Chill Factor Page 0,4

knew, wouldn't go out of his way to rack up civilian casualties, but I was far from convinced he'd go out of his way to avoid it, either.

"Not in range. I can dampen the vibrations a little, at the outskirts, and he's focusing it right beneath us. No one's been hurt." The unspoken yet made me wince.

"How long can he keep it up?"

David shot me a look. "You're kidding."

"As long as he wants?"

"Exactly." From the desert-dry tone, David was feeling a little inadequate. "We'll have to wait him out." Again.

"So," I said, and forced a little lightness into my voice, "how will we pass the time?"

David wasn't in the mood for banter. He watched the road writhe like a living thing below us and said, "Catch some rest while you can. I'll keep watch."

Not exactly what I was hoping for, but I got his point. I was tired, and unlike David, I was only human these days.

Not that I was bitter about that, or anything.

Much.

Weather is nothing but the practical application of quantum mechanics. There's no way to make quantum mechanics simple, but ultimately it boils down to the interactions of particles so small they make atoms look big. Everything is divisible by something else, down to particles so small the human mind can't grasp them or even measure them in any way except by the effects they leave behind. Particles behave like waves. Nothing is what it seems.

Controlling quantum interactions is a macro/micro science, or magic, or art-or the true marriage of all of those. When you're controlling the weather, manipulation occurs at subatomic levels, gaining or losing energy, annihilating quarks against antiquarks or protons against antiprotons, and it's both destructive and clean. It can mean the difference between a sunny day and a gentle spring rain, or a thunderstorm and a killer F5 tornado. It can mean flood or drought. Life or death.

"Chill Factor"

It's a lot of responsibility, and I'm afraid the Wardens don't really take it all that seriously sometimes. We're human, after all. Like everybody else, we've got lives, and families, and all the normal human complement of sins and vices. Hey, nobody likes getting the four a.m. call from the office, especially if it's to fix somebody else's mess.

And sins, yes, we've got plenty of those. Greed, for one. Greed and power have always been really good bedfellows, but greed and magic are the deadliest of evil twins.

I'd had a few brushes with how absolutely power could corrupt. The Wardens were built on solid, idealistic principles, but somewhere along the way some of us-maybe even a lot of us-had lost the mission. There were a few faithful, altruistic ones left (I didn't dare count myself among them).

It's never been my job, or my nature, to worry about whether or not what I was doing was right in the grand scheme of things. I'm a foot soldier. A doer, not a planner. I like being useful and doing my job well, and so far as lasting satisfaction goes, owning a killer wardrobe and bitchin' shoes doesn't hurt.

I never wanted to be in an ethical struggle. It shouldn't be my job to decide who's right, who's wrong, who lives, who dies. It shouldn't be anybody's job, but most especially not mine. I'm not deep. I'm not philosophical. I'm a girl who likes fast cars and fast men and expensive clothes, not necessarily in that order.

But you do the job you're handed.

I couldn't sleep. I mean, could you? Hanging in midair over an earthquake, waiting for the other shoe to drop? Even as exhausted as I was, fear kept me from closing my eyes for more than five seconds at a time.

So we were hanging there, watching the road ripple in the bright merciless sun, when something occurred to me and made me sit up straight, blinking.

"Can I fly this thing?" I asked. As if we weren't already hanging a ton of steel in midair without benefit of an airplane engine. D'oh! "I mean, move the car to another highway. Without them knowing."

That got David's complete attention, with a slight puzzled frown. "It's not exactly built for gliding, but yes, I suppose. Why?"

"Because if you can keep an illusion on the aetheric of us staying here, I can move the car with wind power to another route, and maybe we can gain some time before he figures it out." I hesitated, then asked the question I'd been afraid to put into words. "He could kill us, right? Anytime