Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,90

had the power, wouldn't you save yourselves?

She was still there by the river when the darkness came, when the stars came out. For a moment, gazing at the ancient light of the stars, she thought: Why should I worry about uncreating so much of human history? Why should I care that it will be worse than forgotten, that it will be unknown? Why should that seem to be a crime, when all of human history is an eyeblink compared to the billions of years the stars have shone? We will all be forgotten in the last exhalation of our history; what does it matter, then, if some are forgotten sooner than others, or if some are caused to have never existed at all?

Oh, this is such a wise perspective, to compare human lives to the lives of stars. The only problem is that it cuts both ways. If in the long run it doesn't matter that we wipe out billions of lives in order to save our ancestors, then in the long ran saving our ancestors doesn't matter, either, so why bother changing the past at all?

The only perspective that matters is the human one, Tagiri knew. We are the only ones who care; we are the actors and the audience as well, all of us. And the critics. We are also the critics.

The light of an electric torch bobbed into view as she heard someone approaching through the grass.

"That torch will only attract animals that we don't want," she said.

"Come home," said Diko It isn't safe out here, and Father's worried."

"Why should he be worried? My life doesn't exist. I never lived."

"You're alive now, and so am I, and so are the crocodiles."

"If individual lives don't matter," said Tagiri, "then why bother going back to make them better? And if they do matter, then how dare we snuff some out in favor of others?"

"Individual lives matter," said Diko. "But life also matters. Life as a whole. That's what you've forgotten today. That's what Manjam and the other scientists also forgot. They talk of all these moments, separate, never touching, and say that they are the only reality. Just as the only reality of human life is individuals, isolated individuals who never really know each other, never really touch at any point. No matter how close you are, you're always separate."

Tagiri shook her head. "This has nothing to do with what is bothering me."

"It has everything to do with it," said Diko. "Because you know that this is a lie. You know that the mathematicians are wrong about the moments, too. They do touch. Even if we can't really touch causality, the connections between moments, that doesn't mean they aren't real. And just because whenever you look closely at the human race, at a community, at a family, all you can ever find are separate individuals, that doesn't mean that the family is not also real. After all, when you look closely enough at a molecule, all you can see are atoms. There is no physical connection between them. And yet the molecule is still real because of the way the atoms affect each other."

"You're as bad as they are," said Tagiri, "answering anguish with analogies."

"Analogies are all I have," said Diko. "Truth is all I have, and truth is never a comfort. But understanding truth, that is what you taught me to do. So here is the truth. What human life is, what it's for, what we do, is create communities. Some of them are good, some of them are evil, or somewhere between. You taught me this, didn't you? And there are communities of communities, groups of group's, and--"

"And what makes them good or bad?" demanded Tagiri. "The quality of the individual lives. The ones we're going to snuff out."

"No," said Diko. "What we're going to do is go back and revise the ultimate community of communities, the human race as a whole, history as a whole here on this planet. We're going to create a new version of it, one that will give the new individuals who live within it a far, far better chance of happiness, of having a good life, than the old version. That's real, and that's good, Mother. It's worth doing. It is."

"I've never known any groups," said Tagiri. "Just people. Just individual people. Why should I make those people pay so this imaginary thing called 'human history' can be better? Better for whom?"

"But Mother, individual people always sacrifice for the sake of