"What do you normally do all the time?" Rybys asked. "Lie in your bunk listening to the Fox? The foodman told me that; is it true? That doesn't sound to me like much of a life."Anger touched him, a weary anger. He was tired of defending his life-style. So he said nothing.
"I think what I'll lend you first," Rybys said, "is C. S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain. In that book he-" "I read Out of the Silent Planet," Asher said.
"Did you like it?"
"It was OK."
Rybys said, "And you should read The Screwtape Letters. I have two copies of that."
To himself, Asher thought, Can't I just watch you slowly die, and learn about God from that? "Look," he said. "I am Scien- tific Legate. The Party. You understand? That's my decision; that's the side I found. Pain and illness are something to be erad- icated, not understood. There is no afterlife and there is no God, except maybe a freak ionospheric disturbance that's fucking up my equipment here on this dipshit mountain. If when I die I find out I'm wrong I'll plead ignorance and a bad upbringing. Mean- while I'm more interested in shielding my cables and eliminating the interference than I am in talking back and forth with this Yah I have no goats to sacrifice and anyway I have other things to do. I resent my Fox tapes being ruined; they are precious to me and some of them I can't replace. Anyhow God doesn't insert such phrases as 'your behind' in otherwise beautiful songs. Not any god I can imagine."
Rybys said, "He's trying to get your attention."
"He would do better to say, 'Look, let's talk.'
"This apparently is a furtive life form. It's not isomorphic with us. It doesn't think the way we do."
"It's a pest."
Rybys said, pondering, "It may be modifying its manifestations to protect you."
From what?"
From it." Suddenly she shuddered wildly, in evident pain. "Oh goddam it! My hair is falling out!" She got to her feet. "I have to go back to my dome and put on that wig they gave me. This is awful. Will you go with me? Please?"