'Let me make use of a mathematical analogy. Do you know what Godel's Theorem is?"

'No."

'Well, neither do I, not exactly. But I can give you an approximation of it. It's a twentieth-century idea, I think. What Godel's Theorem asserts, and nobody has ever been able to disprove it, is that there's a fundamental limit to the rational reach of mathematics. We can prove all the assumptions of mathematical reasoning down to a certain bed-rock point, and then we hit a level where we simply can't go any farther. Ultimately we find that we've descended beyond the process of mathematical proof to a realm of unprovable axioms, things that simply have to be taken on faith if we're to make any sense out of the universe. What we reach is the boundary of reason. In order to go beyond it - in order to go on thinking at all, really - we are compelled to accept our defining axioms as true, even though we can't prove them. Are you following me?"

'All right. What I propose is that Godel's Theorem marks the dividing line between gods and mortals."

'Really," Lawler said.

'This is what I mean," said Quillan. 'It sets a boundary for reasoning. The gods occupy the far side of that boundary. Gods, by definition, are creatures who aren't bound by the Godel limits. We humans live in a world where reality ultimately breaks down into irrational assumptions, or at least assumptions that are non-rational because they're unprovable. Gods live in a realm of absolutes where realities are not only fixed and knowable down beyond the level of our axiomatic floor, but can be redefined and reshaped by divine control."

For the first time in this discussion Lawler felt a flicker of interest. 'The galaxy is full of beings which aren't human, but their maths isn't any better than ours, is it? Where do they fit your scheme?"

'Let's define all intelligent beings who are subject to the Godel limitations as human, regardless of their actual species. And any beings that are capable of functioning in an ultra-Godelian realm of logic are gods."

'Let us suppose that the gods themselves at some point must reach a Godel limit, a place where their own reasoning powers - that is, their powers of creation and recreation - run up against some kind of barrier. Like us, but on a qualitatively different plane, they eventually come to a point at which they can go thus far, and no farther."

'The ultimate limit of the universe," Lawler said.

'No. Just their ultimate limit. It may well be that there are greater gods beyond them. The gods we're talking about are encapsulated just as we mortals are within a larger reality defined by a different mathematics to which they have no access. They look upward to the next reality and the next level of gods. And those gods - that is, the inhabitants of that larger reality - also have a Godel wall around them, with even greater gods outside it. And so on and so on and so on."

Lawler felt dizzy. 'To infinity?"

'Yes."

'But don't you define a god as something that's infinite? How can an infinite thing be smaller than infinity?"

'An infinite set may be contained within an infinite set. An infinite set may contain an infinity of infinite subsets."

'If you say so," replied Lawler, a little restless now. 'But what does this have to do with the Face?"

'If the Face is a true Paradise, unspoiled and virgin - a domain of the holy spirit - then it may very well be occupied by superior entities, beings of great purity and power. What we of the Church once called angels. Or gods, as those of older faiths might have said."

Be patient, Lawler thought. The man takes these things seriously.

He said, 'And these superior beings, angels, gods, whatever term we choose to use - these are the local post-Godelian geniuses, do I have it right? Gods, to us. Gods to the Gillies, too, since the Face seems to be a holy place for them. But not God Himself, God Almighty, your god, the one that your church worships, the prime creator of the Gillies and us and everything else in the universe. You won't find Him around. here, at least not very often. That god is higher up along the scale of things. He doesn't live on any one particular planet. He's up above somewhere in a higher realm, a larger universe, looking down, checking up occasionally on how things are going here."

'Exactly."

'But even He isn't all the way at the top?"

'There is no top," Quillan said. 'There's only an ever-retreating ladder of Godhood, ranging from the hardly-more-than-mortal to the utterly unfathomable. I don't know where the inhabitants of the Face are located on the ladder, but very likely it's somewhere at a point higher than the one we occupy. It's the whole ladder that is God Almighty. Because God is infinite, there can be no one level of godhood, but only an eternally ascending chain; there is no Highest, merely Higher and Higher and Even Higher, ad infinitum. The Face is some intermediate level on that chain."

'I see," said Lawler uncertainly.

'And by meditating on these things, one can begin to perceive the higher infinities, even though by definition we can never perceive the Highest of all, since to do that we'd have to be greater than the greatest of infinities." Quillan looked toward the heavens and spread his arms wide in a gesture that was almost self-mocking.