part of Europe to another on and off for weeks. If little bits of grit chewed up jet engines on routes between one American coast and the other, that wouldn’t be so good- which was putting it mildly.
Airplane travel in this day and age sucked. Not being able to travel by airplane would suck even harder in a country as big as the United States.
But that wasn’t all that was rattling Kelly’s cage. So far, this seemed like a normal volcanic eruption, the kind Yellowstone often had-even if often didn’t mean lately. Nobody knew how a supervolcano worked, though. All the evidence pointed towards everything happening at once. If lava spurted up all around and most of what was now the park fell toward the center of the earth…
It would all be over in a hurry, anyhow.
Larry steered a little closer to the Bechler River, which ran in the direction of (though not into) Ranger Lake. The river hadn’t frozen up yet. Ducks rose from it, wings beating swiftly as they got airborne. They liked snowmobiles no better than the bison had.
Something ahead was burning. Larry waved to Daniel. They stopped side by side. At first, Kelly thought she was seeing lava oozing up from some new crack in the earth’s crust that led down to the magma pool under Yellowstone. But no. The lodgepole pines were burning, which was pretty goddamn awe-inspiring in its own way. Snow stifled wildfires. That was a rule as old as the park.
Well, there were older rules. How hot did the lava flow heat the trees? Hot enough to steam the snow off them, and off the ground between them. Hot enough to dry them out and set them blazing. Some of what was going up into the air was genuine, honest-to-God wood smoke.
Silence slammed down after the engines cut out. It seemed all the more quiet because Kelly’s ears were on the stunned side. Through it, Larry said, “I don’t think we ought to get a whole lot closer, y’know?”
Daniel spread his gloved hands. “You’re the boss. If you don’t think it’s a good idea, we won’t. But it’s a shame to come this far and not be able to go the rest of the way.”
“It’d be a shame to get into trouble we can’t get out of,” Larry said, and Kelly knew they wouldn’t be going any farther.
“I wonder what it looks like from space,” she said. “What are the satellites picking up?”
“Dust. Ash. Smoke,” Ruth said.
“Oh, more than that,” Kelly said. “They’re bound to have infrared sensors to look through all the crap and see exactly where the hot stuff is coming out.”
“No doubt about it,” Larry agreed. That made Kelly feel good, the way a nod from one of her profs at her doctoral orals had. She’d understood something clearly. Very few things outside the bedroom were more satisfying.
Inside the bedroom… Did Colin know what was going on? If CNN had somebody in Yellowstone, it was bound to be making the headlines, but was he watching TV or listening to the radio? She hoped he was. She wanted him to see her. He’d be proud of her if he did, and having him proud of her mattered.
It mattered a lot, in fact. Was that love? If it wasn’t, it sure felt like a stop on the way. They’d known each other for a year and a half now; they’d been lovers for more than a year. Colin hadn’t said the word, not once. Kelly hadn’t, either. She didn’t think it was her place to start talking about love. He was the one who’d been burned. He needed time to work that through.
How long did he need? Kelly shrugged inside her anorak. This wasn’t the time or place to worry about that.
Something not far enough ahead went Boom! — a sub-sub-bass, a noise felt more than heard. Kelly felt something else, too: the ground shook under her feet. Ruth pointed into the sky. “Whoa!” she said.
Whoa! was right. A chunk of rock about the size of a school bus flew through the air with the greatest of ease. For a bad second, Kelly thought the parabola it was describing would end right on top of her. Then she realized the volcanic bomb would fall short.
It did, by a couple of hundred yards. The ground shook again at the impact. How much would a flying boulder that size weigh? Plenty. And how hot was it? Hot enough so the snow went sssss when it came down. That was just steam rising into the air.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Daniel sounded deeply impressed.
“I have, in Hawaii. No snow there, of course,” Larry said. “But that was too close for comfort. I think we’re like Kansas City right now-we’ve definitely gone as far as we can go, or maybe a little farther. Move we adjourn. We probably shouldn’t waste much time doing it, either.”
Daniel still looked disappointed. He didn’t argue this time, though. That enormous boulder still steaming in the snow was a potent argument all by itself. Adjourn they did.
