Walker Percy - Lost in the Cosmos

THE CAPTAIN: Let’s hear them.

Dr. Aristarchus Jones’s Proposal

Here are the facts:

The human species is finished on earth. Due to the delayed and cumulative effect of Ce 137 radiation or the reduction of ozone in the atmosphere by nitrous oxides and the resulting ultraviolet flare, male sterility is approaching 100 percent, and female is not far behind. In a word, we are either the last generation on earth or the next to last. You, Captain, and your crew are obviously fertile, but it is problematical how long you will remain so — a year? a month? And do you imagine that when your children mature sexually, they will be fertile?

My proposal: that we colonize Europa, one of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter. You, Captain, made a fly-by eighteen years ago and know better than I that it is probably habitable: planet-size, covered by water ice, evidence of newly emerging land — the famous greening seen nowhere else but here on earth — no vulcanism, no impact craters, what appears to be a river system and, most important of all, an atmosphere of 10 percent oxygen.

Your starship has sufficient reactor fuel for launch and to attain sufficient ramjet speeds to activate the hydrogen scoop. Hence, a journey of weeks.

Here in the good monks’ cellar I have found a supply of seeds, algae, plants, small mammals, and even insects. I have books, music, Shakespeare on cassettes.

As a matter of fact, we have no choice except to stay here and die. I will go along — you will need me as a technical adviser. Moreover, Tiffany and I already have a relationship. Who knows, I may not be totally sterile — no one ever is 100 percent. After all, it only takes one spermatozoon.

With a bit of luck, we can colonize Europa in much the same way as Europe colonized the New World, except that —and here is the exciting part! — there is no reason why we cannot develop a society such as the one my namesake lived in in ancient Ionia, a society based on reason and science, and do so without repeating the mistakes of the past, for example, the Dark Ages, two thousand years of Plato and Judaism and Christianity — a sexually free and peace-loving society where the sciences and arts can flourish freed from the superstitions and repressions of religion — no offense to the good monks, who are in fact invited to come along. I think it appropriate, with your permission, to change the name of Europa to New Ionia. At long last, we are going to put behind us forever the interminable quarrels of the people of the Book — first the Jews, then the Christians, then Islam. There will be no Middle East on Ionia, no Christian vs. Jew, no Christian vs. Moslem, Shi-ite vs. Sunnite, Moslem vs. Jew, Protestant vs. Catholic.

There is no reason why we cannot start a new society on another planet just as we started a new society in the New World.

In fact, we have no choice. Europa lives. This planet is dying.

There is no time to lose. I calculate that the launch window for Europa will occur for only a few days next month.

That is my proposal.

ABBOT: Are the children invited?

ARISTARCHUS: The space children are. It would make no sense to perpetuate genetic defects.

ABBOT: I see.

Abbot Leibowitz’s Proposal

Here are the facts:

The human species may or may not be finished on earth. Perhaps the incidence of sterility is lower in Seattle or New Zealand. We do not know.

But it makes no difference. In either case, I could not go.

Why not?

Because I believe that God exists and that he created the Cosmos (the Big Bang, as you vulgarly call it, embarrasses you, Aristarchus, doesn’t it?), that he created man through evolution, in the latest moment of which, perhaps the last Ice Age, man became ensouled and came to himself as man, body and spirit; that God thus created man as a person who had gifts of knowledge and love but most of all of freedom, that he somehow encountered a catastrophe, God alone knows what, used his freedom badly, and chose badly — perhaps chose himSELF, the one thing he can never know of itself, rather than God — and has been in trouble ever since. That, as a consequence, God himself intervened in the history of this insignificant planet, through a covenant with an even more obscure tribe, the Jews, through his son, a Jew who actually lived as a man on this earth, him and no other, through founding a church, the Catholic Church based on a very mediocre, intemperate Catholic, Peter, also a Jew; that he, God, is somehow inextricably and permanently, even hopelessly, involved with the two, the Jews and the Catholic Church, until the end of earth time.

In a sense, nothing has changed. Here is the Christian remnant, still hanging on, a slightly mad enclave of odd sorts, gentile-bums collected from the hedgerows and invited to the feast. And over there in Israel, we know, is still the Jewish remnant, still hanging on, long ago dispersed and now come back to the same place, proud and stiff-necked as ever, still persecuted, still fighting Assyrians. What has changed?

I am both. I am both Jew and Catholic, whether Jew or Catholic like it or not, and generally they do not, usually have no use for each other, in fact, and even less use for me. The Jews think I have apostasized, and the Catholics think I am a Jew. They don’t think of Jesus and Mary as Jewish. But me? I’m still a Jew. And they’re right. I am. Catholics are a queer lot — I’ve never really gotten used to them. I admire their, our, faith, adopted it in fact, but I wish they loved learning more, as they loved it in the High Middle Ages, loved science and art more, like our brother Aristarchus here, just as they loved them in the age of the great Giotto and Roger Bacon and the monk Copernicus and the great Galileo; like Moses Maimonides and Einstein; like the monk Gregor Mendel. We are a church of sinners, yes, but can’t sinners love science and art?

But the two, Jew and Catholic, are inextricably attached to each other, like Siamese twins at the umbilicus, whether they like it or not, and they both detest it, until the end of earth time.

I believe that we have the promise of God and his son that he, Jesus Christ, having come once to save us from the death of SELF in search of ITSELF without any other SELF, will also come again at the end of the world. We also have his promise that the Church will endure until the end of the world.

Now, it is also the case that I have no reason to believe that the Holy Father or a single bishop has survived the holocaust. As Dr. Jane Smith recently told me, jokingly but more seriously than she knew, I may very well be the Pope. That is to say, as an abbot, I have the episcopal power of consecrating priests. And if there are no bishops left and no Pope left, guess who that leaves. As abbot, I am in the apostolic succession, the direct line of laying on hands which goes back to Christ himself.

As Pope, my first act will be to revive the University of Notre Dame around a nucleus of Jewish scientists whom I shall lure from Israel. The Catholic Church is responsible for the birth of science in the West, but it got too rich, got distracted by family quarrels, and dropped the ball, which the Jews picked up.

Are you getting the point, Captain? I may be the only man left on earth who can consecrate priests. The only candidates for the priesthood I can see, not counting my little malformed innocents, are these boys, your sons, Krishna, Vishnu, Siddhartha, Oppie, Carl Jung, Chomsky, and John. Whether or not one or another chooses to become a priest is his business and God’s business, but it is my business to be around, to stay here in case the human race survives and needs priests.

And if it is the end, it is still my obligation to remain, because the Church will survive until the end of earth time and until Christ himself comes, and so, if I’m the putative head of the Church, as putative head I stay.