CRADLE OF SATURN BY JAMES P. HOGAN

Less than half an hour later, an Army sergeant driving a Ford van with netting draping its sides and a layer of sandbags on the roof arrived to collect them. Apparently, everything had happened too quickly and universally to allow martial law to be declared formally in the U.S. Military control had been instituted as an automatic reaction locally, nevertheless—as doubtless had been done in all areas retaining any organizational capability at all. In El Paso an Army general called Weyland had taken charge after just about all of the area’s regular command structure and FEMA directorate were wiped out along with the fifty-plus percent of the city that was now craters and rubble.

As the sergeant talked, they negotiated their way around mounds of fallen rock and debris, wrecked vehicles, and mud traps created by the recent rain. Parts were like Boston in January, but with paths being cleared through mud and sand instead of snow. Along whole blocks, rescuers were still hauling the dead and injured from collapsed buildings. Sandbagged bunkers and shelters were being constructed wherever opportunity presented itself, and undamaged stores, homes, and offices adapted into dressing stations. But even with all the bulldozing and shoveling, the medics and nurses working frantically under tents and awnings and in hollows dug amid the debris, the mobile kitchens and relief workers handing out rations from trucks, untended cases and others too shocked or exhausted to help were everywhere: laid out along the roadsides, sitting blankly outside their vehicles, or just wandering aimlessly. The sergeant said that the services had been hard put to cope even before yesterday, which had been a massacre. Today they were overwhelmed.

The route took them west of the city along another piece of Interstate 10, with dry red mountains flanking the road on one side, and slopes leading down to the Rio Grande river marking the Mexican border on the other. They exited on a road that climbed for a short distance through a spread-out residential area that had been fairly evenly battered, and led into a valley with boulder-strewn sides and a scattering of industrial buildings and other facilities strung along the bottom. A gate through a chain-link fence, attended by sentries outside a gatehouse that had been reinforced by sandbags and corrugated steel sheeting, brought them into a parking area in front of a couple of office buildings, some sheds, and several unidentifiable structures standing below a high cliff with a mountain ridge rising beyond. Work crews in helmets, flak vests, and military fatigues were clearing rubble, filling craters, and finishing more dugout constructions. Both office buildings had every window shattered and were showing damage, especially to the upper parts.

The sergeant took Keene and the two others through a side door into one of the sheds, across a floor where stores were being sorted and vehicles unloaded, to the entrance of a tunnel leading into the mountain. He explained that Weyland had located his headquarters in a former mine working that had been converted years before into a repository for banking and financial documents as a precaution in the event of a major war. The tunnel led to a cage elevator which they took to a lower level, emerging into well-lit corridors with white, ribbed-concrete walls. After all the destruction and chaos of the preceding days, the order and normality of the surroundings seemed almost unnatural.

They came to an open area where military personnel at desks were working in front of a situation board occupying most of one wall, the others covered in charts, maps, and an array of aerial photographs. A large map of the surrounding parts of Texas and New Mexico was marked with red circles showing what looked like craters, and various other annotations. Weyland’s office was at the far end, consisting simply of a smaller space separated by a partition. It had a desk and side table covered with papers, more wall maps, and several upright chairs along two of the walls. A naked bulb hung from a cord overhead, shaking slightly to the vibrations of machinery somewhere nearby.

Weyland was tall and wirily built, on the young side for his rank, Keene thought, forceful in manner, with straight black hair brushed to one side and dark, intense eyes that refused to be cowed by the situation. His face was dark with stubble, and he wore a flak jacket over a grimy, sweat-stained shirt. The three arrivals were shown in by the sergeant, who then left. They introduced themselves; Weyland invited them to take seats. He draped his elbows over the arms of his chair and looked them over.

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