White mars by Brian W. Aldiss & Roger Penrose. Chapter 10, 11

One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least

Which into words no virtue can digest.

Listening to this speech, Belle Rivers clasped her hands on the desk in front of her and appeared to study them.

Religion, at least the Christian religion, Tom said, changed over time, abandoning the ill-tempered and savage Jehovah of the Old Testament for a more responsive faith in redemption – though it still based itself on such impossibilities as virgin birth, the resurrection of the dead and eternal life – impossibilities designed to impress the ignorant of Christ’s unscientific age.

When the Omega Smudge would be detected, we should see a genuine miracle – once we understood what had been detected. (Yet would I ever understand this area of science? I made a resolve to learn still more …)

By going two steps forward and one step back, continued Tom, humankind since the days of Jesus Christ had scraped together some knowledge of the world, the universe and themselves. The situation now, in the late middle of the twenty-first century, was that God got in the way of understanding. God was dark matter, an impediment rather than an aid to our proper sense of the divine aspect of things. We had been forced to leave many good things behind on Earth; God should be left behind too.

The world was more wonderful without him.

Belle Rivers, continuing to regard her hands, said merely, ‘It cannot be more wonderful without him, since he created it.’

Until this juncture Mary Fangold had remained silent, watching Tom and Belle with a faint smile on her lips. Tom said afterwards that Mary, the apostle of reason, knew we had fallen into human error by excluding the hard-working Belle from most of our educational plans. She felt her position to be undermined. Mary spoke up.

The prospectus is only at the planning stage, Belle. We rely on you to continue teaching, just as the children rely on you. We wonder if you would care to include a subject such as we might call, say, Becoming Individual, in your timetable, whereby religion would form a part of it, together with archetypal behaviour and the interrelationship of conscious and sub-conscious.’

Belle regarded her suspiciously. ‘That does not sound like my idea of religion.’

‘Then let’s say religion and reason…’

After a moment’s silence, Belle smiled and said, ‘Do not think I am trying to be difficult. Basically, your entire plan for improved learning cannot flourish without one additional factor.’

She waited for us to ask her what that factor might be. Then she explained that there were children who were always resistant to learning, who found reading and writing hard work. Others were happy and fulfilled with such things. The difference could be accounted for by the contrast between those children who were sung to and read to by their mothers and fathers from birth onwards, perhaps even before birth, when the child was still in utero, and those who were not, who were neglected.

Learning, she said, began from Day One. If that learning was associated with the happiness and security of a parent’s love, then the child found no impediments to learning and to the enjoyment of education. Those children whose parents were silent or indifferent had a harder slog through life.

The basis of all that was good in life was, she declared, simply love and care, which arose from a love of Christ.

Tom rose and took her hand. ‘We are in perfect agreement there, at least as far as love and care of the child are concerned,’ he said. ‘You have probably cited the most vital thing. There’s no harm in using Christ as an exemplar. We’re very happy you are the headmistress here, and in charge of learning.’

Tom’s and my, in some respects, mysterious, relationship deepened. I was legally adopted as his daughter at a small ceremony; I became Cang Hai Jefferies, and lived in harmony with him. To be truthful, I mean more or less in harmony with him. It was not easy to get mentally close.

Often when my new leg troubled me – it got the twitches -I would lie in his arms. This was bliss for me; but he never attempted a sexual advance.

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