Free Mercury Rises by Robert Kroese Page B

no-nonsense dogooder who applied to charity work the sort of drive that most people reserved for some combination of career, family, and dental hygiene. In short, she didn't appreciate impediments to efficiency such as unscheduled vomiting.
    "I think my pancreas is coming up," moaned Christine.
    "Stick your head out the window. We need to be back before nightfall. Can't stop now."
    In fact they were barely moving as it was. What they were driving on wasn't so much a road as it was a vague idea of a road; a roughly linear stretch of ground littered with barely navigable rocks. Their destination was a mere twenty miles away as the crow flew, but they had been on the road for nearly an hour and they were only halfway there.
    Christine couldn't recall a time when she had been more miserable. She was nauseous, tired, uncomfortable, and dirty, and part of her couldn't help wishing that the world had ended six weeks earlier. Maybe she and Mercury shouldn't have interfered with the plans of Heaven. Maybe the world was meant to end. Sure, the archangel Michelle had assured her that the Apocalypse was indefinitely on hold, but maybe there were powers at work that trumped even the best intentions of the most influential angels. Maybe Michelle was as powerless to stop the Apocalypse as she was.
    But if the Apocalypse was still proceeding, wasn't there a whole lot of other bad stuff that was supposed to go down before the final act? Rivers turning to blood and a third of the moon falling out of the sky, stuff like that.
    It occurred to her that she was thinking like Harry Giddings, a realization that actually made her feel worse. No matter how bad things were, she wasn't about to adopt Harry as a role model.
    Was there even such a thing as destiny? There must be, she mused. If not, then aren't we all just bouncing around aimlessly like ping-pong balls? But if everything is predetermined, then what's the point of doing anything at all? Maybe Mercury was right: we're all just splashing around in the inexorable stream of fate. Of course, Mercury had ended up splashing a little too hard, and had nearly been pulled under by the weight of the Heavenly bureaucracy. Now he was God-knows-where, presumably still on the run from the powers-that-be.
    Christine sighed. These sorts of thoughts weren't helpful. She needed to focus on the here and now, not on abstract philosophical notions. And certainly not on the late Harry Giddings or the vanished angel Mercury. She needed to focus on whatever good she could do here in Africa, for whatever time she had left.
    At last they reached the remote agricultural testing facility, which consisted of a small aluminum building attached to a greenhouse about half the size of a football field. The entire facility was ringed by a twenty-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Inconspicuous signs identified the structure as "TRI-FED TESTING FACILITY 26." Maya pulled the Land Rover up to the gate and honked.
    "What do they do here?" Christine asked.
    "They test bioengineered crops," Maya said. "It has to be remote to prevent contamination with the local varieties."
    "Remote?" Christine said. "We passed remote about ten miles back. This is...like...godforsaken."
    A pudgy, red-faced man with an enormous head emerged from the building and unlocked the gate, swinging it open to let them enter. Thin wisps of pale yellow hair arced out from his gigantic cranium in a futile effort to block some minute fraction of the radiation pummeling his scalp. Christine tried to make out the name on the man's embroidered nametag, but the second half of the name was obscured by a sizeable scorch mark. What she could decipher looked like Crisp ---an unlikely, albeit appropriate name.
    "Drive around back," the man said. "I've got a pallet ready for you." He lumbered toward the rear of the building, his arms and legs splayed widely in an apparent attempt to prevent any one part of his body from contacting any other part. As they