Capitol - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,60

seen. In dozens of other ships, other captains were doing the same: they knew the horror felt by those who, millennia before, had walked into death camps and seen stacks of corpses and soldiers casually murdering civilians and piles of gold teeth and false teeth and a lampshade made of human skin. Only in this case eight billion people had died.

And they were ready to carry the word back to the empire: that the telepaths, the Swipes, had committed an atrocity beside which all other cruelties of humanity in the past became negligible.

The empire would rock with the news, and mobs would hunt down known telepaths and tear them apart in vengeance for the vast crime their kind had committed. Almost a hundred thousand telepaths would die.

But for a brief moment, sitting in front of his starfinder, Captain Fil Treece of the imperial fleet could not figure out why anybody's life should have been any more valuable than Homer Worthing's, and why the murder of one person should be good policy, while the murder of eight billion should be an inhuman crime.

Instead, he remembered a practical joke he and Homer Worthing had played on a professor in pilot school. They had programmed the class battle computer to respond incorrectly to any program that would result in death or damage to any ship. For three hours the professor tried to force the computer to carry out battle instructions, but it would not. Finally the professor realized that the mistakes were not in his program, and he turned to Homer and Fil (since practical jokes usually originated in their little circle of friends) and said, "May every ship you pilot have a computer that acts like this."

At the time it had been a sobering thought-- almost a wish for their certain deaths.

But now, Fil thought, I wish to God it had come true.

He led his fleet from the dead star system and soon they were passing light as if it were standing still. On the way back toward Capitol, their ships woke them from their somec sleep-- an enemy colony ship was heading past them toward a distant star system. According to standing orders, the fleet dispersed: three ships blasted the colony ship out of the sky along with all three hundred or so sleeping passengers aboard the unarmed craft, while the rest of the fleet continued toward Capitol.

And back on Capitol they gave Fil and his fleet medals for having killed the rebels and citations for having destroyed the enemy colonists.

"But I never meant to kill anybody," Fil said to the official who had guided him through the ceremony.

"Shut up," the official responded quietly. "Everybody says that. But you bastards take the medals just the sqme."

"I hope a raise in salary goes along with it," Fil said. And it did, allowing him to purchase a permanent apartment on Capitol, much to his wife's pleasure. Shp decorated it in ancient Chinese style, and every time he was in port they drank tea together and made love afterward on a mat on the floor and Fil was as happy as a person can reasonably expect to be.

And the people of the empire, learning of the terrible crime of the SWIP-e33 fleet, murdered almost a hundred thousand known or suspected or (at least) accused telepaths. Almost everyone agreed it was just. After all, hadn't the telepaths committed an atrocity?
AND WHAT WILL WE DO TOMORROW?
GLENDOWER: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

HOTSPUR: Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?

-- Henry IV part I, 3:1

Of all the people on Capitol, only Mother was allowed to awaken on her own bed, the bed where she had slept with Selvock Gray before his death eight hundred years ago. She did not know that the original bed had fallen apart centuries ago; it was always remade, right down to the nicks and scratches, so that she could awaken on it and lie there for a monient in solitude, remembering.

No attendants murmuring. No flush of fever. Of all the people in Capitol, only Mother was given the delicate combination of drugs that made waking a delight-- that cost more for each of her wakings than the entire budget of a colony ship.

And so she luxuriated in the bed, cool and not feeling particularly old. How old am I? she wondered, and decided that she was probably forty. I am probably middle-aged, she said, and spread out her