“Such as?”

“Such as ethics and morality. There is no crime in Wreed society, and they seem able to solve the most vexing moral quandaries with ease.”

“For example? What insights do they have on moral issues?”

“Well,” said Hollus, “one of the simplest is that honor does not have to be defended.”

“A lot of humans would disagree with that.”

“None that are at peace with themselves, I suspect.”

I thought about that, then shrugged. Maybe he was right. “What else?”

“You tell me. Present an example of a moral quandary, and I will try to tell you how a Wreed would resolve it.”

I scratched my head. “Well, okay — okay, how about this? My brother Bill got married recently for the second time. Now, his new wife Marilyn is quite lovely, I think—”

“The Wreeds would say you should not attempt to mate with your brother’s spouse.”

I laughed. “Oh, I know that. But that’s not the question. I think Marilyn is lovely, but, well, she’s quite curvy — zaftig, even. And she doesn’t exercise. Now, Bill keeps bugging Marilyn to go to the gym. Meanwhile, Marilyn wants him to stop picking on her, saying he should accept her the way she is. And Bill says, ‘Well, you know, if I should accept your not exercising, then you should accept my wanting to change you — since wanting to change people is a fundamental part of my character.’ Get it? And, of course, Bill says his comments are selfless, motivated by genuine concern for Marilyn’s health.” I paused. The whole thing gives me a headache whenever I think about it; I always end up wanting to say, “Norman, coordinate!” I looked at Hollus. “So who is right?”

“Neither,” said Hollus, at once.

“Neither?” I repeated.

“Exactly. That is an easy one, from a Wreed point of view; because they do not do math, they never treat moral questions as a zero-sum game in which someone must win and someone else must lose. God, the Wreeds would say, wants us to love others as they are and also to struggle to help them fulfill their potential — both should happen simultaneously. Indeed, a core Wreed belief is that our individual purpose in life is to help others become great. Your brother should not vocalize his displeasure at his wife’s weight, but, until he attains that ideal of silence, his wife should ignore the comments; learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace, say the Wreeds. Meanwhile, though, if you are in a loving relationship, and your partner has grown dependent on you, you have an obligation to protect your own health by wearing safety belts in vehicles, by eating well, by exercising, and so on — that is Marilyn’s moral obligation to Bill.”

I frowned, digesting this. “Well, I guess that does make sense.” Not that I could think of any way to communicate it to either Bill or Marilyn. “Still, what about something controversial. You saw that newspaper article about the bombed abortion clinic.”

“The Wreeds would say that violence is not a solution.”

“I agree. But there are lots of nonviolent people on both sides of the abortion issue.”

“What are the two sides?” asked Hollus.

“They call themselves ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice.’ The prolifers believe every conception has a right to fulfillment. The pro-choicers believe that women should have the right to control their reproductive processes. So who is correct?”

Hollus’s eyestalks weaved with unusual speed. “Again, it is neither.” He paused. “I hope I am not giving offense — it has never been my desire to be critical of your race. But it does astound me that you have both tattoo parlors and abortion clinics. The former — businesses devoted to permanently altering one’s appearance — imply that humans can predict what they will want decades in the future. The latter — facilities to terminate pregnancies — imply that humans often change their minds over timeframes as short as a few months.”

“Well, many pregnancies are unintentional. People have sex because it’s fun; they do it even when they don’t wish to procreate.”

“Do you not have methods of contraception? If you do not, I am sure Lablok could devise some for you.”

“No, no. We have many methods of birth control.”

“Are they effective?” asked Hollus.

“Yes.”

“Are they painful?”

“Painful? No.”

“The Wreeds would say that abortion, then, should simply not be a moral issue because simple precautions would obviate the need to discuss it at all, except in a handful of unusual cases. If one can easily choose not to get pregnant, then surely that is the proper exercising of choice. If you can avoid a difficult moral problem, such as when life begins, then why not simply do so?”

“But there are cases of rape and incest.”

“Incest?”

“Mating within one’s own family.”

“Ah. But surely these are exceptional occurrences. And possibly the best moral lesson my own people have learned during our association with the Wreeds is that general principles should not be based on exceptional cases. That one insight has enormously simplified our legal system.”

“Well, then, what do you do in exceptional cases? What should you do in the case of a rape resulting in pregnancy?”

“Obviously, the woman had no chance to proactively exercise her reproductive rights via contraception; therefore, clearly she should be permitted to regain control of her own biology as fully and completely as she desires. In such cases, abortion is obviously an acceptable option; in others, birth control is clearly the preferred route.”

“But there are humans who believe artificial birth control is immoral.”

Hollus’s eyes looked briefly at each other, then they resumed their normal oscillating. “You humans do seem to go out of your way to manufacture moral issues. There is nothing immoral about contraception.” He paused. “But these are easy examples of Wreed thinking. When we get into more complex areas, I am afraid their responses do not make much sense to us; they sound like gibberish — our brains apparently are not wired to appreciate what they are saying. Philosophy departments at the Forhilnor equivalents of what you call universities had little status until we met the Wreeds; they are now extremely busy, trying to decipher complex Wreed thought.”

I considered all of this. “And with minds geared for ethics and for discerning underlying beauty, the Wreeds have decided that God really does exist?”

Hollus flexed his six legs at both their upper and lower knees. “Yes.”

I’m not an overly arrogant man. I don’t insist that people refer to me as Doctor Jericho, and I try to keep my opinions to myself. But, still, I always felt I had a good grip on reality, an accurate view of the world.

And my world, even before I was stricken with cancer, did not include a god.

But I’d now met not one but two different alien lifeforms, two different beings from worlds more advanced than my own. And both of these advanced creatures believed the universe was created, believed it showed clear evidence of intelligent design. Why did this surprise me so much? Why had I assumed that such thoughts would be, well, alien to any advanced being?

Since ancient times, the philosophers’ secret has always been this: we know that God does not exist, or, at least, if he does, he’s utterly indifferent to our individual affairs — but we can’t let the rabble know that; it’s the fear of God, the threat of divine punishment and the promise of divine reward, that keeps in line those too unsophisticated to work out questions of morality on their own.

But in an advanced race, with universal literacy and material desires fulfilled through the power of technology, surely everyone is a philosopher — everyone is privy to the ancient, once-guarded truth, everyone knows that God is just a story, just a myth, and we can drop the pretense, dispensing with religion.