Nicole stared at him, the anger draining slowly out of her. He was right. “Were you the resident psychiatrist in your village?” she muttered, not willing to openly acknowledge what he had said.

He smiled. “I don’t have a diploma on the wall, but my references are impeccable.” When she didn’t answer, he went on more soberly. “Should I be really honest with you? Give you the full diagnosis?”

“Can I stop you?”

“You could always go for the rifle again.”

She shook her head. “Is turnabout fair play?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, you first. I’m braced.”

“You said the Major pushed the buttons to terminate Cliff. Right?”

In a flash, and against her will, he had thrust her mind back to that horrifying moment. She stared down at her hands, unaware that she was twisting the ring on her left hand around and around.

“Why? Why could he do it and you couldn’t? He may pontificate about his great love for mankind and his desire to protect us from everything from first-degree murder to dirt under our fingernails, but however benevolent his dictatorship may appear on the surface, when the crisis hit, his real nature surfaced. He’s willing to kill to maintain his little empire.”

“You killed three Guardians when you dynamited the truck that was headed for your village. That was a crisis too. What does that mean?”

He shook his head slowly. “A man is justified in resorting to violence as a solution to his problems only under a very limited set of circumstances—when he is defending his life, his liberty, or his family, and when he has no recourse to normal law-enforcement procedures. We approached your men in peace, and they shot Cliff down without warning. Come on, Nicky. Are you telling me that what I did trying to protect the village and what the Major did to Cliff are equivalent acts?”

After a long silence, she finally shook her head. “No.”

“But let’s get back to that night in the monitoring room. The Major pushed the buttons, but you were caught in exactly the same crisis situation as the Major. You were faced with the same choice, but you refused to terminate Cliff. Why?”

When she looked up, he could see in the firelight that her eyes were shining. “I just couldn’t.”

“Exactly, which makes you a very different person indeed.”

But Nicole went on as though she hadn’t heard him. “The Major didn’t know which buttons to push. When I wouldn’t push them, he demanded that I show him so he could. I couldn’t do that either.”

“Who did show him?” he asked gently.

She looked up, startled as his question broke into her thoughts. “What?”

“Who did show him which buttons to push?”

She turned her head away, shaking it quickly.

“It was Travis, wasn’t it.”

A long silence stretched out between them before he spoke. “I rest my case.”