"But stay. My life here is a lonely one. You're a sister of mercy, aren't you? Have mercy on a lonely old man, and walk with me."
She wanted to say no, to leave at once. At that moment, however, he leaned back in his chair and began to breathe deeply, regularly, with his eyes closed, as he hummed a little tune to himself.
A ritual of calming. So . . . at the very moment of inviting her to walk with him, he had felt some kind of anxiety that triggered the device. That meant there was something important about his invitation.
"Of course I'll walk with you," she said. "Though technically my order is relatively unconcerned with mercy to individuals. We are far more pretentious than that. Our business is trying to save the world."
He chuckled. "One person at a time would be too slow, is that it?"
"We make our lives of service to the larger causes of humanity. The Savior already died for sin. We work on trying to clean up the consequences of sin on other people."
"An interesting religious quest," said Anton. "I wonder whether my old line of research would have been considered a service to humanity, or just another mess that someone like you would have to clean up."
"I wonder that myself," said Sister Carlotta.
"We will never know." They strolled out of the garden into the alley behind the house, and then to a street, and across it, and onto a path that led through an untended park.
"The trees here are very old," Sister Carlotta observed.
"How old are you, Carlotta?"
"Objectively or subjectively?"
"Stick to the Gregorian calendar, please, as most recently revised."
"That switch away from the Julian system still sticks in the Russian craw, does it?"
"It forced us for more than seven decades to commemorate an October Revolution that actually occurred in November."
"You are much too young to remember when there were Communists in Russia."
"On the contrary, I am old enough now to have all the memories of my people locked within my head. I remember things that happened long before I was born. I remember things that never happened at all. I live in memory."
"Is that a pleasant place to dwell?"
"Pleasant?" He shrugged. "I laugh at all of it because I must. Because it is so sweetly sad--all the tragedies, and yet nothing is learned."
"Because human nature never
changes," she said.
"I have imagined," he said, "how God might have done better, when he made man--in his own image, I believe."
"Male and female created he them. Making his image anatomically vague, one must suppose."
He laughed and clapped her rather too forcefully on the back. "I didn't know you could laugh about such things! I am pleasantly surprised!"
"I'm glad I could bring cheer into your bleak existence."
"And then you sink the barb into the flesh." They reached an overlook that had rather less of a view of the sea than Anton's own terrace. "It is not a bleak existence, Carlotta. For I can celebrate God's great compromise in making human beings as we are."
"Compromise?"
"Our bodies could live forever, you know. We don't have to wear out. Our cells are all alive; they can maintain and repair themselves, or be replaced by fresh ones. There are even mechanisms to keep replenishing our bones. Menopause need not stop a woman from bearing children. Our brains need not decay, shedding memories or failing to absorb new ones. But God made us with death inside."
"You are beginning to sound serious about God."
"God made us with death inside, and also with intelligence. We have our seventy years or so--perhaps ninety, with care--in the mountains of Georgia, a hundred and thirty is not unheard of, though I personally believe they are all liars. They would claim to be immortal if they thought they could get away with it. We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time."