Grail - Elizabeth Bear [103]
She grimaced. It wasn’t unheard of, but three was a lot. Most people were stable past twenty-five, at least until they got up past the centennial mark and degradation set in. “Angels come and talk to both of us,” she said.
He smiled. So they did.
She huffed lightly in frustration or concentration. “I’m not saying rightminding is a bankrupt technology. What I’m saying is that we lose something irreplaceable when we apply it broad-spectrum. We lessen our diversity. My friend Claude—”
“The autist.”
“The same.” She sighed. “He wasn’t—he didn’t read people, not the way most of us do. He was very … literal. But I still don’t see what’s wrong with that. Rightminding him made him more like other people, easier for them to deal with. It may have made it easier for him to navigate among them. It certainly lessened conflict. But did it make him happier or more useful to society? I mean, dealing with sophipathology is one thing, forcing people to think instead of believing, but when do we take it too far?”
“But rightminding you,” Danilaw said, “you and those like you. That benefits society.”
She smiled. “It doesn’t necessarily benefit me.”
“Not as an individual genetic competitor, no. But evolutionarily speaking, we’ve won. We can afford to be magnanimous.” Danilaw felt as much as heard the strands of her hair rasp between his fingers when he rolled them there. “This is a reversal for you. In the Council meeting, your concerns were focused on what effect a large group of unrightminded individuals would have on our society. Now you’re arguing against rightminding on principle? That’s inconsistent logic, unless I’m missing something.”
She shook her head and waved around the green walls of the ship that embraced them. “You keep talking about how we can afford to be magnanimous. But I don’t think we can, not anymore. How does noblesse oblige stand up in the face of this? If this isn’t competition, Danilaw, I don’t know what is. And if we don’t welcome them to Fortune, what’s to stop them from taking whatever they want? Fighting is so antisocial. A compromise position would serve everyone better, right?”
Her anger startled but did not shock him. It was a natural response to frustration. Still, he pulled away slightly, leaning his back against the mossy bulkhead as she sat up.
She shook her hair back. “Rightminded people find solutions. They find common ground. They make sacrifices and consider the impact of their actions on future generations. These people do what they do and take what they want, and spend a lot of time sorting or putting off their legacy of inherited crises.”
“You do realize that they serve as an inherited crisis of our very own?”
She snorted, waving a hand that encompassed his objection as much as dismissed it. “Are we too fucking post-evolution to fight them? Are we going to lie down and surrender because it’s the civilized thing to do?”
“Of course not,” he said. “We were here first. Did you blow up the scull?”
He’d hoped to blindside her, to surprise her into a revelation. He got one—a look of utter horror and denial. “I—Danilaw!”
“I had to ask,” he said gently. Torn between relief and concern. If it had been her, that would at least have been a mystery solved. “Amanda—”
“Mm?”
“If you want to learn to manage an unrightminded society,” he said, “it occurs to me that the Jacobeans are our only modern-day example.”
“You make a compelling case for the surgery.”
“We’re better people when we’re sane.” He shrugged and spread his hands. “There’s a tension in your ideas. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I know. That’s the problem with rightminding.” She rose from the bunk, shedding the blanket, and crossed the mossy floor to where her borrowed pajamas waited folded on a shelf. “You get to see all the sides of the issue. Mature consideration of the options can be paralyzing.”
He nodded. “What if we offer the Jacobeans resources to repair their ship, and send them on?”
“What if they agree to rightminding?”
“What if they have a civil