State of Grace

By John Walters

Sister Mary Grace is part of a group of nuns who have settled in isolation on a far planet to devote themselves to prayer for humankind. When she is sent on an errand of mercy she realizes that in the guise of another colonist evil has followed her even to this remote place, and that it lusts after her and seeks to trap her in a horrifying prison.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Walters
• Release date: Apr 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458001351

John Walters

John Walters recently returned to the United States after thirty-five years abroad. He lives in Seattle, Washington. He attended the 1973 Clarion West science fiction writing workshop and is a member of Science Fiction Writers of America. He writes mainstream fiction, science fiction and fantasy, and memoirs of his wanderings around the world.

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State of Grace

By

John Walters

Published by John Walters at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 by John Walters

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons places or events - except those in the public domain - is purely coincidental.

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State of Grace

One hot windy day, a day like any other in the long summer on this harsh new world, Sister Mary Grace, while out hoeing between the rows in the vegetable garden, thought she saw a man far in the distance on a sere hillside. She could not tell what he was doing or whether he saw her or not, but he was definitely human-shaped, a biped, and not one of the strange coyote- or antelope-analogs that she sometimes caught glimpses of.

Her surprise was so great that she dropped her hoe and ran into the prefab building that passed for a convent. Once inside, confronted by the tiny shrine with the statue of the Virgin on her left, and a portrait of Christ with his sacred heart pierced with thorns on the right, she quickly regained her composure, and chastised herself for temporarily losing it, no matter what the emergency was. She slowed to a contemplative walk as she approached Mother Superior’s door.

She knocked quietly, thrice. As she waited