"I'm sure that God, being God, is big enough to cover all the bases in any number of universes. My job's a lot easier if I concentrate on just the one God and the one universe."

"Ah. Well, even if God is in his Heaven, or God is the heavens--the universe, spacetime--is he subject to the laws by which spacetime works?"

"Aquinas said God exists outside time."

"I said spacetime. Spacetime's indivisible. Let's assume Aquinas was full of it and God and spacetime are indivisible."

"Immanent rather than transcendent."

"Right. God and spacetime are one. Spacetime is bound by physical laws. God, being everywhere in spacetime, obeys its physical laws, including the one that sets the cosmic speed limit, which nothing with mass can exceed."

Helen yawned noisily, without trying to smother it. "Gab, it's late, I'm sleepy, and I have the feeling you're about to unleash a brain-teaser. Chaplain, we should go before he--"

"Hear me out, Helen, then I'll escort you to your tent and tuck you in personally."

"Bad enough, brain-teasers. Now you want to give me nightmares."

"Hear me out. By definition, the omnipresent, omniscient God must be simultaneously aware of everything occurring everywhere. Yet, if nothing, and that includes information, if nothing can travel across the universe faster than light--"

"God is everywhere," Madiel said, "and locally aware of everything everywhere."

"That doesn't solve the problem. Even if part of God takes care of business in the Andromeda galaxy while part keeps tabs on us here on Earth, since information can't move any faster than light, one hand of God doesn't know what the other's been up to until a million years after the fact. And we haven't even touched on how God manages to be both in the twenty-first century of the Christian era and here in the Paleozoic--"

"And we're not about to, either," Helen said sharply, but the astronomer ignored her.

"--unless there is something to the many-worlds, many-gods hypothesis after all."

"However he manages it," said Madiel, "God is here."

"Ah. Well, I imagine if there's a god here, it's not any kind humans ever worshipped. Not one they'd want anything to do with. Don't gods evolve as well as organisms? In five thousand years of human history, elemental forces evolve into cat-faced Bastet and goat-assed Pan, thence, into the old man with the long white beard and his son and that ghost. No, our paleodeity isn't just unhuman, it's probably unsympathetic to chordates generally. It's the eldritch ur-god of trilobites and sea scorpions."

"The sea has many voices," said the chaplain, "many gods and many voices."

"Bible verse?"

"T. S. Eliot. You raise many interesting points, Doctor Gabbert. I'm glad I never had you in my Sunday school classes. You might've have caused mass apostasy."

"Is faith so fragile?"

Helen growled again and got heavily to her feet, "That's it. It's time to call it a night, Gab, and tell you you've behaved perfectly horribly to our guest."

"Not at all," Madiel said as he stood. He and Gabbert shook hands. "I've enjoyed myself."

"So," said Gabbert, "have I."

"Good night, Gab. We're leaving. I hope you're satisfied now you've run everybody off. Thank you for the part of the evening that was lovely, you jerk."

Gabbert bowed slightly. "Always a pleasure to see you, Helen. Do be careful on the path going down."

Halfway down the slope, Helen said to the chaplain, "Allow me to apologize for certain of my less socialized colleagues in the scientific community."

"He didn't offend me."

"He was trying to with all his might. If we'd stayed he'd have kept trying till he succeeded."

"I had a good time. It reminded me of bull sessions back in school. Next time, of course, I'll expect to find myself under attack and give as good as I get."

"You didn't do badly. Still. He was attacking your faith."

"My faith can withstand attacks. What would faith be worth if it was fragile? And, really, he did hold my interest the whole time. He's quite a stimulating talker, your friend."

"He's not--well, he is my friend. But it's in spite of the way he is, not because of it. If you were the pope, he would have tried to get you chasing your own tail about papal infallibility."

Madiel laughed. "I don't think that's much of an issue among Catholics any more."

"Whatever. If you were an atheist, he'd have figured out some way to attack your lack of faith."

"Are you a Christian, Doctor Wheeler?"

"Thinking about it."

"Then you know that Jesus died for everyone, even people who disagree with you and are disagreeable to you."

Just as they arrived at the edge of the camp, the black sky turned a creamy purple, and the moon peeked around the edge of a backlit cloud at the world. The cloud withdrew with unhurried dignity.

"And here around us," Madiel said softly, "is the rolling primeval sea, the begetter. The dragon of the deep, the deep itself, the salt sea, the mother who gives birth to the gods. Or whom the gods and the first heroes of men, Nun, Apsu, Tiamat, slay and from whose disorganized substance they fashion the world, bringing order out of chaos."

The purple sky became creamier. The surface of the sea sparkled as the moon, bowed like a wind-filled sail, beat its course along the horizon.

"Wow," said Helen. "They do good work."

When they reached her tent, they shook hands, she entered, and he walked slowly through the camp. The windows of the communications hut were illumined from within, but he saw no sign otherwise of human activity, and between the time he bade Helen Wheeler goodnight and the moment he came within sight of the dock he saw no one, overheard no conversation.