The Alleluia Files by Sharon Shinn Page B

advanced scientific research institute and teaching facility on the continent. Based right at the foot of Mount Sinai. Started by a man called Caleb Augustus and an Edori named Daniel sia Calasinsa. It flourished during Delilah’s day, and for twenty or thirty years after that. Credit them with virtually all the electronic amenities we have today. But, like Bael, Archangel Joel was no fan of technology, and he tried more than once to shut the school down. Eventually, the professors just moved the whole place to Ysral. Where only the Edori are benefiting from the new marvels of science.”
    “So they’re the ones who built these trucks and buses?”
    “The prototypes. The early models.”
    “And what is it that Bael has against science?”
    Jonas smiled. “You must know your history better than that.”
    “Samaria was founded by settlers escaping a brutal war on a planet far from here,” she recited in a childlike singsong. “Technological advances had brought this world to the brink of destruction with weapons so powerful they could not be withstood. Our forefathers prayed to Jovah, and he took them in his hands and carried them to Samaria, where he instructed them to live in harmony all their lives.”
    “Very good!” he applauded. “So Bael’s fear, theoretically, is that if we encourage any scientific advancement, we will eventually build whatever weapons these other ancestors discovered, and destroy ourselves and the whole planet. He’s not the only Archangel to have felt that way, of course. That’s why we as a society have not crept very far down the road of progress in the last hundred years.”
    “Maybe it’s a slow road.”
    “Maybe we have no incentives to make it a faster one.”
    They might have continued debating for the next half hour, but at that point the rumble of the big engines grew to a deafening level and the big buses shuddered to life. Around them, the air was suddenly patterned with a massive interleaving of angel wings as the contingent from Cedar Hills took flight. Jonasand Lucinda flung themselves aloft and began the long journey southward.
    Lucinda loved to fly. It was something of a guilty pleasure, because Gretchen hated to see her take wing, constantly fearing that she would meet with an errant breeze and go cartwheeling down into the beautiful, treacherous acres of the sea. Early on, she had promised her aunt that she would never fly so far away that she couldn’t see the green–and–tan contours of Angel Rock—which had severely limited the scope of her travels. The idea of flying for hundreds of miles, without pausing, without circling back, made her giddy with anticipation.
    She drove her wings down sharply, repeatedly, gaining altitude as fast as she could, till she was far above the ground, the trucks, the other angels. She saw Jonas glance up at her and rise a few yards, but nowhere near her level. A few of the other angels also turned their faces up to her, calculating her speed and her distance. They seemed to be smiling.
    This high up, the air was frigid and full of devious, sometimes dangerous currents. The cold did not bother her; like all angels, her body was built to withstand the icy temperatures at high altitudes, and indeed, she was often uncomfortable in a warm room. As for the malice of the wind, well, that was an adversary she had faced time without number; she had had no other real opponent in the past twenty-eight years, and so she had sharpened all her skills on it.
    Now came a sudden uprush of air, swift and powerful; she pulled her wings closer to her body and let herself glide on its back. It stopped abruptly and she fell, loving the breathtaking drop, the sensation of speed in the moments before she spread her wings again and eased herself from side to side to slow her descent. For a few minutes she coasted, then she arced upward again, higher than before. She flew forward as fast as she could for as long as she could stand the pace, outdistancing