Children of God (The Sparrow, #2)

by Mary Doria Russell

What is it in humans that makes us so eager to believe ill of one another? Giuliani asked himself that night. What makes us so hungry for it? Failed idealism, he suspected. We disappoint ourselves and then look around for other failures to convince ourselves: it’s not just me.

‘Indeed,’ Bhansaar ruled in his official finding, ‘that which is not forbidden must be permitted, for to find the opposite true implies that those who established the law were lacking in foresight.’

‘Anne said that’s the beginning of wisdom.’ He looked at her, mouth open. ‘Wisdom: true knowing,’ she explained. ‘Anne said wisdom begins when you discover the difference between “That doesn’t make sense” and “I don’t understand.”’

We meant well, she thought, looking up at a sky piled with cumulus clouds turning amethyst and indigo above the clearing. No-one was deliberately evil. We all did the best we could. Even so, what a mess we made of everything . . .

I began to hate this species that called itself wise. I wanted to cure Gaia of the sickness our species inflicted on her. I began to consider seriously how I might exterminate very large numbers of humans, preferably without being caught. I believed myself heroic and selfless – a solitary worker for the planetary good.

The weeping ceased, replaced by pure steely anger. ‘God’s got a lot to answer for,’ she snarled. ‘That’s all I can tell you, Father. God’s got a lot to answer for.’

‘Should’ had no clarity. He’d looked ‘should’ up, but he found only noise about responsibility to others, obligations. He did not understand emotion that required two or more persons. His emotions took cognizance of his own state. He could be frustrated, but not frustrated by. He felt anger, but not anger at. He experienced delight, but not delight in. He lacked prepositions.

The pattern was established at Sinai and under the Buddha’s tree; on Calvary and at Mecca; in sacred caves, at wells of life, amid circles of stone. Signs and wonders are always doubted, and perhaps they are meant to be. In the absence of certainty, faith is more than mere opinion; it is hope.

He was a linguist, after all, and it seemed entirely possible to him that religion and literature and art and music were all merely side effects of a brain structure that comes into the world ready to make language out of noise, sense out of chaos. Our capacity for imposing meaning, he thought, is programmed to unfold the way a butterfly’s wings unfold when it escapes the chrysalis, ready to fly. We are biologically driven to create meaning. And if that’s so, he asked himself, is the miracle diminished?