“What I’m trying to put across is that John couldn’t reform even if he wanted to. He’ll always be a human weasel, a hyena, a skunk.”
Joe puffed on a cigar even longer than his nose and said, “Vell, I don’t know. Humanth can change. Look at vhat the Church of the Thecond Chanthe hath done. Look at Goring. Look at you. You told me that in your time vomen vore clotheth which covered them from the neck to the ankleth, and you got ekthited if you thaw a goodlooking ankle, and a thigh, oh my! Now you aren’t too dithturbed if you thee . . .”
“I know! I know!” Sam said. “Old attitudes and what the psychologists call conditioned reflexes can be changed. That’s why I say that anybody who still carries in him the racial and sexual prejudices he had on Earth is not taking advantage of what The River offers. A man can change, but . . .”
“He can?” Joe said. “But you alvayth told me that everything in life, even the vay a man actth and thinkth, ith determined by vhat vent on long before he vath even born. Vhat ith it? Yeth, it’th a determinithtic philothophy, that’th vhat. Now, if you believe that everything ith fikthed in itth courthe, that humanth are mathyineth, tho to thpeak, then how can you believe that men can change themthelveth?”
“Well,” Sam drawled, looking fierce, his excessively bushy eyebrows pulled down, his blue-green eyes bright above the falcon nose, “well, even my theories are mechanically determined and if they conflict, that can’t be helped.”
“Then, for heaven’th thaketh,” Joe said, throwing up his football-sized hands, “vhat’th the uthe of talking about it? Or even doing anything? Vhy don’t you jutht give up?”
“Because I can’t help myself,” Sam said. “Because, when the first atom in this universe bumped against the second atom, my fate was decreed, my very thought and action was fixed.”
“Then you can’t be, uh, rethponthible for vhat you do, right?” “That’s right,” Sam said. He felt very uncomfortable.
“Then John can’t help it that he’th a murdering treacherouth thoroughly dethpicable thvine?”
“No, but then I can’t help it that I despise him for being a swine.”
“And I thuppothe that if thomebody thmarter than I am came along and thyowed you, by thtrict undeniable logic, that you vere wrong in your philothophy, that you vould thay that he can’t help thinking you’re wrong? But he’th wrong, it’th jutht that he’th predetermined, mechanically, to think the vay he doeth.”
“I’m right, and I know it,” Sam said, puffing harder on his cigar. “This hypothetical man couldn’t convince me because his own reasoning does not spring from a free will, which is like a vegetarian tiger—that is, it doesn’t exist.”
“But your own reathoning doethn’t thpring from a free vill, either.” “True. We’re all screwed. We believe what we have to.”
“You laugh at thothe people who have vhat you call invinthible ignoranthe, Tham. Yet you’re full of it, yourthelf.”
“Lord deliver us from apes that think they’re philosophers!”
“Thee! You fall back on inthultth vhen you can’t think of anything elthe to thay! Admit it, Tham! You haven’t got a lochical leg to thtand on!”
“You just aren’t capable of seeing what I mean, because of the way you are,” Sam said.
“You thyould talk to Thyrano de Bercherac more, Tham. He’th ath big a thynic ath you, although he doethn’t go ath far ath you do vith determinithm.”
“I’d think you two incapable of talking to each other. Don’t you two resent each other, you look so much alike? How can you stand nose to nose, as it were, and not break up with laughter? It’s like two anteaters . . .” “Inthultth! Inthultth! Oh, vhat’th the uthe?”
“Exactly,” Sam said. Joe did not say good night, and he did not call alter him. He was nettled. Joe looked so dumb_ with that low forehead and the bone-ringed eyes and comical dill pickle nose and gorilla build and his hairiness. But behind those little blue eyes and the lisping was an undeniable intelligence.
What disturbed him most was Joe’s comment that his deterministic belief was only a rationalization to excuse his guilt. Guilt for what? Guilt for just about everything bad that had happened to those whom he loved.