The Trinity Paradox Read Online Free Page B

cleaned up the MCG apparatus, the pad, the road, everything.
    As if the site had never been here at all.
    Elizabeth had never done drugs back at Berkeley, so this wasn’t some sort of flashback. Maybe she had hit her head in the explosion, she thought. Maybe none of this was really happening.
    Maybe it was.
    She took care to hide Jeff’s body in one of the natural caves that dotted the cliff wall, shallow impressions weathered into the soft tuff. The rock was too hard to dig. She couldn’t find any way to bury him, no way to keep the animals away. It made her sick to think of leaving him there, unprotected, unmarked. Not unremembered. She tried not to look at his fused legs or the blood splotches on his tan shirt as she piled rocks beside him. It took an hour to cover up the shallow depression in the rock, a cairn for him.
    When Elizabeth was done, she stared tight-lipped at his makeshift grave. She stood for several moments, then whispered, “Good-bye, Jeff,” and turned away while she still could.
    She had heard no sound, no sign of any traffic, though hours had passed. She decided to climb to the top of the mesa, away from the canyon floor, so as not to run into one of the Los Alamos scientists. When and if things got back to normal, she wanted the situation to be in her favor. And on her own terms.
    Exhaustion sapped at Elizabeth as she climbed back up the canyon wall, but still she made considerably better time in the daylight than she had last night. Even the chain-link fence was gone. She made her way down the canyon rim toward the Park Service road that would lead to the Bandelier Monument headquarters and visitor’s center where they had parked the Bronco.
    The second shock came when she couldn’t find the road.
    New Mexico State Road 4 should have been at the bottom of the canyon, winding its way to the national monument, looping around to the cluster of homes called White Rock, then back to the city of Los Alamos. She found only a faint horse trail disappearing into the distance. The New Mexican foothills showed no other sign of civilization.
    Elizabeth shrugged off her pack. Panting and sweating, she dug out the topographical map she and Jeff had used to plot their course to the back fence of the MCG site. Squatting in the dirt on the canyon rim, she oriented the green map toward the Jemez caldera. Mount Baldy lay to the right, sixty miles away, towering over Santa Fe. Behind her rose the Sandias and Albuquerque; half a million people within a hundred-mile circle.
    It just didn’t make sense. She stood and pushed back her reddish hair, then retied the leather thong. The central part of Bandelier National Monument, with its hiking trails and ancient Indian cliff dwellings, lay over the next two ridges. She was sure she had her bearings right. She would straighten this out sooner or later.
    But Jeff would never be coming back.
    Elizabeth shoved all those thoughts aside. Not now! She set off at a rapid, steady hiking pace. She had never felt so tired, or so overwhelmed.
    The sun was not quite overhead by the time she scaled the last ridge, looking over Frijoles Canyon, where the Bandelier parking lot, gift shop, and snack bar should have been. Even in the mountains the cool early summer air seemed heavy, making her perspire more than she should have.
    Elizabeth confirmed her location once again by lining up features on the detailed topo map before looking over the canyon rim. She scrambled up to the top and surveyed Bandelier. Caves dotted the far cliff walls. A partially excavated circle of boulders delineated the ancient Anasazi Indian settlement off to her right. And below her sprawled a wooden ranch house and stables, with dirt paths stretching from the buildings. She recognized the adobe visitor’s center buildings, but they looked different somehow, newer.
    Mouth set, she stared at the site. Nothing existed of the ranger station she had visited just a day earlier. She could not see any cars; even the