The writer of the book Chris had read confessed bafflement as to why Gaea built these things. And why, having done so, did she leave them in the dark, all but invisible? It made one feel like a flea lost in the musty bottom of a child's toy box. The structures might have been counters in a trillionaire's Monopoly set.
"That's my favorite," the woman said unexpectedly.
"Which?"
"That one," she said, pointing her flashlight. "National."
It seemed familiar, but after so many in such a short time one pile of stone was beginning to look like any other.
"What's the point of this? You can barely see them."
"Oh, Gaea doesn't need visible light," she assured him. "One of my great-grandparents worked on that one. I saw it, in Washington."
"It doesn't look like that."
"No, it's a mess. They're going to demolish it."
"Is that why you came here? To study great architecture as it was?"
She smiled. "No, to build it. Where can you do this kind of work on Earth? They worked on these things for hundreds of years. Even here, it takes twenty or thirty, and that's with no labor unions or building codes and no worries about cost. On Earth, I was building things a lot bigger, but if they weren't done in six months, they'd hire somebody else. And when you were finished, what you had looked like a turd had fallen out of the sky. Here, I'm working on the Zimbabwe Mormon Tabernacle."
"Yes, but what is it good for? What does it mean?"
Her look was full of pity. "If you have to ask that question, you wouldn't understand the answer."
They were in an area of subdued lighting. It was impossible to find the source of light, but for the first time there was enough to see the hub roof, more sharply curved than that of the rim but still more than 20 kilometers away. It was an intricate basket weave, each reed being a thousand-meter cable strand. To the near wall was fastened a white cloth the size of a cyberschooner's mainsail. A movie was being projected on it. Not only was it two-dimensional, but it lacked color and sound as well. A pianola near the projection booth provided musical accompaniment.
Between the booth and the screen was an acre of Persian carpet. On divans and pillows lounged two- or threescore men and women in loose, colorful garments. Some of them watched the movie; others talked, laughed, and drank. One of them was Gaea.
She did not do justice to her photographs.
Few pictures had been taken of the particular tool Gaea was pleased to present as "herself" In them, scale was indeterminate. It was one thing to read that Gaea was a small woman, quite another to stand facing her. No one would have noticed her warming a park bench. Chris had seen thousands like her roaming the urban wastelands little, lumpy ragpickers.
Her jowly face had the texture of a potato. She had soft dark eyes squeezed between a heavy brow and folds of fat. Her frizzy hair, shot with gray, had been trimmed off evenly at shoulder level. Chris had found a picture of Charles Laughton to see if an oft-expressed comparison was true. It was.
She grinned sardonically.
"I know the reaction, son. Not as impressive as a goddamn burning bush, am I? On the other hand, what do you think Jehovah had in mind when He did that? Scare the pants off some superstitious Jew goatherder, that's what. At ease, boy. Pull up a pillow and tell me about it."
It was surprisingly easy to talk to her. There was this to be said about her unorthodox choice of Godly aspect: it suited, in a way impossible to pinpoint, the image of Gaea as Earth Mother. One could relax in her presence. Things long held inside could be brought out, bared, in a trust that grew as one spoke. She had a knack all good therapists or parents should have. She listened and, beyond that, made him feel that she understood. It was not necessarily a sympathetic ear, nor was it uncritical love. He did not feel that he was her special favorite, or even any great concern. But she was interested in him and the problem he presented.
He wondered if it was all subjective, if he was projecting all his hopes onto the dumpy woman. Nevertheless, he wept unselfconsciously as he spoke and felt no need to justify it.
He seldom looked at her. Instead, his eyes roamed, lighting on a face, a goblet, a rug, without really seeing anything.
He finished what he had come to say. There were no reliable reports about what might happen next. People who had returned with cures were curiously vague about their interviews with Gaea and about the average of six months they spent inside her after the audience. They would not speak of it, no matter what the inducement.
Gaea watched the screen for a time, took a sip from a long-stemmed glass.
"Fine," she said. "That's pretty much what I got from Dulcimer. I've examined you thoroughly, I understand your condition, and I can guarantee a cure is possible. Not only for you, of course, but for-"
"Excuse me, but how did you examine-"
"Don't interrupt. Back to the deal. It is a deal, and you probably won't like it. Dulcimer asked you a question, back at the embassy, and you didn't answer it. I'm wondering if you have thought about it since and if you have an answer now."
Chris thought back, suddenly recalled the problem of the two children tied down before an approaching train.
"It doesn't mean much," Gaea conceded. "But it's interesting. There are two answers I can see. One for Gods, and another for humans. Have you thought about it?
"I did, once."
"What did you come up with?"
Chris sighed, decided to be honest. "It seems that it's likely that if I attempted to rescue either of them, I would probably die while trying to set the second one free. I don't know which I would free first. But if I tried to free one, I would have to try to free the other."
"And die." Gaea nodded. "That's the human answer. You people do it all the time-go out on a limb to pull back one of your kind and have the limb break under you. Ten rescuers die while looking for one lost hiker. Terrible arithmetic. It's not universal, of course. Many humans would stand by and watch the train kill both children." She looked at him narrowly. "Which would you do?"
"I don't know. I couldn't honestly say I'd sacrifice myself"
"The answer for a God is easy. A God would let them both die. Individual lives are not important, in other words. While I'm aware of every sparrow that falls, I do nothing to prevent the fall. It's in the nature of life that things should die. I don't expect you to like that, to understand it, or to agree with it. I'm just explaining where I stand. Do you see?"
"I think so. I'm not sure."
Gaea waved it away. "It's not important that you approve, just that you understand that is how my universe works."
"That I understand."
"Fine. I'm not quite as impersonal as that. Few Gods are. If there were an afterlife-which, by the way, there isn't, not in my theogony or in yours-I'd probably be inclined to reward the fellow who jumped onto the tracks and died trying to save those children. I'd take the poor bastard into heaven, if there were one. Unfortunately"-she gestured expansively, with a sour look-"this is the closest anyone will ever come to heaven, right here. I make no great claims for it; it's a place, like any other. The food's okay.
"But if I admire someone for something he or she has done, I reward them in this life. Do you follow me?"
"Well, I'm still listening."
She laughed, reached over, and slapped his knee.
"I like that. Now, I don't give anything for free. At the same time I don't sell anything. Cures are awarded on the basis of merit. Dulcimer said you couldn't think of anything you'd done to deserve a cure. Think again."