Chapter 2

Paul stepped into his room with a towel around his waist and began dressing. "Was that Shy Anne I saw you with in the cafeteria last night?" his roommate asked.

"Yeah. She seems to have taken a liking to me."

"Just your luck. You seem to be the male equivalent of a nerd magnet."

"Cheyenne's okay ... a nice girl. I like nerdy girls ... change of pace from Kristen."

"That's for sure."

"Besides -- this relationship is platonic at best."

"For now," Sandy remarked.

"I don't think it's going anywhere. Shy seems to be interested in theology more than anything else."

"Shy?"

"Short for Cheyenne. It's what her friends call her." Paul picked up his backpack. "I'm off to my morning class."

Paul sat in the student union with a bagel and a cup of coffee. A young man with his long hair in a ponytail sat at the same table. Paul saw Cheyenne enter the union. She spotted him and headed for the table. "Hi, Paul," she said.

"Shy -- this is my friend Jeremy.

"Hi," she said.

"He's a biology major -- a senior working on an evo-devo project. Jeremy -- this is Cheyenne."

"What's evo-devo?" she asked.

"Evolutionary-developmental biology," Paul explained. "If you want to ask about evolution -- Jeremy's your go-to guy."

"What about evolution?" Jeremy asked.

"Shy was asking me about it the other night," Paul replied. "I told her I was out of my depth."

"What's the question?"

"Well," Cheyenne said, "Paul was explaining about theories fitting observations. He said a theory was the best, current explanation."

"That's right," Jeremy replied. "Not only does our current understanding of evolution fit observed facts, there is no other theory that comes close."

"How do you address the problem of irreducible complexity, then?" she asked.

Jeremy looked up at Paul. "What is she, a fucking creationist? Holy shit!" He shook his head. "Look -- irreducible complexity is bogus. It's fake science. There is no such thing as irreducible complexity and the notion has been discredited in paper after paper. The whole concept was cooked up by one guy to try to put a scientific polish on the turd of intelligent design ... I.D. as they call it. We call those who subscribe to it Idiots."

Paul looked up at Cheyenne and saw her lip trembling. She turned and stalked away. "Jeez, Jeremy -- do you have to be so harsh?"

"Yeah, I do," Jeremy replied."I'm sick and tired of it. I get the same bullshit every time I go home. If she believes that crap, she doesn't belong here. This is a serious institution of higher learning, not some fucking bible school."

"She's not a biology major, Jeremy -- she's a humanities major. Cheyenne is struggling with some of these concepts."

"What is she? Don't tell me she's some fundie you're trying to turn."

"No, I'm trying to help her." He spotted Cheyenne sitting in a corner, holding her forehead in her palm. "I'm going to go talk to her."

He approached her. "Shy..."

"Leave me alone."

"Shy -- I'm sorry."

"I didn't expect that." She stood and turned away. "I didn't expect to be insulted like that."

"Hey..." Paul grasped her upper arm and turned her toward him. "Jeremy came from the same sort of environment as you. He's turned his back on all that. He's estranged from his family because of his beliefs and he's become a sort of an atheist militant. And, it appears, an atheist asshole to boot."

"He didn't need to be so mean."

"No, he did not." Tears rolled down her cheeks and Paul used the back of his finger to stroke one away. "Hey..."

"He called me an idiot!"

Paul slipped his arm around her shoulders. Cheyenne took off her glasses and leaned against his shoulder, sobbing softly. "I know you're no idiot, Shy. I think you're very intelligent."

"Really?" she sniffled.

"Really."

"I'm getting you all wet."

"I'm not made of candy -- I won't melt. You okay?"

She let go of him and slipped her glasses on. "I'll get over it. Do you think it's wrong to teach intelligent design?"

"In the context of a religious study course -- not at all. It's perfectly valid in that setting. In a science course -- no. Absolutely not. There is no established, peer-reviewed literature supporting it."

"This isn't helping."

"Let's meet for dinner and talk about this some more tonight. Okay?"

"Okay. I'll try not to have such a thin skin."

"Jeremy was the one who was out of line, Shy. You weren't."

"You're sweet, Paul."

"Where's your next class?"

"Parker hall."

"I'll walk with you part way." He escorted her from the union.

Paul touched her hand and they locked fingers. "I like you, Paul," she said. "You're a decent guy."

"You're a nice girl, Shy. I like you, too."

Paul sat in the cafeteria. He saw Cheyenne in the line and waved to catch her attention. She brought her tray to his table and set it down. "Are you still tender over what Jeremy said to you?" he asked.

"I'm over it. You know ... when all your life you're taught one thing and then you discover it's widely held in contempt ... It's confusing and frustrating."

"I imagine."

"Tell me more about your notion of God as a metaphor."

"Ten thousand years ago ... At the time, one of the biggest questions was, where does the sun go every night? This was an important issue then, and they feared, perhaps, one day the sun might not rise in the morning. So, they invented solar cults in an attempt to explain this and perhaps guarantee the sun will rise tomorrow. Modern science has solved this problem without a doubt. We know where the sun goes at night and the fact it will rise in the morning is as close to a dead certainty as anything. As science progresses and we catalogue more knowledge and develop theories to explain what we observe ... We need to rely less and less on myths."

She nodded. "That's a good analogy."

"I don't think we'll ever know everything. The universe is a very strange place -- stranger than you can imagine. For example, given the extremes of temperature that exist in the universe -- from absolute zero to billions of degrees -- it's somehow amazing to me that life developed to inhabit a world that's so close to absolute zero. We're only about three hundred degrees above absolute zero right now. Compare that to the temperature of the interior of the sun."

Cheyenne nodded. "I'm beginning to understand."

"Recent studies are suggesting that in this galaxy there may be up to a hundred billion planets revolving around stars, and each of these could have conditions similar to Earth. What would the unequivocal discovery of life on one of those worlds do to your notion of God? Does it strengthen it or diminish it?"

She closed her eyes and nodded. "I think you're right, Paul."

He picked up his tray. "Finished?"

"Yeah." He picked up hers. "Want to go for a walk?"

"Okay. Where to?"

"Where would you like to go?" he asked.

"Up the hill to watch the sunset."

Paul took her hand and they headed toward Observatory Hill. "When I was growing up," she said, "we were given pamphlets that listed, point-by-point why evolution was wrong."

"Well -- here we have a collision of faiths. My faith is that I believe what I observe; and I think you do, too."

"Yes, I believe my eyes."

"There is no doubt that every physical observation is consistent with a planet that's four billion years old. If you want to believe a literal interpretation of Genesis, then you have to abandon belief in your own senses. You'll need to accept that God created a planet that's at most ten thousand years old, but surrounded it with the illusion that it's much older. And He somehow created the illusion that we're surrounded by galaxies that are hundreds of millions of lightyears away. What you're accepting is just like Hindu Maya. Then, ask yourself, why would a deity do that?"

"I like talking with you, Paul. You have a way of directing my thinking without making me feel foolish or stupid."

"Unlike Jeremy."

"Right. Unlike Jeremy. I'm looking for a middle path, Paul. I think you're guiding me onto it."

They approached the top of the hill. Paul sat on the outcropping and Cheyenne sat beside him. "Looks like a pretty sunset," he remarked. His hand touched hers. She grasped it and they locked fingers.

He regarded her face. "Do you need to wear those?" he asked, pointing to his own eyes.

"These?" She touched her glasses. "If I want to see, I do."

"You're nearsighted?"

"Very."

"How close would I have to be for you to see me clearly without them?"

She moved so her face was inches from his. "About like this."

Paul regarded her features. Perhaps she didn't fit the definition of pretty, but she was not unattractive. Her dark, deep-set eyes with their heavy lids held his fascination.

"Take them off for a minute."

"Why?"

"Well ... I want to see what you look like without them. And, I don't want to damage them if I kiss you."

"You want to kiss me?"

"I do -- but only if you're agreeable."

She smiled. "You're the first guy who's asked me if he could kiss me."

He touched her cheek. "I don't believe that."

"Well -- it's true. A couple of guys kissed me without asking..."

"Where are they, now?"

"I got rid of 'em..."

"So -- may I kiss you?"

"Okay."

He touched his lips to hers and kissed her gently. "Your eyes look so different ... bigger without glasses."

"I think I look better with them, actually."

"I like you both ways." He kissed her again. Cheyenne slipped her hand around his neck and they kissed again.

"I'm going to miss the sunset like this."

"If it gets really good I won't let you miss it." He coaxed her onto his lap and they kissed again.

"You're a good kisser, Paul," she said.

"You're a pretty good one, too." He looked at the sky. "Sunset's getting good."

Cheyenne put on her glasses. She held onto Paul and looked toward the west. "Very pretty."

"Shy -- I didn't expect this."

"Neither did I."

"This morning after the Jeremy business -- I liked how you felt in my arms."

"It felt good to me, too. Not just physically, Paul. You were tender with me." She tightened her grip on him. "Do you really think I'm intelligent?"

"I think you're a very smart girl, Shy."

"It's the nicest thing you could possibly say to me."

The red disk of the sun slipped behind the horizon and twilight descended. Shy removed her glasses again and they resumed kissing, tongues touching. "Looks like a clear night," Paul remarked. "Do you know what I like to do sometimes?"

"What?"

"I like to point the telescope at some random part of the sky, turn off the clock drive and watch the star field drift by."

"I'd like to see that," she replied.

He eased her off his lap and headed for the shed containing the small Schmidt telescope. Unlocking it he folded back the roof. From a drawer he selected an eyepiece. The he pressed the controller to point the telescope upward.

Sitting on a stool he squinted through the eyepiece. "This is a good spot." Paul motioned Cheyenne beside him. "We need to let it get a little darker."