Carnifex

21/7/467 AC, Mendoza Apartment, Ciudad Balboa

Jorge didn't have an answer. He was beginning to wonder if there was an answer. And if there was no answer to the question, then his entire project was false, a fraud.

The question? Simply put, it might be called, "My family or my country?"

"It's a basic question, 'Queli," Mendoza said aloud as he paced in a area in the living room that Marqueli ensured was always kept clear of obstruction for just that purpose. "And one that if I cannot answer it makes my whole thesis nonsense. I am insisting, just like that old book the Duque had translated, that morality must be rooted in the survival instinct or it's just a meaningless platitude. But I keep running into the problem that the survival instinct relates to either the self or to one's personal gene pool and has nothing to do with any artificial construct such as a country or a civilization. Those things only have moral meaning when they enhance the chances of the survival of oneself or one's genes. And both can require the sacrifice of either the self or the gene pool, so where does that leave me?"

"Sit, Jorge," the tiny wife ordered. Obediently, he paced to the couch and plopped himself down.

She patted him on the thigh affectionately then stood and went to the bookcase. From this, she drew a book of Old Earth poetry that Carrera had had translated and published. She opened it and scanned the index, then broke the book open to a particular page. From that page she read:

"For Romans, in Rome's quarrels, spared neither land nor gold,

Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, in the brave days of old."

"Sure," Jorge answered. "But so?"

"Those lines were about old Rome's best and bravest days. The lines that follow talk about the days that came, when people watched out for their own and to hell with their country. I am sure they thought . . . or felt, in any event . . . that they were doing right to care for their own, directly. But I want you to imagine, Husband, the descendants of those old Romans, in the days of the Gothic sack. Imagine their sons slaughtered, their wives and daughters enslaved, raped and led off in chains, all the treasure hoarded by their ancestors stolen. Do you not think those later Romans, at that terrible moment, wouldn't have given anything they had if they could only undo the work of their ancestors who put family over country?"

"Perhaps they would have," Jorge conceded. "But it was too late, it is always too late, by the time people realize. And even so, that doesn't invalidate the objection to my thesis."

"Yes, Husband, it does. By your own words, isn't it ultimate survival we're talking about?"

"Yessss," he answered, warily.

"Fine. What does being in a state of nature, without civilization or patria, do to that?"

"It makes it 'nasty, brutal and short,'" Jorge answered, quoting Hobbes.

"Exactly," Marqueli agreed. And why should she not have recognized it? She'd basically taken Jorge's degree along with him. "And society—patria—enables us to make life something else, something less 'nasty, brutal and short.' In enhances the possibility, for nothing is a certainty, Jorge, that our gene pool will survive, does it not?"

"Sure," Jorge shrugged, "but the optimum is to have someone else sacrifice for the common good while preserving one's own gene pool."

"And then what happens?"

"Oh," he said, suddenly brightening.

"That's right," she said. "Then it becomes obvious, then common, then everyone guards their own and everyone ultimately loses."

"But couldn't one watch out for one's own and hide it?"

"Has that ever happened, Jorge? I mean in the long run? Doesn't it always come out, even if never openly admitted to? Doesn't it always begin with just one or two or a few . . . mmm . . . what was that term Professor Franco used?"

"Amoral familists," Jorge supplied.

"Right. 'Amoral familists.' They begin to look out for themselves and their own, alone, and it spreads like a wildfire. And soon enough—eventually, at any rate—they lose exactly what they were trying to save."

"All right then; I can see that," Jorge conceded. "That doesn't matter though as it will happen anyway. People are shortsighted. They will preserve their own."

"Then that kind of person has to be cut out from society before they have a chance to spread their infection," Marqueli said.