Hardscrabble Road(82)

“People have thought of it before,” Tibor said, “and it’s worse than you realize. Jehovah’s Witnesses will not have blood transfusions, even to save their lives. Christian Scientists do not consult conventional doctors or use conventional medicine. They use Christian Science practitioners instead. Christian Science practitioners pray with the sick person, but do not use medicines or medical technology. There have been cases involving the death of children—”

“—Good God.”

“Yes, Krekor, good God. There are states that have passed laws requiring parents to seek conventional medical care for children in spite of their religious beliefs, and those hold up when they are passed, because the child itself is not making the decision and the parent who does make the decision is not hurting only himself. And this is fine with me, Krekor. I have nothing at all against such laws to protect children. But I do have something against such laws to stop the adults involved in these religions from refusing medical care they deem to be sinful or inappropriate. Do I think they’re stupid to do this? Yes, dear God, yes. I think they are stupid almost to the point of criminality. But I also think that it must be their choice, and their decision, on their terms, and not mine.”

“And Jig Tyler, I take it, didn’t feel that way,” Gregor said.

“Dr. Tyler expressed the opinion that anybody who could look at the evidence and still think faith healing was a rational choice was not, in fact, rational, and that we do not allow mentally incompetent people to run around making decisions they are unable to make and hurting themselves in the process. If a person is mentally ill, we have hearings and commit him to a mental institution. If people persist in irrational and harmful behavior, we make laws against the irrational and harmful behavior. Like seat belt laws. He brought up the seat belt laws. That’s why I was thinking of them.”

“And that’s why you think he is capable of committing a cold-blooded murder?’

Tibor looked into his coffee cup. It was empty. “Krekor,” he said. “You have to understand something. Dr. Tyler is a serious person.”

“You mean he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor?”

“No,” Tibor said. “I mean he has, what, gravitas is the word, and it isn’t English. I’m sorry. He is a great mind, probably the greatest I have ever met. This is not a trick, or a joke. He can do things with his mind I can’t even understand, never mind do myself. He is a committed person. Nobody wins two Nobels and a Fields Medal if he isn’t. His books are outlandish and overwrought, but they are meticulously researched and meticulously documented. I can only guess how quickly and efficiently his mind works, and on how many levels. When we first met, we talked about the formation of the New Testament, and he quoted St. Ignatius to me, in demotic Greek. I went back and looked up the passage when I got home, and he had it exactly. From memory. From a field he has no professional interest in. In the course of our time on the committee, he quoted from or alluded to everybody from Niels Bohr to Charles Schultz. He’s read Dante in the medieval Italian and understood it. He’s seen every movie Arnold Schwarzenegger ever made. He speaks six languages and reads ten. He can play both Beethoven and Jerry Lee Lewis on the piano. It’s an encyclopedic mind, a comprehensive mind, and the most remarkably detailed memory I’ve ever encountered in anyone, ever. It’s not a ‘photographic’ memory, it’s something better. It’s a regular memory, just at four hundred times the effectiveness that most of us can manage. If I’d met him under other circumstances, I might have felt privileged to have some time to talk to him. But.”

“I knew there was a but coming,” Gregor said.

“If there wasn’t a but, you’d have no need to talk to me. There is a but, Krekor, yes. And it is that I think that Dr. Tyler does not think he is human, or does not think the rest of us are.”

“You mean, he thinks he’s God?”

“No, no, Krekor. He is not trite. I mean that he thinks there is a difference between us and him, a difference so vast it is not a difference in degree but a difference in kind. He sees us the way we see very intelligent dogs. We can love our dogs, but we don’t treat them the way we treat our grandmothers. Dogs do not have rights, because we don’t think they would know what to do with them. We put them down, if we think we have to.”

“That’s trite, though, isn’t it?” Gregor said. “The great genius who looks down on lesser mortals. I’d think that is as trite as it comes.”