"I got laughed out of the auditorium when I delivered that paper," she said quietly.
"Of course you did." Laura looked up at Gray, and he smiled. "Whenever you try to change people's beliefs, you're in for a real fight. There's a reason we say old ideas die hard. It's because they have to die. And what kills them is a better idea. A more believable idea."
They jogged on for a while as Laura pondered his comment.
"Do you believe in God?" he asked all of a sudden.
Laura looked at him in surprise. "Where did that come from?"
"Some people hold faiths that transcend lower-order belief structures. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, humanists, even atheists — all have core beliefs that define the universe in which their thoughts and ideas exist."
She had no idea what he'd just said. "Do you believe in God?" she asked.
"Yes."
She looked up at him again. His expression betrayed no hint of hidden meaning. "Well… what does that mean?"
"Does it surprise you that I believe in God?"
"No… I… It's just, I don't know."
"You didn't ask me which God." Gray took a deep breath. He gazed out through a break in the jungle at the blue sky and green sea far beyond. "Some people believe in a God who's angered by human attempts to build towers into the sky. Their God wants to keep man in his place — fearful, pious, awestruck, crawling at the feet of the master."
Their pace down the hill was now swift, but the cool air kept Laura fresh and full of energy. "What about your God?" she asked.
Gray smiled. "My God waits for us to build a ladder to his heaven. He gave us the ability and the drive, and he smiles with each rung that we climb. Good and evil are my God's measure of men, but what is good, and what is evil? Is God indifferent to the able-bodied or intelligent who waste the gifts he bestowed upon them? Is he indifferent to a man who, no matter how meager his talents, slaves and sweats his way to a better life?"
"Is that what it all comes down to? How hard somebody works? What about good deeds?"
"Good deeds are wonderful. They make our world a nicer place. They do not, however, address the central issue of our existence. They do not advance us as a people — a species."
"What is it about advancement that has risen to religious proportions to you? I mean, we live in a world that's filled with a million horrors brought about by the 'advances' of the last few centuries."
Gray laughed. "You should be dead by now. If your parents had managed to remain alive and fertile long enough to bear you, your mother would probably have died in childbirth. Any simple injury would have killed you as a child. If you had made it to adulthood, you would've been riddled with parasitic disease and suffered from tooth decay so painful as to have preferred death by starvation over another miserable meal. By our age, you would've been tired of life. Ignorant beyond belief, you would experience none of the more sublime pleasures we know. What little you enjoyed would've been physical and fleeting, and you would have lost even those things with the decline of your body. Laura, the only reason that doesn't describe your existence today is advancement, and the only reason we have advanced is work."
It was so trite — so obvious. Laura had expected more. She had expected something wonderful from a mind like Gray's. She tried not to let her disappointment show. "So, Joseph, when you build your tower to heaven, what then? How will your God greet you?"
Gray looked over at Laura and smiled. "As an equal, of course."
The road flattened and rounded an outcropping of rock to reveal a containment dome and two cooling towers. Laura stopped dead in her tracks.
"What the hell is that?" she demanded.
"It's a nuclear reactor."
Her jaw dropped. "Jesus Christ! Just… 'a nuclear reactor'? That's your answer?" Gray looked back and forth between Laura and the heavy concrete buildings, then nodded. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Making electricity," he replied tentatively — as if uncertain how she would react next. "Wanna take a look inside?"
"No, I don't want to go inside there! You just don't get it, do you? You go around raising private armies and building nuclear power plants and God knows what, and you think there's nothing wrong with it because you're Joseph Gray!"
"Is it nuclear power? Are you opposed to that system of power generation?"
"Yes!" she replied, and then headed back up the hill at a jog.
Gray caught up with her. "Why?"
She opened her mouth to answer, but then the words hung in her throat. "Because! The danger. The waste. Everything!"
"Those are rather simple problems, really. Would you like me to explain how we handled them?"
"No!" Gray let the subject drop, and they continued up the hill in silence. Laura's thighs and lungs began to burn from the effort, but she was glad for the distraction of the pain. She regretted having lost her temper with Gray. After they passed the guardhouse. Laura said, "Look, I'm sorry, Joseph. But there's something going on here and you're not telling me what it is."
"I'm telling you what you need to know."
"How do you know what I need to know? You should tell people everything and let them decide what's important."
"I never tell anybody everything," Gray said in a voice so low it was almost as if he hadn't meant to say it. She looked up at him. He had concern etched deep on his face.
Laura's internal clock told her she had only until they reached the top of the hill to break through. She slackened her pace, and Gray slowed to remain beside her.
"Did you have any friends when you were a boy?" she asked.
Gray looked at her, and then to Laura's surprise he answered. "That depends on what you mean by friends. There were other kids around. Sometimes I'd play with them. But for the most part I preferred to read. I guess they thought I was pretty strange."
"What about your parents?"
"They died when I was twelve."
Laura felt a stab of pain at getting that answer. "I know, but I mean did you talk to them?"
"Sometimes. They didn't really know how to deal with me, especially my mother."
"What do you mean?"
He shrugged. "I always knew I was different. And my father knew it, too. But my mother… She just wanted me to be…" He frowned.
"Normal?"
Gray nodded. "My father would bring books home from work. When my mother would get ready for bed, he'd sneak them up to my room. I'd read them under the covers with a flashlight. I've never needed much sleep. For a long time I thought maybe that was all it was — that I had so much more time than other kids to read."
"Would your mother get upset with you?"
Gray sighed. "She loved me very, very much, but… When I played with the other kids instead of reading, she was happy. When I brought a B home from school, she'd tell me that was okay and bake cookies." He looked over at Laura with deeply sad eyes.
"When I figured that out I made a lot of Bs." His smile evoked still more sorrow from Laura. "But when I said something — like at a Christmas party once when I made a point to my parents' friends and everyone laughed because I was only a child — she'd get upset."
"So you hid your intellect."
He looked at her. "What?"
"It happens a lot with gifted children. You hid your intellect — but not from your father."
His head dropped. "No, not from my father." Laura had made it through his shell. He was confiding in her.