Tchar looked over at the artass, who made a head motion. Tchar continued.
“Our greatest saints,” Avery translated, “experienced visions just such as yours, visions that asked them to open up their mind and explore what is reality. What is the universe? If bosons can contain a universe, who is to say that we are not experiments in some cosmic laboratory? Are we the result of one of the stuffed Tuffy dolls saying: ‘Let’s see what happens.’? Is God one? Is God omniscient and omnipotent? Or is God many researchers, searching to understand Their own reality? Are we made in God’s image as lab rats? Or are we, too, researchers, furthering Its quest for understanding? At our level of physics, these are viable questions, not to be dismissed. As you apparently dismiss them.” Tchar made another head movement as Avery completed the translation and then said something quietly.
“He grieves that you do not open your mind to the wonder of the universe.”
Bill, who felt that he had spent the better part of his life doing just that, was taken aback.
“Actually,” Bill said, shrugging, “what you’re saying sounds about right. But it’s less a question of the scientists than the religious persons. Most scientists at my level, who work with advanced physics, are just fine with God as researcher and us as assistants. Perhaps it is the way that God is portrayed among my people. Very few of the religious are scientific and vice versa. In early science, many of our discoveries were made by religious persons. But as time went by the belief structure of religion seemed to interfere. To most of our religious persons, if they think about it at all, things either are or are not. God made gravity pull to keep people from flying into space. That’s good enough. That attitude creates a good bit of friction, but the friction for physicists is simply that they won’t bow their heads to the unthinking and say ‘yes, you’re right about God and I’ll stop researching since it’s pointless.’ ”
Tchar looked over his shoulder but the artass was simply watching Bill.
“Then, perhaps,” Tchar said, carefully, “we should be talking to your religious leaders.”
“Good luck,” Bill laughed, hollowly. “Hope you don’t get lynched.”
Avery winced but translated the statement.
“This would happen?” Tchar asked.
“Probably not in the United States,” Bill admitted. “But if you went to Mecca and preached your word of God, you’d have your head taken off. And I don’t think the Reform Baptists would be really open-minded, either.”
This required a good bit of back and forth between Avery and Tchar, each explanation requiring more explanation. Finally the artass spoke to Avery and Avery nodded.
“They, too, have religious sects,” Avery explained. “But very few are antiscience although some are militant to a degree. One sect provides the bulk of their fighting forces. In fact, as they seemed to indicate, science and religion among the Adar seem to go hand in hand. I think, once they get the language down, they could have a very instructive time talking to some religious leaders I know.”
“I will consider your words carefully,” Bill said, wondering if he could get his mind around God as a researcher. It certainly made more sense than “in six days he created the earth and then kicked Adam out of the garden for simple curiosity.”
Maybe that was it. From the very beginning, curiosity among the religious had been degraded. “Don’t eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or you, too, will be thrown from the Garden.”
He knew that early science had been heavily supported by religion. Even some of the urban legends surrounding “religious bigotry” about science were false. Galileo, for example, rather than being a victim of religious bigotry had been a victim of simple failure to rigorously base his conclusions. The theory of planets going around the Sun and the Moon going around the Earth required a theory of gravity and calculus to explain it. Since Galileo could not show conclusive proof of why his theory worked, the best scientific minds of his day, admittedly supported by false theories that had built up starting with Aristotle, dismissed his work as fraudulent. But it had been his inability to show a method, rather than pure religious bigotry, that had doomed him. That and the fact that he was a revolting son of a bitch. The pope of the day had protected him from his detractors, but that was all that he could do. Galileo, himself, made it impossible to do any more.
For that matter, it was not those who believed that the world was flat who argued most vehemently against supporting Columbus’ mission that had found the “New World.” It was, instead, the best scientific minds of Isabella’s court, who pointed out that going west, instead of around Cape Horn, was an impossible distance, with the technology of that day, to India. They had determined the size of the globe and the distances involved and realized that Columbus would be out of food and fresh water before he was halfway there.
Fortunately, before he was a third of the way there he landed in the Caribbean. But they didn’t know that was there. And Isabella, the poor dear, was too stupid to understand their math.
Nevertheless, religious bigotry against science did exist. The Scopes Monkey Trial and continuing bills to try to enact “Creationism Science” as being on the same order as evolution. The hysteria about the current boson formation which was being supported and exacerbated by religious leaders.
He wondered if one of the first people to convert to the Church of Adar or whatever might not be William Weaver.
“I’ll think about it,” Bill repeated.
“Do,” the artass said. “Open your mind. Or we all may fail.”
Admiral Avery accompanied him out of the meeting room where they picked up a visibly curious Robin and headed back to the gate. When they were on the other side, and out of hearing, Avery touched Bill’s arm.
“I just figured something out,” Avery said.
“What?” Bill asked, wondering if Tuffy was really God. The Church of Tuffy. Somehow, it just didn’t have that ring. Tuffy’s Redeemed Church? Nope. He remembered the interview with Mimi’s aunt and thought about what that good woman would have to say if he tried to tell her Tuffy was holding God.
“Those defenses the Adar have on their side,” Avery said, looking around to ensure nobody would overhear.
“Yes?”
“They’re not for us. They’re for if… when the Titcher overwhelm us.”
“The largest nuclear weapon we have in the inventory is the Mk-81,” the national security advisor said, nervously. “That’s right at two megatons. You’re saying that that will only close the gate for, what? A couple of weeks?”
“Maybe three,” Bill said. “Right now it’s been closed for more than a month. And I somehow suspect that something that size wouldn’t shut down all the gates simultaneously.”
“We’ve converted Mk-81s and mounted them at the three gates,” the secretary of defense said. “But at that rate…”
“A potential of a nuke every three weeks on a potential twenty-two gates,” Bill replied. “And that assumes that every one works; the failure rate for nuclear weapons we’re not even considering.”
“True,” the national security advisor said, biting her lip. “To be sure, we should have two or three at each gate. And you don’t have any idea what this weapon system they use is?”
“No, ma’am,” Bill said. “That is, I’ve got a couple of theories but nothing I can test.”
“Between twenty-two and sixty-six nuclear weapons every three weeks,” the secretary of defense said, shaking his head. “We’re going to have to begin scrapping our nuclear arsenal and converting them for gate closure. We’re going to have to go back into the nuke building business. In ten years we’re going to have to have a flock of breeder reactors just to keep up with the plutonium usage. And if any of the devices fail…”