"That gene?"
"No, it was another, but it showed me what was possible. The human brain could be far smarter than it is. But is there a, how you say, bargain?"
"Trade-off."
"A terrible bargain. To have this great intellect, you have to give up everything else. That's how the brains of autistic savants accomplish such feats. They do one thing, and the rest is a distraction, an annoyance, beyond the reach of any conceivable interest. Their attention truly is undivided."
"So all hyperintelligent people would be retarded in some other way."
"That is what we all assumed, because that is what we saw. The exceptions seemed to be only mild savants, who were thus able to spare some concentration on ordinary life. Then I thought ... but I can't tell you what I thought, because I have been served with an order of inhibition."
He smiled helplessly. Sister Carlotta's heart fell. When someone was a proven security risk, they implanted in his brain a device that caused any kind of anxiety to launch a feedback loop, leading to a panic attack. Such people were then given periodic sensitization to make sure that they felt a great deal of anxiety when they contemplated talking about the forbidden subject. Viewed one way, it was a monstrous intrusion on a person's life; but if it was compared to the common practice of imprisoning or killing people who could not be trusted with a vital secret, an order of intervention could look downright humane.
That explained, of course, why Anton was amused by everything. He had to be. If he allowed himself to become agitated or angry -- any strong negative emotion, really -- then he would have a panic attack even without talking about forbidden subjects. Sister Carlotta had read an article once in which the wife of a man equipped with such a device said that their life together had never been happier, because now he took everything so calmly, with good humor. "The children love him now, instead of dreading his time at home." She said that, according to the article, only hours before he threw himself from a cliff. Life was better, apparently, for everyone but him.
And now she had met a man whose very memories had been rendered inaccessible.
"What a shame," said Sister Carlotta.
"But stay. My life here is a lonely one. You're a sister of mercy, aren't you? Have mercy on a lonely old man, and walk with me."
She wanted to say no, to leave at once. At that moment, however, he leaned back in his chair and began to breathe deeply, regularly, with his eyes closed, as he hummed a little tune to himself.
A ritual of calming. So ... at the very moment of inviting her to walk with him, he had felt some kind of anxiety that triggered the device. That meant there was something important about his invitation.
"Of course I'll walk with you," she said. "Though technically my order is relatively unconcerned with mercy to individuals. We are far more pretentious than that. Our business is trying to save the world."
He chuckled. "One person at a time would be too slow, is that it?"
"We make our lives of service to the larger causes of humanity. The Savior already died for sin. We work on trying to clean up the consequences of sin on other people."
"An interesting religious quest," said Anton. "I wonder whether my old line of research would have been considered a service to humanity, or just another mess that someone like you would have to clean up."
"I wonder that myself," said Sister Carlotta.
"We will never know." They strolled out of the garden into the alley behind the house, and then to a street, and across it, and onto a path that led through an untended park.
"The trees here are very old," Sister Carlotta observed.
"How old are you, Carlotta?"
"Objectively or subjectively?"
"Stick to the Gregorian calendar, please, as most recently revised."
"That switch away from the Julian system still sticks in the Russian craw, does it?"
"It forced us for more than seven decades to commemorate an October Revolution that actually occurred in November."
"You are much too young to remember when there were Communists in Russia."
"On the contrary, I am old enough now to have all the memories of my people locked within my head. I remember things that happened long before I was born. I remember things that never happened at all. I live in memory."
"Is that a pleasant place to dwell?"
"Pleasant?" He shrugged. "I laugh at all of it because I must. Because it is so sweetly sad -- all the tragedies, and yet nothing is learned."
"Because human nature never changes," she said.
"I have imagined," he said, "how God might have done better, when he made man -- in his own image, I believe."
"Male and female created he them. Making his image anatomically vague, one must suppose."
He laughed and clapped her rather too forcefully on the back. "I didn't know you could laugh about such things! I am pleasantly surprised!"
"I'm glad I could bring cheer into your bleak existence."
"And then you sink the barb into the flesh." They reached an overlook that had rather less of a view of the sea than Anton's own terrace. "It is not a bleak existence, Carlotta. For I can celebrate God's great compromise in making human beings as we are."
"Compromise?"
"Our bodies could live forever, you know. We don't have to wear out. Our cells are all alive; they can maintain and repair themselves, or be replaced by fresh ones. There are even mechanisms to keep replenishing our bones. Menopause need not stop a woman from bearing children. Our brains need not decay, shedding memories or failing to absorb new ones. But God made us with death inside."
"You are beginning to sound serious about God."
"God made us with death inside, and also with intelligence. We have our seventy years or so -- perhaps ninety, with care -- in the mountains of Georgia, a hundred and thirty is not unheard of, though I personally believe they are all liars. They would claim to be immortal if they thought they could get away with it. We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time."
"Surely you're not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings!"
"It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees -- knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying."
"You speak in theological terms, and yet I thought you were an unbeliever."
"Theology is a joke to me. Amusing! I laugh at it. I can tell amusing stories about theology, to jest with believers. You see? It pleases me and keeps me calm."
At last she understood. How clearly did he have to spell it out? He was telling her the information she asked about, but doing it in code, in a way that fooled not only any eavesdroppers -- and there might well be listeners to every word they said -- but even his own mind. It was all a jest; therefore he could tell her the truth, as long as he did it in this form.
"Then I don't mind hearing your wild humorous forays into theology."
"Genesis tells of men who lived to be more than nine hundred years old. What it does not tell you is how very stupid these men all were."
Sister Carlotta laughed aloud.
"That's why God had to destroy humanity with his little flood," Anton went on. "Get rid of those stupid people and replace them with quicker ones. Quick quick quick, their minds moved, their metabolism. Rushing onward into the grave."
"From Methuselah at nearly a millennium of life to Moses with his hundred and twenty years, and now to us. But our lives are getting longer."