Stephen Jay Gould had fought cancer, too; he’d been diagnosed with abdominal mesothelioma in July 1982. He’d been lucky; he’d won. Gould, like Richard Dawkins, argued for a purely Darwinian view of nature — even if the two of them couldn’t agree on the precise details of what that view was. But if religion had helped Gould get through his illness, he never said. Still, after his recovery, he’d written a new book, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, which argued for the scientific and the spiritual being two separate realms, two “nonoverlapping magisteria” — a typical bit of Gouldish bafflegab. Clearly, though, larger questions had preoccupied him during his bout with the big C.

And now it was my turn.

Sagan had apparently remained stalwart until the end. Gould seemed perhaps to have wavered, but he’d ultimately returned to his old self, the perfect rationalist.

And me?

Sagan hadn’t had to contend with visits from an alien whose grand unified theory pointed toward the existence of a creator.

Gould hadn’t known of the advanced lifeforms from Beta Hydri and Delta Pavonis who believed in God.

But I did.

Many years ago, I’d read a book called The Search for God at Harvard. I was more intrigued by the title than by the actual contents, which told of the experiences of Ari Goldman, a New York Times journalist who spent a year enrolled in the Harvard Divinity School. If I wanted to search for fossils from the Cambrian explosion, I’d go to Yoho National Park; if I wanted to search for dinosaur eggshell fragments, I’d go to Montana or Mongolia. Most things require you to go to them, but God — God, if he is ubiquitous — should be something you could search for anywhere: at Harvard, at the Royal Ontario Museum, at a Pizza Hut in Kenya.

Indeed, it seemed to me if Hollus was correct, you should be able to reach out, anywhere, at any time, and sort of grab hold of a handful of space just the right way, and peel back the flap in front of you, revealing the machinery of God behind.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain . . .

And I hadn’t. I’d ignored him utterly.

But now, right now, I was alone.

Or . . .

Christ, I never had thoughts like this. Am I weaker than Sagan? Weaker than Gould?

I’d met them both over the years; Carl had lectured at U of T, and we invited Stephen up to the ROM every time he had a new book out; he was coming again in a few weeks to speak in conjunction with the Burgess Shale exhibition. I’d been surprised at how tall Carl was, but Stephen was every bit the little round guy they’d drawn him as on The Simpsons.

Physically, neither looked stronger than I — than I used to be.

But now, now perhaps I was weaker than either of them.

God damn it, I didn’t want to die.

Old paleontologists never die, the joke goes. But they sure are petrified by death.

I got up off the couch. The living-room rug was pretty much obstacle-free; Ricky was getting better about putting his toys away.

It shouldn’t matter where you do it.

I looked out the living-room window. Ellerslie was a great, old street up in what had been called Willowdale when I was a kid; it was lined by mature trees. A passerby would have to make a real effort to see in.

Still . . .

I walked over, closed the brown drapes. The room darkened. I threw the wall switch that controlled one of the torchiere floor lamps. A glance at the glowing blue clock on the VCR: I still had time before Susan and Ricky got home.

Did I want to do this?

There was no place for a creator in the curriculum I’d taught at U of T. The ROM was one of the most eclectic museums in the world, but, despite that ceiling mosaic proclaiming the museum’s mission to be “that all men may know His work,” there was no specific gallery devoted to God.

Of course not, the founders of the ROM would have said. The creator is everywhere.

Everywhere.

Even here.

I blew out air, exhaling my last bit of resistance to the idea.

And I knelt down, on the carpet, by the fireplace, the pictures of my family staring blindly at what I was doing.

I knelt down.

And I began to pray.

“God,” I said.

The word echoed softly inside the brick fireplace.

I repeated it. “God?” A question that time, an invitation for a response.

There was none, of course. Why should God care that I’m dying of cancer? Millions of people worldwide were battling one form or another of that ancient foe at this very moment, and some of them were much younger than I. Surely children in leukemia wards should command his attention first.

Still, I tried again, a third uttering of the word I’d only ever used as a curse. “God?”

There was no sign, and indeed there never would be. Isn’t that what faith is all about?

“God, if Hollus is right — if the Wreeds and Forhilnors are correct, and you designed the universe piece by piece, fundamental constant by fundamental constant — then couldn’t you have avoided this? What possible good does cancer do anyone?”

The Lord works in mysterious ways. Mrs. Lansbury had always said that. Everything happens for a purpose.

Such bull. Such unmitigated crap. I felt my stomach knotting. Cancer didn’t happen for any purpose. It tore people apart; if a god did create life, then he’s a shoddy workman, churning out flawed, self-destructing products.

“God, I wish — I wish you had decided to do some things differently.”

That’s as far as I could go. Susan had said prayer wasn’t about asking for things — and I couldn’t bring myself to ask for mercy, ask not to die, ask to get to see my son graduate from university, ask to be there to grow old with my wife.

Just then, the front door swung open. I’d been lost in thought, obviously, or else I would have likely heard Susan jostling her keys as she worked the lock.

I felt myself going beet red. “Found it!” I exclaimed, as if to myself, making a show of picking up some invisible lost object. I rose to my feet and smiled sheepishly at my beautiful wife and my handsome, young son.

But I hadn’t found anything at all.

25

In 1997, Stephen Pinker came to the ROM to promote his new book, How the Mind Works. I attended the fascinating lecture he gave. Among other things, he pointed out that humans, even across cultural boundaries, use consistent metaphors in speech. Arguments are always battles. He won; I lost; he beat me; she attacked every point; he made me defend my position; I had to retreat.

Love affairs are patients or diseases. They have a sick relationship; he got over her; she’s got it bad for him; it broke his heart.

Ideas are food. Food for thought; something to chew on; his suggestion left a bad taste in my mouth; I couldn’t stomach the notion; a delicious irony; the idea kept me going.

Virtue, meanwhile, is up, presumably related to our erect posture. He’s an upstanding citizen; that act is beneath me; I wouldn’t sink so low; he took the high road; I tried to come up to his standards.

Still, it wasn’t until I met Hollus that I realized how uniquely human those ways of thinking were. Hollus had done an excellent job of mastering English, and he did often use human metaphors. But from time to time, I glimpsed what I presumed was the true Forhilnor way of thinking behind his speech.

For Hollus, love was astronomical — two individuals coming to know each other so well that their movements could be predicted with absolute precision. “Rising love” meant that the affection would be there tomorrow, just as surely as the sun would come up. “A new constellation” was new love between old friends — seeing a pattern amongst the stars that had always been there, but had heretofore eluded detection.