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proponents of physical and metaphysical:
"My little primitivist, how is it that you set youself up to adjudge a culture
of which you know nothing, a context about which you may be sure of only one
thing: that it is other than your own? It is said of your people that they
seek the law within. Where is it written, upon those books, that one idea is
good and another evil, that an idea in seed, when nurtured by these five
fingers and given spatial reality that it be numbered among the items of
creation, becomes tainted, while another, swathed in numinosity and wraithlike
for lack of palpable existence, does not?"
"The ideas of our mechanists sent the remnants of a world scurrying into
burrows, there to wait interminably for the fruits of their methodical
poisoning of air and sea to disperse," I pointed out.
"And so you say to a man: this is too dangerous, this you must not do. But you
allow the sword, and pharmacology, and all that suits you, though the dangers
of each are as great as that of a hand
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Janet E. Morris communicator or a death cube. Is a man less dead when killed
by a blade of stra?" His visage, jutting forward aggressively, drew from my
mouth the admission that a man; killed, was as dead by aegis of knife or limb
as by incineration; but I felt compelled to add that one man so armed could
not destroy a city, nor a forest, nor a mountain.
M'tras took a moment before he replied: "Then ban fire, for with it city and
forest might fall by way of a single well-placed torch, and even a mountain be
scoured bare of all life she hosts. It is held by you an ineluctable truth
that technology destroys, and yet it is ideology, morality, and all the
cogitations which you hold so dear and elevated that bent the metal of
inventor's alchemy to the desecration of nature you so loudly decry. It is not
truth of which it is said: 'Herein lies destruction/ but man's use of it. The
world which spawned me, like all others, took the trial of fire: that of
subjugation, by means mechanistic, of greed overwhelming and lust blind to
tomorrow. It is said by us that the true test of spirit lies therein, that
only when man waxes godlike, when he consigns into his brothers' hands the
means for elevation or destruction of his own civilization, does he learn the
validity of the conglomerate of survival decisions called morality that his
world has constructed." His dark hands, whose fingers might within their own
sum of days smite my beloved Astria from afar, twisted together, whitened,
then released. Staring at those digits, it came to me that he was in a sense
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right, that it is not the product of their labor that destroys, but the intent
of the mind that directs them.
"Khys," I offered, taken aback with sudden enlightenment, "must have
considered these things, else why did he allow commerce with the star worlds
to commence, and bring to us once again the temptations of such power?"
M'tras smiled. "Temptations, are they? I think.
WIND FROM THE ABYSS
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instead, a road to growth upon which man either becomes wise or perishes by
his own folly. Unlike M'ksakka, we chose not to befoul the nest of our
descendants that the progenitors' coffers overflow with wealth. Nor did we, as
upon Silistra, raze to the ground those who believed differently than we,
deeming even the obliteration of plant and beast meet price, that an idea
offensive to our minds be no longer promulgated by men who, more by their
samenesses than their differences, loomed iniquitous in our judges' sight.
Upon my world it is said that we have three billion religions, and of
philosophies an equal number; that of the total sum of men living thereupon.
And to those of us most insightful it remains an eternal source of wonder that
two may speak together from out of each one's singular reality, and that from
out of these cross-indexed similitudes of meaning, understanding is birthed
and communion upon ideas achieved. Against all odds of logic and reason, man
speaks with his brother, and that brother hears"." Those hands that might at
their whim reduce every hide upon Silistra to poisoned ash stroked his jaw,
awaiting my rejoinder.
But I was struck cold and cautious, asudden aware of the dangerous ground upon
which I trod. How wholeheartedly might anyone, in my place, have debated with
his jailer? I shook my head, my eyes lowered. I would not chance speaking to
him of relevance, nor of the low esteem in which I held logic and what
preferences one man will label "reason," and another "irrationality."
And so, he chose to continue: "My home is magnificent. You will not see it.
You have no more place there than one of your mutated carnivores in the void,
nor would you survive even as long. But know you: there is no sphere I have
seen among the M'ksakkan worlds as green, no range of climate as exulting to
flesh and spirit, no world
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Janet E. Morris anywhere among the civilized stars that boasts the fecundity
of Yhrillia. Is is said of her that He practiced upon the firmament, and
perfected upon her bosom. But notwithstanding, none of yours will ever discern
that truth; we open not our doors to this universal rabble of which you are a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]