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Enrique took in the two devices with a sweep of one arm. “Can you make it work?”

Simon took his time inspecting the professor's machine. To an outsider it was only so much junk. But Simon had worked on worse. In truth his attention was mostly on Enrique. The mayor gave Simon the same tight inspection, and his voice carried the same hidden edge, just like the last time he had asked about Vasquez and the device.

Simon shook his head, wondering what he was missing. “Doubtful.”

The lines of tension around his eyes multiplied. “Explain.”

“There are a number of highly sensitive components. If any of them are damaged, nothing will work.”

“Can you replace them?”

“Sure. In time. First I have to test each separately and isolate the flaw. If there is one. Which I'm pretty sure there will be.”

“There is an electronics shop in Ojinaga. A good one. They supply the high-tech companies in the maquiladora with spare parts.”

“Great. I'll check them out.” Simon pretended to focus on disassembling the professor's machine and made his question as casual as possible. “So why is this so important to you?”

“A device that may deliver free energy? Is that a joke?”

“No. No joke. Just wondering.”

“Power in Mexico is controlled by CFE. They have a monopoly in Chihuahua state. You have heard of CFE?”

“Vasquez mentioned it, sure.”

“The only company more corrupt in all Mexico is the oil company. CFE is the means by which corruption flows through much of our national government. They are one of the reasons why I intend to enter national politics. I want to wipe them from the map. I want to
erase
them.”

Simon almost believed him. Enrique certainly did show a proper amount of outrage. And it explained the tension that emanated from him. Almost. But there was a rehearsed quality to his words and gestures. As though he had practiced them endlessly for just such a moment. Here with Simon, or in a nationally televised interview, or a speech before thousands. It was all the same.

Simon was certain that more was at work.

“I'll give it my best shot.”

“Splendid!” Enrique flashed his number-one smile. “You are a great help to everyone, Señor Simon.”

Juan piped up, “He made the solar lanterns work.”

“Did you indeed? Fantastic! Harold is desperately in need of something he can make and sell and build a source of revenue for this place.” Enrique clapped Simon on the back. “I will leave you to get on with this work, Señor Simon. It is vital, do you hear me? Vital! Juan, you must show me one of these excellent lanterns.”

Sofia remained inside the classroom as they departed. For once, she did not reveal the predatory gleam, the desire to argue or condemn. She simply stood there, watching him work, looking pensive.

Looking like a woman waiting for him to ask a question.

If only he had the first hint of an idea what to say.

Sofia tried to tell herself she needed to go join Enrique. There was really no logical reason for her to be here with Simon. And yet she remained in the doorway, until Simon said quietly, “Penny for your thoughts.”

“I was thinking about Vasquez.”

His hands continued to sort through the components. “So was I.”

She could tell he feared she would ask why he had betrayed his friend. His hands slowed, and his face pinched tightly, and his shoulders bowed. He became the portrait of a man waiting for a strike he could not avoid. It was a powerful moment for her. Sofia realized Simon was changing. The cynical edge had vanished. His armor was down. Her brother was right. God was working in this man's life.

She recalled how Vasquez had described the
other
Simon. The person kept hidden away from a world that had wounded him when he had been young and most vulnerable. The brilliant orphan, cast off to foster care after his grandmother died, hurt and angry and scared and alone.

Sofia felt her heart go out to him. There was a great deal of herself in him. He was the face of who she herself might have become, had she not been brought here. To the orphanage in Ojinaga, where Harold could heal and nurture and introduce her to faith.

So she said, “When the professor returned last year from America, we became very close. Armando was educated. He knew the world beyond the mountains and the desert. He had been to Europe and he had lived in America. And yet he came back here because he loved it. Even with all the problems we face, even though he had many other places he could go, he wanted to be here.”

Simon kept sorting, but his gaze flickered back and forth toward her, not lingering. “Like you.”

“Yes. Like me. We both had island fever. We loved it here, and we did not ever want to leave, and yet we were desperate for someone else who knew about the world. The first day after his return, I'll never forget. Armando was seated there in Harold's office and we started talking, and two minutes later, it felt as though we had been friends for years.”

The pain of loss bloomed inside her. She did not often indulge her sorrow, or the vacuum Armando's passage had left in her life. Sofia swallowed hard. “He loved you very much, Simon.”

He stopped. He did not move or speak. He merely stood there. One look was enough to know he was burdened by the same weight. And more besides. He looked so sad.

She heard herself say, “Armando described you as a son. He accepted your flaws as only a father could. He talked about you every time we met. You and the device. He hoped it would help the poor of Mexico and help you as well, finally bring you around.”

Simon dragged in a single breath. It was not quite a sob. He started to speak, though no sound emerged.

The words were there. Waiting.

“Look at me, Simon.”

His gaze was filled with the shadows of a thousand wrong moves. He stood there, defenseless. Waiting for her to attack and destroy him utterly.

She knew now why she was there. She needed to help another orphan. Deliver the message Harold had instilled in her. Help them move in the right direction.

“We all carry burdens. We all make mistakes. We all sin and fall short of the people we should be. We leave things undone. We do what we shouldn't and we give in to bad actions and worse emotions. We hurt those closest to us.”

His gaze gave Sofia the impression that he was too filled with pain to weep. Her eyes filled for him, as though one of them needed to shed tears over the state of their fallen world. “But there is an answer. An eternal truth. That the Savior died so we might be washed clean. So we can be forgiven for all we have done, and all we have left undone. So our lives can be made whole. So we can speak that impossible word,
hope
, and believe it is true for us. So that we can know joy. And love. And claim them for ourselves.”

She stood there, waiting. “Would you like to pray with me, Simon?”

All he did was turn his head and look out the window. But it was as clear as an audible denial. He had broken the connection.

Sofia turned and walked out the door. She stood in the sunlight and saw the children run and heard their laughter. And she felt whole.

The assembling of Vasquez's and his device into one unit went far easier than Simon expected. The machines were almost identical. Not quite, because the two men had been working at a distance and communicating mostly by e-mail. They mirrored one another's work, to a point. Until, that is, Vasquez had come up with his new idea.

The professor had clearly waited to discuss his alterations once he had evidence that they worked. This was not unusual. He and Simon both tried a number of different directions and up to now none had succeeded. So they developed a sort of scientific shorthand. As in,
I have a new maybe
. That's what they had called them. New maybes. The name worked as well as anything.

What had been different this final time was the excitement. Vasquez had sounded electric the last couple of times they spoke. And the pages in the professor's globe had offered substantial hints. By midday, Simon had combined the working components of two machines into one functioning device.

He organized a dozen kids into a solar-lantern assembly line and appointed Juan their manager. The kids worked and chattered and laughed through the process. Juan proved to be a born dictator.

By late afternoon, the lanterns were finished and tested and boxed. Pedro joined them in loading the assembled lanterns into the orphanage's dilapidated van. They completed their work just as the chapel bell rang.

Simon joined the kids by the outside faucet, loving the sound of their young laughter and easy delight at having this gringo wash his face and hands with them. Chapel revived him, and dinner with the children was a time of rare joy. He sat with Pedro and Harold and Juan and Sofia, speaking little, savoring the simple delight of belonging.

Afterward Harold insisted Juan join him in the office for another voice lesson. Pedro and Sofia and Simon ambled through the long shadows and entered the classroom. Brother and sister settled by the entrance as Simon gave the assembled device one last check.

Sofia recalled, “Vasquez talked about retrieving lost energy.”

“Okay, first of all, energy is never lost.” Simon did not look up from his work. “The amount of energy in the universe is unchanging. It is a constant. Vasquez's dream was to retrieve energy that was
wasted
.”

“He said it was your dream too.”

Perhaps someday he would hear these words and not feel the bloom of guilt. “Vasquez had an idea. I helped make it happen. But it was his vision.”

“So how does your device work?”

“Scientists have struggled with retrieving wasted energy for over a century. A physicist named Tesla claimed to have actually done it. And maybe he did. But it's been hard to replicate his device because his notes were both illegible and incomplete. But the cost of Tesla's equipment was staggering. He spent millions of dollars to collect about a nickel's worth of usable power.”

“What makes your device so different?” Sofia asked.

“Quantum field theory.”

“What is this, exactly?”

“That's the problem. There is no
exactly
in the quantum universe.” Simon snapped the exterior cover into place, polished off the dust with a bit of old rag, and took a step back. There were two long scratches in the fuselage, probably from where he had shoved it down the culvert pipe. And a big dent in the top, which had cracked the motherboard now replaced from Vasquez's unit. All in all, it looked like a vacuum cleaner that had seen a lot of hard use. But the excitement in his gut said otherwise.

Simon turned and realized the pair was still waiting for him to complete his thought. “At the subatomic level, energy reveals the attributes of being both a wave and a particle. But at the level of Newtonian physics, that's impossible. Either it's one or the other. In the quantum world, both can exist at the same time. Not only that, the attributes they show depend upon the observer. If I set up an experiment looking for waves of energy, I find waves. If I look for particles, I find particles. Vasquez and I focused on the wave attributes of energy.”

“That was your idea,” Sofia recalled softly. “Vasquez called it brilliant. A game changer.”

He could not go there, not and focus on the night and the work ahead. “Most wave attributes can't be proven. Because we're dealing with subatomic particles that can't be seen or measured with standard instrumentation, a lot of quantum mechanics remains stuck at the level of field theories. A field theory signifies a concept that has not yet been physically measured. But this doesn't mean the wave attributes of energy can't be utilized. Storm patterns are all the result of unproven wave calculations.” He patted the cover and felt the latent potential surge through him. “Vasquez's latest results indicate we may have finally found our way to stardom.”

Sofia asked, “What happens now?”

“We need to check this gizmo out. To do that, I need a very particular kind of setting.” Simon described what he had in mind.

When he was done, Pedro glanced at his sister, who snapped, “Don't even think about leaving me behind.”

“This is exactly what you were against all along,” Pedro said. “Recklessness, risk, possibly danger.”

“And sitting here worrying about you out there will somehow make it better? I don't think so.”

“Enrique won't like you being with us.”

“Then we had better not tell him.”

“Or Harold.”

“Of course not Harold.” She jangled her keys. “Let's take my van. The seat in your pickup hurts my back.”

Simon felt the same surge of electric tension he always knew when working on the fringes of proven science. It captivated him. It
called
to him. And yet it terrified him. Sitting in the van's broad seat, riding along a dusty sunset road, the realization struck him with the force of a blow to his heart. A scientist could not be a cynic. And cynicism had been his shield against all the pain and loss he had known. To take up his role, to live up to the potential Vasquez had seen, Simon had to set down his shield. And that simple act terrified him. It stripped him bare. It laid his pain and suffering and past and all the wrong acts out in the open.