"I'm afraid it's you who aren't being clear. You're making a reality where none exists. Truth--with a small _T_ is a description, a relationship. A way to describe a statement. A semantic tool. But capital _T_ Truth is an imaginary word, a noise with no meaning. It pretends to be a noun but it has no referent. It stands for nothing.

It means nothing. When you say 'I believe in Truth' you are really saying 'I believe in nothing'."

"You're wrong, you're wrong," Mikah said, leaning forward, stabbing with his finger. "Truth is a philosophical abstraction, one of the tools that mankind's mind has used to raise it above the beasts--the proof that we are not beasts ourselves, but a higher order of creation. Beasts can be true--but they cannot know Truth. Beasts can see, but they cannot see Beauty."

"Arrgh!" Jason growled. "It's impossible to talk to you, much less enjoy any comprehensible exchange of ideas. We aren't even speaking the same language. Aside from who is right and who is wrong, for the moment, we should go back to basics and at least agree on the meaning of the terms that we are using. To begin with--can you define the difference between _ethics_ and _ethos_?"

"Of course," Mikah snapped, a glint of pleasure in his eyes at the thought of a good rousing round of hair-splitting. "Ethics is the discipline dealing with what it good or bad, or right or wrong--or with moral duty and obligation. Ethos means the guiding beliefs, standards or ideals that characterize a group or community."

"Very good, I can see that you have been spending the long s.p.a.ceship-nights with your nose buried in the books. Now make sure the difference between those two terms is very clear, because it is the heart of the little communications problem we have here. Ethos is inextricably linked with a single society and cannot be separated from it, or it loses all meaning. Do you agree?"

"Well...."

"Come, come--you _have_ to agree on the terms of your own definition.

The ethos of a group is just a catch-all term for the ways in which the members of a group rub against each other. Right?"

Mikah reluctantly produced a nod of acquiescence.

"Now that we agree about that we can push on one step further. Ethics, again by your definition, must deal with any number of societies or groups. If there are any absolute laws of ethics, they must be so inclusive that they can be applied to _any_ society. A law of ethics must be as universal of application as is the law of gravity."

"I don't follow you...?"

"I didn't think you would when I got to this point. You people who prattle about your Universal Laws never really consider the exact meaning of the term. My knowledge of the history of science is very vague, but I'm willing to bet that the first Law of Gravity ever dreamed up stated that things fell at such and such a speed, and accelerated at such and such a rate. That's not a law, but an observation that isn't even complete until you add 'on this planet.'

On a planet with a different ma.s.s there will be a different observation. The law of gravity is the formula

mM F = ---- d squared

and this can be used to compute the force of gravity between any two bodies anywhere. This is a way of expressing fundamental and unalterable principles that apply in all circ.u.mstances. If you are going to have any real ethical laws they will have to have this same universality. They will have to work on Ca.s.sylia or Pyrrus, or on any planet or in any society you can find. Which brings us back to you.

What you so grandly call--with capital letters and a flourish of trumpets--'Laws of Ethics' aren't laws at all, but are simple little chunks of tribal ethos, aboriginal observations made by a gang of desert sheepherders to keep order in the house--or tent. These rules aren't capable of any universal application, even you must see that.

Just think of the different planets that you have been on and the number of weird and wonderful ways people have of reacting to each other--then try and visualize ten rules of conduct that would be applicable in all these societies. An impossible task. Yet I'll bet that you have ten rules you want me to obey, and if one of them is wasted on an injunction against saying prayers to carved idols I can imagine just how universal the other nine are. You aren't being ethical if you try to apply them wherever you go--you're just finding a particularly fancy way to commit suicide!"

"You are being insulting!"

"I hope so. If I can't reach you in any other way, perhaps insult will jar you out of your state of moral smugness. How dare you even consider having me tried for stealing money from the Ca.s.sylia casino when all I was doing was conforming to their own code of ethics! They run crooked gambling games, so the law under their local ethos must be that crooked gambling is the norm. So I cheated them, conforming to their norm. If they have also pa.s.sed a law that says cheating at gambling is illegal, the _law_ is unethical, not the cheating. If you are bringing me back to be tried by that law you are unethical, and I am the helpless victim of an evil man."

"Limb of Satan!" Mikah shouted, leaping to his feet and pacing back and forth before Jason, clasping and unclasping his hands with agitation. "You seek to confuse me with your semantics and so-called ethics that are simply opportunism and greed. There is a Higher Law that cannot be argued--"

"That is an impossible statement--and I can prove it." Jason pointed at the books on the wall. "I can prove it with your own books, some of that light reading on the shelf there. Not the Aquinas--too thick. But the little volume with _Lull_ on the spine. Is that Ramon Lull's 'The Booke of the Ordre of Chyualry'?"

Mikah's eyes widened. "You know the book? You're acquainted with Lull's writing?"

"Of course," Jason said, with an offhandedness he did not feel, since this was the only book in the collection he could remember reading, the odd t.i.tle had stuck in his head. "Now let me see it and I shall prove to you what I mean." There was no way to tell from the unchanged naturalness of his words that this was the moment he had been working carefully towards. He sipped the tea. None of his tenseness showing.

Mikah Samon got the book and handed it to him.

Jason flipped through the pages while he talked. "Yes ... yes, this is perfect. An almost ideal example of your kind of thinking. Do you like to read Lull?"

"Inspirational!" Mikah answered, his eyes shining. "There is beauty in every line and Truths that we have forgotten in the rush of modern life. A reconciliation and proof of the interrelationship between the Mystical and the Concrete. By manipulation of symbols he explains everything by absolute logic."

"He proves nothing about nothing," Jason said emphatically. "He plays word games. He takes a word, gives it an abstract and unreal value, then proves this value by relating it to other words with the same sort of nebulous antecedents. His facts aren't facts--just meaningless sounds. This is the key point, where your universe and mine differ.

You live in this world of meaningless facts that have no existence. My world contains facts that can be weighed, tested, proven related to other facts in a logical manner. My facts are unshakeable and unarguable. They exist."

"Show me one of your unshakeable facts," Mikah said, his voice calmer now than Jason's.

"Over there," Jason said. "The large green book over the console. It contains facts that even you will agree are true--I'll eat every page if you don't. Hand it to me." He sounded angry, making overly bold statements and Mikah fell right into the trap. He handed the volume to Jason, using both hands since it was very thick, metal bound and heavy.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Now listen closely and try and understand, even if it is difficult for you," Jason said, opening the book. Mikah smiled wryly at this a.s.sumption of his ignorance. "This is a stellar ephemeris, just as packed with facts as an egg is with meat. In some ways it is a history of mankind. Now look at the jump screen there on the control console and you will see what I mean. Do you see the horizontal green line?

Well, that's our course."

"Since this is my ship and I'm flying it I'm aware of that," Mikah said. "Get on with your proof."

"Bear with me," Jason told him. "I'll try and keep it simple. Now the red dot on the green line is our ship's position. The number above the screen our next navigational point, the spot where a star's gravitational field it strong enough to be detected in jump s.p.a.ce. The number is the star's code listing. DB89-046-229. I'll look it up in the book"--he quickly flipped the pages--"and find its listing. No name. A row of code symbols though that tell a lot about it. This little symbol means that there is a planet or planets suitable for man to live on. Doesn't say if any people are there though."

"Where does this all lead to?" Mikah interrupted.

"Patience--you'll see in a moment. Now look, at the screen. The green dot approaching on the course line is the PMP. Point of Maximum Proximity. When the red dot and green dot coincide...."

"Give me that book," Mikah ordered, stepping forward. Aware suddenly that something was wrong. He was just an instant too late.

"Here's your proof," Jason said, and hurled the heavy book through the jump screen into the delicate circuits behind. Before it hit he had thrown the second book. There was a tinkling crash, a flare of light and the crackle of shorted circuits.

The floor gave a tremendous heave as the relays snapped open, dropping the ship through into normal s.p.a.ce.

Mikah grunted in pain, clubbed to the floor by the suddenness of the transition. Locked into the chair, Jason fought the heaving of his stomach and the blackness before his eyes. As Mikah dragged himself to his feet, Jason took careful aim and sent the tray and dishes hurtling into the smoking ruin of the jump computer.

"There's your fact," he said in cheerful triumph. "Your incontrovertible, gold-plated, uranium-cored fact.

"We're not going to Ca.s.sylia any more!"

III

"You've killed us both," Mikah said with his face strained and white but his voice under control.

"Not quite," Jason told him cheerily. "But I have killed the jump control so we can't get to another star. However there's nothing wrong with our s.p.a.ce drive, so we can make a landing on one of the planets--you saw for yourself that there is at least one suitable for habitation."

"Where I will fix the jump drive and continue the voyage to Ca.s.sylia.

You will have gained nothing."

"Perhaps," Jason answered in his most noncommittal voice, since he did not have the slightest intention of continuing the trip, no matter what Mikah Samon thought.

His captor had reached the same conclusion. "Put your hand back on the chair arm," he ordered, and locked the cuff into place again. He stumbled as the drive started and the ship changed direction. "What was that?" he asked.

"Emergency control. The ship's computer knows that something drastic is wrong, so it has taken over. You can override it with the manuals, but don't bother yet. The ship can do a better job than either of us with its senses and stored data. It will find the planet we're looking for, plot a course and get us there with the most economy of time and fuel. When we get into the atmosphere you can take over and look for a spot to set down."