Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

“For now, this will have to do. We will cross the next bridge when we come to it.”

“I think we’ve already reached it, Director Pyragy. The subject has also asked about killing sapients.”

Pyragy swiveled to face her, his face rigid with horror. “He has asked about killing humans?”

Selena shook her head sharply. “No, no; his questions were philosophical in nature. In particular, he focused on the concept of justified homicide: he is having a hard time understanding that.”

“What? He wants to slaughter bunnies but he has a hard time understanding justified homicide? That is such a bizarre juxtaposition that I frankly suspect him of playing a joke on you, Doctor.”

“Director, I am afraid you are misconstruing my statement. The subject does not have a problem understanding the ‘homicide’ part of ‘justifiable homicide.’ His confusion stems from what he considers the endless and overfine moralizing that informs the extreme constraints our society imposes upon sufficient justification for killing another sentient. He called our attention to the ethics of killing ‘obsessive, pointless, and unnatural.’”

“And I presume you informed him of his error?”

“Director, for him, that opinion is not an error: that is the voice of his nature speaking.”

“Nature be damned. We were killers, once, too. But we have trained ourselves to be otherwise. So can the kzinti. This is the moment when his inclinations must not be indulged: he must be conditioned away from an easy acceptance of wanton slaughter.”

Selena stilled her drumming fingers. Here’s where the real fight starts-unavoidably. “Director, I’m sorry, but this is simply not a question of behavioral training. It is a matter of his nature, and it is not subject to our nurture, as so many of the ARM’s idealists presumed when this project started. Sapience is not a guarantee of ethics that evolve around a universal core of pluralism or sanctity of life. For the kzinti, there are worse things than killing, and that’s true for them no matter which end of equation they find themselves on: killing or being killed. What we need to realize is that it had to be that way for them, that there wasn’t any viable alternative. For them, the impulse to hunt, chase, and kill is a positive evolutionary trait. It’s how they survived as a species. Every part of both their inbred impulses and early social construction was determined by increasing their chances of success in taking on big, lethal prey animals: the only kind that could sustain a tribe of kzinti, given their immense appetites.”

Pyragy’s eyes had narrowed. “We suspected as much when we began this project, Dr. Navarre. And we proceeded with a moral resolve to mitigate this behavior, both so that the subjects could eventually become liaisons for us, and so that they could be used to civilize the kzinti.” He studied her carefully, clearly giving her enough time to realize that the pause implied the importance of what he was going to say next. “Are you proposing, Doctor, that we-including the ARM’s oversight personnel, such as the admiral and the executive-have all made a fundamental error?”

“I’m proposing, Director, that many of us were not well-prepared to face the challenges of this project squarely. And I am not referring to the methodological challenges, but the implicit ideological challenges.”

“What do you mean, ideological challenges? Do you mean the conflict between our system of values and the kzinti’s?”

“No, sir; I mean a conflict between the realities of our own existence and the ideologies under which we had buried them. Hindsight suggests that, during the last century and a half, during our Golden Age of Peace, there was a tendency to slip into a moral anthropomorphization of the universe.”

Pyragy’s ever-thickening brows lowered further. “I warn you, Dr. Navarre, if you cannot trouble yourself to be clear, I will be forced to censure you.”

“Okay, then, how about this: for the last one hundred and fifty years, many of our leaders were so pleased with how we supposedly purged violence from our natures that they generalized that lofty state of existence into a universal constant: it became the presumed zenith of social accomplishment for any civilization. And no one dared raise a hand in objection or doubt, for fear that they’d be reprogrammed due to their recidivistic sympathies, for aiding and abetting primitivism. From top to bottom, we all drank the Kool-Aid with blissful smiles on our wan little faces.”

“‘Drank the Kool-Aid’?”

“It’s an old reference to sheeplike behavior that got people killed back in the twentieth century. It was a group phenomenon not unlike the one we observe in lemmings, except that we humans leap to our deaths following ideologies, not instincts. Everyone goes over the cliff because they’re too busy staring at and complimenting the emperor on his new clothes.”

“I asked for pellucidity, not insolence.”

“You got the truth as best I know how to say it. And since you didn’t seem willing or able to get my earlier hints about how our own social conditioning blinded us to the real challenges that we’d experience working with the kzinti-”

“Silence. I will not be schooled by you, Dr. Navarre.”

“Fine-but then you’d better find someone who you are willing to be schooled by, because your present policies are going to ruin our relationship with the test subject.”

“How? By compelling him to initially restrict his murderous appetites to rodents?”

“No: by retarding his development, by withering away those essential parts of him that don’t fit into the pacifistic procrustean bed that you’ve constructed not merely for him, but for all of humanity.” When Selena was finished, she realized that her voice had become sharp and that she was panting with suppressed rage.

Pyragy’s smile was small, but very smug. “I regret that I will have to report this outburst to our overseers, Dr. Navarre.”

Boroshinsky’s voice had risen even before the Director had finished: “Yes, Director, do. And add to your report that the entirety of the biology group supports Dr. Navarre’s findings and handling of this matter.”

Pyragy considered the back wall over steepled fingers. “Well, in light of your unanimity of opinion, I suppose a report might be precipitous. I shall therefore desist-”

“Too late,” Boroshinsky snapped. He tapped his wristcomp. “I’ve just sent a message to Admiral Coelho-Chase and Associate Executive Chair Dennehy that independent assessments from all the project’s group leaders are forthcoming.”

If looks could kill, Pyragy’s would have slain Boroshinsky on the spot. “That,” he almost whispered, “was very ill-advised.”

Boroshinsky shrugged. “Then fire me.” He smiled, sent a sideways wink at Selena. “But I suppose we’d all need to report that too, wouldn’t we?”

Selena had never had an impulse to kiss a man so old that his lips had a perpetual quaver in them.

But she did now.

2402 BCE: Subject age-six years

Down in the scrub-covered defile that wove its way into the preserve’s boundary ridgeline, there was a burst of dust. It told them that Hap had brought down the mule deer at last. Had he not exhausted himself earlier chasing a particularly nimble springbok, the current pursuit would have been much shorter.

“He’s a pretty impressive hunter,” Dieter commented, looking away. “But then again, they all are.”

Selena did not know what to say, and if Boroshinsky did, he didn’t offer it. But they all knew what Dieter meant, and they were all thinking the same thing: Dr. Yang’s reports-now distributed to all the members of the research project, as well as select military personnel-made repeated, ghastly mention of the kzin habit of hunting humans on Wunderland. It wasn’t done at random, and it wasn’t done in a cavalier fashion, but the fact remained: traitors, rebels, criminals, malcontents, and incompetents were not punished or incarcerated on Wunderland. They were the foxes in the horrible hunts whereby kzin officers amused themselves, and the higher ranking ones trained their young males. It was all too easy to stare at the settling puff of dust down in the ravine and imagine that it was not a mule deer thrashing beneath Hap’s teeth and claws, but a human.