“This is not about sex,” said Tovar.

“You’re damn right it’s not.”

Kessler threw up her hands. “What if we just don’t let them procreate?” she asked. “Will that make you happy?”

“If they can’t procreate, we have no reason to keep them alive,” Woolf shot back. “By your own logic, we should kill them and be done with it.”

“They can work,” said Kessler, “they can plow fields, they can grind wheat for the whole island, they can—”

“We’re not keeping them alive for reproduction,” said Tovar softly, “and we’re not keeping them alive as slaves. We’re keeping them alive because killing them would be wrong.”

Woolf shook his head. “Punishing criminals is—”

“Senator Tovar is correct,” said Hobb, rising to his feet. “This is not about sex or reproduction or manual labor or any of these other issues we’ve been arguing. It’s not even about survival. The human race has a future, like we’ve said, and food and children and so on are all important to that future, but they are not the most important. They are the means of our existence, but they cannot become the reason for it. We can never be reduced—and we can never reduce ourselves—to a level of pure physical subsistence.” He walked toward Senator Woolf. “Our children will inherit more than our genes; more than our infrastructure. They will inherit our morals. The future we’ve gained by curing RM is a precious gift that we must earn, day by day and hour by hour, by being the kind of people who deserve to have a future. Do we want our children to kill one another? Of course not. Then we teach them, through our own example, that every life is precious. Killing a killer might send a mixed message.”

“Caring for a killer is just as confusing,” said Woolf.

“We’re not going to care for a killer,” said Hobb, “we’re going to care for everybody: old and young, bond and free, male and female. And if one of them happens to be a killer—if two or three or a hundred happen to be killers—we still care for them.” He smiled mirthlessly. “We don’t let them kill anybody else, obviously; we’re not stupid. But we don’t kill them, either, because we’re trying to be better. We’re trying to find a higher ground. We have a future now, so let’s not start it by killing.”