Yes, Morgan Toth, you are, Gabriel piped up. Will you be our king?
With pleasure, said Morgan, sketching a slight bow and flipping back his artfully overlong bangs on the way up. He was a small guy with a handsome face set atop skinny, sloping shoulders and a neck about the circumference of Elizas pinkie. As for the puffy lips, they existed in a state of snide smirk, and Eliza was constantly plagued by urges to bounce things off them. Coins. Gummy bears.
Fists.
The two of them were grad students in Dr. Anuj Chaudharys lab, both recipients of highly competitive research fellowships with one of the worlds foremost evolutionary biologists, but from the day they met, the animosity Eliza felt for the smug little white boy had felt like nausea. Hed actually laughed when she told him the name of the scruffy public university she came from, claiming to have thought she was joking, and that was just the beginning. She knew he didnt believe shed earned her spot here, that some form of affirmative action must account for itor worse. Sometimes, when Dr. Chaudhary laughed at something Eliza said, or leaned over her shoulder to read some results, she could see Morgans nasty assumptions in his smirk, and it enraged her. It dirtied herand Dr. Chaudhary, too, who was decent, and married, and also old enough to be her father. Eliza was used to being underestimated, because she was black, because she was a woman, but no one had ever been quite so vile about it as Morgan. She wanted to shake him, and that was the worst of it. Eliza was mild , even after everything, and the rage itself enraged herthat Morgan Toth could alter her, bend her like a wire by the sheer awfulness of his personality.
I mean, come on, he said, gesturing at the TV screens. The helmed angel and the Pope still appeared to be speaking. Someone had gotten a camera closer to the action, on the ground with them now, though not near enough for audio. What are those things? Morgan demanded. We know theyre not celestial beings
We dont know anything yet, Eliza heard herself say, though the last thing she wanted to dodear god, the ironywas argue on behalf of angels .
Only Morgan could provoke her like this. It was like his voicebelligerent spiked with obnoxioustriggered an autonomic impulse to argue. All he had to do was take a position and shed feel an immediate need to oppose it. If he declared affection for light, Eliza would have to defend the dark.
And she really, really didnt like the dark.
Are you even a scientist? she asked him. Since when do we decide what we know before theres even any data?
Youre making my point for me, Eliza. Data. We need it. I doubt the Popes going to get it, and I dont hear the president demanding it.
That doesnt mean hes not. He said every scenario is being considered.
Like hell it is. I suppose if a flying saucer descended on the Vatican, theyd clear a landing strip for it in the middle of St. Peters freaking Square?
Its not a flying saucer, though, is it, Morgan? Can you really not see how this is different? She knew there was no point arguing with him, but it was maddening. He was pretending not to grasp the intense sensitivity of this situation out of some notion that it marked him as superiorlike he was so far above the masses that their concerns were quaint to him. How primitive your customs are! What is this thing you call religion? But Eliza knew that this was a whole different kind of threat than a flying saucer would have been. An alien landing would unify the world, just like in a science fiction movie. But angels had the potential to splinter humanity into a thousand sharp shards.
She should know. Shed been a shard for years.
There arent many things that people will gladly kill and die for, but this is the big one, she said. Do you understand? It doesnt matter what you believe, or what you think is stupid. If the powers that be pull any of your protocol, its not going to be pretty out there.
Morgan sighed again, steepling his fingertips to his temples in an attitude of Why must I endure such mental frailty? There is no scenario in which its going to be pretty. We need
to be in control of the situation, not falling to our knees like a bunch of bedazzled peasants.
And here Eliza had to bite the inside of her cheek, because she hated to agree with Morgan Toth, but she agreed with that. Shed been fighting that fight for yearsto never again fall to her knees, never again be knocked to them and held down, never again be forced.
And now the sky opened and angels poured in?
It was kind of hilarious. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to pound her fists against something. A wall. Morgan Toths smirk. She imagined how he would look at her if he knew where she came from. What she came from. What shed run from. He would achieve a threshold of disdain unmatched in human history. Or more like fascinated, disgusted glee . It would make his year.
She decided to shut up, which Morgan took as a victory, but still she had a sense, from the fishy glint of his glare, that she should have shut up sooner. People with secrets shouldnt make enemies , she warned herself.