An overhead light powered on and illuminated the sterile, windowless room. It had low ceilings, a long, narrow shape, and none of the candlelit ambience of the temple sanctuary. A small screen and panel of buttons beside the door indicated that the humidity and temperature of the room were strictly controlled. Fortunately the room was laid out in typical library fashion, books and periodicals arranged according to the Dewey Decimal System. This made what she sought easy enough to find, and within minutes Gabi had seated herself beside a pile of marine biology texts. Another glimpse at her watch told her she had twenty minutes to cram as much information into her brain as possible and get back to her seat before anyone noticed she was gone. She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, but the fact she’d dared so greatly already made the caper worthwhile.
The pictures in the larger texts included underwater photography, scaled drawings, and illustrations of biochemical processes. While fascinating to look at, trying to absorb that level of detail was overwhelming, so Gabi looked for books more closely resembling the ones on offer in her own school library. Cursing herself for not having thought to bring a bag so she could “borrow” some of the books and take her time going through them, Gabi flipped through the pages as quickly as she could, her eyes drying out from her reluctance to blink.
She scanned until an odd image in one of the books caught her eye. It was a finely detailed drawing of the bones of a huge hand. She checked the cover of the book, which read, Aquatic Mammals: Origins, Biology, and Behavior. What was an illustration of a human hand doing in a book about cetaceans? She turned back to the drawing and looked at the caption, which read, “Whale appendage, skeletal drawing.” Gabi traced the fine bones on the page with her finger.
“Impossible,” she whispered. “No wonder these books needed correction.” Still, she couldn’t resist reading the long paragraph under the subtitle “Evolution of Whale Anatomy.” According to the book, studies of whale skeletons revealed vestigial hind limbs with feet and toes, as well as fully articulated hand bones within the casing of their front flippers. This pointed to a land-dwelling whale ancestor that later evolved into an ocean-dwelling species.
Gabi’s finger rested on the word evolved as she spoke it in the quiet room. “Evolution” was classic Old Science. The word and any of its variations had fallen completely out of use since the Gathering In. There was a time, in early P.G.I., when evolutionary theory was used as fodder for jokes, though the consequences of believing it had been dire. People were still dying from the Divine Wrath unleashed upon them for their distrust of the Word and devotion to the inventions of the human mind.
Yet something about seeing Old Science in the dry language of academia, accompanied by drawings as detailed as any she had seen before, spurred her on. Gabi grabbed another book and then another, riffling through them to read what other scientists had to say about whale evolution. Aside from variations in presentation and word choice, the books were unanimous. Whales had once dwelled upon land.
“Yeah, and the earth is flat,” Gabi could imagine Mathew scoffing, yet her pulse quickened as she heaved another huge text onto her lap. Last one, she vowed. She still had to put everything back and return to her seat in time for the reading of the translations, when her empty chair would be more noticeable.
The tome creaked when she opened it, pages cascading over one another in a tidal shush. It was the same Old Science perspective as far as Gabi could tell, licking her index finger for traction as she flipped through the chapters. But then, just as she was about to close the book, there it was. A close-up photograph of an actual dissected whale flipper, the thick rubbery skin peeled back to reveal the features of a huge, five-fingered hand. Gabi blinked to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. On impulse, she tore the page from the binding.
As she did, an alarm shattered the silence, and Gabi’s head exploded in pain. She screamed and clapped her hands over her ears, looking wildly around. She slammed the book shut and shoved it off her lap as if it were on fire, kicking the pile of textbooks away from her. There was a narrow space beneath a nearby bookshelf, and she jammed the volumes into it as well as she could. She’d been caught, and Gabi knew she should stay and face her punishment, but the attack on her senses unleashed a survival instinct that overrode her conscience.
She dashed to the door and swiped the passcard through the scanner, and the green light flashed. Gabi shoved it into her waistband and wrenched the door open, hurrying toward the secret entrance. Perhaps the temple was being evacuated and she could slip in unnoticed? Gabi would be on all the security cameras, of course, but at least an undetected entrance would buy her some time to prepare to meet her fate.
Gabi had ignored the threat the cameras posed before the alarm went off, since they only powered on when an alarm was triggered. No inch of the complex was immune to the roving eyes of those tiny devices, but power reserves to keep them running all the time weren’t available. Now, with the alarm exploding her eardrums, Gabi felt the cameras’ sharp eyes all over her.
As abruptly as
