“Missing pieces, Lestat. Of course! Imagine for a moment that I made a robot, a perfect replica of myself. Imagine I gave him all the encyclopedias of information that I could—you know, programmed it into his computer brain. Well, it would only be a matter of time before he’d come to me, and say, ‘David, where’s the rest of it? The explanation! How did it all start? Why did you leave out the explanation for why there was ever a big bang in the first place, or what precisely happened when the minerals and other inert compounds suddenly evolved into organic cells? What about the great gap in the fossil record?’ ”

I laughed delightedly.

“And I’d have to break it to the poor chap,” he said, “that there was no explanation. That I didn’t have the missing pieces.”

“David, nobody has the missing pieces. Nobody ever will.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“That’s your hope, then? That’s why you’re reading the Bible? You couldn’t crack the occult secrets of the universe, and now you’ve gone back to God?”

“God is the occult secret of the universe,” David said, thoughtfully, almost as if brooding upon it, face very relaxed and almost young. He was staring at the glass in his hand, maybe liking the way the light collected in the crystal. I didn’t know. I had to wait for him to speak.

“I think the answer might be in Genesis,” he said finally, “I really do.”

“David, you amaze me. Talk about missing pieces. Genesis is a bunch of fragments.”

“Yes, but telling fragments remain to us, Lestat. God created man in his own image and likeness. I suspect that that is the key. Nobody knows what it really means, you know. The Hebrews didn’t think God was a man.”

“And how can it be the key?”

“God is a creative force, Lestat. And so are we. He told Adam, ‘Increase and multiply.’ That’s what the first organic cells did, Lestat, increased and multiplied. Not merely changed shape but replicated themselves. God is a creative force. He made the whole universe out of himself through cell division. That’s why the devils are so full of envy—the bad angels, I mean. They are not creative creatures; they have no bodies, no cells, they’re spirit. And I suspect it wasn’t envy so much as a form of suspicion—that God was making a mistake in making another engine of creativity in Adam, so like Himself. I mean the angels probably felt the physical universe was bad enough, with all the replicating cells, but thinking, talking beings who could increase and multiply? They were probably outraged by the whole experiment. That was their sin.”

“So you’re saying God isn’t pure spirit.”

“That’s right. God has a body. Always did. The secret of cell-dividing life lies within God. And all living cells have a tiny part of God’s spirit in them, Lestat, that’s the missing piece as to what makes life happen in the first place, what separates it from nonlife. It’s exactly like your vampiric genesis. You told us that the spirit of Amel—one evil entity—infused the bodies of all the vampires … Well, men share in the spirit of God in the same way.”