“Keeping babies alive,” he said, “healing the sick, preventing the sewage from getting into the water supply—one starts with doing things that are obviously and intrinsically good. And how does one end? One ends by increasing the sum of human misery and jeopardizing civilization. It’s the kind of cosmic practical joke that God seems really to enjoy.” He gave the young people one of his flayed, ferocious grins. “God has nothing to do with it,” Ranga retorted, “and the joke isn’t cosmic, it’s strictly man-made.
