rescue of trapped animals and energize the forest itself to fight the fire. But that wasn't going to help Estrella.
"Can you make a path through?" I asked. I could hear things popping loudly in the background, like gunshots. "Jesus, what is that? Is somebody shooting?"
"No, it's the trees. Trees exploding. Sap boils-" She coughed again, deep aching coughs that made my chest hurt in sympathy. "Shit! Can't do it. Too hot. Can't get the fire down long enough to get out. Dammit. I'm toast." Her laugh was rich and thick with phlegm. "Burnt toast."
"Hold on," I said. I pulled up the Wardens Map, overlaid Fire Wardens on top of it and got Estrella's location. Once I had it firmly fixed in my mind, I went up into Oversight. My body receded and I flew straight up, arrowing as fast as I could through gray ghostly layers of concrete and steel and wiring, up into hot summer air, up higher where the layers cooled and storms were born. There was disturbance up here, caused by temperature shifts. I oriented myself and moved toward Yellowstone. As I did, I had to buck the currents; force lines were vibrating, bending under the strain. A lot of heat being generated up there. Pushing hard, I flew against the currents until I could see the whole of Yellowstone laid out in front of me.
It was boiling. Not in the physical sense, but in the aetheric; something had gotten the land stirred up, all right, and the turbulent, angry pulses were enough to make me want to drop back into my safe, secure little cubicle far from the danger. Fires were combusting everywhere.... It didn't take much, in such an angry mood, for a forest to start self-immolating.
I pinpointed Estrella's location-she was broadcasting desperately in the aetheric-and went up, way up, until daylight gave way to twilight, which gave way to the false night of the highest levels of the mesosphere. Fifty thousand feet above it, the disturbance was more like a gentle current; I could start to manipulate things to my advantage.
Within a minute, I had formed a cold arctic-fed breeze by tunneling a channel for it through the superheated Yellowstone air. When I had it flowing where I wanted it, I let it collide head-on with a column of heat, controlled the agitation of the molecules to keep it localized, and dropped halfway back into my body in Chicago.
"Star, listen to me, I'm about to drop a very heavy cloudburst right on top of you, understand? It'll hold the fire down long enough for you to make a hole and get out of there. Star?"
Her croak barely sounded human. It was hard to make anything out over the roar of the fire. "Fucked up, Jojo. Damn. We all fucked up."
"Star, stay with me. Hey, you remember the rhyme? Star light, star bright-"
"You crazy?" A bare whisper of air.
I kept going. "First star I see tonight-come on, you know this one. . . ." It was hard, so hard to move the clouds into the right position. I could feel her there, reaching out to me. I could feel the despair and fear. "Wish I may-wish I might-"
I flipped the switch on the storm, and I heard the roar of rain pour down. I hoped the hiss I heard was steam, not fire.
And then I heard Estrella laughing. "Say a prayer, say a Mass . . . keep this fire off my ass!" She collapsed into a coughing fit. Then whooped.
I let myself relax. Fatal mistake. I felt-heard-saw the aetheric boiling back, rebounding at us like a snapped rubber band. "No, Star, listen, don't yell, run! Now!"
She didn't hear me. She was still whooping in celebration.
The line went dead.
I sat tensely, answering lines and connecting up Wardens with each other-it was a big coordinated response, and my little cloudburst ended up as the anchor point for six other Wardens to form a true stormfront, driving down temperatures and dumping nature's fire extinguisher at volumes rarely seen in this country. Meanwhile, the Earth Wardens were trying their best to protect fleeing animals and build up earthen firebreaks, and the Fire Wardens . . . Well, you can guess the hell they were in.
Six minutes later, I had an incoming line light up, and a brisk British voice said, "You're looking for a Fire Warden coming out, right?"
"Estrella