“You say they should be satisfied with personal ignorance, rather than trying to keep the TOE out of human hands entirely. And of course, they’ll go on believing whatever they like, even if a successful TOE is announced; they’ve never let scientific orthodoxy stand in their way before. But the very beliefs they’ve chosen to hold dictate that they can’t ignore the fact that physicists – and geneticists, and neurobiologists – are tunneling ever deeper beneath everybody’s feet, and dragging to the surface whatever they find there … and what they find will influence every culture on Earth, in the long run.”

“And that’s reason enough to come here and intimidate innocent people with the mutilated corpse of Eugene O’Neill?”

“Be fair: if you’re conceding them the right to believe what they like, that has to include the right to feel threatened.”

The play was coming to a close; one of the actors was delivering a monologue on the need to show only compassion to poor scientists who’d lost touch with the soul of Gaia.

I said, “So what do you call claiming to know the divine will of the Earth itself – if not an equally global land grab, couched in warmer and fuzzier terms?”

Lee gave me a puzzled frown. “But of course. MR are like everyone else; they want to define the world on their own terms. They want to set the parameters, they want to make all the rules. Naturally, they’ve evolved an elaborate strategy to try to mask that fact – such as describing themselves with words like ‘generous’, ‘open’ and ‘inclusive’ – but I’m certainly not suggesting that they’re any more humble, virtuous or tolerant than the most fanatical rationalist. I’m just trying to explain their beliefs to you as an outsider, as best I can.”

“With your own universal explanatory scheme?”

“Exactly. That’s my arduous duty: expert guide and interpreter to every subculture on Earth. The sociologist’s burden. But then, who else could shoulder it?” She smiled solemnly. “I am, after all, the only objective person on the planet.”

We walked on through the warm night, passing right out of the carnival. After a minute or two, I turned and looked back. From a distance, it was an odd sight, compacted by perspective and framed by the surrounding buildings: a flamboyant sideshow embedded in the middle of a city – going about its ordinary life – which had built itself out of the ocean, molecule by molecule, and knew it . The adjacent streets certainly looked mundane and colorless in comparison – full of ordinary pedestrians: no one dressed as harlequins, no one juggling fire or swallowing swords – but the memory of the afternoon’s dive, and what it had revealed about the island, was enough to make all of the cult’s self-conscious exotica and desperately cheerful busyness fade into insignificance.