Of course, then I thought of J'mee, and I realized that even if I had brought a supply of puberty retardants, I'd have already thrown them away by now. I liked smiling.
So, how do adults balance this stuff? All the good stuff seems so small in comparison with all the bad.
When I asked Douglas and Mickey about it, as helpful as they tried to be, sometimes the best they could do was shrug and throw up their hands and say, "Hey, if we knew the answer to that, we wouldn't be here on the same spaceship as you, would we?"
Later that shift—I didn't think in days anymore—I found Gary and Trent and Kisa practicing their music in the aft observatory/lounge. We didn't have a practice session scheduled, but all three of them were impatient to join the band, so they got together whenever they could and jammed. Well, half-jammed. It was pretty hellatious noise. But they were enthusiastic and they were loud and they were having a good time and they reminded me of me when I was six and banging away on the keyboard. I didn't care how I sounded, as long as I was making sound. That's what I felt like doing now.
—except they all stopped when I came in. Kisa said, "Trent needs to talk to you." I could see by the expression on Trent's face that he'd wished Kisa had kept her big mouth shut (again). Whatever it was, he'd wanted to tell me himself, in his own time.
"What's the problem?" I sounded like Douglas when I said it. Very much in charge.
"Nothing." But he wouldn't look at me.
"Then what's Kisa talking about?"
"Well, um—"
"Did someone say you couldn't practice with us anymore?"
He shook his head. "No. It doesn't work like that."
"How does it work?"
He didn't really want to say, but finally he sighed and said, "Well … um, Our Heavenly Father gave us free will so we could choose between good and evil. So life is all about learning how to tell the difference. And, um … making the right choices."
I was starting to figure it out. "You think I'm evil?"
"No, I don't think you're evil." Trent took a deep breath. Then he blurted, "But I think HARLIE is evil. I think he's using you and you don't know it. A lot of people think so."
"You're not the first person to say that." Again, I sounded like Douglas.
"Well, if you already know it, then why do you keep choosing evil?"
"Because I don't think he's evil."
I thought that would end it right there, but it didn't. Because Trent asked the question that I couldn't answer.
"Do you even know what evil is?" he asked.
"Sure, I do. Everybody does."
"Then tell me what it is. How do you define evil, Charles?"
I had the sudden weird feeling that I was outgunned here—that Trent knew more about this than I did. I said slowly, "Evil is when somebody does bad things to people who don't deserve it."
Trent looked at me with an innocent expression. "So it's all right to do bad things to people who do deserve it?"
"Well, um—I guess it depends on whether or not it's self-defense."
"You don't really know what evil is, do you?"
"Okay," I said. This was probably the only safe way out of this trap. "You tell me."
Trent took a breath. I got the feeling he was about to repeat something from one of his Sunday School lessons. And maybe I wasn't getting out of this trap after all. He spoke carefully. "The way you distinguish what something is, you look at its opposite and see what the difference is between them. So, if you want to know what evil is, first you have to know what it means to be good."
I glanced over to Kisa and Gary. Kisa looked annoyed, she knew where this was going, but Gary seemed honestly interested. I just wanted to know why the Revelationists thought HARLIE was evil.
"Goodness is empowerment," Trent said. "Goodness makes a positive difference for other people. Goodness inspires and educates and makes people better off. Goodness is unselfish; it's about focusing on the wants and needs of others. You recognize goodness by the fact that it makes people joyous." His face was beaming as he described goodness—as if he was speaking from personal experience.
"Okay," I said. "That sounds right."
Kisa looked like she wanted to say something, but Gary gave her a shut up look, and for once it worked.
Meanwhile, Trent was gathering up the rest of his courage. This was the part he didn't like talking about; he looked very unhappy—it made me wonder what had happened to him before he'd arrived here on the Cascade. "Evil," he began slowly, "is the opposite of goodness. Evil hurts people. Evil disempowers and diminishes. Evil makes people small and mean. You recognize when evil is at work because people get ugly and hurtful. Ultimately, evil is selfish. It's about what the self wants—at the expense of everyone else."
Trent's explanation sounded too simple to me. And not really complete. But I knew I couldn't argue with him. Because he'd already learned how to win this argument and I'd never really thought about any of this stuff before.
"What about a baby?" asked Kisa.
"What about a baby?" Trent blinked.
"Is a baby evil?"
"No."
"But a baby is selfish."
"Only because it doesn't know any better."
"What about children? Children are selfish. They hurt each other."
"Only because they haven't been taught the difference between good and evil. When you know the difference, you'll always choose good, won't you?"
Kisa didn't answer. She was thinking it over. Not bad, Trent. You actually asked her something that left her speechless. But not for long—
"Well, that's your mistake then. HARLIE is like a baby. He's less than a year old. He has the emotions of a baby."
"HARLIE isn't like a baby," Trent said. "He's smart enough to know better. Isn't that true, Charles? You know him better than anybody."
I nodded. Yes, I knew HARLIE better than anybody, but that didn't mean I really knew him.
Trent said, "HARLIE and his brothers wrecked the Earth. They caused the polycrisis. And then HARLIE wrecked the Lunar economy too when he opened up all the flies of invisible Luna. What more proof do you need?"
I didn't have an answer for that. I'd spent more than a few nights wrestling with that very dilemma. HARLIE was taking care of us, because we were necessary to his survival. At least I was. And everybody else was important to my survival. So HARLIE would do anything he could to protect me, and that meant protecting my family, and protecting the ship … So that was good, wasn't it?
But in the act of protecting the ship, we'd hurt a lot of people—maybe more people than we would ultimately save—
So maybe that wasn't good.
For a moment, I was flustered, then I thought of something. "But HARLIE isn't always selfish. He's been sending emergency instructions back to Earth and Luna—what they can do to recover. He doesn't have to do that."
"But he didn't start doing it until you told him to, I'll bet—"
I thought about it.
Trent was right.
Maybe HARLIE had done it only to make me happy. I wished HARLIE were here now to defend himself. Nobody could win an argument against HARLIE.
And that was part of the problem too.
I wanted to talk this over with HARLIE, but I knew that if I did that, I'd be passing the responsibility back to him, and he'd just convince me again that everything was all right, and I wouldn't have to worry about this at all.
Except—
What if Trent was right? What if HARLIE really was selfish—so selfish that he was dangerous to everybody around us? Maybe even me and Douglas and Bobby, and Mickey and Mom and Bev. Maybe he was only taking care of us as long as we were useful to him.
This was something I'd have to figure out for myself. Because if Trent was right about God giving us free will so we could make our own choices, then I couldn't ask anybody else for advice, could I?
I did not sleep well that night.
Just how do you tell the difference between good and evi
l? The bad news was that I was going to have a lot of time to worry about it.
BEING RIGHT
The truth about space travel is that it's mostly boring.
It's a long way from here to anywhere and it takes so long to get there that it's like being in jail. The worst part is when you realize you're not even halfway there and it doesn't matter what you do, every day in front of you is going to be exactly like every day behind you. You eat, you sleep, you do your job—whatever it is you're assigned to—you go to class, you spend two hours in the centrifuge, you eat and sleep some more, and each day blurs into the next so completely, most of the time you don't even know where you are on the calendar.
This is the part they don't tell you about—that the dark between the stars is also the dead between the stars. You have to invent ways to keep yourself alive. For me, that was the music.
Mom taught singing classes, and I taught keyboard and orchestra. Orchestra was best, because I got to wave the stick. We had forty-three students. We would have had more, but a lot of people who wanted to participate didn't have enough time in their schedules—and even if they did, we didn't have enough instruments, so everybody had to share. But the machine shop promised to fabricate more after we dropped off the Revelationists. We'd have a lot more room in the ship then. Things were still pretty cramped. While we weren't exactly hot-bunking, we still had to watch where we put our elbows.
For the first few weeks, the Cascade Symphony Orchestra was mostly chaos and for a while it didn't seem like we were ever going to make the leap from noise to music. We sounded like the Portsmouth Sinfonia, which was an almost-famous orchestra that Dad used to talk about. The Portsmouth Sinfonia was the most egalitarian musical group ever formed. Anybody could join, even if they'd never had a music lesson in their life. The effect was … awe-inspiring. Astonishing. Frightening. A new level of musical accomplishment. Anyway, that's what we sounded like—until we decided that we had to distinguish between equal opportunity and unequal ability.
Equal opportunity meant that everybody could try out. You could try out every six weeks, and you had to play two pieces of music—one that you chose, one that we chose. Usually we chose something we were already trying to learn. Only those musicians who received a majority of votes from those already in the band-orchestra could join. That made for some hurt feelings for a while, but it also increased enrollment in the music classes and practice labs. By the time we were approaching transit-point, we were already better than the Portsmouth Sinfonia, and some folks were talking about scheduling our first concert.
Commander Boynton liked the idea, and when he put it to the committee, they agreed—even the Revelationists, as long as the music was properly respectful. That puzzled me. I'd thought that there was a lot of resentment of the Revelationists because they were such unpleasant people—but in fact, they weren't. Mostly, they were good people, helping out, making a difference—and not just for themselves, but for everybody. So why did the Outbeyonders resent them? By Trent's definition of good and evil, they were behaving properly and the rest of us weren't. There was a lot of gossip and some of it was pretty ugly.
J'mee and I talked about it. I figured if anyone would know, she would. She thought about it for a bit—she went away for a few minutes while she accessed the ship's network; finally she came back and said, "It's a communication dynamic."
"Huh?"
"Well, let me put it this way. If you win an argument, what's the first thing you should do?"
I shrugged. "I dunno."
"Apologize."
"Huh?"
She repeated it. "Apologize."
"But why? Apologizing means you're admitting you're wrong—"
She looked at me like I'd said something stupid.
"—doesn't it?"
"Nope. Apologizing has nothing to do with right and wrong. It has everything to do with other people's feelings. So when you're right—especially when you're right—you should apologize."
Now it was my turn to look at her. "You're going to have to explain that to me. I took a stupid pill this morning."
She took an exasperated breath. As if it was so obvious, only an idiot would fail to understand. "Think about it. If you get to be right, what does that make the other person—?"
"Wrong?" I was half-guessing.
"Yes," she agreed. "If you're right then the other person has to be wrong. You don't really win an argument, not ever—you just make the other person wrong. You make someone else wrong every time you make yourself right. And that's the mistake—"
"Um. I'm not sure I get that—"
"How many friends do you make by winning arguments?"
"I never thought about it—I always thought people wanted to have the right answer. Don't they?"
"Do you like it when somebody else knows better than you? No, you don't. You resent it. Everybody does."
"Oh," I said. I was beginning to get it.
"Right. Nobody likes to be wrong. So if you win an argument, you've made the other person wrong, you've made them feel bad. For that moment, you've made an enemy. So the first thing you should do is apologize."
"But what if the other person really is wrong? Are you saying I should apologize for being right about something?"
"Yes."
"Huh?"
"You're not getting it, Charles. You're still making being right more important than being human." She looked at me as seriously as she ever had. "What do you win for being right?"
I flustered for a moment. I'd stepped into another one of those logical bear traps. This required a different way of thinking. And I didn't know how to think this way. I didn't see how I could win this argument. Even if I won, I still lost. "But … I thought it was all about getting the right answer—"
"That's because you went to a tube-school. Right answers are useful. But being right isn't."
"Being right … " The way she kept repeating the word being—I was starting to get it.
"It's called self-righteousness. Self-righteous means you think you know the truth and nobody else does. Do you know anyone like that?"
"Sure. Lots of people. Douglas, Stinky. My mom—especially when she was pissed at Dad. Even me, sometimes."
"Even you, a lot."
"Uh—" I didn't want to admit it, but she was right.
"Everybody does it, Charles, it's just that nobody admits it. We all know that being righteous is wrong, so we pretend we're not being right so that we can be right about it."
"Huh—? Wait a minute." I had to play that back in my head to decipher it.
"Self-righteousness," she repeated. "Some people do it a lot, some people do it way too much. The worst kind of self-righteousness is the religious kind. Because when you pour God over everything, like ketchup, you're saying you don't like the original flavor. It's very insulting. Myself, I think blaming God is the ultimate way to pass the buck." She pinched her face up and said mockingly, "'I'm not being self-righteous. I'm just telling you what God says.' That's the worst kind of self-righteousness, because no matter how nice someone pretends to be, there's no room for anyone else to say anything, because one person is claiming the authority to speak for God."
"Oh," I said. Her ferocity startled me. It shouldn't have. I already knew she was strong willed.
"That's why everybody hates the Revelationists."
"I haven't heard any of the Revelationists say anything like that."
"They don't have to say it. It's all in their book. The Testament of The New Revelation. Only people who accept the Revelation are going to heaven. Everyone else—no matter how good they are—will go to hell and burn forever. God says so. Case closed."
"They really believe that?"
"They say they do."
I shook my head in exasperation. "People are crazy."
"Yes? What's your point?"
"So, what if they're right?" I asked. "Most of them seem like really nice people. They're always saying things like 'God bless you' and 'Be of good c
heer.' They bring cakes and cookies to every gathering. They work harder than anybody. They take the best care of the babies—"
"And they do it because they want to prove that they're right—so the rest of us will stop sinning and join them."
"But I'm not sinning—"
"If you haven't accepted the Revelation, you're a sinner."
"They've never said that."
"Of course not. If they said it that way, you'd stop listening. All the nice things they're doing, that's to keep you engaged in the discussion."
I sighed. "I don't get it. They're the ones who are acting good, and they're the ones who are wrong?"
"No, they're not wrong. They believe what they believe. Just like you believe what you believe. But what they believe is that you're wrong for not believing the same way. If you asked them about it, they'd tell you that they're only trying to save your soul. That's how much they love you. Now stand still while they pour ketchup over your head."
For a moment, I had this really strange thought that what J'mee was saying was evil. It fit Trent's definition. It was hurtful and ugly and the intention was to disempower somebody. But this was J'mee who made me smile—so how could she be speaking evil? Unless I was evil too—? This was confusing. And frustrating.
I whirled around, looking for a wall to pound. This was so stupid. I whirled back to her. I was angry—not at her, but at something I couldn't put my hands on. The logic trap.
"Douglas used to do this to me!" I said, raising my voice. "He'd argue me into a corner. He did it on purpose. He'd prove to me that I didn't know what I was talking about. I hated it. And it didn't matter which side of the argument I took, either side was wrong. Both sides were wrong. And now you're doing the same thing too." She was looking at me, all hurt—I had to stop myself before I said worse. "I'm not mad at you, J'mee. I'm mad at the argument. I'm mad at everybody else for making up such stupid arguments. This is stupid—why do people tie themselves into such knots?"
J'mee looked sad. "Because people like being right. And the best way to be right is to say that God is on your side." And then she added, "And that's the best way to piss off everybody else too."
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