'That's what I would have guessed,' David said. 'From pictures.'
'The pictures are from the tourist sites. They want to see old Native American culture; we're happy to show it. Dress in the old garb, dance the old dances, sell 'em anything they want made from colorful beads. They didn't want to see our real homes.'
'Not tepees, I take it.'
'Just like any other depressed economy. Multifamily units, tiny houses, house trailers. And the tourists didn't want to know that my dad was a mechanic and my mom worked in the office of a plumbing company. They'd rather believe we were part of a raiding party, drank firewater, or worked in a casino.'
'Your parents really didn't?'
'My mother liked to play the slots. Dad lost a pay-check one night playing blackjack. Never went back.'
'And you were a vet.'
'Vet's assistant, that's all. My uncle, my mother's brother, was self trained. Didn't have to be licensed or certified or any of that other stuff, like on the outside. Unless you wanted business from the outside, and he didn't. And he wasn't into weird stuff either. Tourists asked if he danced and chanted and brought dead pets back to life. He was a good reader, read everything he could find on patching up animals, because he loved them and there were so many of them.'
'You didn't want to be a vet?'
'Nope. I read all the books about Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale. Did well in school, especially science, and was encouraged by a teacher to take advantage of opportunities for Native Americans at state universities. Went to Arizona State and never looked back. Cost me more because I wasn't from Arizona, but I wanted distance between me and the reservation.'
'Why?'
'I wasn't ashamed or anything. I just thought I had more opportunity outside. And I did.'
'Where did you hear about God?'
'Everywhere. There were Christians on the reservation. We weren't churchgoers, but we knew a lot who were. That teacher used to talk to me about Jesus. I wasn't interested. She called it 'witnessing,' and that sounded way too weird for me. Then at university. They were everywhere. You could get witnessed to walking to class.'
'Never intrigued you?'
'Not enough to go to any meetings. I was afraid I would wind up in a cult or a multilevel-marketing scheme. The big thing with those kids was getting people to admit they were sinners and that they couldn't do anything about their sin. Tell you the truth, I never felt like a sinner. Not then.'
'So, wrong approach for you.'
'Not their fault. I was a sinner, of course. I was just blind to it.'
'What finally made the difference?'
'When I found out who disappeared in the vanishings, I was mad. Those churchgoers I knew. Christians from university. My high school teacher.'
'So you must have had an inkling.'
'An inkling? I knew. People were saying God did this, and I believed them. And I hated him for it. I thought about those people and how sincere and devout they were, how they cared enough for me to tell me something that made me think they were strange. I didn't want any part of a God who would remove them and leave me here. I wanted a hero, someone to believe in, but not him. Then I saw all the news about Carpathia. The Bible talks about how so many will be deceived? I was at the top of the list. Bought the whole package. Found put he needed medical people, hopped the next plane to New York. Wasn't so sure about moving on to this beautiful, godforsaken desert, but I was still loyal then.
'I started getting squirrelly about Carpathia when he started sounding like a politician, trying to put everything in the best light. He never seemed genuinely remorseful about all the chaos and the loss. I didn't agree with him when he said all this proved that God couldn't have been behind the disappearances, because why would a loving God do that? I believed God had done it, and it proved he wasn't so loving after all.'
Hannah finished her stitch-removal work, stripped off and discarded her rubber gloves, washed and dried her hands, and pulled on another pair of gloves. She sat on a stool next to David. 'Still have the staples, but we can both use a break.'
'Somebody had to lead you to God. I'm dying to know where you met another believer here.'
'Didn't know there was one till I saw your mark plain as day as you lay there on the ground. I tried wiping it off, then almost danced when I realized what it was. I couldn't see mine and had never seen another, just read about it.'
'Where?'
'Remember when we were told that Tsion Ben-Judah's Web site was contraband?' ''Course.'
'That was all I needed to hear. I was there. It was all Greek to me until he predicted the earthquake. First, it happened. Second, my whole reservation was swallowed up. Lost everybody. Mom, Dad, two little brothers, extended family. I'll bet we were one of the only places in the world that had no survivors. Zero.'
'Wow.'
'You can imagine how I felt. Grief-stricken. Alone. Angry. Amazed that the weird guy on the Net got it right.'
'Can't imagine that convincing you, though. Seems you would have been madder than ever at God.'
'In a way, I was. But I really began to see the light about Nicolae. You were here then, right? You heard the rumors.'
David nodded.
'People said he bullied his way onto a chopper on the roof of the old headquarters building-which I have no problem with. I probably would have done the same.
Self-preservation instinct and all that. But no calls for help. No orders for more rescue craft. People hanging on the struts of his chopper, screaming, pleading for their lives. He orders the pilot off the roof. Probably couldn't have saved anybody anyway, the way the thing went down. But you've got to try, don't you? Isn't that true leadership?
'Then he was phony again. The remorse didn't ring true. I just started doing my job and forgetting my idealism, but I couldn't tear myself away from the Ben-Judah site. Then millions and millions joined in, and so many of them became believers. I read about the mark of the sealed believer, and I was envious. I wasn't sure I wanted in yet, but I wanted to be part of some family.
'But you know what got to me about Tsion? Listen to me, calling a man like that by his first name. But that's just it. He's clearly one of the most brilliant scholars ever born. But he had a way of putting the cookies on the lower shelf for people like me. I understood what he was saying. He made it plain and clear. And he was transparent. He lost his whole family in a worse way than I did.
'He was so loving! You could sense it, feel it right through the computer. He prayed for people, ministered to them the way the best doctors do.'
'And that was what finally persuaded you?'
'Actually, no. I believed he was sincere, and I came to believe he was right. But all of a sudden I went scientific on him. I was going to take this slow, not rush into anything, study it carefully. Well, he starts predicting these plagues, and here they come. Didn't take me long after that. People suffered. These were real. And he knew they were coming.'
'Did you ever see yourself as a sinner?'
She stood and found the small wire cutters.
'Uh-oh,' David said.
'Just relax. Listen to the nice lady's story.' She gently pressed her fingers on each side of the staple and eased the cutting edge of the clippers in. With both hands she forced the handles together, and the staple broke with a snap.
David jumped.
'You still with us?' she said.
'Didn't feel a thing. Just scared me.'
'Story of my life.' She snapped the other while continuing. 'Tsion warned us-you know this; surely you're part
