"Teresa?" Catherine Sickles called up the stairs. "Your father and I are heading out to get decorations for the Christmas cookies tomorrow. We'll be back in a few minutes."
"Okay, Mom, bye," Malcar called back. "See you later."
The front door slammed shut, and Malcar tossed aside the Baby-Sitters Club book she had been pretending to read in case someone came in. «Honestly, Teresa,» she said, «couldn't you have found something mildly interesting to stock your library with? Between your puerile devotionals and your pathetic teenage-girl fluff, it's amazing I can still think at all.»
This comment, like every other comment that Malcar had directed at her host since sunrise that morning, glanced off Teresa's psyche without leaving a scratch. «Interesting that your big holiday and ours were so close together this year,» she commented.
Malcar didn't reply. She supposed there would come a time, eventually, when she could think about Esiln Kalkat without flinching, but that time certainly had not come yet.
«They're even kind of the same sort of holiday, when you think about it,» Teresa said. «The Feast of Someone Getting a Body. Kind of appropriate that Gef should have been baptized when he was.»
This was the first time she had directly referred to her accomplishment of the previous day, and Malcar seized her opportunity. «I wanted to talk to you about that, Teresa,» she said. «Are you sure you did the right thing, baptizing that Hork-Bajir? yesterday?»
Her host's synapses instantly formed themselves into a pattern of extreme wariness. «What do you mean?» said Teresa.
«Well, I'm not a theologian, of course,» said Malcar, «but wasn't the point of the Incarnation, on your theory, to undo the effects of the sin of Adam?»
«Yes...» said Teresa cautiously.
«Well, then, what makes you think it did anything for someone like Gef? He's not connected to Adam the way you are, is he?»
«Hang on a second,» said Teresa. «You're not trying to say that Hork-Bajir are sinless, are you? Because Gef himself said...»
«No, no,» said Malcar impatiently. «I'm saying that they inherited original sin from a different source than you did, so maybe they weren't – what's the word – redeemed the same way you were. Maybe God has a completely different plan for them, and you're interfering with it by forcing Gef into your own mode of salvation.»
Bull's-eye, she thought with satisfaction, seeing the distress and uncertainty her words produced in Teresa's mind. How do you deal with someone who just wants to serve her God? By convincing her that she's letting God down. Elskir's a genius.
But then, before she could pat herself on the back and turn her attention to something else, Teresa, who had been praying fervently for guidance while Malcar was gloating to herself, said, «But that can't be right. St. Paul says that Christ died once for all. Doesn't "all" include Hork-Bajir?»
Malcar was momentarily nonplussed, but she rallied quickly. «I thought that just meant "all men",» she said. «After all, it doesn't include angels, does it?»
«Okay, fine,» said Teresa, «but what's a "man"?»
«Excuse me?»
«What does the word "man" mean in this context?» said Teresa. «A rational animal, right? As opposed to angels, which are pure spirits. Well, Hork-Bajir are rational, and they're animals. That means they're covered.»
«Well, I'll grant you that Hork-Bajir are animals,» Malcar muttered, «but I'm not sure about the other half of that... But then what becomes of the idea that Jesus had to be a part of Adam's race in order to redeem it? I'm pretty sure I remember Father Gullickson telling you about that, once.» And she activated the necessary memory synapses to flood Teresa's consciousness with the old priest's exposition of Cur Deus Homo.
Teresa sighed. «Yeah, I know,» she said. «And Anselm's a great saint and a Doctor of the Church, and I don't like to argue with him – but, you know, he admitted himself that he was just writing what seemed reasonable to him, and that God could easily show him better tomorrow. If he had known that there were fallen human-like beings in the universe who weren't descended from Adam, he might have followed a different line of argument.»
«That may well be your opinion,» said Malcar, «but it hardly answers my question. If it was necessary for one born of man to redeem the race of men, why was it not necessary for one born of Hork-Bajir to redeem the Hork-Bajir race?»
«Because the free gift isn't like the offense,» said Teresa. «Maybe it did take a thousand different Adams to populate the galaxy with fallen beings, but that doesn't mean it takes a thousand different Christs to redeem them all. Jesus is bigger than that.»
«So he singled out your one little planet and made it the only source of salvation in the galaxy?» said Malcar. «That hardly seems fair.»
«It's no worse than what he did with the Jews,» said Teresa. «If I don't mind that my ancestors had to be in contact with Jerusalem for me to find out that I was redeemed, why should Gef mind that his race had to be in contact with Earth?»
«And I suppose you can tell me why a loving God would arrange for redemption to be carried out in such a way that most of the redeemed would die without ever knowing about it,» said Malcar. (Strictly speaking, this, being a direct attack on Christianity as such, was a distraction from her goal of persuading Teresa that a good Christian ought not to be evangelizing aliens, but by this point she was starting to feel just generally contentious.)
«I guess because time and space are part of the whole curse-of-Adam thing,» said Teresa. «We won't have them in Heaven, you know. So if Jesus was trying to use death itself to overcome death, He had to use space and time to overcome space and time – and that meant that He had to start the Church in one particular time and place, and let it spread out to the rest of the universe from there.»
«You have an answer for everything, don't you, Teresa?» Malcar sneered.
«I don't,» said Teresa. «God does.»
«I see,» said Malcar. «Then perhaps, as his self-appointed Messenger to the Stars, you can tell me what, exactly, makes you think that you – you who avoid Mexicans because of an old schoolgirl rivalry, who agree with the Dove wrappers that chocolate is the answer to every problem, who can't even remember to pray without having a schedule – what makes you think that you can be any kind of witness to a being like Gef?»
This was not, as some readers may suspect, a mere flood of vitriol, but a quite deliberate attack on one of Teresa's weaker points. Like most saints-in-the-making, Teresa was acutely aware of her own flaws (Malcar's comment about her tendency to gluttony particularly went home), and it was not irrational for her Controller to try self-doubt as her weapon when reason failed. Indeed, for a moment, it seemed to have worked.
But then, as Malcar watched, a sudden, irrational surge of strength flowed into Teresa's spirit, and she spoke with the quiet confidence of Edith Stein in the gas chamber. «That's an easy one,» she said. «The answer is: Retro me, Satanas.»
Malcar derided this as an evasion, but Teresa said nothing more. Indeed, she said nothing more (despite Malcar's numerous attempts to provoke her) for the rest of the day, and, by evening, Malcar knew that she had lost. Unless she were to malthalamize her host so intensely as to completely break her spirit (which the Sub-Visser would surely notice, and reprimand), in two days' time Teresa Sickles would be back at her task, spreading the gospel of Christ from her cage in the Yeerk pool. Neither sophistry nor scrupulosity, it seemed, would suffice to stop her.
And what shall I do, then, Jimur Three-Four-Five? Malcar thought. You who first infested a vertebrate life-form – you who taught us the three ways of breaking a host – what would you do, were you in my place?
But the great Yeerk hero could give her no answer.