“Sure I want ‘em kept down,” Muller snapped. “We’d better, if we know what’s good for us. You’ve seen the wild ones—they’re a bunch of animals. Nothing they’d like better than to tear a man apart and eat the pieces.”
“On the other hand,” Reese put in thoughtfully, “the ones here in the outpost are docile.”
Muller disparaged the point with a wave of the hand. “They don’t count,” he claimed. “They’re way off the main track. It’s the ones on the mainland that count. If we let them get smart, there’ll be no stopping ‘em. They’ll hunt us down. We’ll be the animals! If we don’t stop ‘em, they’ll chase us right out of the universe. Right now, we can stop ‘em. Later on it’ll be too late. So we’d better get at it. Right now.”
He really believed it, Reese realized wonderingly. He meant every word of it.
“Sigurd, I don’t agree,” Reese said slowly. He hoped he sounded reasonable. “In the first place, we conducted some personality experiments on them about twenty years ago. We took the offspring of wild floppers and raised them with our tame ones. They developed none of the... the bloodthirsty traits of their parents. So I’m sure that this ... this viciousness we see in them is a characteristic forced on them by their environment.”
“Yeah?” Muller scoffed. “But the smart ones aren’t growing up here in the dome. They’re growing up out there —on the mainland.”
Reese nodded. “True,” he admitted. “But before they could be any danger to us, they would have to develop a civilization—a technology. And one of the characteristics of a technological civilization is the ability of its people to control their environment. By removing the causes of their viciousness, they would also remove the need for being vicious. Also, I believe they have shown this same viciousness toward each other—to the point of cannibalism. But recently, I understand, some of them have taken to hunting in groups. They have discovered the advantages of cooperation. Don’t you think this shows a trend away from ... from animal savageness? Don’t you, Sigurd?”
“You want to take a chance on it?” Muller challenged.
“Taking that chance is the only honorable thing we can do,” Reese told him firmly.
“Huh!” Muller snorted. “And how do you think they’ll look at us, once they get smart, with us sitting here not doing a thing to help ‘em? They’ll hate us. They’ll hate us like hell!”
Reese hesitated, then shook his head. “No, Sigurd,” he decided. “The transition will be a slow, very gradual process. It will be all right to start helping them long before they could become a danger to us. Also, if they do become as intelligent as you say, they will probably understand that they could not have evolved to intelligence if we had tried to help them.”
Muller snorted disgustedly. “You’re doing a lot of supposing,” he said. “Suppose you’re wrong? It’s the whole future of the human race you’re talking about, you know. That’s ... that’s us!”
Reese nodded. “I know,” he admitted placidly. “Whatever we do—whatever we decide—it will be thousands of years before the consequences come. I rather imagine we’ll have been forgotten. That puts a terrible responsibility on us. We must try to do what is right.”
“And on that basis you refuse to help them?” Hitchcock demanded. “Mr. Reese, I have never heard such a preposterous—!”
So all his arguments and efforts at persuasion had failed. Reese slumped in his chair, his arms on the rests. He wondered what to do. Muller’s careful half-truths—Hitchcock’s stubborn ignorance—together they were too much to fight. He could do nothing. He was helpless. Defeat and frustration wearied him, and he felt a sick pity for all the intelligent floppers who would now never be born.
It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.
But he did not say it. Thinking it to himself, he realized how futile it was to speak of fairness to these men. And besides, by what right could he ask for fairness—an ideal— from the real world?
Of course it wasn’t fair. Nothing was ever completely fair in the real world, because the real world conformed to the physical laws, not the rules of sportsmanship and fair play. It was a hard, bitter thought to accept, but Ben Reese accepted it. As a scientist, he had to accept it no matter how he felt about it.
And in that recognition, he saw, was the key—the way he could protect the floppers from both these men.
He turned to his phone again. “You will excuse me, won’t you?” he requested politely as he punched the number combination. His hand trembled.
Before either Hitchcock or Muller could nod their assent, someone answered the phone. “Clinic,” he said.
“Nick?” Reese guessed. “This is Ben. Could you send up a couple of your boys?”
“Sure,” the one identified as Nick consented. “But what—?”
“Never mind,” Reese said quickly. “Just send them.” He broke the connection.
“What’s the matter?” Muller wanted to know. “You feel sick?”
Reese ignored the question. “I’ve changed my mind, Sigurd,” he said. “You can stay here.”
Muller backed up a step. “Well, now, I don’t know,” he said warily. He scratched his beard. “I’ve been here a long time—”
“But, Sigurd,” Reese urged. “We’re going to need you here—at least for the next year. All the information you’ve held back—”
“It’s in my files,” Muller said. “You’ll find it, if you want it bad enough.” He moved toward the door. “I’m going to pack.” In a moment, he was gone.
Reese smiled a complacent smile. “There’ll be no room for him in the ship,” he confided to no one in particular. He leaned forward. “As for you, Mr. Hitchcock... sit down, please. There’s one thing more I want to say.”
Hitchcock paused uncertainly, then resumed his chair. “Let it never be said,” he declared, “that I will not hear all arguments.”
Reese nodded, pleased. Everything would be all right if he could keep Hitchcock in his office until the boys came from the clinic. “Mr. Hitchcock,” he said, “in a sense, I’m very glad you came.”
Hitchcock scowled.
“For one thing,” Reese went on, “it was you who ... who brought out the fact that the floppers are developing intelligence. If you hadn’t come, Sigurd might have concealed it for years. Of course, Sigurd was hoping you’d help him to ... to wipe out the intelligent ones, but that is beside the point.”
“Mr. Reese,” Hitchcock said sternly. “You cannot convince me that black is white.”
“Oh, of course,” Reese agreed willingly. “But there are hundreds of shades of gray. The other reason I’m glad you came...” He spoke earnestly. “You’ve forced me to reexamine what we’re doing here—to ... to question the rightness of our doing nothing about the conditions in which the floppers live. It’s not an easy thing to be sure of.”
“So you admit it!” Hitchcock pounced triumphantly. “You admit—”
Reese silenced him with a gesture. “No,” he said firmly, “I do not admit it. I have come to the same conclusions I have always held. But now—because of you—I know why it is right.”
“Impossible,” Hitchcock objected. “It is not right.”
Ben Reese was very patient with him. He could afford to be patient—it used up time, while the boys from the clinic were coming.
“You’re a very moral man, Mr. Hitchcock,” he said. “I’d be the first to admit it. But—unfortunately—a high moral sense isn’t enough. You see, Nature isn’t moral—it doesn’t conform to our concepts of right and wrong, and it isn’t limited to conditions where the right and wrong of a matter are easy to decide. There are times when an act that seems morally right can lead to... to something horrible. You cannot say a thing is morally right or wrong until you’ve considered the context in which it happens. And that, Mr. Hitchcock, is where your moral sense fails you.”