He chuckled. “Melodrama. One of the hazards of digging fossils in a romantic setting.” He ate the rest of his sandwich and drank from the canteen. Then he said, “Genevieve,” and was quiet for a long time.
“Were you shocked by the Intervention?” Sister Roccaro asked at last. “Some of the older people I’ve counseled seemed almost disappointed that humanity was spared its just ecological deserts.”
“It was tough on the Schadenfreude crowd,” Majewski agreed, grinning. “The ones who viewed humankind as a sort of plague organism spoiling what might otherwise have been a pretty good planet. But paleontologists tend to take a long view of life. Some creatures survive, some become extinct. But no matter how great the ecological disaster, the paradox called life keeps on defying entropy and trying to perfect itself. Hard times just seem to help evolution. The Pleistocene Ice Age and phivials could have killed off all the plant-eating hominids. But instead, the rough climate and the vegetation changes seem to have encouraged some of our ancestors to become meat eaters. And if you eat meat, you don’t have to spend so much time hunting food. You can sit down and learn to think.”
“Once upon a time, hunter-killer was better?”
“Hunter doesn’t equate with murderer. I don’t buy the totally depraved ape-man picture that some ethnologists postulate for human ancestry. There was goodness and altruism in our hominid forebears just as there’s good in most people today.”
“But evil is real,” said the nun. “Call it egocentrism or malignant aggression or original sin or whatever. It’s there. Eden’s gone.”
“Isn’t biblical Eden an ambivalent symbol? It seems to me that the myth simply shows us that self-awareness and intelligence are perilous. And they can be deadly. But consider the alternative to the Tree of Knowledge. Would anyone want innocence at such a price? Not me, Amerie. We really wouldn’t want to give back that bite of apple. Even our aggressive instincts and stubborn pride helped make us rulers of the Earth.”
“And one day maybe of the galaxy?”
Claude gave a short laugh. “God knows we used to argue long enough about the notion when the Gi and the Poltroyans cooperated with us on salvage digs. The consensus seems to be that despite our hubris and pushiness, we humans have incredible potential, which justified the Intervention before we got ourselves too screwed up. On the other hand, the trouble we caused during the metapsychic flap back in the ’Eighties makes you wonder whether we haven’t simply transferred our talent for spoiling to a cosmic stage instead of just a planetary one.”
They ate some oranges and after a time Claude said “Whatever happens, I’m glad that I lived to reach the stars, and I’m glad that Gen and I met and worked with other thinking beings of goodwill. It’s over now, but it was a wonderful adventure.”
“How did Genevieve feel about your travels?”
“She was more strongly tied to Earth, even though she enjoyed the outworld journeyings. She insisted on keeping a home here in the Pacific Northwest, where we had been raised. If we had been able to have children, she might never have agreed to leave. But she was a sickle-cell carrier, and the technique for modifying the genetic codon was developed after Gen had passed optimal child-bearing age. Later on, when we were ready for rejuvenation, our parenting instincts were pretty well atrophied, and there was so much work to do. So we just kept on doing it together. For ninety-four years…”
“Claude.” Sister Roccaro reached out her hand to him. A light breeze stirred her short curly hair. “Do you realize that you’re healed?”
“I knew it would happen. After Gen was dead. It was only her going that was so bad. You see, we’d talked it all out months ago, when she was still in control of her faculties, and did a lot of commiserating and accepting and emotional purging. But she still had to go, and I had to watch and wait while the person I loved more than my own life slipped farther and farther away but was never quite gone. Now that she’s dead, I’m functional again. I just ask myself what in the world I’m going to do?”
“I had to answer the same question,” the nun said carefully.
Majewski gave a start, then studied her face as though he had never seen it before. “Amerie, child. You’ve spent your life consoling needy people, serving the dying and their mourners. And you still have to ask a question like that?”
“I’m not a child, Claude. I’m a thirty-seven-year-old woman and I’ve worked at the Hospice for fifteen of those years. The job… has not been easy I’m burnt out. I had decided that you and Genevieve would be my last clients. My superiors have concurred with my decision to leave the order.”
Shocked beyond words, the old man stared at her. She continued, “I found myself becoming isolated, consumed by the emotions of the people I was trying to help. There’s been a shriveling of faith, too, Claude.” She gave a small shrug “The kind of thing that people in the religious life are all too likely to suffer. A sensible scientific type like you would probably laugh…”
“I’d never laugh at you, Amerie. And if you really think I’m sensible, maybe I can help you.”
She rose up and slapped gritty rock dust off her jeans. “It’s time for us to get off this mountain. It’ll take at least two hours to walk back down to the egg.”
“And on the way,” he insisted, “you’re going to tell me about your problem and your plans for the future.”
Annamaria Roccaro regarded the very old man with amused exasperation. “Doctor Majewslti, you’re a retired bone digger, not a spiritual counselor.”
“You’re going to tell me anyhow. In case you don’t know it, there’s nothing more stubborn in the Galactic Milieu than a Polack who’s set his mind to something. And I’m a lot more stubborn than a lot of other Polacks because I’ve had more time to practice. And besides that,” he added slyly, “you would never have mentioned your problem at all if you hadn’t wanted to talk it over with me. Come on. Let’s get walking.”
He set off slowly down the trail and she followed. They tramped along in silence for at least ten minutes before she began to speak.
“When I was a little girl, my religious heroes weren’t the Galactic Age saints. I could never identify with Pere Teilhard or Saint Jack the Bodiless or Illusio Diamond Mask. I liked the really old-time mystics: Simeon Stylites, Anthony the Hermit, Dame Julian of Norwich. But today, that kind of solitary commitment to penitence is contrary to the Church’s new vision of human energetics. We’re supposed to chart our individual journey toward perfection within a unity of human and divine love.”
Claude grimaced at her over his shoulder. “You lost me, child.”
“Stripped of the jargon, it means that charitable activity is in; solitary mysticism is out Our Galactic Age is too busy for anchoresses or hermits. That way of life is supposed to be selfish, escapist, masochistic, and counter to the Church’s social evolution.”
“But you don’t think so, is that it, Amerie? You want to go off and fast and contemplate in some lonesome spot and suffer and attain enlightenment.”
“Don’t you laugh at me, Claude. I tried to get into a monastery… the Cistercians, Poor Clares, Carmelites. And they took one look at my psychosocial profile and told me to get lost. Counseling, they advised! Not even the Zen-Brigittines would give me a chance! But I finally discovered that there is one place where an old-fashioned solitary mystic wouldn’t be out of place Have you ever heard of Exile?”