By Evelyn’s estimation, they had covered about eight miles in their first four hours of walking, stopping frequently to let Tate catch his breath. At their current pace, Evelyn figured they still had about an hour to go. The purple halo over the wallowing plains behind them told her the sun was still a while away from rising. If they didn’t hit any snags along the way, they should get to the shuttle by about the time the sun was coming up. Then a quick blast across the galaxy with the Leap Frog, and Tate could be rejuvenating with new nanite tech in the infirmary on Vista before breakfast.
Evelyn sat on the rock, looking up at the starry sky. Without the clouds, she could see billions of stars, the faint fog of the Milky Way galaxy stretching out like a moonlit river dancing with fireflies. She wondered what else was out there, beyond what she had seen.
She took a sip of her water bottle and then looked at her brother. There were so many wonders out there in space and right on the rock in front of her.
“I’ve been curious about something, Tate,” Evelyn started, latching on to one of the many questions she had flittering around in her thoughts. “How did you figure out you could heal people?”
Tate looked up at her from his rock. Even in the cool dark, she could see he was still sweating. Without his nanites, his body just couldn’t run well, and he struggled to catch his breath even over short distances. His dark hair fell in thick strips over his forehead, but the effort he had exerted hadn’t diminished his spirits. He smiled, sat straighter, and took a sip of his water.
“I’d tell you it was an accident, but there really aren’t any accidents with God. He just reveals things to us in surprising ways, sometimes.”
He took another sip. “A few years after you left, I had moved out to a shelter near a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. There had been territorial battles in Arizona and Texas, and many of the survivors had fled into New Mexico. The shelter I went to was for children who had lost parents.”
“That sounds like you, Tate.”
Tate smiled. “Well, I was walking some of the children to the shelter from the depot where they were coming in on busses, when a car rolled up to the checkpoint. Apparently, they were immigrants trying to get clear of the war. I heard afterward that they probably didn’t know their car was wired to explode.”
Evelyn was almost speechless. “What about the kids?”
“Well, I also heard afterward that the car bomb probably wasn’t meant to go off in the center of an orphan relocation center, but it did. Still, the only fatalities were the people in the car, and other than the guard, who had some burns and a concussion, one little boy was hurt.
“He had wandered closer to the gate at the sight of the yellow car, and when the car exploded, the front wheel blew loose and hit him in the chest.”
Evelyn gasped. “Oh my God!”
“That’s exactly what I said. I ran over to the boy, and it was obvious he couldn’t breathe. I think the wheel had crushed his ribcage when it hit him, and he was on the ground, gasping for breath. He wasn’t bleeding much other than a few scrapes from being hit by the wheel and hitting the ground, but he was scared. I was sure he was going to die right there in my arms, so I placed my hand on the back of his neck, and I held his head, and I started giving the boy Last Rights.
“And then the strangest sensation came over me. It’s hard to explain, but I felt like my strength, my life even, was flowing out of my body, through my fingers, into this boy. I opened my eyes, and he was looking at me with a surprised look on his face. I don’t know, maybe he felt it too, and then I saw his chest stretch back. His lungs inflated. He breathed. It was a miracle. God had used me to deliver a miracle to this little boy.
“By then there were people standing around us. They were shocked. I was shocked. I didn’t know what to say. I mean, can you imagine that? Me … a priest … at a loss for words in the face of a miracle. But I was. A doctor and a couple of nurses rushed over from the medical tent and brought the boy to the infirmary, and I was mobbed by the onlookers.
“Most people were surprised. They thought I was an angel. Some called me all manner of other things—demon, devil, you name it. All I knew was God chose me, and I was exhausted. I went back to the dorm we had available to us as missionaries, and I slept. Twenty hours later, I woke up, still exhausted, and not feeling like myself, and then I started to have my suspicions about what had happened.
“I went back to the medical tent, and sure enough, the boy was recovering as if by a miracle. The medics didn’t have much technology to monitor his progress, given where we were, but I knew. The nanites I had in me had flowed into him. It was then that I realized my fingertips were sore, where the nanites had gone through my skin into the boy.
“I didn’t want to interrupt his healing, so I didn’t touch him. I was worried the nanites might not return to me, but I was more concerned they would leave him too quickly, so I just prayed over him. The Lord had delivered a miracle through me. He just used the science in me to do it.
“A few days later, the boy was doing well but people were asking a lot of questions. I knew it was time for me to leave. So I placed my hands on the boy and I felt the nanites return to me … and then I left.”
“And the legend of the mystic Navajo healer was born,” Evelyn finished.
“It was,” Tate said with a smile. “I couldn’t be a priest … at least, not the way I was … but God helped me find my purpose.”
Tate stood and gestured blandly with one hand, nodding in the direction they had been walking, indicating he was ready to walk some more. Evelyn snapped up and slung the pack over her shoulders.
The cloudless night was bright, but it still didn’t give them enough light that they could walk carefree through the scrub. They kicked along for a moment to find their rhythm again, her in front and him just behind, and waited for the canyon to move closer.
“So after that, you just went around the country, laying hands on people and healing them?” she teased.
Tate laughed. “Not exactly. I got it in my head that if I could get more nanites, I could just give those to people who were really in need. I knew I couldn’t help everyone, but I figured God would put the people in front of me I needed to help the most.”
Tate paused, and something about his tone, the way he finished his thought—something—grabbed her attention. She glanced behind her and caught Tate’s grin. She turned back around. “Who’s helping who here, Tate?” she muttered under her breath.
“I hadn’t ever gone back to the headquarters in Atlanta after you left,” Tate began again, perhaps satisfied Evelyn had caught the innuendo, “but I figured if there were nanites left here on Earth, they would be there.”
“Did you find them? Most of the original nanobot technology was developed there … In fact, we left all of the first-generation tech … the same tech you had … in an underground storage facility,” Evelyn added, trying to be helpful.
“Unfortunately, no. I couldn’t even get near the campus. It was under military control. Guards. Drones. The works. I never got a straight answer from anyone I talked to about it either, but the suspicion is that President Coleson had the military confiscate the facility after Dad left.”
“Yeah,” Evelyn half chuckled, “Mr. Philips has a way of getting under people’s skin.”
“A truer thing may never have been said, Evie,” Tate agreed with a laugh. “But … the country was already in a bad place. We weren’t at war yet, but things were bad and getting worse, and after Dad—and you—” Tate added, thumping Evelyn lightly on the back, “slipped through his fingers, I think the president just lost his mind. It was as if the whole country sank into a horrible depression, and then there was war.”
Tate paused for a second. “But the nanites were out of reach. I couldn’t get to them if they were still there. If Dad left any technology behind, I’m sure Coleson has it now.”
And as Tate finished his thought, it all made sense to Evelyn. The NCG rangers, and the tech
she felt reverberating inside them … Whatever nanite technology they had left behind had probably been confiscated, reprogrammed, and used to develop super-soldiers.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Evelyn said, clenching her teeth and balling up her fists at the realization of what had happened.
“What’s the matter, Evie?”
“The nanites, Tate! We were so careful to scrub all the servers in the headquarters before we left. I even programmed a very specific virus to destroy all the research and data we had about me, Miss Artificial Intelligence herself, but we didn’t destroy any of the hardware. We left the original nanite technology behind, and now President Coleson and his goons are using my technology to create killing machines.”
A shudder ran across her shoulders as she realized that she hadn’t just been responsible for Jane’s death and the deaths of her family. She stopped in her tracks and whipped around. “Oh my God, Tate … all the people those rangers have killed over the years … it’s all my fault!”
A furrow crept across Tate’s brow. “Just because you helped develop the technology, doesn’t mean you’re responsible for the way evil men use it.” He looked at his hands and then showed her his palms. “You’ve seen the good your work can do, Evie. If you want to take credit for anything, take credit for that. Your intentions were good.”
“Yeah, my good intentions,” she said, kicking a rock and then sitting in a huff, but no sooner had she sat than she bolted upright. “Ouch!” she said, reaching around her now-tender backside, realizing she had just tried to assume The Thinker’s position on top of a Horse Crippler. “Dammit!” she spat, feeling her blood pressure rising.
She turned to Tate. “My good intentions … you saw that bone wall, Tate. My good intentions probably put millions of people there. My good intentions probably led to countless millions more who have been terrorized by those monsters parading around as patriots. My good intentions have wreaked a wave of death and destruction upon humanity, and it was my good intentions … that got Jane killed.”
Tate cocked his head, obviously confused.
“I thought you said she didn’t make it to the new planet,” he said, his tone making it more of a question than a statement.
Evelyn hung her head and felt the breeze blow across her face. She was out of time. In a couple of hours, Tate would be on Vista and he’d hear the whole truth from someone, and she knew it would be better for it to come from her. She owed Jane and him that much.
“I’m responsible for her death, Tate,” she started with a sigh. “Actually, I’m responsible for all of their deaths … Mr. and Mrs. Philips, Marcus … Jane. I was trying to connect one of the power generators to the power supply on a shuttle so the whole settlement could have electricity. I thought I knew what to do, and I … I don’t know what happened. One minute she was there, and the next … they were all dead.”
Evelyn was quiet for a moment, and she felt her brother place his hands on her shoulders. He pulled her in closer, wrapping his arms around her. She felt the side of his cheek rest on the top of her head, and the strength of his chest as she pressed her cheek into him. She smelled the salt from her tears as they made his shirt damp.
“You know, you should watch where you sit out here,” he said as a moment passed. “Those cacti are murder, and the Navajo healer can’t spare any more nanites to repair your posterior.”
Evelyn slobber-laughed but didn’t move. “How can you make jokes, Tate? Everyone’s gone … Your mom and dad and sister … they’re all gone.”
“Why do you say that, Evie? Why do you say your mom and your dad, or Mr. Philips and Mrs. Philips … You’re my sister, and you’re Jane’s sister, which makes them your parents too. So why don’t you call Mom Mom and Dad Dad?”
Evelyn was quiet. However she thought this conversation was going to go, it hadn’t, and she didn’t know how to answer his question. She thought for another moment and then shrugged her shoulders in his embrace, answering the only thing she could. “They never said it was okay.”
Tate finally pulled away, and he looked in her eyes, like he was searching for an answer somewhere within her. “Why did you come here, Evie?”
“What do you mean? Isn’t it obvious? I came here to find you,” she added, a little irritated at the question.
“I know that, but why? Why did you want to come and find me?”
“Because I wanted to see you again. And I knew I had to tell you about Jane.”
“Is that it?”
“Well, no … Jane also talked about flying shuttles back to Orsus. She wanted to help more people. I suppose I was thinking about doing that too.”
“Okay. And now that you’re here, what are you planning to do?”
Evelyn knew Tate was going somewhere with all the questions, but she didn’t know where and she was losing her patience. “I’m taking you to Vista, and then I’m bringing you back.”
“And then what?”
“This whole little thing you’re doing is starting to get on my nerves, Tate. What are you getting at?”
“I’m getting at the fact that you have no purpose.”
“Thanks for that.” She crossed her arms and turned sideways, keeping her more colorful words to herself.
“Okay, so maybe I could have said that better. Give me some grace, huh? My nanites are on the way to California.”
Evelyn laughed, and Tate continued.
“What I mean is you are searching … you don’t know what your purpose is. It’s obvious you feel responsible for Jane and Mom and Dad, and maybe that’s why you feel like you need to take up their cause. And Lord knows I would love to have you with me when I come back to Earth, but in the end, you have to figure out what your purpose is.”
“Figure out what I want to do,” she mumbled. The concept was completely foreign to her.
“Sort of, but I’m talking about your purpose. Sometimes it’s what you want, but not always. If you had asked me when I was a teenager what I wanted to do, living a life of poverty and chastity as a priest would not have been my first choice.”
Evelyn laughed again.
“But I knew that was my purpose. It was the reason God made me. What I’m trying to say is, God created you for a reason too. He has a purpose for you. You need to figure out what that is.”
More carefully this time, Evelyn sat on a rock, wincing just a little from being stuck just moments before. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“What, that God has a purpose for you?”
“No … that God created me.”
“I see,” Tate said, crouching in front of her and taking her hand in his.
“What?” Evelyn mumbled.
“You don’t think you’re a real person?”
“Honestly, Tate, I don’t know. My body was grown by scientists in a lab. My brain was programmed by engineers. I don’t know what I am.”
“But you’re alive, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, all life comes from God, Evie. It doesn’t matter how He gave it to you or whether it was in a lab or not.”
Evelyn wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know, Tate. I wish I didn’t have so many doubts about all that.”
“You know, the truth is I do too,” Tate said, sitting down beside her. “I may be a priest, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have doubts. I don’t know for sure what happens when we die. Nobody does. That just makes us human.”
Evelyn shifted in her seat, still unsure. “So how do I figure out what my purpose is?”
“God will tell you.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“That’s the truth.”
“Still not helpful, but thanks,” she said, still irritated, but knowing the truth of it anyway. Tate wasn’t going to be able to tell her what her purpose was any more than Jane would have been able to. She knew she was going to have to figure that out for herself. Evelyn stood and tiredly gestured to Tate. “Come on, we still have a galaxy to cross.”
They
started walking toward the opening of the canyon, which seemed to appear out of nowhere as the morning sun reflected off the tips of the hills.
“I don’t get the sense you feel better about any of this,” Tate said.
“No … I do a little. I guess if there was any evidence about my humanity, it’s in the fact that I’m as confused as everyone else.”
“There you go,” Tate said, patting her on the back and then squeezing her into a sideways hug.
For a few minutes more, they walked together quietly. Rounding the edge of the canyon wall, Evelyn saw the grove of trees ahead, and even though the sun hadn’t brightened the inside of the canyon, she could make out the hulking black shape of her shuttle. A wave of relief washed over her at the thought they would soon be on their way—she and Tate—and soon would be in the safety and comfort of the space station again.
Evelyn caught another whiff of herself. She had mostly been ignoring her odor, but after five days without a real shower, and rotating through her clothes in the hopes they might freshen up on their own, she was disgusted with herself. She wasn’t sure if she would wait to get to Vista or not, figuring a hot shower on the shuttle would feel heavenly and might brighten her spirits. Tate wasn’t exactly fresh either, but if he was smelling her too, he would probably be grateful for her taking a shower also.
Shower. Sleep. They were the only two words that seemed to have much meaning to her after her last several days and a long night of walking. Despite how tired she was, Evelyn’s mind was awhirl with questions. If she could figure out how to stop her mind from running away from her, she knew that would at least be a step in the right direction. But as it stood, she felt insufferably confused about what her purpose was, and then as if to compound her anxiety, she remembered the gunfight in San Antonio. The agent had been looking at his tether when he said, “It’s definitely her.” Whatever that meant—whomever they thought she was—Evelyn still didn’t know, but she was grateful to be leaving.
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