As the teenager’s fingers settled on the cigarette, Rafael let the packet go, gripping the boy’s left hand in his own and twisting it sideways across the palm, yanking it hard as he stepped in.
The boy’s shoulder turned in sympathy with the pain as he struggled up onto one foot, his mouth gaping open to cry out. Rafael’s right hand whipped between them, a blade glittering in the streetlight before he slammed it hilt deep into the young man’s throat, slicing into his windpipe and snatching the call from his lips.
The boy lurched but Rafael picked the body up under his arm with immense strength and rushed across the street into the darkness of the alleyway opposite. He crouched down and clamped one hand across the boy’s mouth before turning the blade in his throat and pulling it hard to one side. A crisp sound like splitting fresh lettuce issued as the blade left the boy’s throat, followed by a deep gurgling as blood flooded his lungs. Rafael closed his eyes, holding the boy and gently stroking his hair until he stopped struggling, only the occasional twitch of his limbs betraying the last vestiges of life. A final gush of blood onto his grubby T-shirt and the boy fell limp.
“Go in peace, my young friend, ma’assalama,” Rafael whispered softly, and set the body gently down in the darkness.
He turned and walked back across the street, slipping the blade into his jacket and pulling the scarf up across his face before reaching the door of the building and quietly slipping inside.
That’s ridiculous.”
Rachel Morgan gazed at Hassim Khan as though he had just grown horns. Ethan too found himself intrigued by Hassim’s casual degradation of the miracle of life.
“Life is debris?” he asked.
“And nothing more,” Hassim replied. “It is a scientific fact that was uncovered decades ago. It concerns the fabric of our entire cosmos, everything that we are and everything that we’re made of, changing over time.”
“Then how come we don’t all know about it?” Ethan challenged.
“A question that I too would like answered. If all people were educated about the fundamental origin of life, then there would be far more understanding in the world.”
Rachel shook her head.
“How can life be everywhere and be debris? It doesn’t make sense.”
Hassim shrugged.
“When our universe was born in the Big Bang, it consisted of about three-quarters hydrogen, a quarter helium, a smattering of lithium and deuterium, and nothing else.”
“How do you know that?” Rachel asked.
“Because it still does,” Hassim said. “The rest of the universe’s mass is made up of dark matter and dark energy, substances about which we know very little indeed.”
“And we’re the debris?” Mahmoud asked.
“Absolutely,” Hassim said. “Look at yourself. Look at the room you’re in, the earth that we’re standing on, the air that you’re breathing. Think about anything chemical at all in this universe. Then think about what you’ve just learned. A universe filled with swiftly cooling hydrogen and helium gas, unknown dark materials, and nothing else at all.”
Ethan thought for a moment.
“We must have been created after the Big Bang.”
“Exactly,” Hassim said. “People think that the universe came into being containing everything within it and that stars, planets, and life evolved thereafter over immense periods of time. This is basically correct but it misses a most important point: that the young universe contained no heavy elements like carbon, oxygen, silicon, iron, and so on—nothing that makes solid matter like planets, trees, oceans, or people.”
“So where did it come from?” Ethan asked.
“Stars,” Hassim replied. “They all form from interstellar clouds of hydrogen gas that collapse under their own gravity, creating pressure and heat within. When the core of the cloud gets hot enough, it shines with nuclear fusion, just as our sun does now. What’s happening inside is that the hydrogen fuel is being converted into heat and light as atoms of hydrogen fuse together under the immense gravitational pressure: fusion. The thing is, when this occurs, only a small percentage of the mass of each atom is released. The rest remains within, and so the two nuclei fuse and create a new element, helium.”
“Which was already present in the universe,” Rachel said.
“Yes,” Hassim agreed. “From this process, a helium core grows inside the star, and when it’s big enough, it too begins burning with nuclear fusion, creating carbon. In stars, the deeper you go, the heavier the elements you find being created, all the way up to iron, if the star is large enough. When these stars exhaust