“You think we didn’t try?” asked Vale. “Of course we tried. We talked and persuaded and kicked and screamed. We tried to explain to the ParaGen board of directors what the Partials really were, what they represented—a new sentient life form introduced to the world without a thought for how they would live in it once the war was over. We tried to explain that the government had no plans for their assimilation, that there was no possible outcome but apartheid, violence, and revolution, that it would be better to shut down the entire program than to condemn humanity to what was going to happen. But the facts, as they saw them, were simple: number one, the army needed soldiers. We couldn’t win the war without them, the government was going to get them from somewhere. Number two: ParaGen could build them those soldiers, could build them better than any other company in any other industry. We were miracle workers; we made giant trees with leaves like butterfly wings, delicate and perfect, and when the wind blew they fluttered like a cloud of rainbows, and when the sun set behind them, the world lit up with iridescent shade. We made a cure for malaria, a disease that killed a thousand children a day, and we erased it from the world. That’s not just expertise, little girl, that’s power, and with that kind of power comes greed. And that’s fact number three, and the most damning fact of all. The CEO, the president, the board of directors . . . The government wanted an army, and ParaGen wanted to sell them one, and what good were the Trust’s arguments in the face of five trillion dollars in revenue? If we didn’t build their Partial army, they would have found someone else with more malleable morals to do it instead. You don’t remember the old world, but money was everything. Money was all that mattered, and nothing we did would stop them from buying, or ParaGen from selling.