“Talk with me?”
“We are providing you a favor,” came a voice from above Van. “In return, we would like a few minutes of conversation and thought from you. It will help us in improving our understanding of you and of your species.”
“I’ll offer what I can.” As he spoke, Van noted that Desoll seemed both surprised, and yet not surprised.
“You have killed other humans, have you not?”
“In combat situations…”
“Is not a death a death?”
“It is,” Van admitted.
“Then why do you offer an explanation?”
Van thought for a moment. “Because…I mean…there’s no difference to those who died, but there is a difference to me. There is a difference…between killing someone because you feel like it and to prevent that person from killing others.”
“Can you see what will happen in the future? Do you know that with certainty?”
Van had been over that ground before. “With absolute certainty? No? But when you are facing a ship that has already killed hundreds of innocent civilians time after time, the probability of those actions continuing is high enough to justify the assumption that they will kill again.”
The Farhkan said nothing for a time.
Van wondered if the conversation were finished, but he waited.
“Is any person innocent—other than a newborn or one recently born?”
“Probably not. But there are degrees of innocence, and there are those who have done no harm to others—or no great harm. And there are those who have done great harm.”
“You would decide that?”
“When I must,” Van admitted. What exactly did the Farhkan have in mind?
“Do all humans believe the same values are correct?”
“No.”
“Are your values more ethical?”
“I would like to think so.”
“Do you know that?”
“No.”
“Yet you have killed when it is possible that the values of those who killed were more ethical than yours. Is that ethical?”
“I don’t know about their values, Doctor. I know that their actions, which presumably reflected those values, were less ethical.”
“How do you know that?”
Van reflected. “There’s no good answer to that question.”
The Farhkan barked, a sound Van hoped was laughter, then asked, “Is any value that preserves a society ethical?”
“No. Not necessarily.”
“Then what is the basis for ethics? Do you believe in a deity that determines what is correct and moral?”
“No.”
“On what do you base your values?”
“On what I must,” Van replied. “Upon what I have seen and what I have learned.”
“Are they adequate when you are making decisions that will kill some beings and spare others?”
“I can only hope so.”
The Farhkan barked his laugh again, then nodded to Desoll. “We should proceed.” He stepped closer to the chair, adjusting a cablelike protrusion that had lowered itself from the ceiling until it was just above Van’s head.
“You’ll probably notice some disorientation, and you may lose some memory of what happens here,” Desoll said, “but you won’t feel it, except that you won’t recall what happened in the chair.”
Van frowned. “It didn’t take that to deactivate—”
“No. But didn’t it take a full operation to put in the implant? This isn’t like that, but it’s more complicated to undo what they did than merely turning off your functions. Also, we have to add a little capacity so that you can link with the Farhkans and some of the other out-systems that don’t use Arm-standard freqs.”
That made sense, especially after the Elsin’s approach to the Farhkan station.
Van blinked.
There was a moment of blackness, and then he was still sitting in the chair.
Except his buttocks were sore—and there were some sore patches in his skull, needlelike points. “I lost more than a few moments,” Van protested.
You did. The response came from the Farhkan, with a slight hissing overtone, but far clearer than most direct implant communications. There was some damage. It was intentional. We repaired it.
“The RSF?”
Dr. Fhale couldn’t say, only that it was there, Desoll replied. His link was crystal clear.
Van’s lips tightened. I’m all right now?
You are operating at maximum normal human capacity, the Farhkan replied.
They’re very literal, Desoll commented.
How else can one be ethical if not with maximum accuracy? Yet there was a trace of what Van would have called humor in the response.
“Ethical?” Ethical? Van’s implant echoed his words.
All life is a struggle with ethics. Those who fail to understand that are doomed to extinction. You should have gathered that from our conversation. The barking snort followed the Farhkan’s unspoken communication. You will learn. If you are fortunate.
The last seemed more command than observation.
You should move. Slowly at first, added the Farhkan.
Van eased his way out of the chair. All around him swirled pulses of energy, various nets or systems he had been unaware of before. “Is this…” Is this normal?
It is an enhanced implant, very similar to, but better than, the standard Coalition implant.
Van stopped walking for a moment, just short of the reopened trapezoidal opening. He glanced back. The Farhkan had vanished.
“Is that all?” Van hoped it was.
“You’ll have to get used to using it. We’ll be working on that over the next week or so.”
“Was that a threat…the business about not understanding ethics leading to extinction?”
“The Farhkans certainly have that kind of power, but they don’t believe in using it that way. They believe it would lead to an internal conflict that would destroy them.”
“That kind of power?” Van replied, stifling a yawn as he walked.
“More than that kind of power.” Desoll nodded toward the lock ahead. “We need to get back to the ship. You’re going to need some food and some sleep,” Desoll said.
Van found he was yawning again as he walked beside the older pilot. “How long was I out? That was more than a few minutes. Much more. But I can’t tell how much. My implant clocks were frozen.”
“About three hours. Someone had set a few more traps in you, probably when you were in the medcrib.”
“Traps?”
“Locator, remote trigger transmitter.” Desoll lifted a bag. “You can see for yourself later.”
“What?” Van was stunned, then outraged. Absently, he noted that he seemed more able to sense overtones
