Heavy Weather

"I think I've changed my mind," said the first chess player.

Without changing expression, Crimson Avenger lowered his pistol and pointed it at the bridge of the first chess player's glasses. "Okay, dood."

"Never mind, I'm going." He looked at Red, the radioman. "Let's do it."

"I'm going too," said Crimson Avenger.

"Why?" said the chess player.

"Because I got left over, and you're go

They left. And they came back alive.

"I think a twenty-five-percent mortality rate is extraordinarily good under the circumstances," said Leo.

"Considering the extreme precautions taken to keep us from accomplishing this... yes, quite acceptable," said the second chess player.

The television, which had been showing snow, flickered into life again.

"Look, it's hitting Oklahoma City," said the first chess player. He turned up the sound a bit, and the six surviving Garners settled in on the couch, their faces alight with deep interest.

"Look at the way they've networked those urban securicams to catch that first damage wave coming in," said Red. "Not only that, but they are the very first back on the air! The staff at Cha

"Leave it on 005," said the second chess player. "They're definitely the best fast-response storm team in the country."

"You got it." Red nodded. "Not that we have any choice. I think everything else is still down." He began cha

"Whoa," Leo told him. "Look at that SESAME satellite shot... . That's very odd, people. Oklahoma City seems to be under siege by a giant doughnut."

Rosina chuckled.

"That's a very odd shape, isn't it, Jane? What does it mean?"

Jane cleared her throat. "It means... it means that Jerry is right. Because I've seen that shape before, in his simulations. That's not a spike, it's a... well, it's a giant torus vortex down on the ground. I mean, you think of a tornado . .. and you turn it sideways and you put the tip of it into the top of it, like a snake eating its own tail.

And it becomes a giant ring, a tows. And it sucks in updraft from all directions outside the ring, and it spews downdraft out the top and sides, and it's stable. And it just gets bigger until all the heat and moisture are gone."

"What does that imply, exactly?"

Jane felt tears slide thinly down her cheeks. "I think it means that all my friends are dead."

"And that Oklahoma City is definitely dog meat," Rosina added.

"Mega," said Crimson Avenger.

Oklahoma City was methodically recording its own destruction. Jane knew immediately that she was seeing history bubble off the screen, an odd and intense kind of history. Like some decadent Roman poet reciting his autobiography as he opened a vein in the bath.

At the touch of the F-6, now in its full fury, Oklahoma City was exploding on television, block by block. It was being sucked up and peeled apart and smashed. Heavily reinforced high-rises were being pulled up bodily out of the ground, like a farmer pulling up carrots. They were very hard and very strong buildings, and when they fell over and started rolling, all their contents would gush out of their windows, in a fountaining slurry of glass and trash and mist. The falling high-rises would rip up big patches of street with them, and when the wind got under the Street, things would start fountaining up. There was a lot of room under the earth in Oklahoma City, a lot of room with a lot of human beings in it, and when the wind got into those 'long shelters it simply blew them like a flute. Manholes blew off the streets and big whale gushes of vapor came Out of the pavement, and then a whole pod of whales seemed to surface under the street, because another skyscraper was slowly falling over and it was ripping up the street surface with its internet links and its indestructible ceramic water pipes and its concrete pedestrian subway.

And somebody was putting this vision together, deliberately assembling it. Somebody had broken the screen into compound miniscreens like a bee's eyes: traffic securicams and building securicams and minibank securicams and all the other modern urban securicams that offered no one even the tiniest trace of security. And as the cams were blinked out and smashed and ripped apart and exploded and were blinded and crushed, whoever was at work just kept adding more viewpoints.

One of them was a sudden glimpse of the Troupe. It was Jerry, he had his back half-turned to the camera, he was leaning, half-doubled, into the gusting wind. He was shouting and waving one arm. It was Troupe camp, and all the paper yurts were smashed and torn and writhing in the wind. Jerry turned to the camera suddenly and he held up a broken-winged ornithopter, and his face was alight with comprehension and terror.

And then he vanished.

It didn't look like a machine was doing these viewpoints. It was the sort of montage technique often best left to machine, but Jane had a very strong intuition that someone was doing this work by hand. Human auteurs were putting it together, very deliberately, swiftly, and deftly assembling it with their own busy human fingertips. Doing it, knowing they were going to die at their post.

And the sorrow and pity of the great disaster struck her then, lancing into her right through that busy thicket of interface. And she felt the hurt explode inside of her. And she thought, with greater clarity than she had ever thought of anything before, that if she ever, somehow, managed to escape from this shelter and from these People of the Abyss, then she would learn to love something else. Something new. To learn tu love something that didn't stink at its spi

Then the broadcast blinked out.

"Lost transmission again," said Red. "I bet it took down the main towers out on Britton Road this time-who wants to bet?"

"That was great," said Rosina, appreciatively. "I can't wait till they compile all this coverage and do the definitive disk."

Red combed cha

"Yeah, the feds keep their weather links down in the old missile silos," said chess player two. "Practically U

"Where are we exactly?" asked Crimson Avenger, looking at the SESAME map. Red pointed. "Well," Avenger said, "I don't see any precipitation over us. I think we're in the clear!"

Suddenly there was a violent series of explosions just outside the door-explosions actually inside the shelter. Leo winced, then suddenly gri

"Close," said chess player one, and plucked at his lower lip. He had gone quite pale. "Real close."

"How'd they squeeze that signal through?" said the second chess player.

"I'd bet autonomously launched drone aircraft," Red theorized. "Probably sweeping the whole locale. Of course, if a drone can safely fly over us, that ought to mean that we can leave here safely."

"Fuck the theory, I'm checkin' this out," Crimson Avenger declared. He left.

He was back within a minute, his handsome leather shoes leaving faint smudges of fresh blood on the shelter's thick carpet. "The sun is out!"

"You're kidding."

"No way, dood! It's wet, and everything is smashed completely flat, but the sky is blue and the sun is shining and there's not a cloud in the sky, and people, I am out of here." He walked into the kitchen and pulled a shining ceramic valise off the top of the freezer.

"You won't get far on foot," said chess player one.

Crimson Avenger glared at him. "How stupid do you think I am, Gramps? I don't have to get far. I know exactly where I'm going, and exactly what I'm doing, and my plans don't include you. Good-bye, doods. Good-bye forever." He opened the door and stalked away, leaving it ajar behind him.