“And your people all think this?” she asked in a trembling voice. “You all believe this?”

“What is there to disagree about?” Thaw Tint said.

Jonathan felt the despair coming out of Hollis like a white heat burning deep within her. The priest’s entire worldview, built up over a lifetime of thoughtful effort, was being shaken to its foundations, and he knew that her imagination was a self-contained hell of her own creation; and for the first time he felt sorry for her. Facts warred with her emotions and her reason could not deal with either. Here was an intelligent race that did not share human concepts of morality, ethics, or fair play; who in fact saw such notions as self-serving, local illusions.

“You are telling me the truth?” she pressed.

“Why shouldn’t I? How can it benefit me to lie about such matters? Why should I protect you? What can I gain from you by lying?”

“Then explain to me how your culture managed to evolve without a sense of mercy. When I view the evolution of my own people, I see man’s concept of God evolving as man evolved. Before the time of Babylon’s kings, if a member of your tribe killed a member of mine, then it was my duty to kill your entire tribe. Then there emerged the concept of an ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life.’ It was the first attempt to make the punishment fit the crime, and a step toward mercy, preparing the way for the prophets who would tell us, ‘love thy enemy.’ How did it happen that your culture never evolved beyond the tribal warriors who built Babylon?”

“You make the mistake of equating the story of your evolution with what you call progress. We have no religious beliefs, no cultural moorings, only demonstrable knowledge and a pragmatism that follows what you would call the natural grain of the universe; but this does not make us less advanced than you are. We have no malice toward anyone, of the emotional underscoring kind that is inherited from evolutionary nature. We simply see what is there, and make sure that we see it. Caution is our essential way, born of long contemplation. You might call our conglomerate a culture that is so unparochial that we see it as simply the way to be.”

“There you have it,” Jonathan said. “The Race of None!”

“An apt description,” came the reply. “By comparison, you belong to a race in which mind appears unfortunately linked with a tendency toward imaginative closure—”

“And you have liberated yourselves?” Hollis interrupted.

“Yes. We have no culture as you know it. We follow knowledge where it leads, and where it may lead us on forever, into deepest time, if that is the case, with no closure. We know what we were and what we are, so we don’t invent lies about ourselves or the universe.”

“You know what you are,” Hollis said, “but do you ever consider what you should be? Hasn’t it occurred to you that you are a race of murderers?”