“The Bible,” repeated Mary. “Scriptures.” Bleep. “Holy text.” Bleep. “A revered book of moral teachings. The first part of it is shared by my people—called Christians—and by another major religion, the Jews. The second part is only believed in by Christians.”
“Why?” asked Ponter. “What happens in the second part?”
“It tells the story of Jesus, the son of God.”
“Ah, yes. That man spoke of him. So—so this … this creator of the universe somehow had a human son? Was God human, then?”
“No. No, he’s incorporeal; without a body.”
“Then how could he …?”
“Jesus’ mother was human, the Virgin Mary.” She paused. “In a roundabout way, I’m named after her.”
Ponter shook his head slightly. “Sorry. Hak has been doing an admirable job, but clearly is failing here. My Companion interpreted something you said as meaning one who has never had sexual intercourse.”
“Virgin, yes,” said Mary.
“But how can a virgin also be a mother?” asked Ponter. “That is another—” and Mary heard him speak the same string of words that Hak had rendered before as “oxymoron.”
“Jesus was conceived without intercourse. God sort of planted him in her womb.”
“And this other faction—Jews, you said?—rejects this story?”
“Yes.”
“They seem … less credulous, shall we say.” He looked at Mary. “Do you believe this? This story of Jesus?”
“I am a Christian,” Mary said, confirming it as much for herself as for Ponter. “A follower of Jesus.”
“I see,” said Ponter. “And you also believe in this existence after death?”
“Well, we believe that the real essence of a person is the soul”—bleep–“an incorporeal version of the person, and that the soul travels to one of two destinations after death, where that essence will live on. If the person has been good, the soul goes to Heaven—a paradise, in the presence of God. If the person has been bad, the soul goes to Hell”—bleep–“and is tortured”—bleep–“tormented forever.”
Ponter was silent for a long time, and Mary tried to read his broad features. Finally, he said, “We—my people—do not believe in an afterlife.”
“What do you think happens after death?” asked Mary.
“For the person who has died, absolutely nothing. He or she ceases to be, totally and completely. All that they were is gone forevermore.”
“That’s so sad,” said Mary.
“Is it?” asked Ponter. “Why?”
“Because you have to go on without them.”
“Do you have contact with those who dwell in this afterlife of yours?”
“Well, no. I don’t. Some people say they do, but their claims have never been substantiated.”
“Color me surprised,” said Ponter; Mary wondered where Hak had picked up that expression. “But if you have no way of accessing this afterlife, this realm of the dead, then why give it credence?”
“I’ve never seen the parallel world you came from,” said Mary, “and yet I believe in that. And you can’t see it anymore—but you still believe in it, too.”
Once again, Hak got full marks. “Touche,” it said, neatly summarizing a half dozen words uttered by Ponter.
But Ponter’s revelations had intrigued Mary. “We hold that morality comes from religion: from the belief in an absolute good, and from the, well, the fear, I guess, of damnation—of being sent to Hell.”
“In other words,” said Ponter, “humans of your kind behave properly only because they are threatened if they do not.”
Mary tilted her head, conceding the point. “It’s Pascal’s wager,” she said. “See, if you do believe in God, and he doesn’t exist, then you’ve lost very little. But if you don’t, and he does, then you risk eternal torment. Given that, it’s prudent to be a believer.”
“Ah,” said Ponter; the interjection was the same in his language as hers, so no rendering of it was made by Hak.
“But, look,” said Mary, “you still haven’t answered my question about morality. Without a God—without a belief that you will be rewarded or punished after the end of your life—what drives morality among your people? I’ve spent a fair bit of time with you now, Ponter; I know you’re a good person. Where does that goodness come from?”
“I behave as I do because it is right for me to do so.”
“By whose standards?”
“By the standards of my people.”
“But where do those standards come from?”
“From …” And here Ponter’s eyes went wide, great orbs beneath an undulating shelf of bone, as though he’d had an epiphany—in the secular sense of the word, of course. “From our conviction that there is no life after death!” he said triumphantly. “That is why your belief troubles me; I see it now. Our assertion is straightforward and congruent with all observed fact: a person’s life is completely finished at death; there is no possibility of reconciling with them, or making amends after they are gone, and no possibility that, because they lived a moral life, they are now in a paradise, with the cares of this existence forgotten.” He paused, and his eyes flicked left and right across Mary’s face, apparently looking for signs she understood what he was getting at.
“Do you not see?” Ponter went on. “If I wrong someone—if I say something mean to them, or, I do not know, perhaps take something that belongs to them—under your worldview I can console myself with the knowledge that, after they are dead, they can still be contacted; amends can be made. But in my worldview, once a person is gone—which could happen for any of us at any moment, through accident or heart attack or so on—then you who did the wrong must live knowing that that person’s entire existence ended without you ever having made peace with him or her.”
Mary thought about that. Yes, most slave owners had ignored the issue, but surely some people of conscience, caught up in a society driven by bought-and-sold human beings, must have had qualms … and yet had they consoled themselves with the knowledge that the people they were mistreating would be rewarded for their suffering after death? Yes, the Nazi leaders were pure evil, but how many of the rank and file, following orders to exterminate Jews, had managed to sleep at night by believing the freshly dead were now in paradise?
Nor did it have to be anything so grandiose. God was the great compensator: if you were wronged in life, it would be made up for in death—the fundamental principle that had allowed parents to send their children off to die in war after countless war. Indeed, it didn’t really matter if you ruined someone else’s life, because that person might well go to Heaven. Oh, you yourself might be dispatched to Hell, but nothing you did to anyone else really hurt them in the long run. This existence was mere prologue; eternal life was yet to come.
And, indeed, in that infinite existence, God would make up for whatever had been done to … to her.
And that bastard, that bastard who had attacked her, would burn.
No, it didn’t matter if she never reported the crime; there was no way he could escape his ultimate judge.
But … but … “But what about your world? What happens to criminals there?”
Bleep.
“People who break laws,” said Mary. “People who intentionally hurt others.”
“Ah,” said Ponter. “We have little problem with that anymore, having cleansed most bad genes from our gene pool generations ago.”
“What?” exclaimed Mary.
“Serious crimes were punished by sterilization of not just the offender but also anyone who shared fifty percent of the offender’s genetic materiaclass="underline" brothers and sisters, parents, offspring. The effect was twofold. First, it cleansed those bad genes from our society, and—”
“How would nonagriculturalists stumble onto genetics? I mean, we figured it out through plant cultivation and animal husbandry.”