Christian Scientists

Christian Scientists function in the story less as a developed religious community than as a recognizable human label that the Greenes exploit to survive on Earth. May Greene proposes the affiliation when the danger of raising a child in secret becomes unavoidable: the family must appear ordinary, yet Terence Greene’s body requires masks, lenses, and continual concealment. The claim gives the Greenes a plausible reason to resist doctors and transforms religious nonconformity into a shield for an extraterrestrial identity.

The Cover and Its Purpose

May Greene’s proposal rests on the assertion that Christian Scientists do not believe in doctors. Dan Greene initially considers the explanation far-fetched, but the alternative is worse. Under the rules governing Milotan agents, a child would have to attend school at about six, and medical examinations could expose the biological disguise created for Terence. A private tutor would itself make the family conspicuous in Washington Heights and might require revealing the secret to another Milotan operative. The Christian Scientists cover therefore solves two problems at once: it preserves the Greenes’ appearance as average middle-class people and supplies a culturally intelligible reason for refusing ordinary medical scrutiny.

The cover is especially useful because it does not require the Greenes to construct an elaborate public story. They need only present themselves as a family whose religious convictions place doctors outside acceptable practice. That narrow explanation can absorb suspicion without inviting the more radical possibility that Terence is not human. The story repeatedly shows Earth society reaching for familiar categories—foreign nationality, mutation, radiation damage, or religious difference—rather than imagining life from another planet.

School Admission and Institutional Protection

When Terence Greene reaches six, May Greene enrolls him in a private day school. A boarding school is impossible, and the school’s fees are sufficiently high to make the principal accommodating. May explains that the Greenes are Christian Scientists and therefore that Terence must not undergo medical examinations. The principal accepts the arrangement, giving the family temporary access to human education without requiring the physical inspection that could reveal the masks and lenses fitted by Dr. Robinson.

The arrangement exposes the dependence of institutional tolerance on class and presentation. The school is willing to respect the stated religious position partly because the Greenes can pay its substantial fees and appear to be respectable parents. Christian Scientists thus operate as both a belief claim and a form of bureaucratic negotiation. The label does not alter Terence’s body; it alters the school’s interpretation of that body and temporarily prevents the institution from treating examination as routine.

Medicine, Concealment, and Misrecognition

The religious cover exists within a larger system of medical anxiety. Dr. Robinson has fitted Terence Greene with small masks and contact lenses in a laboratory unusually complete for a New Jersey general practitioner. The disguises are expensive, and the Greenes can scarcely afford them, but they are necessary because Terence’s appearance cannot safely be left unaltered. Christian Scientists provide the public explanation for avoiding the examinations that might reveal this technological and biological concealment.

The story’s medical language also shows how difference is translated into human pathology. When Terence’s body is exposed during swimming lessons, the school principal assumes that he is a freak and speculates about radiation from bombs, concealed governmental knowledge, and the effects of nuclear competition. May Greene then strengthens the misunderstanding by suggesting that doctors once thought Terence was a tumor and that X-rays were involved. The principal’s hostility shifts toward sympathy because the child can now be classified as a victim of radiation or medical misfortune rather than as an alien.

This episode makes the Christian Scientists cover part of a broader politics of interpretation. The Greenes fear that doctors will discover the truth, while the school fears liability if an injured child is denied medical care. Medical examination is therefore not merely a health procedure; it is the point at which private identity can become an official case. The religious claim delays that conversion, but it cannot abolish the institution’s power to demand explanation when Terence’s body refuses the school’s assumptions.

Exposure and the Limits of the Strategy

The cover protects Terence only until ordinary school life creates a situation that concealment cannot control. Swimming lessons begin in his grade, and the need to appear unclothed or nearly so exposes the difference that masks and lenses had hidden. Terence tells May Greene that he is different, making the accusation personal: the secret maintained for his protection has also made him feel alien and deprived him of an explanation that other children possess.

The principal’s reaction reveals the cover’s final limitation. She reproaches May for failing to disclose that the boy was a freak and says that, had she known, she would not have allowed him to swim with the others. Her response is not an investigation into Milotan biology but a rapid movement among familiar explanations. She accepts the possibility of bomb fallout and assumes that the Greenes have concealed a human medical condition. Christian Scientists have prevented routine inspection, yet the school still excludes Terence once his body becomes visibly incompatible with its practices.

May preserves the deception by adopting the emotional posture expected of a parent of a severely afflicted child. She says that the family had become accustomed to concealing Terence’s condition and agrees that he cannot remain at the school. She proposes moving from Washington Heights to the suburbs and transferring him to a school where no one will know him. The principal, now sympathetic, asks May to tell the authorities what is wrong with him in advance. The cover has not revealed the truth; it has redirected suspicion into a socially legible story of disability, radiation, and parental concealment.

Narrative Significance

Christian Scientists represent the instability of social categories in a world where identity is enforced through institutions rather than discovered through appearance alone. The Greenes are Milotan agents, Terence Greene is biologically Milotan yet born on Earth, and the family’s religious label is neither a transparent confession nor an entirely arbitrary invention. It is a human disguise used to preserve a nonhuman life.

The strategy also creates an ironic contrast between belief and function. The Greenes invoke Christian Scientists to avoid doctors, but the practical purpose is not spiritual healing; it is protection from biomedical detection. The school accepts the claim as a conventional difference, while the family uses it to conceal a radically different species. When swimming makes Terence’s body visible, the label continues to shape the scene by supplying the authorities with an explanation they find easier to accept than extraterrestrial existence.

As a result, Christian Scientists become an instrument of both refuge and misrecognition. The cover helps Terence enter human school, but it also places him inside the school’s hierarchy of abnormal bodies, where his difference is tolerated only when framed as illness or damage. Its temporary success demonstrates how thoroughly institutions depend on familiar narratives—and how precarious any protection becomes when a hidden body appears in the wrong setting.