Later, we sat back and looked at each other. I laughed again. He chortled noiselessly.
“You know, Dariush”, I said. “I think a lot about Kitha-ré and Pho-rion. Do you ever feel the way I do, that somehow you knew them personally? That they were part of your life?”
“Every day I feel this. I often reread their song. I try to imagine how it might have sounded when they sang it. Surely, they must have sung it together.”
“They probably did.”
“I ask myself what they would think if they visited the Kosmos.”
“They would think they’d arrived at the bliss in the heavens”, I said dryly.
“I suppose that is so.”
“Or they would have thought they were dreaming. I’m still puzzled by their innocence—if that’s what it was. How was it preserved in the midst of their civilization?”
“There is always a spark of goodness in the human heart, no matter how deeply buried in surrounding evils.”
“There’s always a spark of evil too, no matter how deeply buried in surrounding good.”
“Yes, this also is true. However, I would call it a lightless place within us, rather than a spark.”
“There’s always a killer hiding inside of us. Do you remember the shoot-out the day the pioneers left for Nova?”
“I heard a great deal about that most amazing event, though I arrived too late to observe it.”
“At one point, I aimed Paul’s pistol at Larson’s head. I was just about to pull the trigger. I wanted to pull it, but at the last moment, I pointed the barrel at the floor.”
“You couldn’t bring yourself to do it?” he asked with a solemn expression.
“I discovered I was quite capable of doing it. But I didn’t.”
“There is the inheritance of Cain inside each of us. And Abel.”
“Yes, well, I suppose that’s the case. The problem is, which will we turn out to be? One never knows until the moment arrives.”
“One never knows”, Dariush nodded.
For a time, we let the subject ride. I hoped it would fade out. It was veering too close to his belief system, and I did not want a repeat of our previous conversation.
But he was irrepressible, as I should have realized.
“Murder in the human heart”, he said quietly. “The violence as old as the story of Cain and Abel. Lately, Neil, I’ve been pondering those two brothers, and it seems to me that in a sense we are like a third brother.”
“A third brother?”
“We are witnesses to the scene through the hindsight of history, and yet we are also participants. When radical evil strikes, our instinctive response is to defend—especially to protect the innocent and vulnerable, is it not so?”
“Yes. That’s a good thing, wouldn’t you agree?”
“It is a necessary and just thing to do. Our response to evil, however, becomes problematic according to the ways we defend the good. In one form or another, this is the test we all must pass through.”
“But when you see the evil that goes on back home, all the deaths, all the confiscations of children, the persecution of your religion, don’t you ever feel an instinctive flash of horror, rage, and desire to kill the killers?”
“When I was younger, I overcame this instinct.”
When I was young, I had nurtured the instinct, then shelved it, biding my time. Throughout the following sixty years, there had been no opportunities to make retributive or preemptive strikes against the atrocities. Always I had searched for a way to stop the killing, yearned to eradicate the killer class in some big decisive way. But I never found one.
“When I was younger”, I said, “I did not overcome this instinct.”
“I understand, Neil. Yet do you see how the temptation, if it is not recognized for what it is, will grow and grow? Then comes the desire to definitively solve the murderous tendency in human nature by applying radical therapy. Is there not a voice inside us suggesting that if we kill enough of the killers, then the world will become safe for good people like ourselves? Do you see how we presume that we are good? Is this why most of mankind applauds a world-system of absolute control over all aspects of life, public and private—because we have been convinced this is the only way to abolish violence?”
“That’s what DSI is all about”, I said. “It’s what the world state has given us, and there aren’t any other options.”
“There are other options. They do not come easily to us, especially for those who must defend the weak. If there had been a third brother back then, on the terrible day when Cain’s rage and jealousy drove him to murder, would he not have been put to this test? Driven by powerful feelings, would he have picked up a rock and killed Cain in turn? Would he have called it justice? Would he have seen it as a necessary act for the preservation of peace and security in the lands east of Eden?”
I did not answer him. In a sense, he was speaking rhetorically. In another sense, he was cutting straight to the core of my struggle with life itself. Too often, he had done this to me, engaging me in conversations that gradually drew me into one of his sermons. He just wouldn’t leave well enough alone. He was my conscience-cricket, and it was getting on my nerves.
“Look, Dariush”, I said irritably. “Your beliefs help you to avoid despair. They make you peaceful in the middle of a firefight. They promise you justice in a future heaven, and so you never have to fight for it here and now.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Yeah”, I said. “Yeah, I do believe that. I like you and respect you as a man, but you make the mistake of always presuming you’re standing on the high road, and people like me are unenlightened. Maybe it’s the other way around.”
“If I have offended you. . .”
“Irresolvable questions”, I murmured dismissively. “Have some more cucarachas.”
He ate a token bite.
I ate one too, and not long after we parted.
*
Little did I know that the third brother would soon become the hand of justice—justice as he saw it. Arjuna rose up in our midst with Krishna standing behind him, pushing him on. Then Pinocchio stood up on his little wooden legs and lurched forward to resist him.
It was during our eighth month outward bound from Nova that the event occurred. We were then cruising at more than half-lightspeed, our navigation set for destination Earth.
One evening, I received another invitation to dine with the Captain. Dariush was also invited. Both of us were in an equitable mood as we walked along Concourse A toward the KC elevator, chatting about this and that. I told him I was concerned about the firewood consumption, that it might not hold out until we got home. He described new translations he was working on, temple codices. He was intrigued by what he called the “the psychology of ritual” and waxed didactic about the differences between cultic mind / brain processes and those of “authentic worship”. He said that the abolition of formal religion in our times had created a new phenomenon, the “ritualization of spontaneity”, which he believed was not in the least spontaneous or free but was, rather, an unhealthy frame of mind, producing in people a mental shell without a core. This in turn fostered a craving for “neo-transcendent experiences”.
“Like that green dance in the temple?” I said.
“Like that serpent dance in the temple”, he replied.
We boarded the elevator and ascended. The doors opened, and the conversation ended.
As we entered the Captain’s dining room, he rose from the head of the table and warmly greeted us. There were new messages from Nova, he said, handing us print-outs. The news was good. A second baby had been born, healthy and full term, obviously the fruit of another illegal conception before departure from Nova. There were now twelve pregnancies. Cabins were being built, fields being turned over for planting grain, tubers, and beans. The pioneers had discovered a mammal that was akin to the bovine. It had been captured without great effort, and the small herd was adapting well to domesticat
ion. It produced abundant milk. The colonists were experimenting with making cheese. The wild “turkey” was a prolific egg layer. Hives of the wild stingerless bee had been found, full of honey, as well as wax for making candles. The laser saws had broken down, and there were no materials to repair them, but the manual bow-saws worked well enough. The men had constructed a forge and were making tools such as ploughshares, sawbands, scythes, axe-heads—there was iron in the hills.
The shuttle had exhausted its fuel and had become a temporary barn. Vladimir and two of the other men were building a wooden boat, on which they hoped to go down the river to the sea some day, an estimated three-day journey. Others were building a cart on which they would pile harvested hay from the natural meadows. They hadn’t yet come to an agreement on a name for their community, but for now they were calling it “our village”. Everyone was in good health.
The Captain declared that the evening’s celebration would be in honor of our brave friends, whom he wished were here with us. “Or we with them”, said one of the half-dozen flight crew seated around the table. Dariush and I sat down to join them, and friendly banter ensued. A trolley was rolled into the room, bearing steaming platters and bowls. The meal commenced. I was getting a little tired of Cajun food, but the evening as it began was congenial.
After supper, the Captain turned to me and Dariush and said, “Gentlemen, would you be interested in seeing a room with a view?” We both said yes, wondering what he meant.
Everyone went out into the hallway, and the Captain led us through a double door into the forward command center. I had not visited it before, and my first sight of it was overwhelming. Uncannily, it was not unlike the command center of the temple ship, though ours was brightly illuminated, with polished floors and off-white ceilings. Along both walls were numerous modules for particular functions, all lit up with a perplexing array of technology, blinking lights, and computer screens. There didn’t seem to be anyone on duty. At the forefront of this long room, or hall, the uttermost command post stood like the wheel of an ocean liner. There was no wheel as such, but rather a sloped curving countertop embedded with large computer screens and more technology. Front and center were three comfortable swivel chairs facing the nose. Above the counter was a twenty-foot-wide horizontal window.
The Captain led us close to it and patted the central chair.
“The hot seat”, he smiled. “I don’t sit in it much. The ship is basically flying itself, and all we have to do is check instruments once or twice a day and make a record in the log.”
I couldn’t stop staring at the window.
“It’s a digital image”, explained the Captain. “Sometimes it seems more real than real. I’m not sure I like that, but it is very pretty.”
The view ahead was one I knew from reading star maps. We were heading home. In eight years from now, that tiny star we called the sun would be a massive sphere of fire so bright we would not be able to look at it.
“Can you see the planets?” Dariush asked.
The Captain bent over his console and tapped buttons. The view through the window expanded rapidly, and now we could see our solar system in detail. The sun was the size of a marble and four of the planets were visible as pin heads. He expanded it further, and then we could see Earth, our small blue pearl, a conglomerate of pixels that was halfway between a square and a sphere.
“Not much to see at this point”, he said. “It looks like it’s still there. Or should I say the light is still reaching us, though it left the planet four years ago.”
“Can we look at Nova?” I asked.
Again he tapped buttons, and there it was on the screen with a different configuration of constellations surrounding it. It was large enough that the continents were distinct. Only C-1 looked dead, partly visible as its western coast was swallowed by nightfall. C-4 was in the dawn of a new morning, shining and beautiful. Another zoom took the screen to a valley between the mountains and the ocean. From our present distance, the village was too small for recognition, but we knew its coordinates, knew where it was by the luminous computer dot shining at the bend of a river, twenty kilometers south of the mountains, sixty kilometers north of the sea.
The Captain pointed to the locater dot and said, “We’ll be erasing that from the computer memory soon, along with any other reference to the location.”
And that is when Arjuna appeared.
Behind us a voice said, “You will not be erasing anything from the memory.”
Startled, the Captain and the rest of the crew turned around to see who had spoken. And there stood Elif Larson and six DSI agents in uniform. We had been so intent on the view screen that we hadn’t heard them enter behind us. For a moment, no one said a word. We saw that the agents had pistols in their hands, little e-weapons that were either for stunning or killing, we weren’t sure which.
The Captain calmly pressed a button on his console and glanced up at the screen. The locator dot disappeared. He pressed another button, and the screen showed our distant home system.
“Get away from that console”, the Elf commanded. The Captain did not do as he was told. Instead he drew himself up to his full height and said: “You will immediately leave this deck and return to Concourse D, where you will confine yourselves for the remainder of the voyage, unless you are otherwise instructed.”
In reply, Larson removed a folded piece of paper from his inside breast pocket and opened it. He addressed the Captain by name and informed him that he had committed crimes against the government and grave violations of the expedition’s mandate. Moreover, he had just been heard planning another crime, the erasure of ship’s records, which were the property of the government. There were witnesses.
The Captain’s nerves were good. He looked Larson straight in the eyes and said with a voice that betrayed no emotion whatsoever: “It is a matter of supposition whether or not I have committed any crimes. It is a matter of fact that your crimes, Dr. Larson, are real. It is that which should concern you. There will be a hearing on Earth, and if you are found to be innocent, you will be released. If you are found to be guilty of murder and other infractions of civil liberty, you will face a prison sentence. I suggest that you would be wise to avoid compounding your crimes with more.”
“Obviously, you do not know the law”, said Larson.
“I have read the Manual thoroughly, as well as my own fleet directives. You are standing outside the law at the present moment, and I command you to leave this deck, where I am the sole authority.”
“The Manual is bigger than you think”, Larson countered. “Only my department has full access to the entire body of the laws governing this expedition.”
“Oh? Tell me what sort of a law is readable only by its enforcers?”
“An effective law.”
“A mockery of true law. Leave this deck now.”
“No, you’re coming with me. You are being taken into custody.”
“The ship needs her flight officers.”
“The ship, as you very well know, is programmed for the entire voyage and for docking in orbit upon arrival.”
This was true, a point that could hardly be refuted.
“You forget the need for oversight, human monitoring.”
“The ship monitors itself and corrects itself in the event of systems error, which has never occurred and never will.”
“This crew is also the guardian of fail-safe.”
“No more arguments, Captain. You will come along with us now.”
“Dr. Larson, I have already sent a detailed account of your activities to Earth-base, along with the sworn and signed testimony of witnesses. Your guns will prove to be very ineffective against a court of law. I should inform you that this conversation is being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to Earth-base even as we speak.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You would be imprudent to disbelieve me. Of course, it will take four years to arrive there, but within eight years from now,
you also will arrive there. Consider this carefully.”
Larson grabbed the sleeve of the Captain’s uniform and yanked him away from the console.
Now for the first time, I saw the Captain’s anger. “Murderer of Siauliai,” he growled in a low voice, “destroyer of the hill of crosses.”
Larson took a step back and pointed his gun at the Captain.
The six men in the flight crew, who had followed the foregoing exchange as if they were paralyzed, now pressed close to their captain and stared menacingly at the company of DSI.
They in turn raised their pistols and aimed at the crew.
Does it sound like farce? Is it a scene out of a wild west film full of showdowns and shoot-outs, a cliché that has been lived or dramatized a thousand times over throughout our history? Well, that’s the way it was.
And to this last, best western I must now add an account of my own part in it. If I were truly honest with myself, I would tear up these pieces of paper or burn them in the arboretum, or simply wait for everything to burn. But I will not.
Tell it, Neil.
During the whole confrontation, Dariush and I had stood nearby, Dariush a step to the right of the Captain and me farther back, both of us within the guns’ firing line.
I felt the weight of Paul’s Russian pistol in my jacket’s right pocket. It was a revolver, loaded, with the safety on. I had carried it about with me ever since the aborted showdown at the shuttle bay. Like everyone else, I had been fairly certain that DSI was deflated and that we would probably have no more trouble from them. Nevertheless, carrying the gun gave me confidence. In part, it was a hankering after my youthful identity as the rider of the open range, the killer of snakes, armed and dangerous. And though I had not seriously believed that Larson was still a threat, it had given me some satisfaction to think that I could protect people from him in the unlikely event that he stepped out of line.