Contact - Carl Sagan [183]
"I've been searching, Eleanor. After all these years, believe me, I know the truth when I see it. Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe. I mean the real universe. All those light-years. All those worlds. I think of the scope of your universe, the opportunities it affords the Creator, and it takes my breath away. It's much better than bottling Him up in one small world. I never liked the idea of Earth as God's green footstool. It was too reassuring, like a children's story…like a tranquilizer. But your universe has room enough, and time enough, for the kind of God I believe in.
"I say you don't need any more proof. There are proofs enough already. Cygnus A and all that are just for the scientists. You think it'll be hard to convince ordinary people that you're telling the truth. I think it'll be easy as pie. You think your story is too peculiar, too alien. But I've heard it before. I know it well. And I bet you do too." He closed his eyes and, after a moment, recited:
He dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it…surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not…This is none other but the House of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
He had been a little carried away, as if preaching to the multitudes from the pulpit of a great cathedral, and when he opened his eyes it was with a small self-deprecatory smile. They walked down a vast avenue, flanked left and right by enormous whitewashed radio telescopes straining at the sky, and after a moment he spoke in a more conversational tone.
"Your story has been foretold. It's happened before. Somewhere inside of you, you must have known. None of your details are in the Book of Genesis. Of course not. How could they be? The Genesis account was right for the time of Jacob. Just as your witness is right for this time, for our time.
"People are going to believe you, Eleanor. Millions of them. All over the world. I know it for certain…"
She shook her head, and they walked on for another moment in silence before he continued.
"All right, then. I understand. You take as much time as you have to. But if there's any way to hurry it up, do it-for my sake. We have less than a year to the Millennium."
"I understand also. Bear with me a few more months. If we haven't found something in pi by then, I'll consider going public with what happened up there. Before January 1. Maybe Eda and the others would be willing to speak out also. Okay?"
They walked in silence back toward the Argus administration building. The sprinklers were watering the meager lawn, and they stepped around a puddle that, on this parched earth, seemed alien, out of place. "Have you ever been married?" he asked. "No, I never have. I guess I've been too busy."
"Ever been in love?" The question was direct, matter-of-fact.
"Halfway, half a dozen times. But"-she glanced at the nearest telescope-"there was always so much noise, the signal was hard to find. And you?"
"Never," he replied flatly. There was a pause, and then he added with a faint smile, "But I have faith."
She decided not to pursue this ambiguity just yet, and they mounted the short flight of stairs to examine the Argus mainframe computer.
CHAPTER 24
The Artist's Signature
Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed…
CORINTHIANS 15:51
The universe seems…to have been determined and ordered in accordance with number, by the forethought and the mind of the creator of all things; for the pattern was fixed, like a preliminary sketch, by the domination of number preexistent in the mind of the world-creating God.
-NICOMACHUS OF GERASA
Arithmetic I, 6 (ca. A.D. 100)
She rushed up the steps of the nursing home and, on the newly repainted green veranda,