“I see. The temptation to cut a throat might be overwhelming.”
“They fight commercial wars,” Kennon said.
“Disgusting—utterly uncivilized! Under the circumstances you had no other course. Still, they have no moral right to enslave human beings.”
“There is always the element of doubt. Maybe they didn’t know. After all, an impartial court declared the Lani alien—and the Betan mutation isn’t known throughout the Brotherhood.”
“One doesn’t go around broadcasting data on the variations of one’s germ plasm,” Brainard said. “That’s a private affair—a matter of personal privacy.”
“And public safety?”
Brainard nodded. “We’re no more courageous than any other civilization. We have no desire to borrow trouble. We are content to leave things alone.”
“That’s the trouble,” Kennon said. “We’re all content to leave things alone. If I hadn’t found the spaceship I’d not have been able to lay aside my moral conditioning. And if I had not, Copper would not have become pregnant and forced me into these drastic actions. It’s even possible that I would have done nothing.” He grimaced. “And when I left Alexander’s employment mnemonic erasure would have removed all memory of the Lani’s human origin.” He shrugged. “I still am not certain that it wouldn’t have been the wiser course. Naturally, once I knew, I couldn’t do anything else than what I did.”
“Naturally,” Brainard said. “Humanity reaches the heights when it faces questions of moral responsibility.”
“To mankind,” Kennon added heavily. “We have a convenient blind spot regarding our moral responsibility to other intelligent races.”