do anything for me. So who was doing this? Somebody had come along and brute-forced this thing together, and if it hadn't been broken up yet by the combined power of the Wardens, it had one hell of a power supply behind it. When I looked at it in Oversight, there was no clear identification, nobody lurking nearby to blame it on. Which meant it was somebody strong enough to do it at a great distance without traveling in Oversight to touch it. That was-incredible. And really, really scary. Who the hell could manage that kind of thing? Very few, I thought. Senior Wardens, World Council members . . . Lewis.
I had a very bad feeling suddenly.
The world slid by, shadowed by hovering clouds. Spring still tried to be cheerful but lost color as the sun disappeared. Birds fled with me, heading west. Other cars moved in formation, too, their drivers either oblivious or trying to make it despite the odds; I didn't have a choice. Stopping would be suicide. Driving on was just as bad.
I'd be out of gas by Columbus.
Think. I was a Weather Warden, dammit-maybe not holding on to the best possible reputation these days, but I was damned good at my work. My palms were sweating again. I wiped them, one at a time, and took another swallow of soft drink. My throat was so dry, it clicked. On the seat beside me lay the crumpled wad of ticket that I hadn't even bothered to read. If I survived this drive, I'd survive a fine from the Pennsylvania State Troopers.
Back at school, old Yorenson had always said there was no such thing as an unstoppable weather system. Weather was as delicate as a house of cards. Remove one card, and the structure would start to collapse; the trick was to plan the collapse. A perfect execution, he'd said, would negate the threat and create a beneficial environment at the same time.
Maybe I'd been thinking about it wrong. I'd been prodding at the storm itself, trying to loosen the magic that bound it together; maybe all I needed to do was change its location. I reached for my cell phone and dialed it one-handed from memory.
Paul's growling voice. "You've got to be kidding. Are you crazy, calling me? I thought we had an agreement."
"Listen. I know you're tracking this thing-"
"Yeah, I know it's centered right over you." He sounded depressed; I wondered if there was someone listening in. "You know what they taught you, Joanne. You fuck around with the weather, it will fuck around with you."
"This ain't a storm cell with a grudge, Paul. Somebody's driving."
"The brain trust thinks it's you. That you've gone over the edge."
"Brilliant," I sighed. "Just brilliant. You know better."
"I'm just sayin'."
I bit my tongue hard enough to taste blood. Blood and ozone. The storm was getting stronger overhead, rotating like a pinwheel. Other cars had run for cover. I was driving all alone now, and up ahead I saw another small town on the horizon.
"Listen, we're running out of time," I said. "Help me."
"We're trying, dammit, but if you didn't put this thing together, I don't know who the hell did. It's stronger than anything I've ever seen-"
"We need to do this together. I need you to create a cold downdraft over the top of this thing. You're going to do it fast and hard."
He grunted. "We tried that. Didn't work."
"You do it at the same time I create a hot-air mass underneath. We ought to be able to pop this sucker straight up about twenty miles and start kicking the crap out of it with an adiabatic process. I need it in the mesosphere, Paul. We have to rob it of the fuel or we can't pull it to pieces."
Paul was quiet for a few seconds, then said, "Give me two minutes."
"It's got to be precise."
"It'll be precise."
I sensed he was about to hang up and talked fast. "You got a line to Rashid?"
"Yeah."
"Apologize for me in advance, and tell him to watch out for the shears," I said, and hung up.
Basically, the plan was for me to drastically warm and expand the air underneath the entire storm, shoving it upward while Paul created a vertical process to drag it all the way up to the mesosphere, where we could work on it with