Ambient and computer skills were already being taught, together with history, geophysiology, music, painting, world literature, mathematics. There would be personality sessions, wherein children could discuss any problems brewing; difficult situations could be dealt with swiftly and compassionately.
Tom appeared pleased with the work. Almost as an afterthought he suggested that the entire scheme should be shown to Belle Rivers, who had spoken on the subject of archetypes during our debates and was in charge of teaching cadre children.
Belle Rivers was slender and elegant, with a certain grandeur to her. She carried her head slightly to one side, as if listening to something the rest of us were unable to hear. She was about forty years old, perhaps more.
Tom opened the conversation by apologising for altering her curriculum. Altered circumstances demanded it. He said that he hoped the revised syllabus, a copy of which we had printed out, would please her.
Without responding, Rivers read through the syllabus. She set it down on a desk, saying, ‘I see you do not wish religion to be taught.’
‘That is correct.’
‘We have had to train our children for future careers. Nevertheless we always take care to include world religions in our curriculum. Do you not believe that God prevails as much on Mars as on Earth?’
‘Or as little. We cannot leave it to any god to remedy in future those things he or she has failed to remedy in the past. We must attempt a remedy ourselves.’
‘That’s rather arrogant, isn’t it?’ She appeared less offended than contemptuous.
‘I trust not. We are merely amused by ancient Greek tales of gods and goddesses interfering directly in the affairs of humanity. Such beliefs are outdated. We must try to laugh at any belief that imaginary, omnipotent gods will remedy our deficiencies. We must try to do such things for ourselves, if that is possible.’
‘Oh? And if it proves impossible?’
‘We do not know it will be impossible until we have tried, Belle.’
‘That may be true. But why not enlist God in your enterprise? I seem to recall that the great Utopian, Sir Thomas More, made certain that the children of his Utopia were brought up in the faith and given full religious instruction.’
‘The sixteenth century thought differently about such matters. More was a good man living in a circumscribed world. We must go by the advanced thought of our own time. All Utopias have their sell-by dates, you know.’
‘And your Utopia has dropped any sense of the divine aspect of things.’
Tom offered a chair to Belle Rivers and invited her to be seated. His manner became apologetic. He said he realised that he had made a mistake in having Adminex draw up a new syllabus without consulting her in the first place. It must seem to her that he had usurped her powers, although that had been far from his intention. He had been too hasty; there was much still needing attention.
However, she would notice that her ideas had been taken into consideration. Phylogeny was on the timetable for even small children, wherein the make-up of human consciousness and her understanding concerning archetypes could be considered.
She gazed frowningly into a corner of the room.
Tom shuffled somewhat before asking Belle Rivers not to believe that he was without sympathy for her religious instincts. He was himself all too conscious of the divine aspect of things. Did not everyone who was not utterly bowed down by misfortune or illness, he asked, have a sense of a kind of holiness to life?
Staring hard at Belle, he became lyrical and so, I thought, possibly insincere.
As we moved through our lives, he continued, was there not a vein of enchantment in events, in awakening, in sleeping, in our dreams and in the power of thought? That elusive element, which the best artists, writers, musicians, scientists – even ordinary persons in ordinary jobs – experienced, that special lovely thing of which it was difficult to speak, but which gave life its magic. It might perhaps be simply the ticking of the biological clock, the joy in being alive. Whatever it was, that firefly thing, it was something of which the poet Marlowe spoke: