There is, I believe, much truth in the view you express.
The great European theological and economic expansion of the past five hundred years, coupled with the enormous growth of thaumaturgic knowledge that spearheaded, among other things, the Industrial Revolution, has indeed had a profound impact on both the politics and thecology of the rest of the world. I can hardly be surprised to learn that long-established Powers, chafing under the pressure of European-imposed belief structures imposed by superior military and magical force, are actively seeking to overwhelm that force."
"You mean you approve?" I stared at him.
"That is not what I said," he answered, more sharply than usual. "I said I am not surprised that the Powers and, presumably, the peoples who reverence them, seek to regain their former prominence. I did not say I wished them success in that effort. Such success would be the greatest disaster the world has ever known, or so I believe, at any rate."
"You get no argument from me," I said.
"I had not expected you to disagree," he said. 'You have a reasonable amount of sense, by all appearances."
I wanted to reach over and pat him on the knee. "Why, Michael, I didn't know you cared," I said. From his point of view, he'd just given me the accolade, and I knew it "Facetiousness aside," he amended. I just grinned. He ignored that and went on, "Let us take the Americas, for instance, they being the most dearcut examples of a massive human and thecological transformation in the past semimillenium."
"Okay, take the Americas," I said agreeably, gesturing to show he was welcome to them. Truth was, as long as I was schmoozing with Michael, I didn't have to think (as much) about either Judy or the likelihood that Armageddon was liable to come bubbling out of a toxic spells dump.
Michael gave me a severe look. "Facetiousness aside, I said."
"Sorry," I told him. "You were saying?"
"Nothing of great complexity; nothing, in fact, that should not be obvious to any reasonably objective observer: that we immigrants have done more and better with this land in the past five hundred years than its native peoples would have accomplished during the same period."
"Nothing that isn't obvious, eh?" I said, grinning wickedly.
"Plenty of people, natives and immigrants both - I'd use your phrase: why not? - would say you've just committed blasphemy, that we've done nothing but slaughter and pollute in what was, for all practical purposes, paradise on earth."
"I find only one technical term appropriate to use in response to that viewpoint: bullshit." Michael delivered his technical term with great relish. "I am not saying that slaughter did not take place; I am not denying that we pollute - working as I do for the Environmental Perfection Agency, how could I? I do deny, however, that this was, in a manner of speaking, government work for the earthly paradise."
"Careful how you talk, there," I said. "You work for the government yourself, remember?"
Michael refused to be distracted. "Leaving aside the habits of the natives of the islands off the coast, whose tribal name gave English the word 'cannibal,' the two most prominent cultures in the Americas five hundred years ago were the Aztecs, also cannibals, who fueled themselves both theologically and in terms of protein through human sacrifice, and the Incas, whose theology was benign enough but who regimented themselves more thoroughly than the Ukrainians would have tolerated before their latest crisis."
"You're hitting below the belt, talking about peoples who didn't live in what's now the Confederation," I protested.
"What about the noble warriors and hunters of the Great Plains?"
"Well, what about them?" he asked. "The culture they now revere and think of as ancient did not exist and could not have existed before the coming of the Europeans because their own ancestors had hunted the American horse to extinction - hardly good environmental management, in my opinion. And the firearms they used to defend their territory - bravely - against encroaching whites were all bought or stolen from those same whites, because they did not know how to make them for themselves."
"Whoa, there." I held up a hand. "Blaming people for not having skills isn't fair. And the whites who took the land away from the natives weren't what you'd call saints. Conquest by firewater, deliberately spread smallpox, and mass exorcisms of the native Powers isn't anything to be proud of."
"You're right," he said. "But if Europeans had not found the Americas until, for example, the day before yesterday, they would not have found them much different from the way they were five hundred years ago. And that is precisely the point I am trying to make. Thanks to modem thaumaturgy, our present culture supports far more people at a higher level of affluence and greater material comfort than any other in the history of the world."
"Is that all you judge culture by?" I asked. "Seems to me there should be more to life."
"Oh, no doubt. But make note of this, David: as a general rule - not universal, I concede, but general - the people who show the greatest contempt for material comforts are those lucky enough to have them. The Abyssinian peasant starving in his drought-stricken field, the Canaanite cobbler suffering under a plague of gnats because no local sorcerer knows enough to properly control Beelzebub, the slum-dweller in D.StC. aching with a rotten tooth because her parents hadn't had the crowns to go to an odontomagus to affix the usual invisible shields to her mouth… they will not speak slightingly of the virtues of a full belly and a healthy body, things we take for granted despite their being historically rare."
"Wait a minute, Michael. You just cheated there. You were talking about how wonderful our culture is, and then one of your suffering examples comes straight out of our own slums. You can't have it both ways."
He didn't answer for a few seconds; he was getting the carpet off the freeway. Once he'd done that, though, he said, "I fail to see why not. I never claimed we were perfect. Perfection is an attribute of the divine, not the human. I said that, on the whole, we do better for more people than anyone else has. Our flaws notwithstanding, I hold to that position."
I thought about it. The only times I'd ever been hungry were at Yom Kippur fasts, and those I undertook for the sake of ritual, not because I had no food. I slept in a flat on a bed; I was protected against diseases and curses that had lain whole nations waste in ancient times. I said, "You have a point"
The other thing was, the Chumash Powers and the Aztedans wanted to restore the unpleasant old days. The trouble with that was that most of the millions of people in the Barony of Angels liked the new days better. What would happen to them? My limited acquaintance with the Chumash Powers didn't make me think they were that ferocious, but Huitzilopochtii - The Chumash Powers must have cut a deal with the Aztedan war god, I realized. I tried to imagine the secret dealings that must have happened on the Other Side. Huitzilopochtii was a much bigger fish than the Sky Coyote, the Lizard, or the demons of the Lower World, but they were extra powerful here because the Barony of Angels was their native territory. The combination could prove deadly.
I reached that unpleasant conclusion about the time Michael pulled into the parking lot across the flyway from the Devonshire dump. To my relief, three or four black-and-whites were already there, their synchronized salamander lanterns flashing red and blue.
X
People were standing on the sidewalk rubbernecking the way they always do when something goes wrong. Over on the dump side of the street, a couple of constables were laying down the ritual yellow tape that keeps rubberneckers from getting too close to the action.