Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

“A new tooth, a disappearing tattoo. I know I was the one who said there’s no order of difficulty in miracles, and it’s true, but every time we produce a new type of miracle it helps make it obvious that all miracles are possible, that we have to change our vision of what’s possible and what isn’t. And it helps me to know that.”

“What did you learn out there, Sara?”

“Quite a bit.” Her hand moved to touch the crystal at her throat. “That’s why I’m the way I am right now,” she said. “It’s not tiredness, it’s that I feel overwhelmed. I found out what our job is.”

“And?”

“We’re supposed to cure cancer.”

“We’ve already done that. Didn’t you say Sue Anne had cancer and cured it?”

“Not individually. We’re supposed to cure the planet’s cancer.”

“How do we do that? Go around wiping out the disease all over the globe?”

She shook her head. “No, you still don’t understand. I’m not talking about the kind of cancer that Sue Anne had, the cancer that human beings get and die of.” She took a breath. “The planet itself has cancer,” she said. “And we’re it. And that’s what we’re supposed to cure.”

She said, “This may be difficult to explain. Nobody sat down with me and told me things. I was shown, I was given to understand. Do you know what cancer is, Guthrie?”

“More or less. Something starts growing in you, and if they don’t cut it out it keeps on growing until it kills you.”

“Yes.”

“Or unless you cure it yourself. The good cells run around eating up the bad cells, or however Sue Anne did it.”

She nodded. “Something starts growing in you,” she said. “The something that grows is part of you. Let me tell you what cancer is. Cancer is cellular ego.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Let me try to explain. Picture a cell in your body. It’s a part of one of your organs and it has a job to do and it does it. But one day something upsets that cell and causes it to change its behavior. Maybe it’s a cell in your lung, and you’ve been bombarding it with tobacco smoke for years until the cell’s engulfed in tar. And finally the cell says, ‘Hey, this isn’t working. I’m in real trouble here, and if I just keep on doing my usual job I’m not going to survive, and then where’ll we be?’ So the cell goes on a crash program for survival. It multiplies like crazy to guarantee it’ll be around for a while. It kills any other cells that get in its way. And it does such a good job of survival that it spreads wildly all through the system, and eventually it kills the body it’s been a part of, and, because in the long run it’s just a cell and not a complete organism and it can’t survive alone, finally it dies along with the rest of the body.”

“And that’s what cancer is?”

“What it is and how it works. Cancer’s a cell with a mind of its own. It may be an irritant, like tobacco smoke or asbestos fibers or food additives, that nudges it into a cycle of eccentric behavior. It may be emotional. Look at all the widows who manifest breast cancer. They stuff their grief and their anger at being left, and a cell feels threatened by all that psychic pain, and starts growing in self-defense. One way or another we choose our diseases and find a way to bully our cells into creating them. One way or another we activate the cell’s ego and the label we put on what follows is cancer.”

“Why cellular ego? How does ego enter into it?”

“Because your ego is the part of you that believes you’re separate from the rest of the universe, and that thinks you have to be separate in order to survive. When a cell behaves as if it had an ego, and allows that ego to dictate its behavior, the result is cancer.”

“Okay, but how does a planet get cancer? The earth’s not a living thing.”

“Of course it is. Did you think it was just a chunk of lifeless rock?”

“No, but it’s a setting for life rather than a living being. It’s a home for all of us, it’s a nurturing environment, but it’s not a creature itself, is it?”

“Isn’t it? Every last bit of the planet’s alive, you know. Every molecule, every atom, is buzzing with activity. Nothing stands still. Everything is changing, growing, evolving, going through cycles of birth and death. The rocks are alive. The water is alive.”

“And the hills,” he said. “With the sound of music.”

She leaned forward, touched his arm. “Guthrie,” she said, “I saw the earth the way the astronauts have seen it. It looks like a beautiful blue pearl, and it’s a living being. The rivers are its bloodstream, the atmosphere is its respiratory system. The rocks and mountains are its bones. Everything that lives, everything that is, is part of a tissue or organ or system of the planet it lives on.”

“And what are we?”

“As human beings? You can answer that by looking at what we have that distinguishes us from the other animals. That’s what we are to the planet.”

“What does that make us, the earth’s opposable thumb?”

She laughed. “Oh, that’s lovely. No, our wonderful thumbs are just tools we grew to make it easier to be what we are. It’s our brains that make us unique, and that’s what we are. The human race is the cognitive brain of the planet earth.”

“I think the earth must have a headache.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “It does.”

“No, I was just joking, Sara.”

“I wasn’t. The earth has worse than a headache. It’s got brain fever. The human race is cancerous, it’s a planetary brain tumor.”

“‘The goddamned human race.’ That’s what Mark Twain called it.”

“More than that, surely. God damned perhaps, but God blessed as well. Awful and wonderful.”

“Those meant the same thing once, you know. Full of awe and full of wonder. Now one’s good and the other’s bad.”

“Yes,” she said. “Awful and wonderful. Could you get me some water, Guthrie? This is thirsty work.”

“Ego,” Sara said. “Cancer. Human beings behave like cancer cells. They think they can survive independently at the expense of the rest of the world. They spoil the planet. They kill the other animals and they kill each other. Every faith tells them that they’re all one flesh, that all men are brothers, but none of them act as though they believe it.”

“Hasn’t it always been that way? Isn’t that just part of the human condition?”

“Yes. And for thousands of years it didn’t matter. Man, exercising his cognitive brain, indulging his ego, could do whatever he wanted as he grew in mastery over his environment. We could kill his brothers and be killed by them in turn. There’s no danger in it. He kills, he’s killed, the earth abides and the mountains remain. Souls learn the lesson they came here to learn. Life goes on. The planet goes on.

“Oh, there are some events that look catastrophic. Genocide erases the last passenger pigeon and almost wipes out the bison and the Jew. It is indeed awful and wonderful, the history of mankind. On the bus ride west I would look out at a river or a mountain and see its progress through all of time, and every vista I looked upon that way was awful and wonderful, because that’s what man’s story has always been.

“And it didn’t matter. The earth could allow man to slip his leash and range at the effect of his ego. He wasn’t dangerous. The harm he did wasn’t lasting.” She took a breath. “But it’s different now.”

“How?”

“His tools and weapons are more powerful. Cain doesn’t just kill Abel now. He blows up the world. You can’t do the things you used to do when they have the power to do permanent damage on a global scale. Man is strong enough to destroy the planet now. And he’s been doing it.”