the ones that had been disposed of. Even if the test had been real, even if they had had Anton's Key, what right did he have to snuff out their genetic identity, just because he oh-so altruistically wanted to spare them the sorrow of a life as short as his?
Suddenly he realized what he was thinking. What it meant.
Sister Carlotta, you always wanted me to turn Christian-and not just Christian, Catholic. Well, here I am, thinking that as soon as sperm and egg combine, they're a human life, and it's wrong to harm them.
Well, I'm not Catholic, and it wasn't wrong to want children to grow up to have a full life instead of this fifth-of-a-life that I'm headed for.
But how was I different, flushing three of those embryos, from Volescu? He flushed twenty-two of them, I flushed three. He waited till they were nearly two years further along in development-gestation plus a year-but in the end, is it really all that different?
Would Sister Carlotta condemn him for that? Had he committed a mortal sin? Was he only getting what he deserved now, losing five because he willingly threw away three?
No, he could not imagine her saying that to him. Or even thinking it to herself. She would rejoice that he had decided to have a child at all. She would be glad if Petra really was pregnant.
But she would also agree with him that the five that were now in someone else's hands, the five that might be implanted in someone else and turned into babies, he couldn't just let them go. He had to find them and save them and bring them home.
CHAPTER TWELVE
PUTTING OUT FIRES
From: Han Tzu
To: Snow Tiger
Re: stones
I am pleased and honored to have the chance once again to offer my poor counsel to your bright magnificence. My previous advice to ignore the piles of stones in the road was obviously foolish, and you saw that a much wiser course was to declare stone-carrying to be illegal.
Now I once again have the glorious privilege of giving bad advice to him who does not need counsel.
Here is the problem as I see it:
1. Having declared a law against stone-carrying, you cannot back down and repeal the law without showing weakness.
2. The law against stone-carrying puts you in the position of arresting and punishing women and small children, which is filmed and smuggled out of India to the great embarrassment of the Universal Peoples State.
3. The coastline of India being so extensive and our navy so small, we cannot stop the smuggling of these vids.
4. The stones block the roads, making transportation of troops and supplies unpredictable and dangerous, disrupting schedules.
5. The stone piles are being called "The Great Wall of India" and other names which make them a symbol of revolutionary defiance of the Universal People's State.
You tested me by suggesting that there were only two possibilities, which in your wisdom you knew would lead to disastrous consequences. Repealing the law or ceasing to enforce it would encourage further lawlessness. Stricter enforcement will only make martyrs, inflame the opposition, shame us among the ignorant barbarian nations, and encourage further lawlessness.
Through unbelievable luck, I have not failed your clever test. I have found the third alternative that you already saw:
I see now that your plan is to fill trucks with fine gravel and huge stones. Your soldiers will go to villages which have built these new, higher barricades. They will back the trucks up to the barricades and dump the gravel and the boulders in front of their pile, but not on top of it.
1 . The rebellious, ungrateful Indian people will reflect upon the difference in size between the Great Wall of India and the Gravel and Boulders of China.
2. Because you will have blocked all roads into and out of each village, they will not get any trucks or buses into or out of their village until they have moved not only the Great Wall of India but also the Gravel and Boulders of China.
3. They will find that the gravel is too small and the boulders are too large to be moved easily. The great exertion that they must use to clear the roads will be a sufficient teacher without any further punishment of any person.
4. Any vids smuggled out of India will show that we have only done to their roads what they voluntarily did themselves, only more. And the only punishment foreigners will see is Indians picking up rocks and moving