Jonathan took a few deep, nervous breaths, and let him see the shock and understanding spread across his face. Even the most irritating of Thaw Tint’s revelations—Star Trek and Michael Jackson’s song—were beginning to make sense. He sat forward in his chair and raked his fingers through his hair, still trying to catch his breath and steady himself.

But the alien went on, saying, “The progression of developments that would have made you a threat are inevitable. We could not have risked even the remotest possibility of your coming out into the Galaxy and washing over us, even if you failed to understand for a short time the folly of not destroying us. You see that, don’t you?” His voice was very low now, almost croaking like that of a frog, and Jonathan knew that this Sydney Greenstreet would never laugh.

“They make a desert and call it peace,” Hollis whispered.

“Tacitus,” Thaw Tint said immediately, “a Roman historian who could not step out of history.”

“And you do?” Hollis said. “Pragmatism works best in moderate situations. It breaks down in extremes, when real moral issues confront each other. Beware, dear octopus.”

“You persist, my dear Hollis, in not understanding this crucial point. It was clearly our survival or yours, sooner or later. Nothing more, nothing less. What is it that we should be wary of?”

“Do you believe in God?” Hollis asked in a sudden, shrill voice, and Jonathan saw that she was about to lose her composure.

“What do you mean?” Thaw Tint asked. “I’ve seen this reference on your broadcasts, and I’ve never been exactly clear what you mean by this God.”

“A supreme being who watches over the universe, who fucking stands outside of everything the way Tacitus couldn’t. Has your culture ever suspected that such a being might exist? Have you ever perceived such a presence?”

“God? But the universe is self-sufficient! Didn’t one of your great scientists conclude that in Stephen Hawking’s universe there was nothing for a god to do?”

“So, you’re godless,” Hollis said, as if confronting someone who owed her money.

“Godlessness, as you call it,” Thaw Tint replied with what seemed to Jonathan almost like patience, “is the first step toward innocence.”

So that’s why they destroyed us, Hollis thought, because they’re godless, and felt ashamed of her sudden fundamentalism. It was not worthy of a Jesuit. She recalled the words of Saint Anselm: “The fool hath said in his heart that there is no God.” But this was no race of fools. No god had ever punished them, and never would. Surely, if there was a God, punishment would have been visited on Thaw Tint and his kind. If this crime was not big enough to bring God’s wrath, then nothing would be, or he didn’t care, or he wasn’t there—but she was trying to resist that final step from agnosticism to atheism, trying to fathom God’s mysterious ways, trying to tell herself that it was not for her to judge God, that all of life was a test to make one worthy to see God face-to-face, and that the martyrdom of humanity was just such a test. But did it have to be so extreme— nothing like what was asked of Job or Abraham, nothing at all like the twentieth century’s efforts at genocide, unlike anything…