,rebuttal ,by ,,betsy ,,curtis ,illustrated by ,,giunta ,immortality8 ,like anything else1 it may be a matter of definition1 or just of the point of view4444 ,,the ,,star by ,arthur ,c4 ,clarke was by all odds the most popular story in the first issue of ,,infinity1 and probably one of the most popular science-fiction stories to be published anywhere in #aiee4 ,it was also highly controversial1 and in ,rebuttal ,betsy ,curtis presents the other side of the question--plus an idea that seems to be totally new4 ,the result1 we think you'll agree1 is one of the outstanding science-fictional events of #aief4 ,transcriber's ,note3 ,this etext was produced from ,infinity ,science ,fiction1 ,june #aief4 ,extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the ,u4,s4 copyright on this publication was renewed4 ,they brought ,father ,phillip ,burt to ,st4 ,luke's as our share of the research project on the mysterious disease which afflicted most of the crew of the recently returned ,phoenix ,nebula expedition4 ,news of the disease1 of course1 was not spread beyond the research teams1 as the public seems to fear a plague worse than damnation itself4 ,and it didn't seem to be a very serious disease3 ,father ,phillip was easily the worst case of all2 and although several members of the expedition had died1 their deaths could be evaluated as due to secondary infections of common enough earth origin4 ,very few of the crew members were in actual pain2 but ,father ,phillip was in constant agony which no amount of sedation seemed to calm4 ,i ran the customary tissue cultures and biopsies1 including those on internal organs not customarily available4 ,we were given an excuse for getting internal samples of tissue when ,father ,phillip's appendix flamed into infection4 ,and although ,i did not find a general infecting organism1 what ,i did find was enough to send me trotting up to his room on the double4 ,i suppose ,i should explain here that ,i1 ,father ,niccolo ,molina1 am head research pathologist for ,st4 ,luke's and that ,i don't1 therefore1 meet the patients personally very often4 ,but ,father ,phillip ,i had to meet4 ,his day nurse1 ,sister ,mary ,felicia1 met me at the door in her crisp white teflon overall4 ,father is very uncomfortable today1 she told me4 ,the incision is not healing at all and he keeps trying to talk and then breaking off in the middle of a sentence with the pain4 ,talking about anything in particular8 ,i asked suspiciously4 ,the merest chit-chat4 ,the weather 444 pleasantries about the hospital 444 jokes about doctors in particular4 ,he doesn't have a very high regard for doctors1 it seems4 ,thinks they are notable atheists1 ,i gather4 ,she smiled4 ,many thanks for the diagnosis1 ,sister1 ,i told her gravely4 ,then ,i added1 ,i suppose you are having to maintain a considerable quarantine and decontamination routine as ,father's nurse8 ,oh yes4 ,in this wing1 you know1 we are all in solitary1 approaching no persons other than our patient and the doctors 444 sometimes for as much as three months after the end of a case4 ,it provides excellent time for a retreat1 which is why most of us apply for such duty4 ,she pointed to the small prie-dieu in her tiny cubicle1 which stood as a buffer between the contagion room and the hallway of the ward4 ,if ,i am right about the nature of ,father ,burt's disease1 ,i told her1 you will soon see the end of this case1 and without any three months' decontamination1 either4 ,she smiled again4 ,you couldn't say a happier thing1 she said1 even though ,i shall probably apply for a leprosy case if ,i am relieved of this one4 ,i've become very concerned about ,father ,phillip4 ,good4 ,he needs your prayers as no man probably ever needed them before4 ,i'll see him now4 ,i crossed her small room and opened the inner door and went in4 99 99 99 99 99 ,father ,phillip was lying flat in the narrow white bed1 his arms lying listlessly on either side of the slight hump of his body under the sheet4 ,the big bulge halfway down was his knees over a pillow1 the usual position for post-operative appendectomies4 ,he squeezed out a smile with an effort4 ,morning1 doctor1 he said4 ,father ,nick1 ,i smiled back4 ,father ,nick ,molina of ,pathology1 ,father4 ,his wasted body jerked as if with a knife thrust4 ,then he said1 ,excuse me4 ,i had forgotten that there were doctors who were not laymen4 ,i'm sorry4 ,he drew up a shoulder against his cheek in a curious gesture1 then shivered4 ,sorry for what8 ,i asked4 ,just sorry1 ,i guess4444 ,he winced and was silent4 ,sorry for me8 ,well1 yes4 ,that ,i'm not a layman8 ,you could put it that way4 ,that's a very interesting statement1 ,father1 and one about which ,i want to know a good deal more after ,i've asked you some other questions4 ,you see1 ,i think ,i know what's the matter with you1 and it's definitely curable4 ,it is not curable4 ,his voice had a flat finality1 and his lips drew into a thin firm line4 ,let me ask you the questions anyway1 ,father1 ,i said4 ,he gave no other sign1 ,have you ever looked through a microscope8 ,at the little beasties8 ,yes1 in college4 ,well1 that's what ,i have just finished doing with a number of slivers of living tissue from your body4 ,do you know what ,i saw that would bring me up here8 ,i might1 he answered warily4 ,what do you think8 ,cancer1 maybe4 ,no1 cancer cells have their own pattern of behavior which is very pretty and1 of course1 no longer at all deadly4 ,you do not have cancer2 but the cells of your kidneys1 for instance1 are doing something ,i've never seen live kidney cells doing4 ,and what is that8 he said1 as if he really couldn't care less4 ,nothing in particular4 ,this is unheard of indeed4 ,kidney cells are busy little widgets doing a tremendous job night and day4 ,like the individual muscle fibers of the heart1 they work on year after year with no vacations1 no coffee breaks1 secure in the knowledge of their purpose4 ,no pseudo-sermons1 please1 ,father6 ,father ,phillip's voice was stern4 ,you don't have to ,peter ,rabbit up biology for me4 ,a scholar indeed to have heard of ,peter ,rabbit1 ,i laughed but he did not smile4 ,then ,i asked1 ,do you want to see how real kidney cells--yours---are behaving8 ,i have a projecting microscope in the basement4 ,do you want to see what's going on8 ,not particularly4 ,if you think you can cure me1 go ahead and try4 ,are you willing to pray for your own recovery8 ,no6 ,he spat out the word with a ferocity that seemed to surprise even himself4 ,then ,i am going to sermonize indeed4 ,and you are going to listen1 my dear little kidney cell4 ,oh1 go ahead4 ,but ,i warn you that ,i know something that will cancel it all in advance4 ,he had developed more force of personality than he had showed since ,i came in4 ,oh8 ,then suppose you tell me about that4 ,i always do better in rebuttal4 99 99 99 99 99 ,and he blurted it out 444 the whole story of the ,phoenix ,nebula expedition and its discovery of the memorials of that beautiful race which was destroyed utterly in the explosion of its star 444 the supernova which was our own ,star of ,bethlehem4 ,so you see1 he concluded1 we found out that ultimate dreadful secret of the cosmos1 that there is no plan1 no purpose1 no good ,god who watches the fall of the sparrows with tender concern4 ,to whom could ,i pray for my recovery8 ,to the random spin of electrons or planets8 ,to a petty tribal totem8 ,to nothing6 ,we found out8 ,you and the crew8 ,i gave them what answers ,i could4 ,they asked you 444 and for a fish you gave them a stone1 is that it8 ,scold away1 he said tonelessly4 ,i would not lie to them4 ,the poet ,dante1 ,i began4 ,spare me the poets1 he said bitterly4 ,the poet ,dante1 ,i repeated firmly1 in his recounting of the vision of ,paradise1 came at last to the ,outside4 ,he had pressed on just as you of the expedition had pressed on1 ever outwards1 looking for ,the ,purpose4 ,he was fortunate1 of course1 in not actually making his expedition physically1 in spite of pretending that he did so4 ,because space seems to be too big for man to make anything of while he's in the flesh4 ,anyhow1 when ,dante got ,outside1 the whole universe did a strange flip-flop4 ,if you can imagine a tennis ball really turning inside-out and every other atom of the universe being compacted at the center and the atoms of the original ball rarefying outwards1 you may have his ,rosa ,mystica4 ,at any rate1 you can understand that the further out you go1 the more you look at the same thing no matter in which direction you look 444 like every direction being ,south from the ,north ,pole 444 so you might as well say that you are looking at a ,center when you have reached the periphery and look farther out4 ,for the purposes of analogy1 ,i suppose8 ,he was still bitter4 ,for the purposes of making it clear what ,i want you to do4 ,i want you to turn inside-out4 ,i want you to be ,god1 so to speak1 for a few minutes4 ,indeed8 ,indeed4 ,for those minutes1 at least1 you have done with searching for ,him further and further out 444 where you must have thought ,he was 7and ,he is1 of course7 or you'd probably have been a nuclear physicist or a cytologist like myself4 ,consider yourself1 then1 the deity of yourself1 your body1 of each personality-packed cell within it4 ,those cells respond more or less well to your purposes and your plans4 ,you love them all and they love you1 whether or not they know it very well4 ,now think back 444 how did you explain it to your baby incisor when it first felt the pushing of a second tooth underneath8 ,that it was expendable8 ,that it was no longer part of your purpose8 ,i don't suppose ,i felt that ,i was accountable to my teeth4 ,grumpily4 ,but at any rate1 your purposes had not changed1 had they8 ,i suppose not4 ,now listen closely1 ,god4 ,suppose you actually told your teeth that you didn't need them any more 444 and your heart cells that had been contracting along so bravely 444 and your marrow cells that had been making blood 444 and your stomach and your spleen 444 you told each and every cell that it was probably a good enough cell but that really there was no purpose in their doing anything as you yourself had no purpose and probably didn't exist anyway4 ,then what8 ,they'd go right on working4 ,what a man tells his cells can't affect them4 ,you know that4 ,truculently 444 as if to say3 you can't fool me4 ,they would begin to quit right then and there4 ,a man might not be able to tell his cells much1 but remember1 a god can4 ,now let's go a step further in4 ,let a cell be ,god and let its individual molecules be its creatures4 ,and this ,god tells ,his creatures that it's all over 444 no more purposes1 no more action because there's no reason for it 444 what then8 ,the molecules break down8 ,facetiously4 ,exactly4 ,and the atoms disperse and the electron shells fall away and what happens after that1 ,i'm hardly prepared to say4 ,hardly4 ,amusedly now4 ,now back to man as man1 not ,god1 for the next4 ,while you and your eager predecessors were pushing outward to the stars1 ,i and mine were exploring cells4 ,and we found cells dying from simple lack of faith 444 or1 you might say1 from an excess of faith in purposes which had been abandoned4 ',our ,god said so and so' they insisted1 long after their ,god had revised his plans to such and such4 ,changeable gods do not interest me4 ,boredly4 ,i'm glad to hear it1 ,i told him4 ,that's fairly important4 ,the discovery part of this investigation1 however1 is that man does act as a god to his cells1 can tell them things and know that they hear his still small voice4 ,and among other things which man has to say to his cells is his promise of immortality to each and every one4 ,that's going too far1 ,i think1 ,father ,phillip objected seriously4 ,the body dies4 ,man has a ,precedent1 ,i said quietly4 ,but1 ,i added1 you have just told me that it was a number of bodily deaths which destroyed your faith in all pattern and purpose4 ,is that comparable8 ,not only is it comparable 444 it is1 you might say1 one of the myriad identical petals of the ,mystic ,rose4 ,and it is the one ,i know something important about4 ,you see1 ,i have witnessed the immortality of the cell4 ,that's my contribution to the journals1 if not to the instruction of the world which doesn't read them4 ,oh1 ,i know 444 every cell that's alive is merely a daughter cell of one original cell1 so that cell is immortal4 ,i don't mean that at all1 even though that's true4 ,you might say that ,i mean ,i have seen the souls of 'dead' cells in heaven4 99 99 99 99 99 ,incredulously3 ,through the projecting microscope in the basement8 ,no1 you don't see them with eyes or hear them with ears1 ,i assured him4 ,i thought not4 ,but that doesn't mean they're not there4 ,the first time was in a placenta from the garbage can4 ,we had been culturing polio viruses in human placentas 7very interesting personalities viruses are1 too7 and ,i'd been sent a whole placenta more than ,i needed4 ,what can a mother tell a placenta which has been doing its work and is still in excellent shape1 just like that civilization in the ,phoenix ,nebula some two and a half millennia ago8 ,does she say1 ',there's nothing more for you in time or space2 the baby is born1 ,i abandon you to utter nothingness'8 ,very rarely4 ,and even then she doesn't mean it4 ,but the life does go out of the cells4 ,and disperses to ,god1 glorifying ,him in no uncertain terms4 ,this is what ,i heard and saw1 with a ,god-given perception which is not in my eyes and ears4 ,you don't mean intuition1 surely1 he objected disgustedly4 ,let me put it another way with another question4 ,with what ears do you hear the music of the spheres8 ,you are too much the poet4 ,i don't follow you4 ,he was puzzled4 ,to be very prosaic1 then1 how do you sense the 'turnover' or change in energy level of the lone electron of a hydrogen atom in interstellar space8 ,by deduction from whatever type of recording is made from a radiotelescope4 ,you have no physical nerve endings to sense this directly8 ,of course not4 ,but you are quite sure1 nevertheless1 that so gross a creature as man may be aware of so slight an emission of energy8 ,yes4 ,and that what man can be aware of1 ,god is also aware of8 ,it follows1 if ,god is aware at all4 ,if there is a ,god1 then1 there wouldn't be much chance that ,he didn't know about such gross creatures as the men of the ,phoenix8 ,excuse me 444 ,i've gone far afield4 ,you said the radiotelescope4 ,well1 a few other doctors and ,i have been working on an instrument to measure cellular action currents--in living cells1 of course2 and ,i had added an auxiliary component which was supposed to find out what became of certain suspected possible energy emissions not accounted for or required by chemical processes in the cell4 ,where there's smoke there's fire1 you know 444 and where there's energy there's apt to be more energy4 ,and here was a nice piece of fresh dying tissue in beautiful condition4 ,i put a tiny sliver into the infrascope just as a young child will put anything that comes his way into his mouth for analysis 444 and ,i saw the scintillations on the plate which ,i knew signalled the ascent of the souls of the cells1 the binding energies 444 one flash for each dying cell body 444 calculated later 444 one quantum of binding energy1 one soul6 ,and so they were gone 444 done 444 dissipated into your machine 444 souls no longer4 ,father ,phillip's sigh was one of infinite disappointment4 ,binding energy to light 444 light to mass1 maybe 444 and mass to energy again 444 or is there anything but energy in the final analysis8 ,you astronomers profess to know something of this4 ,why is it1 then1 that when you bump head-on into life you suppose it to be mysteriously something else8 ,something capable of complete extinction1 of contradicting the laws of the universe8 ,but ,i digress again4 ,i am sorry4 ,i have not said what you are waiting to hear4 ,father ,phillip drew in a long breath4 ,in a frenzy of spirit ,i worked for months to refine the instrument and to make more precise the registering and recording1 daily trying various tissues in the original machine 444 getting reacquainted1 too1 with the personalities of various types of cells in the big projecting mike4 ,today ,i can show you1 or any interested person1 the endurance of personality in the energy quanta after the cell body is dead4 ,does this make a difference8 ,father ,phillip's sigh this time was a relaxation of his whole being4 ,somehow it does1 he said1 but ,i don't know why4 ,you know1 ,i assured him1 that the crux of the ,phoenix matter was the question of personal immortality4 ,if the souls of the ,phoenix folk are in the hand of ,god1 what does it matter to you or to me where their bodies are8 ,suppose1 just before the end1 ,god told them that ,he would bless their physical passing and set it for a sign to a younger people that their savior was at hand8 ,you have no way of knowing that ,he did not4 ,you do know that ,he said3 ',other sheep ,i have which are not of this flock4' ,and when your own body dies1 you may even meet your beloved folk of the ,phoenix ,nebula and there shall be 'one flock and one ,shepherd4' ,father ,phillip's hand reached out and ,i grasped it4 ,he returned the pressure firmly4 ,thank you1 ,father1 he said gravely4 ,i have been in mortal danger of making a mistake4 ,you have been sent to me4 ,as you were sent to the crew of the expedition1 and have not yet wholly failed them4 ,how do you feel at this moment 444 in your body8 ,his look became abstracted and he seemed to be searching himself internally4 ,then he looked back at me with a shade of a grin4 ,my incision itches like fury1 he said1 and ,i need the bedpan4 ,so1 you are healing already8 ,now try to tell me a man can say nothing to his cells4 ,i drew back the sheet and observed the drying of the serum at the edges of the incision4 ,how soon can ,i get out of here8 he asked eagerly4 ,i must go to the other members of the crew at once6 ,first to confession1 ,i reminded him4 ,and then1 depending on ,god's will1 it may be weeks or even days4 ,i cannot predict the speed of a miracle4 99 99 99 99 99 ,and it was well ,i did not try4 ,it was a scant ten hours later that the figure of ,father ,phillip ,burt was wheeled in a chair to a waiting ambulance that was to take him to the first of the hospitals where a member of the crew lay in desolate quarantine4 ,his body was still frail1 but his smile was of radiant health4 ,he waved to me4 ,one flock1 he called1 and was borne away4