The Trinity Paradox Read Online Free PDF Page A

Bronco she and Jeff had left by the cottonwood tree was missing. The Anasazi ruins looked the same, but everything else had changed.
    What is going on? she asked herself. Am I still dreaming?
    Jeff’s death had been no dream.
    Elizabeth didn’t spend time debating what to do. Explanations could be filled in later. She had to decide her next course of action. A jaunt down to the ranch house would prove nothing right now, only raise questions she didn’t want to answer. But a trip into Los Alamos would clear the air. She could figure out what was going on without causing too much of a stir. From the location of the sun, it didn’t seem to be more than eleven or so in the morning.
    Confusion and panic gripped her again. Her body still felt displaced and inside-out after the explosion. She remembered Jeff ... then slowly regained control of herself.
    Clouds covered the top of Santa Fe Baldy fifty miles away, but it looked as if the good weather would hold. She should be able to reach Los Alamos by nightfall if it didn’t start raining again. She could get a newspaper. She could have a hot meal. Right now even Los Alamos’s limited selection of restaurants sounded appealing to her.
    She could go back and sleep alone, without Jeff. She could think of how she would explain his absence. Somehow, Elizabeth could not conceive of the need to report his death to the police. A dim part of her mind recognized that she was still in shock.
    But what in the hell was going on? It kept coming back to her as she walked. The simplest answer was that her mind was screwed up; the answer most difficult to swallow was that what she saw was real. But what had happened to everything?
     
    No fences surrounded the mesa or any of the designated Technical Areas. In her Bronco, she had driven around the restricted zones many times before, pretending to be a tourist. But now she saw no warning signs, no barbed wire. As she made her way through the foothills, Elizabeth kept careful track of her location. On the map a dotted red line clearly marked the laboratory limits: U.S.
    DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY RESTRICTED AREA. Though she must have crossed the line, she came across nothing that even resembled a boundary.
    A spring rain spread light mist, but Elizabeth kept on, wet and miserable now. Droplets glistened on her bare arms, and her jeans and hiking boots were nearly soaked through. She ate her last package of trail mix on the go; she could see no use conserving food. Her highest priority was to find out what was going on—and to keep from thinking too much about Jeff.
    Seeing the town of Los Alamos intact might jolt the imbalance from her. She wanted to think clearly again. By the time she reached the top of the mesa where the city lay, the clouds had darkened, sending down torrents of rain. Her feet squished with every step.
    She approached from the southwest, following the ridge line up to where the main lab complex should be. She quickened her pace when she spotted a barbed-wire fence running through the trees, extending into the dense undergrowth. She had never thought she’d be glad to see a security fence!
    Maybe the hike had cleared her mind. Maybe she had been too intense, had dwelled on the Los Alamos project too long. The explosion had sent her reeling. Perhaps her anger at the MCG experiment, and the lightning storm, and Jeff’s horrible death, had snapped her mind like a rubber band. Maybe she had imagined a Los Alamos without the lab, without the experiments.
    The rain made it difficult to see far. As she sloshed through the pines and cottonwoods, her hope continued to rise. Lights—she spotted a flickering source, then a glaring array between the trees. It was if the bulbs had been hung on a wire and strung over a clearing. Noise drifted through the downpour, diffusing into the rain.
    The first thing she’d do was get to a phone—call one of her friends back in Santa Fe. It would take a couple of hours, but Marcia would probably drive