Joe stopped by the fender. The rear right wheel had made its own well in the mud.

“Get her out so I can move the car over.”

“Dr. Weiss?” Ray opened the door for her.

As she looked at Joe’s shirt she could have been scrutinizing the gore on a beast that walked on all fours. Joe noticed the white azalea in her blacker-than-black hair; it was Oppy’s favorite flower. He could just see him offering it to her as she stepped from the train.

“A real giant would be able to lift me, too.”

“Anna,” Oppy said, “be reasonable.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “Stay.”

“Joe, if the three of us—” Ray tried to say.

Lift me? Joe gripped the chrome handle of the bumper, rocked the car and tested the suction of the ooze on the tire. He could lift an elephant and kick its ass down the road. Through the rear window her eyes glittered. On the third push the tire ripped free of the mud; in the same motion, he walked the rear end of the Buick onto the road. When he let the car drop, she laughed, as if nothing he did surprised her, let alone scared her.

“Don’t forget Harvey Pillsbury.” As he got in the car, Oppy gave Joe a worried glance.

He had forgotten Harvey, and the cow. Watching the taillights move away, he could swear he saw the flash of her looking back.

On Two Mile Mesa, south of Los Alamos, bulldozers had cleared piñon, cedar and cactus to make way for test pads and concrete bunkers. There were photo bunkers with spring-forced steel jaws that would snap shut before rocketing debris reached the cameras inside. There were X-ray bunkers, steel-sheathed and coffin-shaped, that resembled ironclad warships sinking into the sand. Also gauge and meter bunkers, magazine bunkers, control bunkers. On the raw plain the bunkers fought their own war, firing more than ten tons of high explosive a week.