David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

"Why?" he asked.

"Because- " Helen paused, suddenly aware she didn't know the answer to that question. She started to release her grip, ready to apologize and let him go. But then she looked into those gray, aloof eyes, and they weren't aloof. There was a darkness in them, the same darkness, Helen knew, which had brought her here to think and be alone. But there was an edge of something else, as well.

Loneliness, she thought wonderingly. Perhaps even… fear?

"Because I'd like to talk to you," she said, and was astonished by the fact that it was the truth.

"About what?" His deep, resonant voice carried the familiar standoffishness. Not rude, or dismissive, but with that unmistakable sense of distance. She felt an equally familiar flicker of irritation, but this time she'd seen his eyes, and his sketch. There was more to Paulo d'Arezzo, she realized, than she'd ever bothered to notice before, and that sent a dull throb of shame through her.

"About the reason you're here." She waved her free hand at the quiet, dimly illuminated dome. "About the reason I'm here."

For an instant, he looked as if he meant to pull free and continue on his way. Then he shrugged.

"I come here to think."

"So do I." She smiled crookedly. "It's hard to find someplace to do that, isn't it?"

"If you want to be left alone to do it," he agreed. It could have been a pointed comment on her intrusion into his solitude, but it wasn't. He looked back out at the pinprick stars, and his expression softened. "I think this has to be the most peaceful spot in the entire ship," he said quietly.

"It's the most peaceful one I've been able to find, anyway," she agreed. She pointed at the chair he'd been sitting in when she arrived. He looked at it, then shrugged and sat back down. She settled herself into the other chair, and pivoted it to face him.

"It bothers you, doesn't it?" She twitched one hand at the closed sketch pad in his satchel. "What we saw aboard Anhur -that bothers you as much as it bothers me, doesn't it?"

"Yes." He looked away, out into the peaceful blackness. "Yes, it does."

"Want to talk about it?"

He looked back at her quickly, his expression surprised, and she wondered if he, too, was remembering their conversation with Aikawa in Snotty Row.

"I don't know," he said, after a moment. "I haven't really been able to put it into words for myself, much less anyone else."

"Me, either," she admitted, and it was her turn to look off into the stars. "It was… awful. Horrible. And yet…" Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head slowly.

"And yet, there was that awful sense of triumph, wasn't there?" His soft question pulled her eyes back to him as if he were a magnet. "That sense of winning . Of having proven we were faster, tougher-smarter. Of being better than they were."

"Yes." She nodded slowly. "I guess there was. And maybe there should have been. We were faster and tougher-this time, at least. And they were exactly what we joined the Navy to stop. Shouldn't there be some sense of triumph, of victory, when we stop murderers and rapists and torturers from hurting anyone else, ever again?"

"Maybe." His nostrils flared as he drew a deep breath, then shook his head. "No, not 'maybe.' You're right. And it's not as if you or I gave the orders, or fired the weapons. Not this time. But the truth is, when you come right down to it, however evil they might've been-and I grant you, they were evil, any way you want to define the term-they were still human beings. I saw what happened to them, and my imagination's good enough to picture at least some of what it must've been like when it happened. And no one should feel triumphant over having done that to someone else, however much they may have deserved to have it done to them. Nobody should… and I do. So what does that say about me?"

"Feeling qualms about wearing the uniform?" she asked almost gently.

"No." He shook his head again, firmly. "Like I said when we were talking with the others. This is why I joined, and I don't have any qualms about doing the job. About stopping people like this. Not even about firing on-killing-people in other navies who're just like you and me, just doing what duty requires of them. I don't think it's the actual killing. I think it's the fact that I can see how horrible it was and feel responsible for it without feeling guilty. Shouldn't there be some guilt? I hate the fact that I helped do that to other humans, and I regret that it had to happen to anyone, but I don't feel guilty , Helen. Sick at heart. Revolted. Horrified. All those things. But not guilty. What does that say about me? That I can kill people and not feel guilty?"

He looked at her, the gray eyes bottomless, and she folded her arms across her breasts.

"It says you're human. And don't be too sure you don't feel guilty. Or that you won't, in time. My father says most people do, that it's a societal survival mechanism. But some people don't. And he says that doesn't necessarily make them evil, or sociopathic monsters. Sometimes it just means they see more clearly. That they don't lie to themselves. There are choices we have to make. Sometimes they're easy, and sometimes they're hard. And sometimes our responsibility to the people we care about, or the things we believe in, or people who can't defend themselves, doesn't leave us any choice at all."

"I don't know." He shook his head. "That seems too… -simplistic. It's like giving myself some kind of moral get out of jail free card."

"No, it isn't," she said quietly. "Believe me. Guilt and horror can be independent of each other. You can feel one whether you feel the other or not."

"What are you talking about?" He sat back, his forearms on the chair armrests, and looked at her intently, as if he'd heard something she hadn't quite said. "You're not talking about Anhur at all, are you?"

Once again, his perceptiveness surprised her. She considered him for a few seconds, then shook her head.

"No. I'm talking about something that happened years ago, back on Old Earth."

"When the Scrags kidnapped you?"

"You knew about that?" She blinked, and he actually chuckled.

"The story got pretty good coverage in the 'faxes," he pointed out. "Especially with the Manpower connection. And I had reasons of my own for following the stories." Again something flickered deep in his eyes. Then he smiled. "And neither your father nor Lady Montaigne have been particularly… inconspicuous since you came home." His expression sobered. "I've always figured the newsies didn't get the whole story, but the part they did get was bloody enough. It must've been pretty bad for a kid-what, fourteen T-years old?"

"Yeah, but that wasn't what I meant." He raised both eyebrows, and she twitched her shoulders uncomfortably, unable to believe she was about to tell Paulo d'Arezzo, of all people, something she'd never even told Aikawa or Ragnhild. She drew a deep breath. "Before Daddy and… the others found me, and Berry and Lars, there were three men. They'd grabbed Berry and Lars before I came along. They'd raped Berry and beaten her-badly. They were going to kill her, probably pretty soon, I think. But I didn't know that when they came after me ."

He was staring at her now, his eyes wide, and she drew another breath.

"I was already pretty good at the Neue-Stil ," she said flatly. "I was scared-I'd just gotten away from the Scrags, and I'd known they were going to kill me if I didn't make a break. I had all the adrenaline in the galaxy pumping through me, and nobody was going to make me go back. So when these three came at me in the dark, I killed them."

"You killed them," he repeated.

"Yes." She met his eyes steadily. "All three of them. Broke their necks. I can still feel the bones snapping. And I felt nauseated, and sick, and wondered what kind of monster I was. The nausea comes back to me, sometimes. But I remember I'm still here, still alive. And that Berry and Lars are still alive. And I tell you this completely honestly, Paulo-I may feel nauseated, and I may wish it had never happened, but I don't feel guilty and I do feel… triumphant. I can look myself in the eye and tell myself I did what had to be done, without waffling, and that I'd do it again. And I think that's the question you have to ask yourself about Anhur . You've already said you'd do the same thing again if you had to. Doesn't that mean it's what has to be done? What you have to do to be you ? And if that's true, why should you feel guilty?"