Mr g (10 page)

“Now that we’ve started,” said Belhor, “we should see what becomes of the young woman. She is struggling to right herself like a turtle on its back. I trust you will not intervene?”

“It is not easy to watch her anguish,” I said.

“You must allow her to make her own choices,” said Belhor. “At the least, you must allow matters to take their course. You have already set everything in motion.”

“I did not intend for this woman and her family to suffer,” I said. “Your previous pronouncement, that suffering is warranted, is clearly not always true. This young woman did nothing to bring misery upon herself.”

“But she made the decision to steal,” said Belhor. “She could have decided otherwise.”

“You know as well as I that there would be misery in either choice.”

“Ah, but the choices are different, and the miseries different as well. She could have refused to steal. There are other ways she could have gotten food for her family. She could have begged for food, like her mother. Young and pretty as she is, she might have made a very successful beggar. Instead, she chose to steal. She made a decision. Not only did she steal, she stole from her neighbors, who knew her and trusted her. She violated their trust.”

“She had no way of knowing whether she could get food by begging. That is
your
estimation, Belhor, not hers.”

“And why does she weep?” asks Belhor. “Her weeping is not a matter of estimation. It is a fact. I believe she weeps out of selfishness. She regrets her decision and knows it will haunt her. She weeps from her guilt and anticipated suffering. She weeps for herself.”

“I agree only in part,” I said. “To me, her weeping shows that she is connected to the life around her, to her younger sister, to her mother, to her neighbors. She feels for them as well as herself. She is part of the world, shaking like a leaf pelted by rain.”

Belhor and I had entered the universe again and now observed the young woman. She was walking along a narrow rock-strewn path between the houses in her commune, her head hidden within a shawl as if she did not want anyone to see her. It was early morning, and the cracked stuccoed walls glowed in the morning sun. The smell of her sweat mingled with the odors of cooking meat and smoke. Could I comfort her? She was so close. I watched her step after step. Could I help her? No, she was only one among many. I could not become involved. I could not. But there she was, so tender, in agony. Could I help her? Now? How could I watch without helping?

“I think you feel sorry for this girl who stole food from her neighbors,” said Belhor. “What about the neighbors? Why not feel sorry for them?”

“I feel sorry for them as well. I could have intervened. I could have prevented all of this from happening.”

“And would you also have intervened in the trillions upon trillions of other cases?” said Belhor. “After deciding which ones merited your intervention? And suppose you did intervene, with good intentions of course, but sometimes made bad situations worse? What then?”

“Stop taunting me, Belhor. I have said I will not intervene.”

“And I am grateful for that declaration. Your nonintervention, in fact, is what makes these cases interesting. These cases have a certain … untidiness. But more than that, I maintain that your intelligent creatures must be able to make decisions on their own, without intervention, in order to know who they are. If they choose to do good, then they know something about themselves, and if they choose to do bad, then they know something else about themselves. Otherwise, they are like stones, they are inanimate matter. The creatures would be even more interesting if they were of any consequence. All little lives, such little lives. Still, from the aggregate we may learn something. And I find it amusing to see how they live—their cities, their habitats and rooms, their squalid little alleyways filled with garbage. Did you notice the dirty pools of water in the alley in front of the young woman’s house?”

“Yes,” I said. A thin film of pollen had floated down and covered their surfaces. The puddles of water split the sunlight and glimmered in colors. Like diamonds sprinkled about.

It has now been approximately 1.576 x 10
³³
ticks of the hydrogen clocks since I created the universe. Although I am the Creator, I have learned much from what I have created. One thing I have learned: the mind is its own place. Regardless of natural conditions and circumstances, even of biological imperatives, the mind can contrive its reality. The mind can make hot out of cold and cold out of hot, beauty from ugliness and ugliness from beauty. The mind makes its own rules.

Consider the case of the planet Uncle has named Akeba. It orbits the smaller of two stars in a double star system. Over the course of eons of evolution, the triumphant civilization on this planet has constructed a striking imbalance between its two genders. The females are considered to be inferior to the males. Not only inferior, but completely dependent. To ensure that the women will be helpless, the hands of all female children are rendered dysfunctional by severing certain nerves. After years of effective paralysis, hands shrivel up into little stumps of gnarled flesh. Females in this society cannot grasp objects, cannot engage in handcrafts or operate machines, cannot even feed themselves. Each female is thus completely reliant on males—that is, creatures with functional hands—to take care of her. For her entire life, she must be fed by males, she must live in the habitats built by males, she must be clothed and cared for by males. She must attach herself to a male and follow him all day. Female babies in this world continue to be born with normal hands, as millions of years of evolution have determined the survival benefit of such appendages, but the cultural traditions of this society oppose and contradict the natural. At an early age, the nerves are cut with a ritual knife. The secretions of the lstrex plant prevent pain.

One might dismiss such behavior if it occurred in a society of low intelligence, such as insects. But the inhabitants of this society on Akeba are mentally advanced and evolved in all other aspects. They (the males) build cities of ingenious design. They have created flying machines and electromagnetic communication devices. They celebrate their painters and musicians and writers and philosophers. Yet they accept their cultural tradition of hand stunting without questioning it. Males consider it both a duty and a pleasure to take care of the helpless females, oblivious to the fact that they, the males, have themselves produced the conditions in which females must be cared for.

The most unusual aspect of this hand-stunting tradition is that the females accept it without protest. Not that the females are stupid. They are every bit as intelligent as the males. But after many generations of the custom, the females, just as the males, take it as ordained. Mothers watch with approval as the ritual knife descends into the flesh of their young daughters and severs the critical nerves. To the mothers, this practice is as natural as rain. On the rare occasions that a woman challenges the custom, she is shunned by the community, given a dim-witted male to take care of her, and spends the rest of her life in loneliness and despair. The vast majority of females not only accept hand stunting but embrace it, seem content and even happy to completely surrender their independence to males. Their role in life is to be taken care of, to make the males feel powerful, and to mate with males for reproduction and pleasure. They welcome this role.

Despite my promise to Belhor that I would not intervene in the affairs of life-forms on Aalam-104729, I have been tempted to put a halt to the custom of hand stunting on Akeba. Do the females not wonder what they might accomplish with the hands they were born with? Do they not cringe from being treated as helpless pets, when they are as intelligent as their keepers? Do they not see that their dignity has been taken from them?

But I hesitate to intervene. For I cannot predict what would follow from my intervention. Perhaps without its time-honored tradition of hand stunting, the society would slowly disintegrate. Perhaps the creatures on Akeba have so adapted to the notion that males are superior, that females must be totally dependent on males, that they cannot live in any other way. Perhaps they cannot imagine a life in which females are equal to males. Their minds have created their reality. If both males and females are content with their roles, even happy with their roles, then would it not be best to allow the society to continue on its own, undisturbed, satisfied with its illusions?

If I do intervene, I would like to do an experiment. I would like to create a planet on which the custom is just the reverse: it will be the males who get their hands stunted. Then, after many generations in which this countertradition has been established, I would like to bring together the creatures from both societies, the one with helpless females and the one with helpless males, and see what happens. Each society should, I think, be shocked to see such a different reality and might finally become aware of its fabrications. But even with such knowledge, each society might prefer its illusions. The mind is its own place.

Both of you wanted the creatures in the new universe to have some awareness of me, I said. I wanted to tell you—

I thought you had already taken care of that item, said Aunt Penelope, fussing with her hair. Of late, Aunt P had been trying out new hairstyles and was at that moment inserting a fancy clasp made out of nothingness. Deva, she shouted, didn’t you already sort that out with Nephew? The soul? The connection to Him?

I don’t think He’s done much about it, said Deva. I wouldn’t—

I thought we had all of that sorted out, said Aunt P. You think something is sorted out. Then you find out it’s not. If it’s not one way, then it’s the other. You think one thing, and it turns out to be the other. One thing, then the other.

You’re babbling, dear, said Uncle D.

Well, Nephew, said Aunt P, what are you saying? Did you take care of it or not? Do the creatures know that you are the Maker?

Yes and no, I said.

Here we go, said Aunt P. I tell you, the two of you are impossible, absolutely impossible.

The creatures have made up their own ideas about me, I said. They have
religions
.

What are you saying, Nephew? Did you straighten them out? Did you make an appearance?

An appearance? I said. A personal appearance! That would be way too much for them. And showy. I could never make a personal appearance.

So the creatures have
ideas
, without knowing anything about you for sure?

They have a lot of different ideas, I said. They want to believe in something big, to give meaning to their lives. They want some large purpose in the universe. I admire them for that.

I understand that perfectly, said Uncle Deva. These are intelligent creatures, Penelope. They think. They want meaning.

They want what
we
have, said Aunt P. They want immortality.

Of course they do, said Uncle. But since they know they can’t have it, they want
something
to be immortal. They come and go so quickly. They want something to last.

But they don’t know what they’re talking about, said Aunt P. They are just guessing. I thought you were going to take care of this, Nephew. I thought you were going to let them know who you are, who you
really
are. Whatever they’re imagining, it couldn’t be what you really are. It couldn’t be infinity. It couldn’t be the Void.

From my observations, I said, I don’t think they would be able to grasp the Void. They have no way of grasping it. But I have looked in on them. They have made beautiful buildings to worship me and to celebrate their belief in something eternal. I have seen the creatures congregate in those buildings, chanting and praying while waves of lavender and magenta light pour through arched windows or stream through openings in the domed roofs. They make offerings. They sing songs. They deny themselves comforts in order to live according to their beliefs. They teach their children their stories about the beginnings of the universe.

You don’t have to say anything more, said my aunt. I know how you are. I thought you had taken care of this, but I can see … So, you are going to let them keep guessing.

Guessing is not so bad, I said. They feel a mystery about it all. I think a little bit of mystery is good. Mystery makes them wonder. It inspires them.

Sometimes, Nephew, you are hopeless, said Aunt P. Well, you’re going to do what you’re going to do. So be it. They’ll have their religions.

I did not tell Uncle and Aunt about all of my visits to Aalam-104729. Or of the many things that I saw. Once, I hovered invisibly in a city that arched over a hill. The planet was one of a dozen orbiting an ordinary star, the smallest planet in the system. It was a quiet world. Oceans and wind made scarcely a sound. People spoke to one another only in whispers. I floated above the city and looked down at its streets and inhabitants. Corners of buildings rusted in the air, billows of steam rose from underground canals. Through throngs of creatures moving this way and that, as creatures do in their cities, I spotted two men passing each other on a crowded walkway. Complete strangers. In the eight million beings living in the city, these two had never met before, never chanced to find themselves in the same place at the same time. A common enough occurence in a city of millions. And as these two strangers moved past, they greeted each other, just a simple greeting. A remark about the sun in the sky. One of them said something else to the other, they exchanged smiles, and then the moment was gone. What an extraordinary event! No one noticed but me. What an extraordinary event! Two men who had never seen each other before and would not likely see each other again. But their sincerity and sweetness, their sharing an instant in a fleeting life. It was almost as if a secret had passed between them. Was this some kind of love? I wanted to follow them, to touch them, to tell them of my happiness. I wanted to whisper to them: “This is it, this is it.”