by J. A. Crook
***
“People do desperate things, you know?” Vickers said, tapping a rolled map against his opposing, open palm.
“All people do desperate things, Grant. Typically, the things done by people when they’re desperate for their own lives... well, at least those things are properly warranted.” Floyd was at his desk, looking over one of Grant’s maps, trying to figure out the very best course for the travelling party.
“Yes. I agree with you mostly. However, when are those things that are done to preserve life so terrible that death is a better response? A more human response?” Vickers challenged.
Floyd looked up from the map for a moment to watch Grant suspiciously. “For the sake of life, Grant, I’d suggest just about anything is a proper response.”
And Grant went on further. “How about killing others to preserve one? Or killing one to preserve many?”
Floyd leaned back in his seat after placing his quill back into the ink jar. “Murder is a sin, Grant. I don’t believe there’s anything that morally constitutes murder.”
Vickers nodded, leaning against a wall. He tapped that map again, silent for a moment. “Funny, isn’t it? How we justify murder by our own law, yet we regard it as sin when done outside of the law? Justice brings men to the executioner, sometimes men that haven’t killed anything! Yet, when lives are at stake, you suppose that killing one for the sake of the lot... that’s a bad idea? That’s immoral?”
Floyd shook his head, turning back to the map, becoming less interested in the conversation. “I’m not a law man, Grant. I’m a doctor. My job is to keep people alive, not to decide who deserves to and who doesn’t.”
Grant smirked. “Well, you’re fortunate enough to have not been in a situation that demands you to make such decisions. However, the trip like we’re planning to take? Some people have made some very...” He paused, thinking of the correct euphemism. “...interesting decisions for the sake of life and preservation.”
Floyd dabbed his quill into the ink and marked a line that curved over the Northern side of the Sierra Nevada. Floyd spoke somewhat distantly. “Only God will judge what is proper of preservation and what is worthy of condemnation.” Floyd looked up to Grant then. “And I am no God.” And his final comment resounded within his mind as he stared down onto the map in front of him, feeling a strange omniscience with his bird’s eye view of the mapped continent below him, and the black line he’d strewn over the Northern peak of the mountains, creating the image of a black chasm that slashed through the same geography established by the god he claimed.