fandomhigh | Library, Thursday [3/24]

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Library, Thursday [3/24]

Cassidy was relieved to find that the library was in a state of peace today. There didn't seem to be any squabbles of any kind going on in the stacks. She was convinced that it was because the different armies had taken her threats of shielding them and putting them in the children's section for a few hours quite seriously.

After she took care of any of the shelving and straightening that needed to be done, she withdrew to the desk with a few books on Akido -- and a travel book about Baltimore.

This could only end well. Really.

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"There were already people in charge taking care of that," he said, "Our command structure is very different from the Blood - I'm sure you've noticed some of that already. Besides, how you grow up also determines a lot about which way you point your curiosity - and which way you help."

After a brief pause, he added, "And how much you accept the idea that the enemy is the enemy and that's that."

"If they're hurting and killing my people, it would be difficult for me to not accept that the enemy is just the enemy," she said slowly. "If there was a reason that they were doing it that wasn't just they're evil and that's that, then it would probably be a little harder to accept that reasoning."

"Do you think it's likely any creature with a conscience would just do something because they're evil?" Ender asked. "I mean, without definition 'evil' can be anything you want it to be. Do you think there's something like a person who is only evil, and hence only does evil things?"

"I don't think that a person or creature starts out as evil or only evil," she said after thinking about this. "I think that most are shaped by their perceptions or the way the world is around them -- or the way that it treats them. All beings start out with the ability to be either good or evil -- or I guess even neutral."

"But is it either-or to you?" Ender asked, "Or can an evil person still have some good in them? Do a good thing for the wrong reasons, for example? Or is it possible for someone to be neither good nor evil, but to do evil out of ignorance, and what does that make them?"

He didn't actually really have any answers to those questions, but they were ones that plagued him, and different perspectives could often help.

Though he had his hunch about what her answer would be.

Cassidy ran a hand through her hair. "Before Agio, I would have said that it's not either-or. I used to believe that everyone had good in them and the ability to do good, and maybe in some ways I still do think that. The Jhinka scared me because I had never felt something so focused on another's destruction like that. Were they evil or just tainted? I don't know. Were they trying to kill everything in that village out of an evil bred by ignorance? I don't know that, either." She sighed. "Do I think that someone could be neither good or evil, but do things that we would label as evil because of the way that we are all taught -- and they were taught differently than we might have been? I do think that it's possible."

He nodded thoughtfully as she answered. "And what if I tell you that the people who attacked us were very different from us?" Ender asked. "That among their species, the only people capable of individual thought, of reproduction, were their Queens, and every other being under their command had no thoughts of their own, were like hands and feet? That the two times they attacked my world and killed my people, they did so thinking that they weren't killing any people, just poking us in the arm or the leg?"

He placed a hand down on the books he'd brought in.

Cassidy's face drained of color. "They had Queens that made them attack your world? Their own people were so broken by them that they couldn't understand that they were harming people?"

She swallowed hard, and then swallowed again. "If they were truly incapable of making the distinction between the harm they thought they were doing and what they were really doing, then I don't believe that makes them evil."

"No," he corrected, gently, "They were just a different species. A little like ants, except their Queens had grown sentient, and very clever. But it was biologically impossible for anyone out of that species, except for the Queens, to develop minds, souls, whatever you would call it. Their Queens corrupted nothing, but their people were just their bodies, born empty; that's just the way they had always been. The problem was that their Queens thought that we worked the same way on the inside, when we didn't-- they didn't realise that for us, every human can think just as well as our Queens do."

He took a breath. "When the Queens did figure that out, they stopped attacking us," he said, "Because for them it was unthinkable to kill anything that could think freely like they did."

Edited 2011-03-25 14:55 (UTC)

"Mother Night," Cassidy whispered. "Mother Night." She shook her head slightly, processing everything that Ender was telling her. Bodies born empty was something she was having a hard time imagining, but she was trying to.

"I don't understand why they would be attacking in the first place, even if they thought every other being worked like them." She bit her lip again. "If they didn't know better and were just acting as they thought every one did, but then stopped when they realized what they were doing... I don't think I would call them evil." She looked up at Ender. "But it wasn't my people that they were attacking. What did you think?"

"I think it was a tragic failure to communicate, nothing more, nothing less," he said, with a brief, none-too-happy quirk of his mouth. "They had just been looking for a new place to colonise, and thought they were just letting us know about their intent by killing a handful of people. Then things escalated."

Ender bit down on his own lip. "Of course, the other side of the question is this," he said, "We didn't know that after the second time they didn't want to come back. So we came for them the third time and wiped them out. Does that make us evil?"

He wasn't actually sure he wanted her to answer that - it was framed as an impersonal question, but it was quite personal to him, and he wasn't sure he actually wanted to debate the matter of guilt here that distantly when it wasn't.

"No," she responded instantly. "It doesn't make you evil. They had already attacked you twice and you didn't know it wasn't going to happen a third time. You reacted with the knowledge of previous attacks and didn't want it to happen again. You thought that you were protecting yourselves from further death and destruction."

The argument Ender had served up every time anyone who didn't really know him - or who he didn't want to know about his real, and very illogical, feelings - had asked him about it. It was true, from a human point of view, and he would certainly defend it from there.

"True. But from the Formics' point of view, it could have seemed evil," he said instead. "This stuff gets tricky."

She chewed on her lip again and then sighed. "It does get tricky. Both sides could definitely have seen the other one as being evil -- even if one action was a reaction to something that had been done by the other side previously." She leaned her chin on her hand once more. "Which means that trying to decide if any creature is inherently good or evil is tricky and there may not be an answer that works in all situations."

His mouth quirked. "And that it's often a good idea to look before you rush out to fight anyone," he said, "Though for the record, I'm all for survival if there's a fight."

She smiled slightly. "I've gotten very attached to being around, so I agree with you and am all for the survival idea." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "So anything could trigger a fight -- difference in beliefs and the idea of good versus evil."

"You mentioned the Jhinka," Ender said, and took a breath. "They were coming at us pretty hard. Communication seemed pretty impossible. I have a hard time condemning Jaenelle for what she did, but I still wonder about them."

"That first day, Raven mentioned trying to find the one in charge and seeing if there could be communication, but all I could feel from their psychic scents was rage and hatred and the desire to kill and destroy." There was sorrow in her eyes when the thought about those days. "I can't condemn Jaenelle for it, no. I understand why she did what she did." Even if it had scared the hell out of her. "But I do wonder what caused them to be like that. I had never felt so much hatred from any being and I believe it was a good thing that I know how to shield."

"And for me, that I can't pick up on any of that, I guess," Ender said, with a little smile, though he had a human sense of empathy that didn't always help him either. "It just adds to the file of evidence pointing towards someone meddling with everything. I'm sorry they had to die, but I'm not sorry they died, if that makes any sense."

It wasn't quite the truth, but it was truth enough, anyway.

"Someone definitely had to be meddling and tainting things for that to have happened because the idea that any creature could exist just for killing is disturbing." Cassidy said quietly. "I am also sorry that they had to die. Such a huge loss of life is never something that is thought of lightly. But when it came down to their lives against ours and all of the people in that village? I'm not sorry, either, so it makes sense to me."

It was truth enough and it didn't cause Cassidy to once more keep weighing that event in her mind with other events like she had done a lot of.

He liked talking to Cassidy about this - she had an innocent, naive point of view, which was nice in its way. And since she was a Queen, getting her to really think about it made him feel like he was doing something constructive.

Ben would be happy about that, Ender thought, with exasperated fondness. Then he banished the Jedi from his mind - he dwelled on him far too much these days as it was.

He nodded. "Though I think that might be enough heavy discussion for today," he said, with another quirk of his mouth. "I just tend to have a lot of questions."

She smiled. "I don't mind the heavy discussions. It gives me a chance to think about things from a different perspective or actually decide what I think or feel about the situation we're discussing. Besides, it's rather nice to have someone to discuss them with who has seen different things than I have -- or in the case of Agio, someone who was there."

She shrugged a little. "Besides, I like talking with you, Ender."

And whether she realized it or not, she was learning things from their conversations.

"And since I tend to have questions about everything, that puts you in good company." She grinned.

"It's when we start thinking we have answers that we get truly dangerous, I think," Ender said, shooting her an amused smile back.

Cassidy laughed lightly. "If we start thinking we have the answers, then someone may decide not to let us talk together any longer."

"Probably my roommate," Ender offered. "I think at the rate I'm going he might wind up throttling me one day."

Internally, he facepalmed at himself for hopping back to the topic of Ben that quickly.

Library, Thursday [3/24]

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