Of course, it’s possible to enjoy the traditions of a religion — the ceremonies, the ties with the past — without believing in God. After all, as one of my Jewish friends has been known to observe, the only Jews who survived World War II were either now atheists or hadn’t been paying attention.

But, in fact, there are millions of Jews who believe — really believe — in God (or G-d); indeed, secular Zionist Judaism was on the wane while formal observance was rising. And there are millions of Christians who believe in the holy threefer of, as one of my Catholic friends occasionally quipped, Big Daddy, Junior, and the Spook. And there are millions of Muslims who embraced the Qur’an as the revealed word of God.

Indeed, even here, at the dawn of the century following the one in which we’d discovered DNA and quantum physics and nuclear fission and in which we’d invented computers and spaceships and lasers, ninety-six percent of the world’s population still really believed in a supreme being — and the percentage was rising, not falling.

So, again, why was I so surprised that Hollus believed in God? That an alien from a culture a century or two more advanced than my own hadn’t shucked off the last vestiges of the supernatural? Even if he hadn’t had a grand unified theory to justify his beliefs, why should it be so outlandish that he wasn’t an atheist?

I’d never questioned whether I was right or wrong when confronted by obviously deluded creationists. I’d never doubted my convictions when assailed by fundamentalists. But here I was, meeting with creatures from other stars, and the fact that they had been able to come to me while I had no way of going to see them made blindingly obvious which of us was intellectually superior.

And these aliens believed what I hadn’t since childhood.

They believed an intelligent designer had made the universe.

15

There are two reasons why a patient might wish to undergo chemotherapy,” Katarina Kohl had said to Susan and me, shortly after my diagnosis. “The first is in hopes of eliminating the cancer.” She looked at me, then at Susan, then back again at me. “But I will tell you the truth: the chances of eliminating your cancer are small, Tom. Lung cancer is only rarely cured.”

“Well, then I don’t want chemo,” I said at once. “I don’t want what’s left of my life to be spent suffering through that.”

Dr. Kohl pursed her lips. “It is certainly your decision to make,” she said. Then, nodding at Susan, “Both of you. But there are many misconceptions about chemo. It can also be palliative — that’s the second reason you might consider it.”

My mouth formed the word palliative. Dr. Kohl nodded. “You may very well experience a lot of pain in the months to come, Tom. Chemotherapy can reduce the severity of the pain by reducing the size of the tumors.”

“What would you do, if you were me?” I asked.

Kohl shrugged a little. “If this were the States — if you were uninsured and had to pay for the chemotherapy treatments yourself, perhaps you might want to forgo them and live with the pain — although of course, either way, I will be prescribing analgesics to help with that. I like to use a platinum compound when dealing with non-small-cell lung cancer, and those compounds are quite expensive. But since OHIP will pay the entire cost of the treatments, I would advise you to have them. We’d use a platinum in combination with vinblastine, etoposide, or mitomycin-C. The platinum drugs have to be administered in hospital, but they’re the best bet with lung cancer.”

“What about side effects?” I asked.

“There can be nausea. You may lose some or all of your hair.”

“I want to keep working as long as I can,” I said.

“The chemo can help; it won’t significantly extend your life, but it may make it more productive.”

Ricky was in school full days now, and Susan had her job. If I could continue to work, even a few months longer, that would be better than having to be home, requiring constant care.

“Don’t make your decision right now,” said Dr. Kohl. “Think about it.” She gave us some pamphlets to read.

Hollus believed in God.

T’kna believed in God.

And me?

“Maybe I’m getting hung up on the word God,” I said to Hollus, once we were back in my office. “Certainly, if you want to propose that evolution on Earth was interfered with by an outside source, I can’t say you are wrong. After all, you yourself told me that there were intelligent aliens in this part of the galaxy as much as three billion years ago.”

“The race from Eta Cassiopeae A III, yes.”

“Aren’t those the ones who blew up their moon?”

“No; that was the race of Mu Cassiopeae A Prime, 5.5 light-years from Eta Cassiopeae.”

“Okay. Well, the beings from Eta Cassiopeae — let’s call them Etans — had a technological civilization three billion years ago, back when life was just beginning on my world. Surely the Etans could have come here then.”

“You are glossing over a lot of time,” said Hollus, “for you said life had existed here for at least eight hundred million, if not a full billion, years prior to three billion years ago.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“And, of course, my own sun, Beta Hydri, had not even formed that long ago; as I told you before, it is only 2.6 billion years old, so no one from Eta Cassiopeae could have ever visited it.”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t the Etans, then — but beings from some other star could have come here, or gone to your world, or to the Wreed world. All the actions you ascribe to God could have been the doing of advanced aliens.”

“There are two problems with your argument,” said Hollus, politely. “First, of course, even if you dispense with the need for a god in recent events — events of the last few billion years; events after other conscious observers had emerged in this universe — you have done nothing to dispense with the need for a designer who set the relative strengths of the five fundamental forces, who designed the thermal and other properties of water, and so on. And therefore what you are doing is contrary to the razor of Occam you spoke of: you are increasing, not reducing, the number of entities that have influenced your existence — one unavoidable god to create the universe, and then optional lesser beings who subsequently became interested in manipulating the development of life.

“Second,” continued Hollus, “you must remember the timing of the mass extinctions apparently orchestrated to occur simultaneously on our three worlds: the oldest was 440 million years ago; the most recent, 65 million years. That is a span of 375 million years — and yet, as we have found, the lifespan of an intelligent race, measured from the point at which it develops radio, is apparently no more than a couple of hundred years before it either destroys itself or disappears.”

My mind raced, careened. “All right,” I said at last. “Maybe the fundamental parameters were tweaked to create a universe that could give rise to life.”

“There is no supposition involved,” said Hollus. “The universe was clearly designed to be biogenerative.”

“All right. But if we accept that, surely simply creating life can’t be the sole goal. You must believe your putative designer wanted not just life, but intelligent life. Unintelligent life is really nothing more than complex chemistry. It’s only when it becomes sapient that life really gets interesting.”

“That is a strange thing for someone who studies dinosaurs to say,” observed Hollus.

“Not really. After all, the dinosaurs disappeared sixty-five million years ago. It’s only because of the advent of intelligence that we know they ever existed.” I paused. “But you are touching on the point I’m trying to make.” I stopped again, searching for the appropriate metaphor. “Do you cook?”