Chapter 2

"You resorted to violence, Amanda," mused Meier Johanssen aloud, shaking his head slightly, as they finished recounting their tale.

"No choice, dad," she answered tightly. They were sitting on the front porch of her parents' home, casually and comfortably to a casual observer, but with an overlay of unspoken tension rippling the air between them.

"There is always a choice," corrected the older man.

"You are correct, sir," Igwanda put in. "In this instance, however, the alternative was unjustified incarceration and probably brutality for me and a threat to your daughter and grandchild. Would you have chosen differently?"

Johanssen looked at Igwanda. "I'd like to say yes, sir. I abhor violence and its sickening pre-eminence in human affairs." He sighed. "But no, I would not. It appears from what you say that this rogue law officer intended violence of his own initiative, and your choice, daughter, was only whether you would be its victim or its perpetrator. At least you took no life."

The tension had lessened, but it was still there. "I would have, dad, if I'd needed to," she told him softly. "And I have before, I did on Eden. You know that." Their dreadful defense against the Edenites' first attack had been discussed endlessly on holographic broadcasts, and she'd also written him privately to explain.

He shook his head dismally. "And there, too, you were faced with only a worse alternative," he said, carefully avoiding her initial comment. "It seems that violence dominates as a mode of behavior not only among humans but other life-forms as well. An elected, even a desired, means of resolving conflict and satisfying need. How terrible to find it so."

Turning to Igwanda he continued his thought. "Colonel, as a soldier by trade I'm certain you disagree, but I see violence as only a horrible relic of that primitive era when humans were no more than one among many animals competing brutally with one another for limited resources. That we have not evolved beyond such simple-mindedness is to me a profound tragedy of the human condition."

Igwanda smiled. "I quite agree with you, sir," he said. "And I must correct you in one regard, I am no longer a soldier." As he'd promised his wife on Eden, he'd resigned his commission following their return to Earth.

"But neither will I apologize for my former profession," he went on. "As you say, we have not as a species evolved beyond violence, nor has the only other intelligent species with which we have come into contact. There must accordingly be those who will resort to it when necessary to protect their fellows who lack the ability to protect themselves against its ravages. We may wish for a Utopia of tranquility, but we live in the world, in the universe, that is."

Johanssen arched an eyebrow. "Nicely said. But can you honestly tell me you didn't relish the opportunity to prove your mettle in combat?"

"Not at all," Igwanda answered. "It gave me great pleasure to outwit and outmaneuver enemies. But I did not necessarily wish death on those enemies, I sought only to emerge victorious and thereby protect those in my charge. I have in my career caused many deaths, and I deep­ly regret every one, but in the nature of the combat in which I was engaged there was no other route to my objective."

The older man nodded. "A fine answer. I, too, have enjoyed that pleasure in my time. But in my case it's been over a chessboard where the only ones to perish were inanimate pieces of wood or plastic, a bridge game where pasteboards conquer pasteboards, a go table where stones are surrounded and eclipsed by other stones. Yours is—was, now—a far harder, and far harsher, discipline."

"Yet a discipline with which, I think you must agree, in the current social milieu—not only here but elsewhere as well, as I am sure the reports from Eden have apprised you—is currently indispensable."

"Why?" demanded Johanssen.

"Why is it indispensable?" Igwanda asked.

"Yes."

"That question you must pose to those who are the instigators of the violence you so deplore," the colonel said. "In my role as a soldier I was the reactor, not the actor—or the agent of reaction, at any event. I said that I regret the deaths I have caused, and so I do; but I do not at all regret the elimination of the threats presented by those who were killed."

"But there must be some better way to remove those threats," Johanssen protested. "There is, always."

"As a general matter I can agree with you, though I might dispute the 'always, '" Igwanda told him. "But it is sometimes a matter of time, or the lack thereof. There are occasions when one must act now, one has not the leisure to await a lessening of the tensions that prevent an immediate more peaceful resolution. As was the case when Amanda found occasion to discharge her weapon in that small town. Time would assuredly have allowed a non-violent solution—but in the meantime, how much harm might have been done?"

For a moment the three of them sat in silence. It was broken by a voice from the house, Gertrud, Meiersdottir's mother, calling them to the dinner table.

During the rest of their visit Igwanda and Johanssen were almost continually probing each other, both focused on their own disparate views.

"The Bible gives the answer, as it does to most things," Johanssen told the colonel at one point. "It says that when a man strikes you on one cheek, the right thing to do is to turn the other one. Isn't that the proper response to violence, instead of escalating it to open warfare?"

"It is an excellent policy," replied Igwanda. "But like all policies it is flawed if applied uniformly and universally."

"How so?"

"Suppose that, instead of striking you on the cheek, the man gouges out your eye. Are you to offer him the other? What if he severs your arm, must you present him the one that remains? He slays one of your children—"

Johanssen flinched visibly. "Enough," he said. "You make your point."

"Even the best of policies may be misapplied. In the military many things are a matter of policy, so many that it is a standing joke that the answer to almost any question about why an action is taken can be expressed as 'there is no reason, it is just our policy.' Policies are a means of avoiding inconsistent and ill-considered spot decisions, but because they are determined in advance they cannot allow for variations in circumstances."

"So you're saying that violence always must be met with violence?"

"That, too, would be a policy, and equally—no, more—flawed. Some violence may be accepted with no more than remonstration. Other forms of violence demand resistance. Still other forms require a yet more aggressive reaction, including, yes, reciprocal or even preemptive violence. Each situation must be judged on its independent merits."

"And who draws the distinction?" Johanssen challenged. "Soldiers, the military?"

"Not always, or even usually," answered Igwanda. "Most often it is politicians, those who gain governmental leadership and thereby the authority to render such decisions on behalf of the state."

"Politicians who are never in the forefront of the wars they declare," said Johanssen sardonically.

Igwanda nodded. "It is the old men—well, old people—who make wars, it is the young who fight them at their elders' behest. But would you have it otherwise—that the youngsters, inexperienced in life, decide such things and send the older ones into battle?"

"How about a middle ground? You vote for a war, you lead the fight? I bet that'd slow down war-mongering kind of a lot."