Van could understand that, but he wondered. “Where do the Revs fit into your analysis?”
“Oh…that’s simple, if you think about organized belief systems in economic terms. The Revs are the religious equivalent of the ‘big kill’ approach. You believe in this one oversimplified system, do what the headhunter—the deity—and his mortal high hunters say, and you will be rewarded with the big kill—paradise in the afterlife, and for those especially privileged in the here and now. The other aspect of this approach is that it also thrives on chaos. The more disrupted things get, the more humans want security and simple answers, and the big kill offers that. No, you don’t have to discipline yourself. You don’t have to sort out the moral ambiguities of life, the cases where things don’t fit in neat little cubes. You don’t have to work hard at all the little things along the way. All you have to do is believe and follow directions, and security and paradise are yours.” He snorted.
Van hadn’t quite thought of it that way.
“The Revenants have always had a habit of portraying themselves as a family-oriented, God-fearing, and moral people,” Trystin went on, “even while using every technique that they can get away with to expand their territory and economic power. They bow to superior force, claiming morality and ethics, and then subvert or annex as many independent systems as possible. Those efforts have gone on for years. The larger political entities—the Coalition, the Argenti Commonocracy, the Hyndji Commonality—have looked the other way most of the time, because they didn’t want a repeat of economic and social costs of the Eco-Tech-Revenant War. This has encouraged the Revenants to keep expanding, especially in more recent years. IIS has done what it can to discourage that sort of thing, but we don’t have the resources, even leveraging them through economic efforts, to do more than slow things down, and really only where the systems themselves need and want assistance. Some systems don’t have enough integrity to resist. And there’s always the danger that other systems will see the apparent short-term success of the Revenants and decide to follow that path as well. That’s at least as big a danger as the Revenant expansion.”
Unfortunately, what Trystin said made sense to Van, perhaps too much sense. “So the Revs are creating economic and social chaos, and you’re using IIS to create order to stop them? And to offer an alternative to other systems?”
“The alternative, yes. But, as for stopping them…” Trystin shook his head, sadly. “It isn’t working that way. We’ve been trying to create islands of order to give examples to people, to show them in practice that true virtue, if you will, has practical and economic rewards.”
“And we’re not above giving true virtue a little hand with a few torps now and then?”
“In the ancient days some marshal once remarked that virtue was on the side with the biggest battalions. Virtue doesn’t have a chance among humans if it’s without defenses. Most of us have great difficulty resisting the allure of the big kill. Throughout history, humans have succumbed to that—wasting billions on lotteries where but one person out of hundreds of millions could win, arming themselves abruptly for massive conflicts, then disarming as quickly and losing the peace.” Trystin stood and stretched. “IIS does what it can. That’s why we’re a foundation and not a multi.”
“You make it sound…”
“Almost hopeless?” An ironic smile crossed the face of the older man. “No. It’s far from hopeless. Look at how many systems have adopted the steady gatherer approach. It just seems hopeless at times, I think, because you can’t quantify our successes in the way you can a big kill success. They can trumpet a big kill, while the most we can do is to set up organizations and institutions that spread the ethical approach through economic and political success.”
“And destroying Revenant warships isn’t a big kill?” questioned Van.
“No. We don’t tell anyone, and that means no bragging rights. When we can, and it isn’t that often, we remove forces that would instill the big kill in more system cultures.”
“I hope we’re not secretly building a planet-sized dreadnought somewhere to destroy some larger aspect of that big kill,” Van said dryly.
“No dreadnoughts.” Trystin laughed. “They’d be a terrible waste of resources.” After a pause, he added, “In the end, though, it’s a matter of personal ethics. If you don’t chart a course based on ethics, then you’re for sale to the highest bidder—or the most insistent one. That goes for me, and it goes for you.” He smiled. “I make it easy. I demand you act ethically and pay you for it. Except it doesn’t really work that way. You can’t demand ethical behavior from people who have to exercise initiative. You can only reward it, or punish them for its absence. That’s true of cultures as well. They can be punished, except most other cultures
