"No. He just didn't believe in the conventional con¬cept of God. A God who focused all his attention on man. Dad was a physicist. They're a skeptical bunch, as a rule."

"Did he believe in a supreme being of any kind?" My father wasn't the type to "get cosmic" very often, but on a few occasions-camping in the mountains under a star-filled sky-he had talked to my brother and me about what he'd really believed.

"Dad had a simple conception of the way things are. Simple but profound. He didn't see man as separate from the universe, but part of it. He always said, 'Man is the universe becoming conscious of itself.'"

"Have I heard that before?"

"Maybe. I've heard New Age gurus like Deepak Chopra say it. But my father was saying it twenty-five years ago."

"What do you think he meant?"

"Exactly what he said. He always reminded us that every atom in our bodies was once part of a distant star that had exploded. He talked about how evolution moves from simplicity toward complexity, and how human intel¬ligence is the highest known expression of evolution. I remember him telling me that a frog's brain is much more complex than a star. He saw human consciousness as the first neuron of the universe coming to life and awareness. A spark in the darkness, waiting to spread to fire."

Rachel looked thoughtful. "That's a beautiful idea. Not exactly a religious view, but a hopeful one."

"Practical, too. If we're the universe becoming con¬scious of itself, we have a moral duty to survive. To pre¬serve the gift of consciousness. And to do that, we have to live in peace. From that you can derive a workable set of laws, ethics, everything."

Rachel reflected on this. "Do you subscribe to his view of the universe?"

"I did until a couple of weeks ago. My latest visions don't exactly fit into it."

She laid her hand on my knee. "We don't know where they fit, all right? And I don't think your father's view precludes the existence of a creator. Do you still have anxiety that you'll die if you don't reach Jerusalem before you dream of the crucifixion?"

The immediate threat of capture by police had dis¬tracted me from this concern. "I still feel some urgency, but not like before. The fact that we're going there seems to have eased the pressure a bit."

"If you do dream of the crucifixion, you shouldn't worry about it. A dream never killed anybody."

I wasn't so sure. "Let's talk about you for a minute. You say you believe in God. What exactly do you believe?"

"I don't see how that relates to what we're doing."

"I think we're both on this plane for a reason. And I think what you believe matters."

A look of ineffable sadness entered her face. "I came to God very late. As a child I was never taken to syna¬gogue or church."

"Why not?"

"My father turned his back on God when he was seven years old."

"Why so young?"

"He turned seven inside a concentration camp."

Something inside me went cold.

Her gaze became unfocused, as though she were looking years into the past. "My father saw his father murdered in front of him. It wasn't a normal event, even by camp standards. The Allies were approaching, and the SS guards were liquidating the prisoners. One guard invented a game with his small work detail. He killed one prisoner a day. He tried to get the starving prisoners to kill each other and offered them survival if they would. My grandfather refused, of course. He'd been a surgeon in Berlin. He'd met Freud, corresponded with Jung."

My mind spun as Rachel's career choice came into perspective.

"The guard beat my grandfather to death in front of his little boy-my father. My father decided then that a God who allowed what he'd seen deserved curses, not prayers."

I wanted to say something, but what words would mean anything?

"He was one of the lucky ones allowed to emigrate to America. He was taken in by distant relatives in Brooklyn." Rachel smiled sadly. "Uncle Milton was a locksmith. My father's refusal to worship angered him, but Milton knew the boy had been through a lot. When he came of age, my father changed his name to White, moved to Queens, and stopped seeing his family, though he did send them money. He married a gentile who cared nothing for religion, and they raised me in a secular house."

I listened in amazement. You saw a face on an American street, or in an office, and you had no idea that a tragic epic lay behind it.

"I always felt like an outsider because of that. All my friends went to church or synagogue. I got curious. When I was seventeen, I sought out my Uncle Milton. He told me everything. After that… I embraced my heritage."

Many small mysteries of Rachel's personality sud¬denly made sense. Her severe dress, her professional dis¬tance, her abhorrence of violence…

"The thing is," she went on, "I think I became Jewish more out of emotional and political identification than a desire to do God's will."

"There's nothing wrong with that."

"Of course there is. If you ask me what I really think about God, it has nothing to do with the Torah or the Talmud. It has to do with what I've seen in my own life."

"What do you really think?"

She folded her hands on her lap. "I believe that to create means to make something that didn't exist before. If God is perfect, then the only way he can truly create is to make something separate from himself. So by defini¬tion, his creation must be imperfect. You see? If it were perfect, it would be God."

"Yes."

"I believe that for human beings to be distinct from God, we must be able to make our own choices. Free will, right? And unless bad choices resulted in real pain, free will would have no meaning. That's why we have such evil in the world. I don't know what religion that adds up to, but whatever it is, that's what I believe."

"That's a good explanation for the world as we find it. But it doesn't address the central mystery. Why should God feel compelled to create anything at all?"

"I don't think we'll ever know that."

"We might. Our sun is going to burn for another five billion years or so. Even if the universe ends by collaps¬ing inward on itself-the Big Crunch-the earliest that could happen is about twenty billion years from now. If we don't destroy ourselves, we'll have plenty of time to answer that question. Maybe all questions."

She smiled. "You and I will never know."

Looking into her dark eyes, I realized just how little I knew about her. "You're not nearly as conventional as you pretend to be. I wish you could have talked to Fielding."

"What did he believe about God?"

"Fielding had a big problem with evil. He was raised a Christian, but he said that neither Judaism nor Christianity had ever faced evil head-on."

"What did he mean?"

"He'd recite three statements: 'God is all powerful. God is all good. Evil exists.' You can logically reconcile any two of those statements, but not all three."

Rachel nodded thoughtfully.

"Fielding thought the Eastern religions were the only truly monotheistic ones, because they admit that evil flows from God, rather than trying to blame a lesser figure like Satan."

"And you?" she asked. "Where do you think evil comes from?"

"The human heart."

"The heart pumps blood, David."

"You know what I mean. The psyche. The dark well where primitive instincts mix with human intelligence. When you look at the atrocities man is capable of, it's difficult to imagine a divine plan behind any of it. I mean, look what happened to your grandfather."

Rachel gripped my arm and looked at me with almost desperate urgency. "On the day my grandfather was murdered, there was a moment when he could have killed that guard. They were alone at a rock quarry, one guard and three prisoners. The Americans were only a day away. But he didn't do it."