Righteous Anger (Okal Rel Saga #2)

3.2: The Ethics of Reality Skimming

Food became a problem for Horth during his first week on SanHome, but it wasn't until he actually got sick from overindulging in fruit slices that Zrenyl admitted to Mrs. Sarn that his brother had a Vrellish stomach.

Horth went down to the kitchen the next day to be greeted by a grinning Kale who shoved her bowl of breakfast fare in his direction. The bowl was full of shredded meat mixed with lard and flavored with small, dried berries.

"You're not the only one," Kale told him boldly. "Try this. We call it pemmican."

While Horth was digging into the pemmican (which would have been a lot like fleet rations if it had been pressed into bars and desiccated), Kale fetched him juice and a glass of water. He was in the middle of swallowing the last of the juice when Mrs. Sarn bustled in, smiling benevolently.

"I see that Kale has been taking care of you," Mrs. Sarn said to Horth.

Kale gave her a sideways hug, and stayed close, taking her welcome for granted.

"Kale is the only other Vrellish-eater that we have here at SanHome," explained Mrs. Sarn. "But we're no less proud of her because of that." She gave Kale a squeeze as the girl detached herself to go claim her share of their breakfast.

Mrs. Sarn fixed Horth with a serious look, arms folded over her ample chest, before she went on. "Give me your word of honor, Horth Nersal, that you'll behave as befits a son of Princess Beryl, and you may go hunting with Kale today. Just the two of you."

Frequently briefed on the question of women, by Zrenyl, Horth was confident that he knew what was expected of him.

"I will not have sex with Kale today," he gave his earnest promise, rather proud of getting an entire sentence out. "Even if she asks."

Kale burst out in laughter so severe she doubled over at the waist and held her stomach.

"Kale!" Mrs. Sarn admonished her.

The Nesak girl righted herself with an effort. "And I swear," she said with mock gravity, "not to ask you!"

Horth knew when he was being made fun of, but refused to admit his presumptions were unreasonable. Everything about Kale pointed to her being more Vrellish than the rest of the family. She was dressed in trousers today, for example, and her braids were tucked under a tight cap.

"Off you go, then," Mrs. Sarn said, briskly. "And kill us something nice for dinner."

"So," said Kale, once they were clear of the house and headed off across the Sarn Haven enclosure at a brisk walk, "what have you hunted before?"

"Grabrats," he told her. "On Tark."

"You eat those?"

"No," said Horth.

"Then what do you kill them for?"

"They're pests," he said. "They steal from us."

"Sort of like non-eternals are they?" Kale asked. "You leave them alone if they leave you alone, otherwise you clear them out."

Horth shrugged.

Kale took him to a shed where she gutted her catch and kept her weapons. The only weapons he saw were edged ones and hand-operated bows, but he had expected that. Only honorable weapons were used on Tark, even against the pesky native grabrats. It was part of the compromise Okal Rel demanded of beings powerful enough to destroy all they depended on for survival — an honorable act of restraint in the conquest of nature that afforded better sport and taught discipline.

"We Nesaks live in harmony with our environment," Kale boasted. "Not like other people in the empire. Oh, you say you do, I've heard that," she reacted to his look of offended honor. "But you don't do it like us. We don't even use rel-batteries except a little here and there among the warrior families to show off."

"What's wrong with rel-batteries?" Horth asked, finding it as easy to talk to Kale as he did to Branst. As far as he could see, rel-batteries were a perfect energy source: charged as a by-product of flying, with no polluting side-effects.

Kale sat down on a stool in her shed with a crossbow across her knees. "What do you know about time slip," she asked.

"Everything," declared Horth.

"All right then, what causes it?"

"Weak grip," said Horth.

"No," she said, "not weak — weaker. If no one but you ever reality-skimmed, you would have to absorb your own time debt. Instead, the weaker pilots pay the price for you cheating the laws of special relativity. For every pilot who makes dock successfully, someone else has got to time slip."

Horth held up one hand and wiggled the fingers. "Many, many safe flights," he said, then lowered the first hand and held up the second, balled into a fist. "One pilot — infinite time slip."

"Are you suggesting," Kale said, "that it is all right to fly because only a few people have to experience near-infinite time slip to compensate for everyone else?"

Horth shrugged.

"The fact remains," Kale insisted, "that we are talking about knocking a pilot out of the cycle of birth and death entirely. Not simply killing him. So at the very, very least, we should never fly frivolously."

"Choice," said Horth, having considered this problem himself at length, when he learned what happened when you time slipped. "Pilot's risk. Pilot's choice."

Kale tossed her head sharply. "For you, maybe. I will never get to fly because women do not have to do it. It isn't necessary. So I have no right to force time debt on someone who is flying to keep the rest of us safe from okal'a'ni conquerors. It's that simple." She said it so fiercely Horth decided not to argue.

Kale got up and banged around the shed getting ready. She found Horth a crossbow and thrust it at him. "You know how to use that?"

He nodded.

"Good," she said. "Don't make a lot of noise stomping through the underbrush after me."

For the rest of the afternoon he learned a lot about moving through brambles and across squishy marshes without startling zer-deer. He also learned how much fun it was to receive a hero's welcome from the women who ran Sarn Haven's kitchens when they came home with dinner.

He and Kale did not discuss the ethics of reality skimming again. But they hunted together regularly.