Gef seemed mildly nonplussed by the simplicity of his rebirth. He looked down at his wrist-blades and began waving them back and forth, as though expecting the seal of God to appear on them. "Gef not feel different," he said.
"No, you won't," said Teresa. "At least not for a while. The baptism changed your soul, but it left your body the same as before – unless maybe it made it able to rise again, but that's not something that you can feel. Eventually, though, if you keep remembering that you have Jesus's life in you instead of your own, and do everything with that in mind, it'll be obvious that you've changed – not to you, maybe, but to other people."
"Even to Toloth Two-Nine-Four?" said Gef.
"Especially to him, I would think," said Teresa. "If the change is really permanent, it'll affect your thoughts more than anything else, and Toloth ought to catch on to that pretty quickly. And speaking of Toloth, you should probably let him know that we're done out here, so he can... you know..."
She trailed off, unwilling to actually say what she knew Gef had to do. Gef, however, surprised her by nodding and saying it himself. "Yes," he said. "Gef must be host to Toloth now, so Teresa can teach Toloth about Jesus."
"Exactly," said Teresa. "Do you think you can do that?"
"He already has," said Gef's voice, and Teresa jumped slightly. After three years as a host, she still hadn't gotten used to the way Yeerks could reclaim a host's body without apparent effort.
"Um... hello, Toloth," she said.
"Hello, Teresa," said Toloth, with mocking courtesy in his tone. "So you have made my host fit for your god, have you?"
"That was the idea," said Teresa.
"Odd that you should feel the need to bother," said Toloth. "I somehow doubt that a Hork-Bajir could contribute much to this elegant philosophical edifice of yours."
"It's not really about that," said Teresa. "The philosophy's important, but it's secondary. What we're really about is making sure that people go to Heaven."
Toloth cocked his head. "To other worlds, you mean?" It was a natural enough motivation for a primitive religion, but it seemed out of character for this one – and, besides, if a large number of humans had a religious impulse to go to other planets, surely the Empire could make a Taxxon-style deal with them instead of bothering with surreptitious conquest.
Teresa shook her head. "Not in the sense that you mean, no," she said. "When a Christian uses it, 'Heaven' doesn't mean the sky; it means the place beyond space and time, where the righteous go when they die to be with Jesus forever."
"Ah," said Toloth, a touch of condescension creeping into his voice. "Like the gardens of Mother Sky, where venerable Hork-Bajir feast on the sweet bark of the sun and moon."
Teresa shrugged. "If you like, yeah."
"I see," said Toloth. "And what must one do to attain this privileged realm?"
"Well, it's not really a question of what we do," said Teresa. "Left to our own devices, we can't get within shouting distance of Heaven. That's why Jesus had to die."
Toloth blinked. "Had to what?"
"Die," said Teresa. "Weren't you listening when I told Gef about that?"
Toloth frowned, and examined Gef's recent memories. Yes, the girl had made some reference to Jesus's death by torture, but it had been too brief to make a real impression on him. He said as much, and Teresa let out a self-chastising laugh. "Shows you what kind of apologist I am," she said. "The most important article in the Creed, and I just skim right over it."
"Well, then," said Toloth, "perhaps you would care to elaborate on it now?"
"I suppose I ought to," said Teresa. "You remember how I said that Jesus entered into the womb of a girl named Mary and became a human?"
"I do."
"Well, when He grew up, He gathered a bunch of disciples together and began teaching people about God: what He was, what He did, what He wanted them to be, that sort of thing. But he also talked about Himself: how He was God, and how all the prophets had known about Him, and how you had to participate in His life if you wanted to have any credit with God. That didn't make the ordinary religious leaders very happy – especially when He started talking about how pathetically corrupt those religious leaders were, with their tricky ways of distorting God's law to circumvent the demands of justice. So they paid one of his disciples to betray him, trumped up a pseudo-trial, and persuaded the local representative of the empire that ruled them to have Him executed by slow strangulation."
Toloth nodded judiciously, as though this were the best that could be expected under the circumstances. "Yes, I see," he said. "But, being a god, of course he returned to life eventually?"
"Two days later," said Teresa. "A couple women coming to tend to the body were the first to see Him, but, by the time He went back to Heaven about a month later, there were a couple hundred people who had."
"Ah," said Toloth. "Well, it is a pleasant enough story, but I don't quite see why you should consider it unusually important. Surely you have tales of Jesus doing many other equally striking things..."
"Oh, sure, He performed a bunch of other miracles," said Teresa. "Still does, for that matter. But the Resurrection was the important one, because that was the reason He came to Earth in the first place."
Toloth cocked his head. "So he could die?"
"So he could save us from our sins," said Teresa. "Remember what I said three days ago? Sin brings death; you can't get around that. If a sel-whatever-that-word-was... a person who dominates his planet..."
"Sellith," said Toloth.
"Right, that. If a sellith is sinful, he has to die. But if the sellith is also God, then He's stronger than sin or death: He can take not just one person's sin, but the sins of everyone in the universe, and bury them in His own grave, then come back out of that grave and start living all over again. And that's what Jesus did."
It was a poor explanation, she knew. If she had been St. Paul or somebody, she could have done infinitely better. But, however inadequate it was, it seemed to have conveyed the appropriate ideas to Toloth, who leaned back on his haunches and made a thoughtful-sounding rumbling noise deep in his chest cavity. "So the ritual that you performed with my host just now," he said, "would be a way of letting him participate in this death of Jesus's, so that he can 'start living all over again' himself?"
"That's the basic idea," Teresa confirmed.
"I see," said Toloth. "Well, I shall have to remember all this. Perhaps someday, if I ever get tired of my own life, I can come have you pour water over me and start a new one."
He was being flippant, Teresa knew, but she felt a shiver run down her spine anyway. For all her joy at Gef's conversion, she still wasn't used to the notion of baptizing aliens, and the suggestion that a Yeerk, of all beings, might someday come asking her for the water of salvation was both thrilling and disturbing at the same time. Of course, it would never really happen, but still...
"Yeah," she said with a slight smile. "Yeah, maybe you can."