Walsh smiled faintly, then walked on without saying a word.
I woke in the early hours of the morning. Burning up again, drenched in sweat.
Michael was sitting on the chair beside me, reading from his notepad. The whole ward was lit softly from above, but the light of the words shone up more brightly.
I whispered, "Today, I tried to become… everything I despise. But I couldn't even manage that."
He put the notepad down, and waited for me to continue.
"I'm lost. I really am lost."
Michael glanced at the bedside monitor, and shook his head. "You're going to live through this. In a week, you won't even be able to imagine how you feel right now."
"I'm not talking about the cholera. I'm having—" I laughed; it hurt. "I'm having what Mystical Renaissance would call a spiritual crisis. And I have nowhere to turn to for comfort. Nowhere to turn to for strength. No lover, no family, no nation. No religion, no ideology. Nothing."
Michael said calmly, "Then you're lucky. I envy you."
I gaped at him, appalled by this heartlessness.
He said, "Nowhere to bury your head. Like an ostrich on reef-rock. I envy you. You might learn something."
I had no reply to that. I started shivering; I was sweating and aching, but icy cold. "I take back what I said about the cholera. It's fifty-fifty. I'm being equally fucked by both."
Michael put his hands behind his neck and stretched, then rearranged himself on the chair. "You're a journalist. Do you want to hear a story?"
"Don't you have some vital medical work to do?"
"I'm doing it."
Waves of nausea began sweeping up from my bowels. "Okay, I'll listen. If you'll let me record. What's this story about?"
He grinned. "My own spiritual crisis, of course."
"I should have guessed." I closed my eyes and invoked Witness. The whole action was instinctive, and it was over in half a second—but when it was done, I was shocked. I felt like I was on the verge of disintegrating… but this machinery—as much a part of me as anything organic—still worked perfectly.
He began, "When I was a child, my parents used to take me to the most beautiful church in the world."
"I've heard that line before."
"This time it's true. The Reformed Methodist Church in Suva. It was a huge, white building. It looked plain from the outside—austere as a barn. But it had a row of stained glass windows, showing scenes from the scriptures, carved by a computer in sky-blue, rose and gold. Every wall was lined with a hundred kinds of flowers—hibiscus, orchids, lillies— piled up to the roof. And the pews were always crammed with people; everyone wore their finest, brightest clothes, everyone sang, everyone smiled. It was like stepping straight into heaven. Even the sermons were beautiful: no hell-fire, only comfort and joy. No ranting about sin and damnation: just some modest suggestions about kindness, charity, love."
I said, "Sounds perfect. What happened? Did God send a Greenhouse storm to put an end to all this blasphemous happiness and moderation?"
"Nothing happened to the church. It's still there."
"But you parted company? Why?"
"I took the scriptures too literally. They said put away childish things. So I did."
"Now you're being facetious."
He hesitated. "If you really want to know the precise escape route… it all started with just one parable. Have you heard the story of the widow's mite?"
"Yes."
"For years, as a schoolboy, I turned it over and over in my head. The poor widow's small gift was more precious than the rich man's large one. Okay. Fine. I understood the message. I could see the dignity it gave to every act of charity. But I could see a whole lot more encoded in that parable, and those other things wouldn't go away.
"I could see a religion which cared more about feeling good than doing good. A religion which valued the pleasure of giving—or the pain—more than any tangible effect. A religion which put… saving your own soul through good works far above their worldly consequences.
"Maybe I was reading too much into one story. But if it hadn't started there, it would have started somewhere else. My religion was beautiful—but I needed more than that. I demanded more. It had to be true. And it wasn't."
He smiled sadly, and raised his hands, let them fall. I thought I could see the loss in his eyes, I thought I understood.
He said, "Growing up with faith is like growing up with crutches."
"But you threw away your crutches and walked?"
"No. I threw away my crutches and fell flat on my face. All the strength had gone into the crutches—I had none of my own. I was nineteen, when it finally all fell apart for me. The end of adolescence is the perfect age for an existential crisis, don't you think? You've left yours awfully late."
My face burned with humiliation. Michael reached over and touched my shoulder. He said, "I've had a long shift, my judgment's slipping. I'm not trying to be cruel." He laughed. "Listen to me, spouting 'season for everything' bullshit—like the Edenites meet Il Duce: Get those emotional trains running on time!" He leaned back, and ran a hand through his hair. "But I was nineteen, there's no getting around it. And I'd lost God. What can I say? I read Sartre, I read Camus, I read Nietzche—"
I winced. Michael was puzzled. "You have a problem with Friedrich?"
The cramp tightened. I replied through gritted teeth, "Not at all. All the best European philosophers went mad and committed suicide."
"Exactly. And I read them all."
"And?"
He shook his head, smiling, embarrassed. "For a year or so… I really believed it: Here I am, staring into the abyss with Nietzche. Here I am, on the brink of insanity, entropy, meaninglessness: the Enlightenment's unspeakable godless rational damnation. One wrong step, and I'll go spiraling down."
He hesitated. I watched him closely, suddenly suspicious. Was he making this up as he went along? A little improvised Care-for-the-Whole-Patient routine? And even if he wasn't… we'd had different lives, different histories. What use was any of this to me?
I listened, though.
"But I didn't go spiraling down. Because there is no abyss. There is no yawning chasm waiting to swallow us up, when we learn that there is no god, that we're animals like any other animal, that the universe has no purpose, that our souls are made of the same stuff as water and sand."
I said, "There are two thousand cultists on this island who believe otherwise."
Michael shrugged. "What do you expect from moral flat-Earthers, if not fear of falling? If you desperately, passionately want to plummet into the abyss, of course its possible—but only if you work hard. Only if you will the entire thing into being. Only if you manufacture every last centimeter of it, on your way down.
"I don't believe that honesty leads to madness. I don't believe we need delusions to stay sane. I don't believe the truth is strewn with booby-traps, waiting to swallow up anyone who thinks too much. There is nowhere to fall—not unless you stand there digging the hole."
I said, "You fell, didn't you? When you lost your faith."
"Yes—but how far? What have I become? A serial killer? A torturer?"