Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,38

work. It's no accident that when the great flood destroyed the Derku, the practice of slavery didn't die with them. The surrounding cultures had already picked it up, because it worked. It was the only way that had yet been found to get the use of the labor of strangers. All the other instances of genuine slavery that we've found can be traced back to that Derku woman, Nedz-Nagaya, when she paid to keep a useful captive from being fed to the crocodile."

"Let's build her a monument," said Tagiri. She was very angry.

"The concept of buying and selling people was invented only among the Derku," said Kemal.

"It didn't have to be invented anywhere else," said Tagiri. "Just because Agafna built the first wheel doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't have built another one later."

"On the contrary. We do know that slavery -- commerce in human beings -- was not discovered in the one place where the Derku had no influence," said Kemal. He paused.

"America," said Diko.

"America," said Kemal. "And in the place where people weren't conceived of as property, what did they have?"

"There was plenty of bondage in America," said Tagiri.

"Of those other kinds. But humans as property, humans with a cash value -- it wasn't there. And that's one of the things you love best about your idea of stopping Columbus. Preserve the one place on earth where slavery never developed. Am I right?"

"That's not the primary reason for looking at Columbus," said Tagiri.

"I think you need to look again," said Kemal. "Because slavery was a direct replacement for human sacrifice. Are you actually telling me that you prefer the torture and murder of captives, as the Mayas and Iroquois and Aztecs and Caribs practiced it? Do you find that more civilized? After all, those deaths were offered to the gods."

"You will never make me believe that there was a one-for-one trade, slavery for human sacrifice."

"I don't care whether you believe it, " said Kemal. "Just admit the possibility. Just admit that there are some things worse than slavery. Just admit that maybe your set of values is as arbitrary as any other culture's values, and to try to revise history in order to make your values triumph in the past as well as the present is pure--"

"Cultural imperialism," said Hassan. "Kemal, we have this argument ourselves every week or so. And if we were proposing to go back and stop that Derku woman from inventing slavery, your point would be well taken. But we aren't trying to do anything of the kind. Kemal, we aren't sure we want to do anything! We're just trying to find out what's possible."

"That's so disingenuous it's laughable. You've known from the beginning that it was Columbus you were going after. Columbus you were going to stop. And yet you seem to forget that along with the evil that European ascendancy brought to the world, you will also be throwing away the good. Useful medicine. Productive agriculture. Clean water. Cheap power. The industry that gives us the leisure to have this meeting. And don't dare to tell me that all the goods of our modern world would have been invented anyway. Nothing is inevitable. You're throwing away too much."

Tagiri covered her face with her hands. "I know," she said.

Kemal had expected argument. Hadn't she been sniping at him all along? He found himself speechless, for a moment.

Tagiri took her hands away from her face, but still she looked at her lap. "Any change would have a cost. And yet not changing also has a cost. But it's not my decision. We will lay all our arguments before the world." She lifted her face, to look at Kemal. "It's easy for you to be sure that we should not do it," she said. "You haven't looked into their faces. You're a scientist."

He had to laugh. "I'm not a scientist, Tagiri. I'm just another one like you -- somebody who gets an idea in his head sometimes and can't let it go."

"That's right," said Tagiri. "I can't let it go. Somehow, when we're through with all our research, if we have a machine that lets us touch the past, then there'll be something we can do that's worth doing, something that will answer the ... hunger ... of an old woman who dreamed."

"The prayer, you mean," said Kemal.

"Yes," she said defiantly. "The prayer. There is something we can do to make things better. Somehow."

"I see that I'm not dealing with science, then."

"No, Kemal, you're not,