The Coming of the Quantum Cats

The veterinarian was twenty-four years old and she was terrified. She soaped herself and rinsed herself six times, as ordered, and came out naked and wet to the farm bedroom where the army captain was waiting. She did not even think about being naked in front of him as he passed the counter wand slowly over every inch of her skin, listening to the sporadic rattle of radiation. "I think you got all the dust," the officer said at last. "You say you found the cattle just like this? And that dust all over everything?" She nodded, eyes big and frightened "You can get dressed, "he finished "I think you're all right. "But he watched her go with fears of his own. Radioactive fallout! Somehow half a square mile had been coated with high-level radionuclides—here, no more than forty miles from Dallas, with no war going on that he knew about and no source of the fallout reported anywhere. It was a puzzle with no answer. And it was a fear that shook him to his bones—what if it had happened forty miles away, in the heart of the city itself?