That seemed a bit like observing an incessant wind blowing across the desert and concluding that the desert must be in motion while the atmosphere was still. Dr. McCullough anticipated my objection, saying, “Yes, of course, it sounds topsy-turvy, but bear with me. Lawson hypothesizes that there is another star whose motion relative to the Sun is the same as the aetheric wind. Such a star would be stationary with respect to the luminiferous aether, and therefore truly be at absolute rest.
“Astronomers have only recently begun mapping the proper motions of stars, but they have detected some broad patterns, so Lawson began looking at the section of the sky where the stars’ velocities are similar to that of the aetheric wind. He found several stars whose motions are close to it, but none that match it exactly.
“Then he happened across 58 Eridani, a star in the constellation Eridanus. Based on its Doppler shift, Lawson measured 58 Eridani to be moving toward us at a speed of several thousand miles per second. That would be extraordinary in and of itself, but later measurements showed that its motion wasn’t consistent. The star was alternately moving toward us and then away from us, again at several thousand miles per second.”
I said that obviously some sort of measurement error must be responsible.
“Of course that was his first assumption. But after ruling out every source of error he could think of, Lawson asked astronomers at another observatory to take a look; they confirmed his findings. Together they determined that 58 Eridani’s motion varied with a period of exactly twenty-four hours. Lawson believes it is moving in a circle.”
I asked if it was in orbit around a larger body, and he said an object traveling in that manner couldn’t possibly be gravitationally bound. It defies everything we know about celestial mechanics. I asked if he thought it qualified as miraculous, whether this was finally unambiguous evidence of your ongoing, active intervention in the universe, Lord.
“It certainly does,” said Dr. McCullough. “But the significance of the miracle is the real question. What does this marvel tell us about God’s design?
“Lawson offers an interpretation. He suggests that 58 Eridani is actually orbiting a smaller body too small for us to detect, a planet the size of the Earth. The star is moving in such a way as to provide a day-and-night cycle of twenty-four hours for a stationary planet. He believes that it constitutes a geocentric solar system.
“He goes on to suggest that the planet that 58 Eridani is orbiting is stationary relative to the luminiferous aether, meaning that it’s the sole object in the universe that is at absolute rest. On that planet, and only on that planet, would the speed of light be precisely the same no matter which direction it was traveling. And although there’s no way to detect life on that planet, Lawson suggests the planet is inhabited, and that its inhabitants are the reason God created the universe.”
I was speechless for a moment. Then I asked how Lawson explained the existence of humanity and life on Earth. Dr. McCullough took the manuscript from my hands, flipped through the pages until he found the section he was looking for, and then handed it back to me.
Reading, I saw that Lawson offered three hypotheses for the presence of humanity. The first was that humanity was the result of a separate act of creation, an experiment or test performed as rehearsal for the main undertaking. The second was that the creation of humanity was an unintended side effect, a kind of “sympathetic vibration” induced because of our solar system’s similarity to 58 Eridani. The third was that humanity on Earth was in fact the main undertaking, and life on 58 Eridani was the rehearsal or side effect. He rejected this last one as unlikely, because if we assume that miracles are signs of your attention, Lord, then a continuous miracle like a star orbiting a planet must be a clear indicator of what you consider most important.
Lawson concluded his paper by acknowledging that many of his conclusions were necessarily speculative, and he invited other hypotheses that fit the observations just as well or better. As I stared at the page, I tried to come up with an alternate explanation, but couldn’t think of any. Then I looked up at McCullough, who nodded as if I were a student arriving at the correct answer.
“It’s a compelling theory,” he said sourly. “And it becomes more so when you consider that it solves many unanswered questions. The multiplicity of languages, for example.”
I realized he was correct. Why are the languages of the world so different? Philologists have struggled to reconcile their variety with the age of the Earth and the rate at which languages diverge. If you had imbued all the primordial humans with knowledge of a common tongue, Lord, we’d expect the world’s languages to all bear a family resemblance, like the Indo-European ones. But the vastly greater differences between languages of the world means there must have been more than a dozen completely unrelated languages spoken immediately after creation. We have long wondered why you would have done that, Lord. But if the disparate populations of primordial humans had each invented language independently, then there was no puzzle to be solved; the multiplicity of languages was accidental rather than by design.
“So now you know,” said Dr. McCullough. “The paper will be published soon, and everyone will read it. I wanted to recommend that it be rejected, but I couldn’t find any grounds for doing so. My commitment to scientific practice made me approve it.” He scowled. “But what if the entire practice of science is founded on a false premise? When I was a boy I used to wish that God had given primordial men the gift of writing, because they would’ve been able to record the dates on which new stars appeared in the night sky. Then we’d know precisely how far away each star was, because we’d know—to the day—when each one’s light first reached the Earth. But men didn’t invent writing until long after the emergence of the stars, so astronomers are forced to use more indirect means to deduce their distances. My teachers told me that God wanted us to reason things out for ourselves. But what if that’s not true? What if”—his voice cracked—“what if God had no intentions about us at all?”
This was the crisis of faith that Wilhelmina had referred to. I clumsily tried to offer some reassurance, saying that this was an enormously confounding discovery, but we could still retain our faith in God. Dr. McCullough shouted, “Then you understand nothing!”
His wife touched his hand, and he grasped hers, struggling to contain his feelings. The two of them were silent for a while. Then Mrs. McCullough turned to me and said, “We had a son, older than Mina by ten years. His name was Martin. He died of influenza.”
I told them how sorry I was. I recalled that “Martin” was the name Wilhelmina had used when donating the relics.
Dr. McCullough said, “You are childless, so you can’t comprehend the pain caused by losing a son.”
I told him he was correct and said that now I realized why this discovery must be especially difficult for the two of them.
“Do you really?” he asked.
I told him what I surmised: that the only thing that had made his son’s death bearable was the knowledge that it was part of a greater plan. But if humanity is not in fact the focus of your attention, Lord, then there is no such plan, and his son’s death was meaningless.
Dr. McCullough remained stone-faced, but his wife nodded. “I’ve enjoyed your books, Dr. Morrell,” she said. “They remind me of the things Nathan said when I was a student of his, before we married. In his lectures he talked about how scientific inquiry provided the strongest foundation for faith. He said, ‘Personal convictions may waver, but the physical world cannot be denied,’ and I believed him. So when Nathan threw himself into his research after Martin’s death, it wasn’t just for his solace, but for mine, too.”