"Surely you're not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings!"
"It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees--knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying."
"You speak in theological terms, and yet I thought you were an unbeliever."
"Theology is a joke to me. Amusing! I laugh at it. I can tell amusing stories about theology, to jest with believers. You see? It pleases me and keeps me calm."
At last she understood. How clearly did he have to spell it out? He was telling her the information she asked about, but doing it in code, in a way that fooled not only any eavesdroppers--and there might well be listeners to every word they said--but even his own mind. It was all a jest; therefore he could tell her the truth, as long as he did it in this form.
"Then I don't mind hearing your wild humorous forays into theology."
"Genesis tells of men who lived to be more than nine hundred years old. What it does not tell you is how very stupid these men all were."
Sister Carlotta laughed aloud.
"That's why God had to destroy humanity with his little flood," Anton went on. "Get rid of those stupid people and replace them with quicker ones. Quick quick quick, their minds moved, their metabolism. Rushing onward into the grave."
"From Methuselah at nearly a millennium of life to Moses with his hundred and twenty years, and now to us. But our lives are getting longer."
"I rest my case."
"Are we stupider now?"
"So stupid that we would rather have long life for our children than see them become too much like God, knowing . . . good and evil . . . knowing . . . everything." He clutched at his chest, gasping. "Ah, God! God in heaven!" He sank to his knees. His breath was shallow and rapid now. His eyes rolled back in his head. He fell over.
Apparently he hadn't been able to maintain his self-deception. His body finally caught on to how he had managed to tell his secret to this woman by speaking it in the language of religion.
She rolled him onto his back. Now that he had fainted, his panic attack was subsiding. Not that fainting was trivial in a man of Anton's age. But he would not need any heroism to bring him back, not this time. He would wake up calm.
Where were the people who were supposed to be monitoring him? Where were the spies who were listening in to their conversation?
Pounding feet on the grass, on the leaves.
"A bit slow, weren't you?" she said without looking up.
"Sorry, we didn't expect anything." The man was youngish, but not terribly bright-looking. The implant was supposed to keep him from spilling his tale; it was not necessary for his guards to be clever.
"I think he'll be all right."
"What were you talking about?"
"Religion," she said, knowing that her account would probably be checked against a recording. "He was criticizing God for mis-making human beings. He claimed to be joking, but I think that a man of his age is never really joking when he talks about God, do you?"
"Fear of death gets in them," said the young man sagely--or at least as sagely as he could manage.
"Do you think he accidentally triggered this panic attack by agitating his own anxiety about death?" If she asked it as a question, it wasn't actually a lie, was it?
"I don't know. He's coming around."
"Well, I certainly don't want to cause him any more anxiety about religious matters. When he wakes up, tell him how grateful I am for our conversation. Assure him that he has clarified for me one of the great questions about God's purpose."
"Yes, I'll tell him," said the young man earnestly.
Of course he would garble the message hopelessly.
Sister Carlotta bent over and kissed Anton's cold, sweaty forehead. Then she rose to her feet and walked away.
So that was the secret. The genome that allowed a human being to have extraordinary intelligence acted by speeding up many bodily processes. The mind worked faster. The child developed faster. Bean was indeed the product of an experiment in unlocking the savant gene. He had been given the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But there was a price. He would not be able to taste of the tree of life. Whatever he did with his life, he would have to do it young, because he would not live to be old.