“I didn’t mean to take anything,” Gabi explained. “I wanted more time with it, but I was worried Mathew or my dad would notice me missing from the service if I stayed too long, so I tore it out.”
“You’ve got to help me out here, Lowell,” Marnie said, squinting at the photo again. “What’s so amazing about a flipper? I’m not a science geek like you, no offense.”
“Look at the bones, Marnie. It has fingers, and other dissections show vestigial hind limbs that resemble feet!”
“Vestigial like leftover?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, okay. Cool.”
“Not just cool,” Gabi said, on fire all over again with the thrill of her discovery. “The uncorrected book I took this from and the others in the facility all say the same thing. Vestigial structures are present because they once served a function. It’s like how the doctrine says that God doesn’t make mistakes.”
“So that means…,” Marnie began, still lost.
“That means the whales that died out thirty years ago, the kind whose flipper you see here, had ancestors that once walked on land!”
“Wait, so… wait,” Marnie said slowly. “This sounds like evolution. Is that what you’re talking about, Lowell? Old Science?”
“Yes!” Gabi cried. “I’m talking about how mammals, which is what humans are too, adapt and change over time because of changes in their environment. If you want to talk about the whole Adam-and-Eve thing, talk about that. What are the chances that God just zapped two vulnerable, naked, fully formed humans onto a chaotic planet? Wouldn’t he at least have started with something that had better odds of survival?”
“Makes sense,” Marnie agreed. “I never thought about it all that much. What the fellowship teaches all sounds like bullshit to me.” Gabi waved the paper in front of Marnie’s face.
“You should pay attention, Marnie. This isn’t just about evolution. The doctrine teaches that we are supposed to adhere to its literal teachings—that it was humanity’s failure to do so that brought on the Wrath. According to Unitas the Wrath was a divine strategy to disrupt life on earth so that humanity would be forced to unite under one faith in order to survive.”
“Which means that the story of Adam and Eve has to be an actual fact, or the whole thing falls apart,” Marnie added, finally sensing where Gabi was going with her diatribe.
“And evolution, and converting the Tribes,” Gabi said, “and girls who like girls being damned, and just about everything else that helps Unitas keep control.”
“They have to do that,” Marnie said, bouncing on the bed in her growing fervor. “They have to say the doctrine is literal in order to control people. They create laws people can’t break by telling them the laws are the only things keeping them alive!”
“But it’s not totally literal, and people know that,” Gabi argued. “I mean there are some things that are in the old doctrine that Unitas definitely doesn’t follow, like how to dress and what to eat and stuff like that.”
“That’s because they pick the parts they know they can get people on board with,” Marnie exclaimed, practically shouting now. “That’s what new doctrine is for, to shape the old doctrine into something people will go along with while still giving Unitas enough leverage to control them. Oh my God, this makes so much sense! I love science!”
“Marnie,” Gabi said in a quiet voice. “When you were in our team circle during the Consecration Ceremony, I saw you translating for Beth. Was that real?”
Marnie shook her head vigorously. “No. I just recited some passages I remembered and kept my voice low so no one could hear if I messed up. What about you? You seemed pretty into it.”
Gabi’s body tingled to recall the wave of ecstasy that had overtaken her when she opened her mouth to speak. “Something happened,” she began. “I don’t know what it was, but I wasn’t fully in control. I think there was definitely something in that sacramental wine.”
“Oh, no doubt,” Marnie agreed. “My mouth tasted like an old gym sock afterward. But wait, you’re saying you think you did get a message?”
Gabi shrugged. “Words came out. I don’t know what they were, but I know that when Peter stepped up and started translating for me, it didn’t sound right. He was basically just doing what you were doing by quoting doctrine, but it didn’t match what was coming out of me. Does that make sense?”
“Totally,” Marnie said.
Gabi shivered as she contemplated the implications. “Marnie, what if they’re all faking it? What if Sam’s faking it, and my brother and Messenger Nystrom and the whole thing is one big lie? What if….” Gabi drew a shaky breath. “What if God doesn’t even exist?”
The two girls stared at each other. Gabi had spoken a question that neither would have dared voice had they worked their way toward it alone. Even for Marnie, who had suffered cruelly at the hands of those who used God as a weapon, the possibility that God didn’t exist had never entered her mind. Gabi knew this, because when she’d asked Marnie about the filigreed cross dangling on a leather cord around her neck, Marnie responded that the cross was a gift from her mother. It served as a reminder that the all-loving God of her parents was real. If there were no God, then their deaths had been for nothing. If there were no God, then no one was watching over her, guiding her and accepting her for exactly who she was.
For Gabi, speaking those words had been like stepping off the rock in the glade all over again. Her faith in Unitas had been permanently altered by what she’d witnessed on D Wing. She no longer believed that the council knew best or that every bit of doctrine was unvarnished truth from God’s mouth to the Messenger’s ear. If Messengers could lie about the message and Translators about its meaning, then wasn’t
