Gregory Benford, Gordon Eklund by If The Stars Are Gods (epub)

Author:If The Stars Are Gods (epub)
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

III

SLUMPED IN A CHAIR, Bradley peered across the neat, flat expanse of his office and waited for the door to pop open. In one fist he clutched the crumpled remains of the message from Earth which only moments before had been thrust into his hand. It was a damn shame, he thought. Only yesterday, at the dinner hour, he had glimpsed a degree of genuine humanity in Mara he had not previously thought existed; it kept peeping through lately, at the most unexpected times and places. And now this—the message—that would ruin it. He sighed softly to himself. He had called them both. Nobody else would want to tell them.

It bothered him that the message had not affected him more deeply, in a less personalized way, but the Earth seemed such a distant place, its churning problems of population and discontent, mutual fear and hate, of far less interest than the crystals of Titan. He often believed that he would not likely be returning; he expected to die somewhere out here. They had taken Tunisia away from him but he had erected a new monastery here beside Jupiter—this office. Is it that I no longer care? he wondered, fingering the message. Has my heart grown cold and encrusted as the decades stretched past? Or is it only that I’ve grown stingier with my sympathy, that I care as much as ever, but about fewer things?

He thought he cared about Mara and Corey, though he did not like them. These genetic freaks, these nippies—he considered their very existence an abomination. A medieval attitude perhaps, but based fully on his felt belief that the human race, in mass, could bardly be improved or bettered. He had spent the last fifty years of his own life trying vainly to wreak some improvement in one solitary soul (his own) and he was far from sure that he had succeeded. Mara an improvement? He did not think so. Intelligence was a virtue whose importance shrank as one grew old. And Corey? He shivered at the thought.

It went back to a young woman he had known in his last years at the Tunisian monastery, Catherine McClair, a devout and learned Christian, who confided one still, silent afternoon that the Messiah had come to Earth.

He took her hand lightly in his, exulting in the smooth pink softness untouched by age. “Which do you mean?” He anticipated her joke. “There are several.”

“No, none of those.” Her lips were painted red, an ancient fashion; her hair, drawn formlessly back, revealed an oval face. “Christ was God incarnate. I mean man incarnate.”

“You’ll have to explain that to me, Cassie.”

She never sweated, hidden in her olive cowled robes; the desert heat rose dry and crisp. “God created man, don’t you agree?”

“At times, yes.”

“Then you must also agree that man’s highest aim must be to reverse the process, to create God.”

“No.”

“And that’s been done. By manipulating—”

“Not those freaks, Cassie!” His hands shook from the shock of his horror; until this moment Bradley had envied this woman.

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