long. Do you know what I can’t understand about the Golden Dart Frog? Why such a tiny, beautiful creature is the most deadly poisonous animal on the planet. One frog – one half-inch-long frog – could kill five African elephants stone dead inside of a minute. Or twenty to thirty humans. If you put your bare hand on a branch where one has been sitting an hour before, its skin secretions could still kill you. I just don’t get it … Hey, Father, you got an answer to that? Why God made something so beautiful then made it so toxic?”
“There is room in God’s creation for all kinds of thing, Gabriel,” said the priest. “There are wonders we may never understand. His reasons may forever be beyond our grasp.”
Gabriel laughed and as he did so, his naked body swayed again. Macbeth saw Corbin tense.
“That’s good … I like that … ‘wonders we may never understand’. The Pope’s get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Gabriel. “But we really try to understand, don’t we? I mean, of the eight or nine million species on this planet, we are the only one trying to make sense of it all. You see, the Golden Dart Frog makes no sense to me because it carries a thousand times more poison than it would ever need to kill any of its natural predators. And you know something? We’re exactly the same. We don’t make sense, either. I mean, why are we so smart? We don’t need all of this intelligence.”
“I don’t get you,” said Corbin.
“Just like the Golden Dart Frog’s been overloaded with poison, we’re overloaded with all this brainpower. Brainpower we don’t really need to hang on to our place at the top of the pile. Look at all of this …” He swept an arm to indicate Boston glittering in the night. “All of this created by an ape. Art, science, music … none of it makes any sense. It’s absurd. Everything is absurd. What do you think, Peter? You gauge and measure and probe the human mind … What’s your take on it?”
“Human intelligence?” As he answered, Corbin took a clumsily casual step closer. He was now halfway between Macbeth and the naked man. “Like you said, we’re top of the evolutionary tree; it’s our intelligence that’s put us there.”
“Now that’s just not true, Peter, and you know it,” said Gabriel. “What about dinosaurs? One hundred and thirty million years at the top of the tree. Infinitely more successful than us. They didn’t need technology or civilization or culture. Our intelligence is actually an evolutionary threat, not an advantage – it has brought us close to extinction at our own hands within what? Two hundred thousand years of modern humans? Fifty thousand years of behavioral modernity? I mean,that’s not even a blink of the evolutionary eye. But in that tiny space of time we have pretty much succeeded in fucking up the planet we depend on and have developed the weapons we need to wipe ourselves out several times over. Yep, Pete … dinosaurs have us beat, all right.” Again he waved an arm to indicate the city spread out below. “They had all this beat.”
“I can answer your question, Gabriel.” The priest moved closer, uncertainly, again casting a nervous eye over the parapet’s edge. “Our wisdom, our inquiry, is God-given. He gave it to us so that we may
seek
to understand Him. And come to know our sins – the nature of sin. So that we can strive to know God.”
“What if I told you,” Gabriel said to the priest, “that I know God? That I know God in a way that you could never, ever understand? That I completely, totally understand the true nature of God?”
“No you don’t, my son,” said the priest.
“But I do,” said Gabriel, for the first time with feeling in his voice. Almost pain. “You’re the one who’s deluded. I’ve seen the answer, the truth, Father. And it’s a big, big truth. A truth so big and so beyond the imaginings of your tiny superstition that you’re incapable of understanding it.” He
“There is room in God’s creation for all kinds of thing, Gabriel,” said the priest. “There are wonders we may never understand. His reasons may forever be beyond our grasp.”
Gabriel laughed and as he did so, his naked body swayed again. Macbeth saw Corbin tense.
“That’s good … I like that … ‘wonders we may never understand’. The Pope’s get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Gabriel. “But we really try to understand, don’t we? I mean, of the eight or nine million species on this planet, we are the only one trying to make sense of it all. You see, the Golden Dart Frog makes no sense to me because it carries a thousand times more poison than it would ever need to kill any of its natural predators. And you know something? We’re exactly the same. We don’t make sense, either. I mean, why are we so smart? We don’t need all of this intelligence.”
“I don’t get you,” said Corbin.
“Just like the Golden Dart Frog’s been overloaded with poison, we’re overloaded with all this brainpower. Brainpower we don’t really need to hang on to our place at the top of the pile. Look at all of this …” He swept an arm to indicate Boston glittering in the night. “All of this created by an ape. Art, science, music … none of it makes any sense. It’s absurd. Everything is absurd. What do you think, Peter? You gauge and measure and probe the human mind … What’s your take on it?”
“Human intelligence?” As he answered, Corbin took a clumsily casual step closer. He was now halfway between Macbeth and the naked man. “Like you said, we’re top of the evolutionary tree; it’s our intelligence that’s put us there.”
“Now that’s just not true, Peter, and you know it,” said Gabriel. “What about dinosaurs? One hundred and thirty million years at the top of the tree. Infinitely more successful than us. They didn’t need technology or civilization or culture. Our intelligence is actually an evolutionary threat, not an advantage – it has brought us close to extinction at our own hands within what? Two hundred thousand years of modern humans? Fifty thousand years of behavioral modernity? I mean,that’s not even a blink of the evolutionary eye. But in that tiny space of time we have pretty much succeeded in fucking up the planet we depend on and have developed the weapons we need to wipe ourselves out several times over. Yep, Pete … dinosaurs have us beat, all right.” Again he waved an arm to indicate the city spread out below. “They had all this beat.”
“I can answer your question, Gabriel.” The priest moved closer, uncertainly, again casting a nervous eye over the parapet’s edge. “Our wisdom, our inquiry, is God-given. He gave it to us so that we may
seek
to understand Him. And come to know our sins – the nature of sin. So that we can strive to know God.”
“What if I told you,” Gabriel said to the priest, “that I know God? That I know God in a way that you could never, ever understand? That I completely, totally understand the true nature of God?”
“No you don’t, my son,” said the priest.
“But I do,” said Gabriel, for the first time with feeling in his voice. Almost pain. “You’re the one who’s deluded. I’ve seen the answer, the truth, Father. And it’s a big, big truth. A truth so big and so beyond the imaginings of your tiny superstition that you’re incapable of understanding it.” He
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