Robert Sawyer - Watch

Holy cow!

It looked like Bashira, but her face was distorted, like the reflection Caitlin had seen of herself in the back of the spoon. “Bash?” she called out tentatively.

“It’s me,” came the muffled reply. Caitlin opened the door and—

Ah, that was a relief! Bashira looked entirely normal. She was wearing a blue headscarf today, and was holding a multicolored box.

“Happy birthday, babe!” Bashira said.

“Oh, my God!” said Caitlin. She reached for it and for the first time understood what the expression “heavier than it looks” meant; it weighed a ton. “Come in, come in.”

Bashira did so and immediately began taking off her shoes—which was, Caitlin had discovered to her embarrassment, a Canadian custom; she’d blithely entered people’s houses without removing hers several times before someone had gently set her straight.

Caitlin’s mom had appeared at the top of the stairs. “Hello, Bashira.”

“Hi, Dr. Decter. Hope you don’t mind me stopping by. I brought Cait a present.”

Caitlin was torn. She looked up at her mom, wondering what to do about Webmind. But her mother said, “That’s fine, Bashira. Caitlin, don’t worry—I’ll, um, look after things up here.”

Caitlin smiled. “Okay.” She could have led Bashira into the living room, but her mother would have been able to hear them there; instead, they headed down to the basement. It wasn’t the most comfortable place—bare cement floor, bare walls with insulation showing, an old TV, a couple of worktables, and two comfortable swivel chairs her father had— ahem —borrowed from the Perimeter Institute. Kuroda had worked down here while he’d been staying with them.

Caitlin put the gift package on one of the tables.

“Go ahead,” Bashira said. “Open it.”

She did. It took several seconds for her to figure out what she was seeing: a boxed set of hardcovers of the Harry Potter novels. “These are,” Bashira announced, “like, the best books ever. You said you’d never read them, and now that you’re learning to read normal printed books, these are the ones to start with.” She pointed at the spine of the first one. “And these are the Canadian editions—none of that Sorcerer’s Stone crap for us.”

Caitlin hugged Bashira. “Thank you! But—but they must have cost a lot of money.”

“Hey,” said Bashira, sitting down on one of the swivel chairs, “your parents were paying me to help you get around school when you couldn’t see, you know. I’m sure your mom would be pleased that I’m stimulating the economy.”

Caitlin sat as well, facing her. She was still getting used to Bashira’s appearance. It was funny, she knew: she was looking at her as if Bash had been the one who’d changed. “So, is your dad at PI today, too?” Caitlin asked.

“Totally,” said Bashira. “He wouldn’t miss a moment with Professor Hawking.”

“Have you met him?”

“Oh, yeah.” She imitated his mechanical voice. “Even—people—who—claim—every thing—is—predestined—look—before—they—cross—the—road.”

“Cool!” said Caitlin. “I’d love to meet him.”

“Well, he’s here for a month; I’m sure you’ll get your chance. And, yes, my dear, ‘Caitlin Hawking’ does have a nice ring to it.”

“Har har,” said Caitlin. “He’s practically British royalty; he probably can’t marry outside the Anglican Church.”

Bash smiled. “I guess. You Christians all look alike to us.”

“I’m not Christian,” said Caitlin.

“You’re—you’re not? What are you?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Well, what are your parents?”

“My mom’s a Unitarian, and my dad’s a Jew.”

Bashira’s eyebrows shot up. “He is?” She’d heard that tone before: You’re Jewish? I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that…

“Well, he doesn’t practice, and we don’t keep kosher.”

“But you’re Jewish?”

“Under Jewish law, you are what your mother is, but… yeah, sure. Decter is an Israeli name.”

“Oh. You always looked, I dunno, Polish or something to me. I thought your name was a shortening of something longer.”

“Well, it used to be Decterpithecus, but we changed that about five million years ago.”

Caitlin had hoped for a laugh, but Bashira’s tone was earnest. “And your mother’s a Unitarian?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Which is… what?”

Caitlin shrugged a little. “To tell you the truth, I don’t actually know. She doesn’t talk about it much. But I know it’s popular with academics and intellectuals.”

“And you—you said you’re ‘nothing.’ Don’t you believe in God?”

Caitlin shifted in her chair. “I’m not large on the big G, no.”

“I don’t know how you can’t believe in him,” Bash said. “I see him all around us, in a thousand details every day.”

She thought about that. There were things in math that she saw when others didn’t—things that were so very clear to her but that her classmates couldn’t see. Could God be like that? Could Bashira really be detecting something that, for whatever reason, Caitlin just wasn’t wired to see? Hell, for most of her life, she hadn’t been wired to see anything —but she’d had no trouble accepting that others did see; she never for a moment thought it was all some big con job, some lie or delusion. It never occurred to her to say to Stacy, “Oh, yeah, sure you see the moon, Stace. And can you see the monkeys flying out of my butt?”

But she knew in her bones that Bashira was wrong about this. And yet, Bash was bright, and so were her parents. “Does your dad believe in God?” Caitlin asked.

“Sure, of course. Prays facing Mecca five times a day.”

Caitlin still wasn’t good at mental pictures, but the thought of Dr. Hameed doing that at the Perimeter Institute did strike her as incongruous.

“In fact…” said Bashira, but then she stopped.

“Yes?”

Bashira tipped her head. “Well, we left Pakistan for a reason, you know. My dad worked for the government there.”

“A civil-servant physicist?” said Caitlin. “You mean he was at a public university?”

“No,” said Bashira softly. “The government. The military. He worked on nuclear weapons.”

Caitlin’s voice was suddenly soft, too. “Oh.”

“And he couldn’t keep doing that. The Qur’an says, ‘Fight in the Way of God against those who fight you, but do not go beyond the limits. God does not love those who go beyond the limits.’ ”

Caitlin considered this. “I’ve often thought that if the people with the highest IQs stopped doing what those with the lowest IQs wanted them to do, the world would be in a lot better shape. Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, Zyklon B…” She paused, then said, “If God existed, we’d know it. But, instead, we have things like the Holocaust.”

Bashira made an expression Caitlin hadn’t yet seen on any other face—but she guessed it was what a person must look like when tiptoeing through a minefield. “But, Cait, God can’t interfere in Man’s doings; if he did, there’d be no such thing as free will, right?”

“There are times,” Caitlin said quietly, “when free will isn’t the most important thing.”

Bashira frowned but didn’t reply.

Caitlin took off her glasses; sometimes it was easier for her to think when everything was a blur instead of a distracting mess of visual details. “And,” she said, “even setting aside free will, what about natural disasters, then? Like earthquakes or hurricanes? Or that outbreak of bird flu in China? Those weren’t Man’s doing; they were God’s doing—or, at least, if he didn’t actively cause them, surely, if the God you’re talking about exists, he could have stopped them, right? But he didn’t. So… so… do you guys read Mark Twain here in Canada?”