Orson Card - Wyrms

"The will makes only a simple choice, and it's already made. Your whole life is nothing but acting out the choice that defines who you really are."

"What's that?"

"The choice between good and evil."

She let him see her disappointment. "All this talk, and we come to that?"

"I'm not talking about the choice between killing people and not killing people, or between stealing and not stealing. Sometimes killing a person is evil. Sometimes killing a person is good. You know that."

"Which is why I decided not to care about good and evil a long time ago."

"No. You decided not to care about legal and illegal."

"I decided there wasn't any absolute good and there wasn't any absolute evil. You just said the same thing."

"No I didn't," said Will.

"You said sometimes killing is good and sometimes it's evil."

"So. Killing isn't absolute. But now, when you go to Unwyrm, what's wrong with doing what he wants? What's wrong with you having his children?"

"Because I don't want to."

"Why? You know he'll give you pleasure. And your children-they'll be human, perfectly human, only stronger and smarter, wiser and quicker, and they'll no doubt have a perfect connection between their minds, all of them like Unwyrm combined with the best human traits.

You'll be the mother of the master race. The most magnificent intelligent beings ever created. The next step in human evolution. Why don't you desire it?"

"I don't know," she said.

"If you don't know, then at the crucial moment, when you are with him, and all your desire is for him, you still won't know. You'll still refuse, but perhaps not with all your strength. And it'll take all your strength to resist him, I promise you."

"Come with me," she said. "Kill him for me."

"I'll come with you, if I can. And I'll kill him, if I can. But I think I won't be able to. I think there's only one person who'll ever come close enough to hurt him, to stop him."

"Then tell me. What is it I need to know?"

"It's simple. Nothing exists except in relation to something else. An atom is not an atom. It doesn't exist, except in relation to other atoms. If it never responded to anything else, it would not exist. All existence is like that-utterly isolated pieces that only come into existence in their interaction with other pieces. Human beings too.

We don't exist except in relation to the other events of the world. Everything we do, everything we are depends on our responses to other events, and other events' responses to us."

"I knew that."

"You didn't know that. It's so obvious that no one knows it. If nothing you did caused any change in the world outside, and nothing in the world outside caused any change in you, then you wouldn't know there was a world outside, and it wouldn't know you existed, and so it would be meaningless to speak of your existence at all.

So your existence, all our existence, depends on every piece, every person in the universe behaving according to certain set patterns. The system. The order in which everything exists. The laws that bind atoms and molecules are very firm. They have no freedom to vary, because as soon as they vary, they cease to be. But life-ah, there the freedom begins. And we who think we are intelligent, we are the freest of all. We make our own patterns and change them as we like. We build systems and orders and tear them down. But you'll notice that none of our choices have any effect whatever on the way that atoms and molecules behave. Just as we have no idea what any particular molecule is doing, they have no notion of what we're doing. We can't change their order at all. We can use it, but we can't break down their system and cause them to wink out of existence."

"I suppose that's true. We can burn wood, but the atoms that are torn from certain molecules combine again with others, and the system hangs together."

"Exactly. So we can't do good or evil to most of the universe. Only to other living things. Mostly to each other. Because the systems of human beings are ours to control. They're every bit as real as the universe itself, and they are what gives us our existence-but we can manipulate them. We can change the systems that create the terms of our life. And we do change those systems, according to the single simple choice of our will."

"What's the choice?"

"It arises from the desire of the will. And the desire of the will is simple. To grow."

"I don't want to grow."

"Every living thing has this same desire. Patience.

Angel touched on it, in his childish way, when he spoke of people who own things. That's the most pathetic way people have of growing. The way Sken makes this boat part of herself-it makes her larger. Eating .also makes her larger."

Patience smiled. "You're being ridiculous now."

"I'm not. Kings also make themselves larger, because their kingdom is part of themselves. Parents make themselves larger through their children. Some few people, though, have such a powerful hunger that they can't be satisfied until their self includes everything alive."

"The King's House is all the world," murmured Patience.

"What did you say?"

"Something my father taught me."

"Oh."

"So, is it good or evil to desire to be larger?"

"Neither. It's how you choose to grow larger. The system lives on sacrifice. No order could exist in which every person in it received everything he desired all the time. The system that gives us our existence depends on people making sacrifices. I give up something I desire, so that others can receive some of what they desire. In turn, they give up something they want, so I can have some of what I want. Every human society depends on that simple principle."

As always, her mind raced ahead, trying to solve the problem before it had to be explained to her. "So you're saying that good people sacrifice everything, and evil people sacrifice nothing."

"Not at all. I'm saying that good people sacrifice anything that is necessary in order to maintain the order that allows all others to exist, even if they have to sacrifice their own life. While evil people manipulate and force the sacrifice of any and every other person in order to wholly gratify their own hunger. Do you see the difference?"

"This is theology. Kristos was good, because he sacrificed his life."

"Don't speak foolishly, Patience, not to me. Everybody dies, and some have been martyrs in stupid causes.

Kristos is Kristos because we believe he sacrificed himself for the whole world. For the largest order of all. He would not have died for anything less. Because his self had grown to include all the systems of mankind, and he acted to protect them all."

"Now I see how you became a heretic."

"Of course you do. These fools who think their Kristos will come to unite humans in perfect peace, without including the millions of geblings, gaunts, and dwelfs-it would not be good, because such a Kristos would be forcing the sacrifice of half the people of the world, to serve herself. So if Kristos is to be Kristos, she is willing to sacrifice anything to maintain the order that gives life to all."

"I'm no Kristos. I don't believe any of this."

Will looked sad. "Oh, you believe my story," he said.

"But you won't know that you believe it until after, looking back. If either of us is alive then."

"It's a pretty philosophy," said Patience. "It makes sense within itself. You'd have a sure career in the School."

He let the insult roll off him. "When you face him, Patience, you'll remember. A tiny part of your memory will hold on to my story, and you'll remember who you are, and who he is, and you'll doubt your own desires and believe my story. You'll destroy him, even though at that moment you'll love him more than all the world.

You'll destroy him, because you know he's evil."