"Catherine Wells - Point of Origin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Catherine)

Point of Origin
by Catherine Wells
Catherine Wells is the author of several science fiction novels and short
stories, including Mother Grimm (Roc), and a finalist for the 1997 Philip K.
Dick Award. She and her husband live in Tucson, Arizona, where she runs a
science and technology library. You can read more about Catherine’s works
on her web site at www.sff.net/people/catherine-wells. Her first tale for us is
the incendiary “Point of Origin”.
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Ozzie was hip deep in paperwork when Dispatch called. “We need an
investigator for a wildland fire.”
His heart contracted. Fire all around them, on both sides of the ravine, trees
exploding like gas jets, flames shooting a hundred feet into the air— Ozzie drew a
deep breath to push back the incipient panic. “What fire is that?”
It was called the Matchless Fire, and so far it had destroyed eighty acres.
Ozzie protested at being sent out to investigate its source; DWR wasn’t supposed to
get involved until a fire hit one hundred acres, or until interagency resources were
called in. But Dispatch was adamant. “The investigator on the scene is calling for
roadblocks,” she told him. “You know what that means.” Ozzie knew. It meant the
fire had been set intentionally; it meant they might be looking at another terror attack.
Grimly, Ozzie collected all the available data on the Matchless Fire: satellite
photos, infrared scans, topo maps, vegetation distribution. Everything the Incident
Commander had to manage the wildfire suppression efforts was at Ozzie’s
fingertips. To it he added reports on other fires in the region, historical fire data, and
evidence scanned in by the on-scene investigator, and he fed it all into ICCARUS,
the Incident Command, Control And Reconnaissance Utility Software. The powerful
integration software was designed specifically for fire management; it chewed the
data, parsed it, collated and indexed it, applied algorithms and heuristics, and spat it
back out as whole cloth.
All the way out to the scene, Ozzie’s laptop unit spoke rationally to him of
established facts, regional patterns, and percentages of probability, so by the time he
pulled onto the last two-mile stretch of four-wheel drive road, he was ready to
dispute the on-scene investigator. In fact, he was ready to castigate the on-scene
investigator. This fire might have been human-caused, but not by a terrorist, and
certainly not by anyone who might still be caught in a roadblock. It had been burning
for at least eighteen hours; that was plenty of time for the perpetrator to flee.
A Forest Service pickup, painted its peculiar shade of sea green, was parked
on the road in a low spot between two north-south ridges. Matchless Mesa rose up
to the south, casting almost no shadow at this time of year. Late June was the worst
time for wildland fires in Arizona: any spring runoff had long since evaporated, and
the relentless sun raised mid-day temperatures, even in this mountainous country, to
ninety degrees. If this was an intentional fire, the perp had picked the most damaging
season to start it.
Ozzie pulled his truck in behind the Forest Service pickup and drew a deep
breath. A trace of smoke reached him and his heart lurched, spurred by the adrenalin
that surged into his blood. Smoke so thick he couldn’t breathe, choking, gasping,
sucking in air that held no oxygen— Ozzie gave himself a physical shake to break
the effect. He had been out in the field a number of times since coming back to work
three months ago, but not where he could smell smoke. He took another deep
breath, fighting the irrational sensation of suffocation. Of course he could breathe.