CLOUD‐SEEDING

3 3 R C L O U D - S E E D I N G C H A S E T W I C H E L L On the news, a man explained the science of cloud-seeding, how they could drop dry ice into the clouds to make them rain. Imagine it raining only at night, he said, and sunny every day! His words stabbed at the god in me, the god of weather still ignorant of us, the clever despoilers. It wounded me more than my parents’ war. I wanted a horse, prayed for a horse, pledged my troth to a horse. Please, whoever you are, let a horse come to me before I turn eleven. No horse came. Eleven came and went. Alan Shepherd hit two golf balls on the moon and left them there, my second conscious god-wound. Now the sky is full of space junk, some of which falls to earth, though the chances of it killing anyone are slight. The only thing it kills is a ghost-horse grazing in Eden’s gray remains. ...