“She would never.”
“All people are vulnerable to persuasion.'
“Like Hollis Westerly?”
Crane offered a small smile. “You feel pity for him, don’t you? A beast like that.”
“No. I feel pity for everyone who died in Columbus. The people you murdered.”
“Naturally you do. It would be inhuman to feel otherwise.”
“Why did you kill them? So many?”
“It isn't as though we took pleasure in it,' the old man said. 'It was collateral damage. A necessary act of war.”
“That’s what Westerly said.”
“It’s what I told him. War surrounds us all. Some of us learn to inhabit it, to move with it, but no man controls it. Do you fault a sailor for the violence of the ocean, or for learning to navigate the storm?”
“You don’t feel anything?' Ruppert asked. 'Remorse?”
“Everyone feels remorse at one time or another,” Crane said. “But we have medication for that. You’re focusing on one event and missing the broader picture. Columbus was necessary to protect and preserve the nation.”
“You protect people by murdering them?”
“You aren’t listening, Daniel. I said we were protecting the nation.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
Crane summoned a holographic keyboard, then typed at it. A three-dimensional representation of ancient Rome appeared on the desktop, with stone aqueducts from the mountains feeding into fountains among colorful marble buildings.
“This is from a PSYCOM training manual,' Crane said. 'Do you know what finally destroyed the city of Rome, Daniel? What caused it to become uninhabitable?”
“Uninhabitable?” Ruppert asked. “I read the population was about 10 million people.”
“You misunderstand. I meant the ancient city.” Crane passed a finger through a miniature aqueduct, and it broke, heaving water out into the mountains far outside the city walls. “Invading barbarians-Goths, if you care to be specific-besieged the city and broke all the aqueducts. They broke the aqueducts, you see, that fed the city, that made the Roman way of life possible. Without water, there could be no city. Never mind who won that particular battle. Without water, the population fell from a million to ten thousand. The greatest city in history became a ruin, home to only sheep and bandits living among abandoned palaces. You saw Las Vegas, didn’t you?”
“Okay,” Ruppert said. “But what does Columbus have to do with aqueducts?”
“Everything. In our case, it is not loss of water we fear. You know what we need, though, do you not?'
'Oil?'
'Loss of petroleum would lay waste our cities. Should we fail to secure the necessary hydrocarbons, and fail to protect the intervening supply lines between there and here, every city in America would resemble Las Vegas in a matter of weeks. No commerce as we know it. And imagine our military-the tanks, the planes, the navy, all useless lumps of metal.
“To protect the nation, we must be willing to fight off all competitors, great and small. We are the mightiest beast in the jungle, Daniel, but the mightiest beast must fight hardest to survive. It is the largest, therefore its needs are the largest, therefore it is, paradoxically, the most vulnerable. You see?”
“You think nations need to make war to survive?”
“Nations do not make war,” Crane said.
“They don't? I'm maybe too medicated right now.'
“It is war that raises up nations, war that makes them powerful, war that destroys them. War is the survival competition among human beings, the driver of our evolution. It does not begin or end, though we artificially mark beginnings and endings to particular wars. The nation itself, Ruppert, is simply a long, sustained act of war, in which one group plunders both its own population and foreign lands. It is simply life, the competition for resources, and we cannot help if that is life's inherent condition.”
“Now you're claiming to be moral?” Ruppert asked.
“I am not,” Crane said. “Morality is for structuring and ordering society. Human beings, like animals, are not good or evil, but amoral. We are capable of good or evil acts at any time. It simply depends on circumstances. Look at your background. Not only did you carry out the various criminal acts I described earlier, but for several years, you made a good living spreading propaganda for us. You have murdered a few men, but you have lied to millions.”
“I’ve tried to atone for it,” Ruppert said.
“And you’ve failed. This little interview with Hollis will have no effect, I assure you. No one will believe it, unless they are already predisposed to believing such a thing. For most people, we will continue to tell them what to believe. We will tell them they are morally superior, that they love peace, but unfortunately this is a time of war, and one must support one's leaders. And they will continue to believe it. Because they need to believe it, Daniel, and at a biological level, they know it is necessary for the survival of the group.”
“If people want war anyway, why do you have to lie to them at all?” Ruppert asked. “Why invent threats? Why not just say, ‘These people have oil, and we need it, and we're stronger, and we’re taking it.’ Why wouldn’t people support that war, if what you say is right?”
“Because we also must live together for the sake of commerce,” Crane said. “Morals are necessary for, as I said, internal organization to support the war machine. The rule of every state rests on two things, Daniel: force and myth. Without force, myth is just words and images. Force without a supportive myth, however, will not last long, because it has no legitimacy among the people. No state can rule by myth alone, or by force alone.
“The role of PSYCOM is to generate the necessary myth-an ongoing myth, extending into the fourth dimension-that is, a mythical narrative. Every war is a war to protect God, country, and family. We exist in an ongoing clash between good and evil, in which good means ‘us’ and evil means ‘them,’ the others who control the resources and supply lines we need.
“What is it that forms our sense of identity, as Americans or as Englishmen or anything else? To which elements of history do we refer? Would you agree that America’s identity was forged in the Revolution, the Civil War, the Second World War, and in the struggle of freedom against terror?”
“That sounds right,” Ruppert said.
“And what do these events have in common?”
“They were all about the struggle for freedom,” Ruppert said.
Crane snorted. “The bigger picture, Daniel, is that they were all wars, weren’t they? Cataclysmic struggles over the question of who would rule whom. Our sense of being a people, that holy sense of patriotism, is generated by war and war alone. What is there that defines a nation beyond its wars?”
Ruppert thought it over. “There's a lot. Culture, learning, science-”
“Irrelevant,” Crane interrupted. “Now, consider the conditions of our existence as living organisms. Organisms can multiply rapidly, at a geometric rate, so their numbers are limited only by the need for each individual to consume resources and sustain itself. There are limited resources available at any given place and time. So they must compete. The slightest advantage-faster, stronger, smarter-determines who lives and who dies. Over time, advantages accumulate.
“The role you served, Daniel, in your former occupation, was the role of coordinating information-the bee dancing before the hive, the ant laying down a scent trail to a food source. It was more complicated, of course. The point is that myth is used to program the group behavior of human beings, to direct their fear, their violence and their productivity as needed. We all have a natural fear for the security of ourselves and our families-so much of the world, and the future, is simply unknown. Myth allows us to nurture that fear, and to pool it into a collective monster. This is the process that permits us to compete for resources as one human group against other human groups, and of course against lone, dissenting individuals like yourself.
“Evolution, as I was saying, results from competition over scarce resources. Colonies of bacteria, colonies of ants wage wars on one another. Trees poison the soil against one another. We have ongoing wars in our bodies, antibodies fighting off invasive disease.
“From the smallest bacterium to the greatest civilizations, the same rules apply. Those who are able to band together and fight, dominate or destroy, are the victors in the evolutionary contest. But victory is always temporary,
