Covenant

41

Ethan Warner sipped water from a chipped mug as he listened to Hassim Khan.

“The American Evangelical Alliance owns MACE, is run from Washington DC, and has consistently sought to alter the course of American history by distributing false information to schools, colleges, and universities throughout the country. It was partly responsible for the attempted insertion of ‘Intelligent Design’ into the education curriculum, which was thwarted in 2005 by state courts as being no different from creationism. Their efforts were exposed after a leaked document called ‘The Wedge Strategy’ reached the mainstream media, revealing their plan to put a wedge between science and the public through a campaign of deliberate disinformation in order to generate doubt in scientific endeavor.”

“They’re willing to play dirty,” Ethan murmured, thinking about the MACE troops shooting at them in the desert.

“They are,” Hassim agreed. “You can see how such an organization might react to Lucy’s discovery out here.”

“They’d do anything to cover it up,” Ethan said. “Even kill.”

“When you believe you’re doing God’s work, anything is justifiable.”

“But what if they’ve got it all wrong?” Ethan said. “Those remains could be something else, a freak of nature or a deformed species of some kind. Even someone as experienced as Lucy could have got it wrong. What’s the chance of there being life in space at all for that matter?”

Hassim Khan seemed surprised.

“Life is known to be everywhere in the universe.”

“No, it’s not,” Ethan said. “Nobody knows if there’s intelligent life out there.”

“I didn’t say intelligent life,” Hassim said. “I said life.”

“How would you know that for sure?” Rachel demanded. Mahmoud and Yossaf were also frowning uncertainly at the scientist.

Hassim shrugged as he looked at her.

“The origin of life, sadiqati, is the formation of the chemical elements themselves, the very things from which we are made. Each and every form of life and structure on our planet and every other planet in the known universe were conceived in the hearts of giant stars: everything that we see, everything that we breathe, touch, taste, and are physically made of. All life on Earth is quite literally built from the chemical ashes of dead stars. We are stardust.”

Ethan experienced a fleeting bout of vertigo.

“Ashes? You mean life is, like, the leftovers?”

Hassim Khan nodded.

“All life as we know it is quite literally debris, nothing more. Lucy knew this, and understood its connection to what she found out here in Israel.”