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“Just
sleeping,” she murmured, and the words had not yet wafted off
of her tongue before she fell into deep, dreamless sleep. Overhead
the light from stars millions of years ago continued their race
through the galaxy to no particular purpose or end.

Chal’s eyes
were closed, but the heavens kept on shining as they had for
millennia. They shone for the rocks and the coyotes and all of the
small slitherings in the night desert.

***

When Chal woke a few
hours later, the sky was losing its last bits of darkness in the
west. In the east, beyond the dunes and low mesas of the desert
country, a light blush of grey began to paint itself across the sky.
It was sunrise.

Chal blinked her
eyes and looked around. Her breath whitened the chilly air, puffs
coming out through her slightly open mouth as though she was enjoying
a cigar. She brought her hands out from where they had been clasped
under her legs for warmth. All of her back and neck muscles were
tense with the cold, and her joints ached.

The half-shattered
cockpit glass twinkled overhead, casting a thousand tiny rainbow
prisms onto Chal’s face and body from the sun’s nascent
rays. She raised one hand above her eyes and wiggled her fingers
experimentally, watching the colored lights play over her skin. She
felt as though she was still in a dream.

“Alan,”
Chal said, looking over to where he slept, his chest rising and
falling. She hoped he would be okay after such a long period of sleep
deprivation. She didn’t want to wake him until he was ready,
but the military would be searching for them, and a plane in the
middle of the desert would not be hard to find in broad daylight.

“Alan,”
she repeated, and this time Alan blinked his eyes open, looking
around.

“We’ve
got to leave,” Chal said. Her fingers were clumsy on her
seatbelt as she unclasped the cold metal. Her fingertips felt numb.
She reached over and unlocked the cockpit latch. There was a tinkling
of glass and metal as the window slid open. She bent her legs under
her, getting her balance as she pulled herself up in the cockpit.

“Leave?”
Alan said. He yawned, and Chal felt like tugging him out of the seat
herself. It was dangerous here, and as the sun’s rays clawed
over the desert floor it grew more and more dangerous to stay.

“We have to go
to Lucia’s,” Chal said. She stood up and immediately bent
over again, nauseated with pain.

“Easy there,”
Alan said. Just like that he was out of his seatbelt, holding her by
the shoulder to steady her.

“I’m
fine,” Chal said, although she wasn’t sure of it. Her
head had been knocked hard during the earthquake and although the
blood had stopped she knew that she would still be weak. But there
was no time to rest, not any longer.

Alan was up, though,
helping her out of the cockpit. She slid along the scratched metal of
the plane until she felt the relief of firm ground under her feet.

Alan pulled on the
clothes she had gotten out for him and slung the packs onto his
shoulders as though he had all the energy in the world. Chal tried to
take one of the backpacks but he stole it off of her hand as she was
bringing it up to her shoulder.

“Hey,”
she said.

“Hay is for
horses,” Alan intoned solemnly, and she giggled, immediately
thinking that she must be in hysterics. Where had he learned that? He
was dressed in the white buttoned shirt and khaki pants she had found
in the pack, and he looked no different from any other man now that
he was clothed. He seemed somehow in disguise.

And his brain was
entirely incomprehensible to her.
What other information had they
programmed in? And why a sense of humor?

“I can take
that, really.”

“So can I, and
you’re the one with the injury,” he said. She watched as
he took out the compass and used it to point them in the right
direction, checking Chal’s markings on the map.

“It’s
this way,” he said confidently.

It was so very
strange to see him like this. In the lab he had been an experiment, a
naked helpless creature waiting to be molded. Now he looked like a
man, acted like a man, and Chal was having a hard time making the
adjustment. She was not the one taking care of him anymore. They were
partners now, both running away, escaping from something they didn’t
fully understand. And, still in her lab suit, Chal was the one who
stood out like a sore thumb in the real world.

They began to walk,
and Chal found herself feeling much more alert as the sun began to
rise and warm the desert valley. The gully receded behind them, ahead
a low plain of dunes stretching out for what seemed like forever. The
white sand bloomed with red and orange haloes as the sun rose, and
Chal saw the faint tracks of a small creature, a jackrabbit perhaps.
She followed the tracks with her eyes until they ran off in a
different direction and were lost in the hills.

Lost. That’s
how Chal felt as soon as they got away from the plane. Looking back,
all she could see was a gleam of silver amid the desert dust and
rocks. She wished they had had time to cover the plane, or to
camouflage it somehow. Now all they could hope for was that they
would outrun the men who were sure to be on their tail as soon as
they regrouped and realized that the two of them had gone missing.

Would they even care
about Chal? She knew a lot of information that shouldn’t be
leaked to the outside world, and she had no idea how important she
was to the military, or if they even cared about her now that Alan
was gone.

She was lost in her
thoughts when she walked right into the path of a rattlesnake. She
didn’t hear the snake until she was almost atop it, and then
she looked down to see the flash of dusty copper scales forming
itself into a recognizable coil. The snake’s spaded head reared
back, its rattle shaking angrily.

“Whoa,”
she said, frozen in place. Reptiles never bothered Chal, but she knew
enough to be frightened by a disturbed rattler. If the snake bit her
right now, she would never make it. Chal tried to stand stock still,
willing the snake to go away and leave her alone. Her balance was
shaky, though, and she shifted her weight on her legs, loosening a
few pebbles underfoot. The snake hissed, baring its fangs.

BANG
! The
shot rang out from behind Chal and the snake fell over at the same
moment the noise reached her ears. Its head had been blown clean off,
the spray of blood darkening the dust of the playa floor. Chal
watched the blood seep from the snake’s neck, filling the dusty
cracks of the earth.

Alan lowered the
barrel of his gun. She realized there was fear in his eyes, fear for
her.

“I should
have seen it,” Alan said. “I wasn’t paying
attention, I was lost in thought. I should have seen it.”

“I didn’t
see it either,” Chal said. “Where did you get that gun?”

“It was in the
pack,” Alan said, tucking the gun back under his belt. Chal
shivered, although the sun was quickly warming the desert.

“Don’t
worry,” Alan said, as if he had read her mind. “It’s
safe.”

A second passed and
Chal remembered something.

“You’re
not supposed to harm anything,” she said.

Alan looked up and
Chal saw a flash of guilt in his eyes.

“I’m
not?”

“I thought...”
Chal said, trailing off. They had made him able to harm other beings.
But not humans.

Alan paused, waiting
for her to resume her train of thought.

“Do you think
it’s wrong to kill humans?” Chal asked.

“Of course,”
Alan answered.

“Why?”

“Because human
life is sacred,” Alan answered with certainty.

“And animal
life?”

Alan paused again,
thinking. Chal saw a thought cross his mind, and then he shook his
head.

“It’s
not...” Alan said, trailing off.

“It’s
not the same?”

“It was you,”
Alan said, his voice careful. “You were in danger. I had to
help.”

Chal frowned.

“What are you
thinking about?” Alan asked.

“Nothing,”
Chal said. She wiped the expression off of her face. He didn’t
need to know about her concerns.

“I think about
it too,” Alan said.

“About what?”

“What they
did. What they put in here.” He tapped his head. “I want
to learn more about it. Everything you know.”

Chal wanted to put
her arms around him, to comfort him.

“Okay,”
she said.

“Not now,”
Alan said. “But later. You’ll tell me?”

“I’ll
tell you,” Chal said.

She wished that she
had seen the code that had programmed him so that she could console
him truthfully. But she did not know what they had put in. She was
learning about his preprogrammed capabilities alongside him, and the
deeper parts of his brain were still a mystery to her.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right.”
-Psalms 139:14

***

They walked on. The
sun rose quickly in the sky and the heat followed soon after. In the
early morning the dunes had been bearable, even pretty in places, but
now that the sun was reflected off of the white sand Chal hated every
footstep. Her throat burned with thirst, and after ten miles of
walking she found herself having to push herself not to scrape her
feet along the sand. They were heading up the side of one dune when
she decided she had to rest.

The hill was so
steep that she would step up two feet and slide back one on the soft
sand, and the slow going made her seethe with frustration. Alan
seemed to be able to adjust his weight effortlessly to avoid sliding,
but Chal found herself clamoring along, her feet slipping until she
had almost fallen over.

She fell to her
knees without crying out, simply sitting down when she could not take
it anymore.

“Chal?”
Alan stopped just in front of her. She wished that he would stand on
the other side so that his figure would block out the sun. It was so
hot.

“I’m
fine,” she said. “Just need to sit for a bit.”

“I’m
sorry,” he said, kneeling down with the packs. “I forgot
– I should have known–”

“Should have
known that I’m a weakling,” Chal laughed. God, her throat
burned. “I need some water.”

Alan took the water
out of one of the packs, frowning all the while in self-admonishment.

“We should
both drink.” He gave her the canteen first. The sips of water
were deliciously cool. The canteen tasted slightly metallic but the
water was still cold from the morning. Water spilled over her parched
lips and she licked at her lips, swallowing gratefully.

“When are you
going to need to sleep?” Chal asked.

Alan shook his head.
“Not sure. Not for a while. I feel strong.”

“I wish I
could say the same,” Chal said.

Alan was looking at
her injury. “I can carry you.”

“No,”
Chal said. She pushed herself up, her feet sliding down another foot
in the dunes. Another foot to climb. She willed herself to be strong.

“Are we going
the right way?” she asked. She knew they were, but didn’t
want to talk about her weakness, didn’t want to draw attention
to the fact that she was not as strong as he was.

“We’re
about a quarter of the way there,” Alan said.

“Then let’s
get going,” Chal said. She felt better. They had made quite a
bit of progress, after all. It would be sundown again tomorrow before
they arrived at their destination. If they arrived at their
destination.

They walked another
hour. The ground underneath them changed to hard, cracked playa, then
back again to soft dunes. The colors of the earth changed too, the
white sand swathed with red stripes where there were iron deposits.
They were silent as they walked, preserving their energy.

Another hour passed,
then another. They rested briefly under a rocky outcropping where
Alan divided up the food from the pack – a couple of hard
protein bars washed down with the water that was now more than
lukewarm. It didn’t matter to Chal.

She looked out at
the desert before them. In every direction the dunes marched on, and
at that moment she felt as though they would be wandering there
forever, cursed to live in the bone dryness. This was what hell would
be like.

Not fire and
brimstone, no, nothing so obvious, not like what the priests used to
warn her about. Not devils with pitchforks but this. A desolate
landscape that didn’t care if you fell down and died, a
landscape that would swallow you up into its heat and bleach your
bones and not care at all, not even a little, about the sufferings
you endured.

“What are you
thinking about?” Alan asked.

“The desert,”
Chal said.

“It’s
beautiful, isn’t it?” Alan asked.

Chal looked
curiously at him. “What makes it beautiful?”

Alan smiled, his
eyes absently sweeping across the dunes.

“The patterns
the wind makes on the sand,” he said. “It’s never
quite the same. They are beautiful, aren’t they?”

Chal looked out at
the desert. It was just sand. She shook her head.

“Not a
romantic, are you?”

Chal laughed out
loud. It was ridiculous. An artificial intelligence berating her for
not being romantic!

“That’s
ridiculous,” she said.

“Ridiculous?”

“Are you
really a romantic?” Chal asked.