“A different universe?” Carlyle supplied, understanding breaking in her eyes like dawn. “A different universe, with a different monotheistic God?”

Jehovah does not nod. “In My own universe I Am all, complete, sufficient, the First and Final Cause, perfect in Myself. Yet, for some reason, I find Myself born here. In this universe I can perceive what is within the limit of My human body’s senses, remember what I have experienced, and wield the prostheses of human technology, but that is all. I have learned, I think, to eke out more from what this flesh can do than any human, but no finite thing can substitute for lost infinity.”

The dream bubble burst here. Sensayer training awoke in Carlyle, ingrained doubt piercing the thin film of belief, so she fell back on routine questions. “How long have you known you were a God?”

“My universe does not have time,” the foreign God replied. “I find it cruel, like death and distance and misunderstanding, barriers separating that which would rather be whole. I do not yet understand why This Universe’s God would make such things. Space. Time. I met Time at the moment of My birth, but since meeting it, and in My native infinity outside it, I have always known What I Am.”

“What happened to your universe when you left and came to this one?”

“I have not left,” He answered. “I cannot leave My universe any more than Being can leave this wood”—he looked to the pew, solid beneath them both—“or Space this place. I Am My universe, always, Creator, touching, making, enabling, and understanding every part of it, though I also sit here in this flesh.”

“So you can still sense your universe even though you’re here?”

Jehovah closed His eyes, the only sense we have the power, at our will, to shut off. “If Unity, which grants absolute understanding of all things, falls under the label ‘sense,’ then yes. It is all right that you struggle to believe.”

“What?” Carlyle’s voice cracked, startled.

“That I am What I say.”

Carlyle looked at her hands. “I believe that you believe it.”

“Most of My fathers tell themselves it does not matter whether I Am a God or not, so long as I do My duty by their Hives. But you know better.”

The sensayer nodded. “If it were true, the existence of another God and another universe, it would be the most important fact in the history of science, as well as the history of religion and everything else.” She buried her fingers in her blond-tinged hair. “I’m trying to understand what you’re describing, but it’s a lot, and, for me personally, at least, belief can’t come before understanding.”

“I likewise find Anselm difficult,” Jehovah answered.

Carlyle smiled; they have read the same theologians, this priest and This God, equal in that at least. “It will take me time,” Carlyle continued, “to work through what it would mean for there to be two universes, and two monotheistic Gods. Until I explore all the implications, I’m not at the level where I can believe or disbelieve, since I can’t yet compare it to my current beliefs. In my experience I have to examine a belief system for at least a few weeks, sometimes a few years, before I know it well enough to believe or disbelieve.”