The Comet Riders: Book Five of Seeds of a Fallen Empire

by Anne Spackman

  Chapter Seventeen

  "Any luck?" Ornenkai asked, looking up again from his desk at Marankeil, who was still bent over one of the plates they had taken from the Havens. Some of what they had found was written in the earliest syllabary they had still not been able to decipher, but some of the records had obviously been written later in a hybrid of the ancient's language and ancient Seynorynaelian.

  "You must have something," Ornenkai persisted when no answer came. "You've been working on just that one plate since we got here."

  Marankeil put down his printsheet, finishing the last sentence.

  "This plate must have been an old canon of our ancestors. It is a recording of a legend, a belief—I don't know, but it even sounds vaguely religious."

  "What does it say?" Ornenkai asked, moving to an empty seat by Marankeil to get a look at his translation.

  "I missed a few words here and there, but it appears to be referring to a theory of existence called the "cycle". I think that these people believed that their very existence was contained in an unbreakable cycle—I thought perhaps they meant their position in time and space, something like a world line—you know, the path our bodies trace in space and time from the moment we are born—but then a world line is jagged and uneven. And it would be impossible for anyone to move constantly from one place to another without ever returning to a place they had been, which they would have to do to exist on an unbreakable circle.

  "Anyway, it talks about the cycle as being a circle and then it begins to refer to it as a sphere—something bound and contained, then something infinite. Doesn't make sense—but then I thought with the missing words, I could be reading it wrong."

  "Perhaps the author was setting the conditions?" Ornenkai wondered.

  "Maybe. Anyway—it calls the "cycle" unbreakable—there is no ending or beginning—they’re one. But then it says the beginning is unclear.

  "It talks about the direction of the circle as lines that curve on a sphere, leading anywhere. At the same time, each circle's "line" exists distinctively, sometimes overlapping or converging with another curve; yet each curve exists by itself and can only be itself. If it altered in its predestined course direction, it becomes by definition something else, and so itself only could it ever remain, for it was meant to be."

  "That sounds like the notion that for each choice we make, the universe takes both of the two, but we only see and live the one."

  "I agree. But listen—there's more. The legend contended that the cycle could not be broken, but the paradox that the ancients saw was the uncertainty the sphere implied. Here's where it ties back in to the nature and beliefs of existence. It says that no one has ever been given to know which path he travels or upon which plane of reality his life belongs." Marankeil picked up the printsheet and began to read it directly.

  "'At a point of singularity, only one point alone has no circle. The "cycle" has no effect upon its existence. Its path unites the courses by an initial infinite choice of direction on the curve. Any person that could travel upon that point would belong to no circle, would be bound to no cycle, can be born and may die at any time.

  "'Long have we of Enor waited for that One'—it looks like not even they had known when the 'One' would appear, when or even if the 'cycle' could be broken."

  "Do you think that this legend has any meaning? It might be just a religious belief, as you said." Ornenkai took the printsheet from Marankeil's offering hand and held the rubbery, gelatinous sheet up to the light, carefully reading over the translated words. There were still some large gaps in the structure, enough missing to cast doubt on the adequacy of their assumptions.

  "How could they know about the future?" Marankeil wondered aloud. "It sounds to me like a prediction. Perhaps there are infinite choices behind our every decision because of the amount of previous decisions that influence our history, but possibilities are also limited by the set of circumstances that we inherit."

  "History is destiny," Ornenkai mused, reiterating a common expression. Then he stopped. Clearly Marankeil was thinking the same thing.

  "The "cycle"—the legend of the ancients—could it be that—"

  "We still believe it to be true." Ornenkai interrupted, finishing Marankeil's guess.

  Marankeil stopped, contemplating, remembering something. We can’t escape our connection to all things that have been or will ever be...

  "And 'the beginning is unclear'—but what did that mean?” Ornenkai said, not noticing Marankeil’s silence. “There has to be some point from which everything occurred. There must be a beginning. And everything ends with the end of the universe.” He shook his head. "I'm more confused. I understand how history influences our individual destinies, but how can those destinies return to affect history if that is indeed what this "cycle" implies? How can the future affect the past?"

  Change my fate... Marankeil turned away, but Ornenkai had gone into contemplation over the translation.

  Is there one destined to live untouched by the bounds that mortal beings must endure? Marankeil wondered. One who will escape the cycle of death at the end of the universe and live for all time, present and future? Maybe if a living being could forsake his human form but keep his spirit, he would become the One who travels on the unbound point of singularity. Then all destinies, and the universe, would be his. For absolute power is impotent unless it is used to control others.

  "I just heard about your technical team's breakthrough," Ornenkai said out of breath as he rushed into Marankeil's inner laboratory. Already six tendays had passed since they returned from the Enorian Havens, but Ornenkai had still been at the Research Center less than a year. Ornenkai stopped, suddenly intrigued by the large android unit lying on the ground, hooked up to the main computer by a million micro-filaments and almost completely covered by a tarpaulin. A small neural helmet lay on the ground; Ornenkai remembered the one he had seen in the young Ilika's apartment years before.

  "How long have you been working on the development?" Ornenkai asked, his eyes drawn to the android arm, not yet covered by the artificial skin or alloys that would either make it a humanroid or a human-shaped mechanized unit. The exposed musculature of the arm, composed of electrostrictive polymer fibers, writhed and flexed.

  "As long as I can remember, in one form or another," Marankeil responded absently, to Ornenkai's irritation. How could Marankeil discuss his own discovery with such indifference?

  "May I try the device after the demonstration period is over?" Ornenkai asked tentatively. Marankeil looked up, an amused smile on his face.

  "Of course. But I must make sure there are checks in place before the technology becomes dangerous."

  "Dangerous?" Ornenkai repeated, his brow furrowed.

  "Yes. Can't you see the potential abuses of the ability to program the human mind from a computer? We'll have people using the computers as methods of learning rather than study, but the information will not have to be processed by the mind, only accepted. That kind of thinking is far too linear, unquestioning, without the modulation of an individual's own beliefs."

  "Surely no one would use it as a substitute for real learning."

  "Why not, if it were possible? You are still so young, Ornenkai. There are those your age less talented than you still trying to clear their first level of training. Once they have reached adulthood, they will have to give up if they have not passed their exams and take a profession in manual operations where the machine operators cannot function. What kind of life is that? Don't you see that many of them would give anything to understand the greater achievements of science and culture in order to obtain better social standing?”

  Ornenkai’s eyes widened.

  "Never fear, my intellectual giant. My invention can't really give them that—it can only allow them to recall the information as the computer does, utilizing their own latent memory storage abilities. It can be an aid to study, if
only as a means of remembering raw information. It cannot replace the real philosophy of the mind and its cognitive abilities."

  "What is this?" Ornenkai decided to change the subject, indicating the strange android in front of him. As far as Ornenkai could remember, Marankeil was still on project leave when he suddenly presented his ground-shaking innovation. No one had known what he had created since there weren't any progress checks while on project leave. It suddenly occurred to Ornenkai that it was likely then that Marankeil alone knew how the technology worked, his technicians only to a lesser degree. The project had been kept in the dark, and no other specialists had made inspections.

  Such an innovation could give Marankeil plenary power over the entire scientific community... Ornenkai shuddered, but tried to shake off his concerns.

  "This? This is my masterpiece, of course.”

  “What—no sense of humility, Marankeil?” Ornenkai laughed.

  “What is humility?” Marankeil echoed, in equal kind. “A vanity that tries to raise one’s true worth in the eyes of others by intriguing them first, so that they will seek the truth and note the subtle contradiction between what was claimed and what rather seems to be true; thus, one’s worth is highlighted more than its real merit deserves.”

  “Okay, okay. I suppose you have a right to crow about it.” Ornenkai conceded, not liking what Marankeil had said.

  “Perhaps I'll explain it to you then when it is finished—if it works.” Marankeil shrugged. “I've been developing it for years, but until recently, I had given up on achieving perfection—" Marankeil stopped short. "How about we go on a break? I'll explain some more of it to you."

  Ornenkai nodded, losing interest in the strange-looking android. It was, after all, just a machine.

  After all he had done, the most difficult task proved to be locating and secretly securing the suspended animation capsule from those left over from launching the first major galactic explorer mission. Now at last the device was his, and he could finally begin the greatest experiment of all, the last step of all.

  Marankeil calmly activated the mechanized unit he had been preparing for many years, a creature he had created with a computerized mind capable of embodying a human mind, able to absorb not only the pieces of thought from a living being, but the entire entity. Now only the last transfer remained.

  Marankeil looked down at the mechanized unit with satisfaction; if it failed, what would he lose? Yes, it was a gamble; if he failed, he would die then, lose a life presently not worth living, but he would die anyway in time. If he succeeded, immortality would be his.

  He felt certain he would; the Enorian legends had so much as assured him so. Yes, he thought. Soon, his being and all of his memories would be extracted, replicated, and transferred into the mechanized unit, his conscious thought entering the machine and remaining there. His human shell he would be careful to preserve in case the machine failed—there was a possibility that it could be revived if he sensed that the mechanized forms were beginning to malfunction, but for that he might need a biological expert—Ornenkai.

  Marankeil smiled complacently, confident that nothing could go wrong with the three replicas he had waiting already as back-ups. Then suddenly his face twisted in irritation, distracting him as he realized again that he was going to need Ornenkai, that he would have to convince his friend to join him.

  But he wasn't worried. He had already gained what he needed from Ornenkai, when Ornenkai refused to see the truth... Perhaps Ornenkai didn’t want to know. Now Marankeil had nothing to fear.

  He also knew Ornenkai's weakness well enough to tempt him, to control him, better than Ornenkai knew it himself. Ornenkai was desperately afraid of death. Marankeil had sensed that when his own mother died. And Ornenkai believed in philanthropic values.

  But he had to concentrate on the transfer now. If it worked, he would have all the time in the world to worry about Ornenkai.

  "Marankeil, where are you?" Ornenkai called out into the empty laboratory. He looked up at the sound of the door opening to the inner laboratory. An incredibly advanced-looking mechanized unit moved into the room, looking at him as though it were waiting to be spoken to.

  "Where's Marankeil?" Ornenkai addressed the machine android that moved fluidly without sound, and for once he found his attention distracted by the revelation that he had never seen such an exquisite android before. Marankeil's? he thought.

  The machine let out a reedy, synthesized laugh that sounded nonetheless familiar. Could machines laugh? Ornenkai wondered.

  No, Ornenkai, they can’t. But I’m not just a machine. Ornenkai heard the words enter his mind unbidden, as though another entity had put them there.

  How did I speak to you without using my voice? The machine went on. As a computerized entity I can receive the information of your brain waves—like telepathy, yes, except that I can only hear your surface thoughts. Then I can communicate back to you using your own frequency.

  "What are you?" Ornenkai asked, amazed.

  "Don't you recognize me, Riliya?" The synthesized voice asked. "It’s me.”

  “Marankeil..." Ornenkai let the words die.

  "Don't you see, Ornenkai? You could live forever in an eternal body.”

  Eternal? Ornenkai was suddenly conscious of his heartbeats. Eternal. He had no real concept of that word, of all that it meant.

  What could a man do with eternity?

  What would he discover if he became like Marankeil?

  “You know that someday we’ll discover a way to defend our bodies from the radiation disease, but it’ll be too late for our generation.” Marankeil continued; Ornenkai tried to ignore the reedy, artificial quality of the mechanized unit’s voice, tried to forget the lyrical voice that had been Marankeil’s and could never be again.

  “You won’t live to see that moment if you remain as you are.” Marankeil continued. “Just imagine, you might never again feel pain."

  "But I wouldn't feel anything. No pleasure either—” He formed a mental image of Lia Hilan. “I couldn't feel pleasure, could I?”

  “This is better,” Marankeil replied. “You can simulate perpetual pleasure.”

  “Well, what would I care if I couldn’t see or hear—”

  “You’re just stalling. You know you could. You know I considered everything before I attempted the transfer. I told you, everything had to be perfect.”

  Perfect? Was there such a thing? Or wasn’t perfection as elusive as immortality—

  “Wouldn’t you love to live free of death and disease as a human being in a body that cannot chemically interact with the environment?” It seemed Marankeil suddenly paused at the words. Ornenkai waited. So—what about the environment?

  “I wouldn’t want to give up my vision more than anything,” Ornenkai said.

  “I can see better than you, Riliya,” Marankeil continued again, “and I can hear sounds you never imagined—the very air is full of sound, and even machines speak. The frequencies show me so much I did not know—and I feel the nature of electromagnetism—and it’s glorious, Ornenkai..."

  "How do you see?"

  "I see as you do, except that I can also determine the heat levels of living objects. I can see in the absolute dark of the void chamber. But you would see how much better it will be if you would join me—"

  "If you feel no pain, how do you sense touch—and pleasure?"

  "Touch is not as sensitive to the unpleasant aspects of pain and pressure, but I can sense the imperfections in a smooth piece of silica—I can feel the texture of water, my fingers are more dexterous and agile and yet a thousand times stronger than human fingers—and pleasure can be simulated in my cerebral cortex whenever I desire it."

  Perpetual pleasure? No pain?

  "There must be a sacrifice," Ornenkai protested, still skeptical, feeling overwhelmed. Why didn't he choose an android mor
e human in appearance, like one of the anthropoid humanroids? Ornenkai began to wonder, but cut off the thoughts to keep Marankeil from hearing them.

  "We solved many of the problems together, Ornenkai. You helped me to understand the physical systems necessary to perfect my android form."

  "The project?! How did you continue the project without anyone knowing?"

  "The project only involved the parts that I could not solve on my own. I admit I was disappointed by its official discontinuation, but then I realized I had learned almost all that I needed. Thus the end of it was only a minor setback..."

  "Why didn't you tell me what you were planning?"

  "I couldn't, Riliya, until I was sure that the transfer would be a success. And I didn't want to alarm you with what I was planning to do. But now I'm offering you alone the chance to join me. Just think of it, Riliya. Together you and I can restore the faded glory of our people—we can create the great Empire the Enorians saw and bring prosperity to all the races if we wish..." Marankeil was unsure if his argument were winning Ornenkai over, and readjusted his line of pursuit.

  "As a machine you can never be harmed, Riliya—my body runs on the energy of sun and wind and can take electricity from any nearby source—it will never fail you. I will teach you how to heal and maintain yourself if an internal system begins to fail, but there are back-up systems in the unit and even back-up units that I have created to replace this body when it begins to grow old.

  “As a machine you can still eat food and burn the fuel as energy as humans do—you can even taste sweet sher-inn juice. Trust me, Riliya, you will see how much better your life will be." Marankeil could see that Ornenkai was wavering. "Come Ornenkai, my friend, I would not have invited you to join me if I hadn’t wished the best for you." He added. "Join me and we will guide the evolution of our kind."

  Ornenkai said more words in protest, instead regarding Marankeil thoughtfully. He didn’t want to become a machine, but—

  Helping humankind, yes, that was interesting. But that was not what swayed his final decision.

  What Marankeil left unsaid—their speculations about the Enorians' eternal life—haunted him. Could it be possible to find that secret someday? And then—yes and then to live forever as a man? One thing was certain—there was much evidence in the animals of their planet that Seynorynaelian life had already evolved in reaction to the damaging effects of Valeria's radiation and potential that life might eventually evolve to the point where radiation could do no more harm to their race and to the planet’s animals.

  Marankeil's promise of immortality would at least buy him some time.

  He was young and foolish enough to believe that a man might deserve it.

  “But surely you wanted to help everyone, didn’t you? The others want to know how you did it. They want to know how they can—”

  “So what?” Marankeil said, with disinterest, as he sat in his residence out by a small, enclosed garden. Ornenkai had just arrived from a meeting at his science department.

  “You don’t want to help them,” Ornenkai repeated, suddenly subdued by the truth he had never before accepted. Only a short time had passed since the transfer, and already Ornenkai saw a change in Marankeil.

  “Ah, you finally understand.”

  “So why—why did you say—”

  “I said what I could to get you to join me, knowing what you wanted to hear. And I omitted my intentions, because they had nothing to do with your decision.”

  “You—you’re a monster.” Ornenkai said suddenly, in shock, but he wasn’t sure if he meant it. “You don’t really care about anyone—but yourself.”

  “You’re right. I don’t care. I just don’t care anymore about anyone, or about helping anyone who doesn’t deserve it.” Marankeil explained, his mellifluous voice low but steady; he was somewhat upset by the fact that he could no longer read Ornenkai’s feelings directly in his eyes, but he himself had nothing to hide.

  “You don’t care?” Ornenkai still refused to comprehend him.

  “The world is just bleak to me.” Marankeil said; he would have to say more now, if Ornenkai was ever going to understand. He eyed him with a glittering, cold, mechanical eye. “Everywhere I look, I see things that are wrong, and I don’t believe that anything can be changed for the better. Chaos is all I see. Yet the thing is, I don’t care any more. I used to think: what if I do something about it? Every little bit everyone can do helps. I used to think I could come up with a miracle cure, something that would bring order to the world, or at least some sense to it. I was young and foolish then, and yes, I remember having a pure heart. I look on that person as an entirely different being now. Yet I remember him, though now he is a stranger to me.”

  Ornenkai stepped back, horrified by his friend’s admission but unable to withdraw. He was suddenly very conscious of his non-human body.

  “I remember him, didn’t I say??” Marankeil continued. “Yes, back then I cared about people, every little thing about people. When they hurt. How they hurt. Why they hurt. And most of all, how to stop us all from feeling so much pain. Then I started to see that most people weren’t worth the effort. They didn’t want help. They didn’t want me. They were going to do what they wanted without ever knowing anything about me or that I cared for them all. That hurt me, back then. I thought something was wrong with me, tried to change myself. Make myself so good at it all that no one could stop me from bettering the world. Slowly I stopped thinking about what I could do for them and more about how I could control them. They couldn’t be trusted to do anything properly, even for themselves. So I decided I’d make the world what I wanted it to be. I’d make myself what I wanted most to be. And maybe I’ll get there. I don’t trust any one else to get me there, that’s for certain—”

  “But surely not me, not all of your old friends—” Ornenkai began to object.

  “People are all flawed, including me,” Marankeil countered. “They’ll let you down if you give them a chance and let you down again if you forgive them. If you trust them, Ornenkai, then you’re a fool.”

  Ornenkai didn’t answer. Marankeil waited a moment, then continued.

  “Then I went through this stage of feeling guilty that I’d given up on them.” He admitted freely. “After a while I stopped feeling guilty. Can you imagine why?”

  Ornenkai shook his mechanical head swiftly.

  “Because I stopped believing that anything was stopping me from getting what I wanted. I saw that everyone was out there just trying to get what he could for himself. Enjoying himself whenever he wanted and as much as he wanted, living his life as though he were the only creature in existence and the rest of the world mere objects around him. He was doing all of these things and not paying any price for it. He was living completely free.

  “I saw that having a conscience about little things wasn’t doing me any good. I began to believe that a conscience was some kind of masochistic streak in humanity that keeps us from getting what we want because it’s easy to give up and not put any effort into anything. It’s easier to act the martyr and complain that life isn’t fair than to blame ourselves for our failures. The thing is, life doesn’t care enough about you specifically to be fair or unfair. It hasn’t the ability to be anything but impartial because it isn’t something ordered. I realized that life is really about survival. The hunter doesn’t worry about whether or not he should attack his prey. I decided my senses were telling me this all along, but I only ignored them—”

  Marankeil saw Ornenkai making vague signs of disagreement. Marankeil waved an arm in dismissal, his voice rising and hurrying along in a passion, but it was a cold, controlled passion.

  “And I don’t want to hear the argument that if you fancy yourself above moral law, if you contemplate and premeditate the nature of your decision to be immoral before you act immorally, that you’ve made a c
onscious acknowledgment of what you’ve done. I don’t want to hear that you’re thereby accountable to the moral law you claimed to be exempt from. I’ve heard it before, that a sinner or murderer must confess, is compelled to because he can’t keep his sin hidden. I’ve heard that this is the conscience’s admission that at heart the sinner himself wasn’t really a predator, because he had to justify his action even to himself. He didn’t believe he was a predator, after all.

  “Well, first let me say that I don’t care either about sin or confession; if I’ve done something, an act, a thought, I can admit it and feel no horror, or keep it to myself and feel no shame. You see, I have no qualms about either keeping or telling secrets. Nothing, not even conscience has power over me, simply by virtue of the fact that I am—that I was—and in my soul still am an animal and need to survive. That is all.

  “Their argument has many other flaws as far as they pertain to me; perhaps to others as well, but how they pertain to me is all that I care about.

  “For you see, I think that you truly have to believe that your mistake matters to any one else in order to feel obliged to justify yourself. I’m not justifying myself. I don’t care what the truth is—don’t mistake this for meaning that I deliberately try to lie or to “sin” as it were; on the contrary, what I’m saying is that I have no interest in making my own character appear good by showing a false truth, or adhering to a morality system I had nothing to do with creating, a morality code which I feel is an artificial concoction of the human intellect rather than the human animal. Therefore, I am the best judge of truth because I do not care for it one way or another, so I can give it better than any one.

  “To the point, I am really beginning to wonder if truth exists. I wonder if anything is simple, if anyone is doing anything other than just surviving or deluding himself into believing that he is trying to please others.

  “Life just keeps going. And I want to be a part of it for as long as possible. Because I wish to survive does not mean I have no sense of pleasure or pain. I am very much aware that I was an animal. I also have feelings. I fear I was once capable of love, though no longer. I once felt desire. Acute desire. I sated it when I could and welcomed its appearance again when it returned, but it no longer gives me the satisfaction it once did. Yet I still wish for companionship, or I would keep no friends, assuming it is in my power to keep them, friends I can tolerate. And you, Ornenkai—I would keep you always with me because you are the one being that reminds me why I became as I am.” He hesitated, as though this comment had surprised even he himself. “You are the one other being I ever respected, apart from one other. For you, my friend, are the one being who ever stood a chance of stopping me from getting what I wanted, and I stopped you.”

  “So, I am a monster.” Marankeil laughed at length; an hour had passed in silence.

  Ornenkai looked over to him, coming out of a long moment of inner reflections.

  “I don’t know. I just said that—because I can’t understand you yet. I—suppose I should try to before I judge you.” Ornenkai heard the words after he said them, as though he hadn’t thought much about what he was going to say.

  “You think I have no morals?”

  “Yes.” No hesitation.

  Marankeil laughed. “I know what you think ‘morals’ are; for years I’ve listened to other people’s definitions of what these things are supposed to be. But if I exist, do I not have a right to my own beliefs about what they are to me?”

  “I suppose,” Ornenkai said after a moment. “Every individual has rights.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “I am completely baffled.” Ornenkai shook his head.

  “Well, Ornenkai, what would you say if I said I believe we are born with certain moral tendencies? How then can we be denounced—even damned—for a nature that was given us and is beyond our control? And is a man to be held morally accountable when obsession robs him of free will?”

  “I’m not saying we’ve ever done anything to be damned for,” Ornenkai replied, evasively. “But we chose to become what we are of our own free will, so whatever we do with it, it’s up to us. Any man who makes a mistake, no matter if he’s become a machine or not, is at fault, and he’ll have to deal with what ensues as a result.”

  “I won’t believe your attributions of blame,” Marankeil laughed. “Morality is abstract and moral perceptions are the vain sentiments espoused by a particular person. We have no control over what we are born, but we still each of us struggle against our natures, with our consciences, with our own morality, so we do have self-control. Yet this fear of blame should rationally have nothing to do with any of our actions. I believe in consequences—yes, but blame—this concept of sin—no.”

  Ornenkai stopped. Marankeil had already said he didn’t believe in sin, but this concept continued to stun Ornenkai.

  “There is a subtle difference.” Marankeil said. “No—actually a great difference.”

  “I think that self-control is something which keeps all of us from plunging into sin or vices. And you, my friend, haven’t got any self-control at all.”

  Marankeil laughed. “Yes, I do. What have I ever done to anyone?”

  “But not everyone has it. That’s why we have criminals.”

  “Show me a man who has never been capable of self-control and I guarantee his mind is either unfunctioning or unhealthy.”

  “You mean it doesn’t function for lack or for excess of something entirely chemical and physical. A chemical imbalance in the brain or something.”

  “Biology again,” Marankeil sighed. “But at least you seem to understand me.”

  “But if we can all control ourselves, how can there be Fate—and dammit—what about criminals? If there is no crime and moral punishment, why do criminals feel the need to confess, even when they know society will punish them? Isn’t it true that we all have a moral conscience?”

  “We may do, most of us, but not everyone shares the same morality, Ornenkai.”

  “What about the criminals?”

  “Criminals—I suppose I know what you mean by that.” Marankeil sighed. “Ornenkai, despite what you believe, a criminal—by your definition—can be happy, and an upright, virtuous man miserable. So tell me, is this justice as you see it?” Marankeil asked.

  “But—” Ornenkai tried to protest.

  “Don’t try to feed me any nonsense about the virtuous being happy for the sake of the goodness they do and the criminal’s conscience making him suffer for his guilt. The fact that this isn’t always true proves that each man or woman possesses their own morality code and lives by it. Their morality was fated to them, yes, but their choice to live or not live by it—this is entirely their free choice and will.”

  “Morality has to involve society—”

  “No, no—not as you think it does.” Marankeil said. “Absolute reality dictates that the morality of a man’s neighbors, who are human and therefore flawed and mortal themselves, has no real moral, non-social bearing upon him—let them judge!; he must decide his morality for himself. A morally strong man is a man who has identified his own morality and lives by it. Doesn’t he have the right to his beliefs as much as any man? You do believe in equality and human rights, as you said, Ornenkai.”

  “Yes...” Ornenkai stopped. “So morality isn’t something that can be taught, but born into you, as you claim. That can’t be true, or else what good are teachers if not to teach us right from wrong?”

  “Morality becomes automatic through habit, yes, Ornenkai, but those concepts of right and wrong are merely rules of a particular society.”

  “Then I have a question. If a man must believe and know he is sinning in order to sin, why must he not also know he is acting virtuously in order to be virtuous?”

  “Ah, if virtue truly exists, Ornenkai, it functions like breathing—sometime
s it will be unconscious and at other times conscious. But virtue and sin are entirely independent concepts.”

  “What if a man is born into a society without moral character?” Ornenkai wondered.

  “You mean, as you persist in defining moral character?”

  “Yes.”

  “Impossible. But no single law—and remember that laws are as unjust to the individual as they are just to the mindless majority—can force the man who was born incapable of your so-called proper moral action to adhere to proper moral action. You can’t force him to obey the law, no matter what the consequences of his action might be, even if he should be detained in prison for his failings. Or else why do we detain so many criminals who never suffered privation or desperation?”

  “Most of them have suffered, though. They have to be desperate to do what they do. But the ones you’re talking about are immoral and deserve what they get.”

  “Because they broke someone else’s law by abiding to their own morality code?” Marankeil said.

  “I can’t believe any morality code would condone their crimes.” Ornenkai protested.

  “Then at least as a biologist, you should remember that above all, man is an animal. A selfish animal, which is why he will do what he must to survive. When a man wishes to survive, that is the only morality he knows.”

  Ornenkai said nothing for a long time.

  “So, you don’t believe in sin, but you do believe in Fate and free will?”

  “Yes. I believe in Fate and predetermined conditions, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hold a man accountable for the choices he makes when more than one option is open to him, and both options are equally within possibility.” Marankeil said. “Well—he simply will be held accountable, because of course he understands his society’s rules, but I don’t condemn him. The sad thing is that most men suffer from the inability to see that if they wish to abide by their own morality, they must change society or leave it. Which is good, or society couldn’t function. Society needs people who are incapable of solitary action to follow others.”

  “You choose your words carefully, as though to avoid blame, which you say you don’t care about. Marankeil, you have a strange set of opinions.”

  “According to whom?”

  “Well—to the world.”

  “To you.”

  “To me.”

  “And what of it? I’m tired of outdated ideas that neglect the reality of the universe and the universal consequences of all actions in favor of petty social consequences. The many humans and aliens—we are all subject to environmental forces that are beyond our control, but we can also affect these forces, which no one seems to consider in their notions of social morality.”

  Ornenkai stopped, suddenly thinking about the Enorians. History is destiny—how much of what the vanished Enorians had done would continue to affect the entire universe and all of the life in it? Even when the explorers returned to a world perhaps influenced by Enor millions of years before recorded time?

  “So, then, is it right to eradicate all that can ever be through our own vain pursuits?” He wondered, disconcerted, thinking about the tablets. “Or perhaps because of our vices?” Ornenkai asked, after a moment.

  “Absolute right or wrong has nothing to do with it. You can’t make blanket statements, my friend. There are consequences, but what gives us the right to judge them right or wrong for other people? We simply have to live with them, try to analyze what we see and predict what might happen. What is going to happen. Ah, but I do not wish to be dogmatic. Of course, I do not expect you to agree with me in this. This is my moral understanding, not necessarily yours.”

  “What you say is interesting,” Ornenkai admitted but tried not to let it work on his thoughts. “Though I can’t understand how a man would believe in Fate and also believe in free will and the capacity to make predictions based on observations.”

  “They are not contradictory.” Marankeil insisted.

  “For myself, I don’t believe in Fate. It makes no rational sense. Entropy is increasing in the universe, that’s all—”

  “Moving all things towards a state of decay—chaos, break-downs—they’re inevitable.” Marankeil returned. “Isn’t that Fate in a way?”

  Ornenkai shook his head. “Not exactly.”

  “Then what about the Enorian legend?”

  “You can’t prove it,” Ornenkai said numbly.

  Some time later, perhaps even years later, it occurred to Ornenkai to wonder why Marankeil had deceived him, why he had even invited him to become a machineor mechanized unit He had gotten what he wanted—what did he need Ornenkai for?

  “Why did you need me?” Ornenkai wondered. The two machines had been involved in a humanroid project for some time; Ornenkai functioned through the days, convinced that Marankeil’s involvement in their newest project was not something philanthropic.

  “Why did I need you, Ornenkai? You mean as opposed to someone else?”

  “Yes. You could have chosen anyone—or no one.”

  “You’re my friend.” Marankeil said, seeming content with that simple answer.

  “You can always make new ones.” Ornenkai insisted. “You didn’t have to grant me immortality.”

  “Unfortunately, I am still an animal in my soul, Ornenkai,” Marankeil replied, with a gesture that passed for a sigh. “And no achievement ever meant anything to the human animal when there was not someone else there to witness it.”

  Ornenkai paused.

  “Is that all?” he asked after a moment.

  “Ornenkai, you are my friend, despite everything I believe, or perhaps because of what I believe. Our friendship reaches beyond time, to the days when we little perceived its existence, or its power. And I did what I did because I see your friendship with me is based on the loyalty which you believe exists and because you base your friendship upon the pursuit of your interest—you hope one day to understand me, and so you linger on, because I am the only one who never feared to tell you the truth of what I believed. My beliefs fascinate you, beliefs which now begin to temper your soul as they did mine.”

  Despite what Marankeil claimed, Ornenkai didn’t believe him, not yet.