“You were equally unfair with your accusation,” Alexander said. “Sure—humanity makes mistakes, and like this one they’re sometimes brutal mistakes. But we are capable of atonement. Morally we have come a long way from the brutality of the Interregnum. I shouldn’t have to use examples, but look at that”—he waved at the view wall at the panorama of gleaming fairy towers and greenery that made Beta City one of the most beautiful in the Brotherhood. “Don’t tell me that five thousand years of peace and development haven’t produced civilization. That’s a concrete example out there.”
“It isn’t,” Kennon said flatly. “Sure, it’s pretty—clean—and beautifully designed for art and utility—but it isn’t civilization. You’re confusing technology with culture. You look at this and say, ‘What a great civilization man has built,’ when you really mean, ‘What a great technology mankind has developed.’ There’s all the difference in the world. Technology is of the mind and hands. Civilization is of the spirit—and spiritually we are still in the Dark Ages.
“We conquer, kill, loot, and enslave. We establish standards to keep humanity a closed corporation, a special club in which men can live but aliens can’t. We’ve made the standards for admission so rigid that we even enslave our own kind and call them animals. That’s not civilization—that’s savagery!
“For nearly five hundred years your family has run a slave pen. Your fortune is based upon it. And you have perpetuated this traffic in flesh on the specious reasoning that a court judgment of half a millennium ago is as good today as when it was handed down. Never once did anyone have the moral courage to re-examine that old decision. Never once did any human question the rightness of that decision. None of us are immune. We all based our conduct upon an antiquated law and searched no further. Everyone was happy with the status quo—or at least not so unhappy that they wanted to change it. Even I would have been content had it not been for Copper.”
“Yet I do not feel that it was bad that I hired you,” Alexander said. “Even though you have shown me that I am a slaver, and made me see faults I never knew I had.” His face was drawn—harsh lines reached from nose to lips, from eyes to chin. Suddenly he looked old. “I can accept censure if censure is just. And this is just. No—I’m not sorry I hired you even though the thought of what I have helped do to the Lani makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Well—” Kennon said. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” Alexander said. “At the first smell of trouble, the Family will turn tail and run. You can break the company, and I won’t stand in your way. It’s only just. You’re the one who’s carrying the ball. Now run with it.”
“That damned blind spot,” Kennon said. “You realize, of course, that you’re not legally liable. It was a mistake. All you have to do is admit the error and start from there. Naturally—no reasonable intelligence would expect that you change the older Lani. They’re too old for either agerone or change. It would be both cruel and inhuman to turn them loose. It’s with the youngsters that you can work—those who are physically and physiologically young enough to derive benefit from agerone and education.
“As I remember, you bought a planet called Phoebe. Now why don’t you—”
“Phase out! Of course! But that means that you can’t press charges.”