Ill Wind Page 0,16

to see Paul staring at Bob. "Come on, Bob, she deflected the storm, sure, and she didn't take the force vectors and wind speed into account, but it still wasn't a bad job. But then, you didn't recheck for changing conditions before you started lowering the ceiling up in the mesosphere. You want to sling some blame, I think you ought to get a little on you, too. And for God's sake, people die. Without us, the whole Atlantic seaboard would be a pile of corpses- you know that as well as anybody. Sometimes you can't save everybody. Sometimes you can't even save yourself. You know that. You of all people."

"Paul," Martin Oliver said quietly. "Enough."

Paul shut up. So did Bad Bob, who closed the folder. Martin Oliver opened his own.

"Joanne, maybe what we should be talking about is a great deal more basic. Do you want to be a Warden? It's not an easy life, and it's not especially rewarding. You'll never have fame, and even though you'll save a lot of lives, you'll never receive gratitude or recognition. You'll need to go through another six years of training, minimum, before you're trusted as a Staff Warden." His gray eyes studied me with absolute impartiality. "Some people don't have the temperament for it. I understand that you're prone to act first and think later."

I licked my lips. "Sometimes."

"Under what circumstances would you believe it was permissible to use the kind of powers you've been given? To, for instance, get rid of a violent storm?"

"To-save lives?" Nobody had told me there was going to be a test. Dammit.

Martin exchanged a look with Bad Bob. "What about saving property?"

"Um . . . no."

"No?" Martin's eyebrows levitated, making his gray eyes wider. "Is there no time when saving property might be preferable to saving lives?"

My heart was beating too fast; it was hurting my chest. I could hardly swallow for the lump in my throat. "No. I don't think so."

"What if the property were, say, a nuclear reactor whose destruction might result in the deaths of thousands more?"

Oh. I hadn't thought of that one.

"What if the property were the central distribution center for food in a country full of starving people? Would you save the property, or the lives, if by saving lives you starved even more?"

"I don't know," I whispered. My hands were shaking. I made them into fists when Bad Bob's laugh sawed the air.

"She doesn't know. Well, that's typical. This is what we end up with these days, a bunch of kids raised on free lunches who never had to make a decision in their lives more important than what TV show to watch. You want to trust her with the power of life and death?" He snorted and shoved my folder into the center of the table. "I've heard enough."

"Wait!" I blurted. "I'm sorry. I didn't understand."

Marion Bearheart looked at me from the other side of the table, her warm brown eyes full of compassion. "And do you understand now, Joanne?"

"Sure," I lied. "I'd save the power plant. And- and the food."

Silence around the table. Bad Bob stood up. Nobody argued with him; nobody moved so much as a muscle as he raised his hands at shoulder level.

A cloud started forming above our heads. Just mist at first, clinging to the ceiling like fog, and then getting denser, taking on form and shape. I felt humidity sucking up into that thing, fueling power.

"Hey-," I said. "Um-"

Power leaped through the air, jumping from each one of the Wardens in the room and into that cloud. It was feeding on them, drawing energy. It was . . . It was . . .

. . . alive.

Bad Bob watched me with those eerie, cold eyes. "Better do something," he advised. "Don't know how long it's going to be content to just sit there."

"Do what?" I yelped. I didn't remember standing, but I was out of my chair, backing away. The power in that room-the uncontrolled, unfocused menace- the sense that the cloud overhead was thinking-

I felt it click in on me as if a channel had opened, and something hot and powerful tore out of the cloud at me. I didn't have time to think, to do anything but just react.

I reached up into the cloud and ripped it apart. No finesse to it,