The Ethical Engineer (3 page)

He pushed the empty plate away and stirred sugar into his cup. Mikah
had eaten sparingly and was now starting on his second cup of tea. His
eyes were fixed, unfocused in thought as he drank. He started slightly
when Jason called to him.

"Since you don't stock cigarettes on this ship—how about letting me
smoke my own? You'll have to dig them out for me since I can't reach
the pocket while I'm chained to this chair."

"I cannot help you," Mikah said, unmoving. "Tobacco is an irritant, a
drug and a carcinogen. If I gave you a cigarette, I would be giving
you cancer."

"Don't be a hypocrite!" Jason snapped, inwardly pleased at the
rewarding flush in the other's neck. "They've taken the
cancer-producing agents out of tobacco for centuries now. And even if
they hadn't—how does that affect this situation. You're taking me to
Cassylia to certain death. So why should you concern yourself with the
state of my lungs in the future?"

"I hadn't considered it that way. It is just that there are certain
rules of life...."

"Are there?" Jason broke in, keeping the initiative and the advantage.
"Not as many as you like to think. And you people who are always
dreaming up the rules never carry your thinking far enough. You are
against drugs. Which drugs? What about the tannic acid in that tea
you're drinking? Or the caffeine in it? It's loaded with caffeine—a
drug that is both a strong stimulant and a diuretic. That's why you
won't find tea in spacesuit canteens. That's a case of a drug
forbidden for a good reason. Can you justify your cigarette ban the
same way?"

Mikah started to talk, then thought for a moment. "Perhaps you are
right. I'm tired, and it is not important." He warily took the
cigarette case from Jason's pocket and dropped it onto the tray. Jason
didn't attempt to interfere. Mikah poured himself a third cup of tea
with a slightly apologetic air.

"You must excuse me, Jason, for attempting to make you conform to my
own standards. When you are in pursuit of the big Truths, you
sometimes let the little Truths slip. I'm not intolerant, but I do
tend to expect everyone else to live up to certain criteria I have set
for myself. Humility is something we should never forget and I thank
you for reminding me of it. The search for Truth is hard."

"There is no Truth," Jason told him, the anger and insult gone now
from his voice since he wanted to keep his captor involved in the
conversation. Involved enough to forget about the free wrist for a
while. He raised the cup to his lips and let the tea touch his lips
without drinking any. The half-f cup supplied an unconsidered
reason for his free hand.

"No Truth?" Mikah weighed the thought. "You can't possibly mean that.
The galaxy is filled with Truth, it's the touchstone of Life itself.
It's the thing that separates Mankind from the animals."

"There is no Truth, no Life, no Mankind. At least not the way you
spell them—with capital letters. They don't exist."

Mikah's taut skin contracted into a furrow of concentration. "You'll
have to explain yourself," he said. "You're not being clear."

"I'm afraid it's you who aren't being clear. You're making a reality
where none exists. Truth—with a small
T
is a description, a
relationship. A way to describe a statement. A semantic tool. But
capital
T
Truth is an imaginary word, a noise with no meaning. It
pretends to be a noun but it has no referent. It stands for nothing.
It means nothing. When you say 'I believe in Truth' you are really
saying 'I believe in nothing'."

"You're wrong, you're wrong," Mikah said, leaning forward, stabbing
with his finger. "Truth is a philosophical abstraction, one of the
tools that mankind's mind has used to raise it above the beasts—the
proof that we are not beasts ourselves, but a higher order of
creation. Beasts can be true—but they cannot know Truth. Beasts can
see, but they cannot see Beauty."

"Arrgh!" Jason growled. "It's impossible to talk to you, much less
enjoy any comprehensible exchange of ideas. We aren't even speaking
the same language. Aside from who is right and who is wrong, for the
moment, we should go back to basics and at least agree on the meaning
of the terms that we are using. To begin with—can you define the
difference between
ethics
and
ethos
?"

"Of course," Mikah snapped, a glint of pleasure in his eyes at the
thought of a good rousing round of hair-splitting. "Ethics is the
discipline dealing with what it good or bad, or right or wrong—or
with moral duty and obligation. Ethos means the guiding beliefs,
standards or ideals that characterize a group or community."

"Very good, I can see that you have been spending the long
spaceship-nights with your nose buried in the books. Now make sure the
difference between those two terms is very clear, because it is the
heart of the little communications problem we have here. Ethos is
inextricably linked with a single society and cannot be separated
from it, or it loses all meaning. Do you agree?"

"Well...."

"Come, come—you
have
to agree on the terms of your own definition.
The ethos of a group is just a catch-all term for the ways in which
the members of a group rub against each other. Right?"

Mikah reluctantly produced a nod of acquiescence.

"Now that we agree about that we can push on one step further. Ethics,
again by your definition, must deal with any number of societies or
groups. If there are any absolute laws of ethics, they must be so
inclusive that they can be applied to
any
society. A law of ethics
must be as universal of application as is the law of gravity."

"I don't follow you...?"

"I didn't think you would when I got to this point. You people who
prattle about your Universal Laws never really consider the exact
meaning of the term. My knowledge of the history of science is very
vague, but I'm willing to bet that the first Law of Gravity ever
dreamed up stated that things fell at such and such a speed, and
accelerated at such and such a rate. That's not a law, but an
observation that isn't even complete until you add 'on this planet.'
On a planet with a different mass there will be a different
observation. The law of gravity is the formula

mM
F = ——
d
2

and this can be used to compute the force of gravity between any two
bodies anywhere. This is a way of expressing fundamental and
unalterable principles that apply in all circumstances. If you are
going to have any real ethical laws they will have to have this same
universality. They will have to work on Cassylia or Pyrrus, or on any
planet or in any society you can find. Which brings us back to you.
What you so grandly call—with capital letters and a flourish of
trumpets—'Laws of Ethics' aren't laws at all, but are simple little
chunks of tribal ethos, aboriginal observations made by a gang of
desert sheepherders to keep order in the house—or tent. These rules
aren't capable of any universal application, even you must see that.
Just think of the different planets that you have been on and the
number of weird and wonderful ways people have of reacting to each
other—then try and visualize ten rules of conduct that would be
applicable in all these societies. An impossible task. Yet I'll bet
that you have ten rules you want me to obey, and if one of them is
wasted on an injunction against saying prayers to carved idols I can
imagine just how universal the other nine are. You aren't being
ethical if you try to apply them wherever you go—you're just finding
a particularly fancy way to commit suicide!"

"You are being insulting!"

"I hope so. If I can't reach you in any other way, perhaps insult will
jar you out of your state of moral smugness. How dare you even
consider having me tried for stealing money from the Cassylia casino
when all I was doing was conforming to their own code of ethics! They
run crooked gambling games, so the law under their local ethos must be
that crooked gambling is the norm. So I cheated them, conforming to
their norm. If they have also passed a law that says cheating at
gambling is illegal, the
law
is unethical, not the cheating. If you
are bringing me back to be tried by that law you are unethical, and I
am the helpless victim of an evil man."

"Limb of Satan!" Mikah shouted, leaping to his feet and pacing back
and forth before Jason, clasping and unclasping his hands with
agitation. "You seek to confuse me with your semantics and so-called
ethics that are simply opportunism and greed. There is a Higher Law
that cannot be argued—"

"That is an impossible statement—and I can prove it." Jason pointed
at the books on the wall. "I can prove it with your own books, some of
that light reading on the shelf there. Not the Aquinas—too thick. But
the little volume with
Lull
on the spine. Is that Ramon Lull's 'The
Booke of the Ordre of Chyualry'?"

Mikah's eyes widened. "You know the book? You're acquainted with
Lull's writing?"

"Of course," Jason said, with an offhandedness he did not feel, since
this was the only book in the collection he could remember reading,
the odd title had stuck in his head. "Now let me see it and I shall
prove to you what I mean." There was no way to tell from the unchanged
naturalness of his words that this was the moment he had been working
carefully towards. He sipped the tea. None of his tenseness showing.

Mikah Samon got the book and handed it to him.

Jason flipped through the pages while he talked. "Yes ... yes, this is
perfect. An almost ideal example of your kind of thinking. Do you like
to read Lull?"

"Inspirational!" Mikah answered, his eyes shining. "There is beauty in
every line and Truths that we have forgotten in the rush of modern
life. A reconciliation and proof of the interrelationship between the
Mystical and the Concrete. By manipulation of symbols he explains
everything by absolute logic."

"He proves nothing about nothing," Jason said emphatically. "He plays
word games. He takes a word, gives it an abstract and unreal value,
then proves this value by relating it to other words with the same
sort of nebulous antecedents. His facts aren't facts—just meaningless
sounds. This is the key point, where your universe and mine differ.
You live in this world of meaningless facts that have no existence. My
world contains facts that can be weighed, tested, proven related to
other facts in a logical manner. My facts are unshakeable and
unarguable. They exist."

"Show me one of your unshakeable facts," Mikah said, his voice calmer
now than Jason's.

"Over there," Jason said. "The large green book over the console. It
contains facts that even you will agree are true—I'll eat every page
if you don't. Hand it to me." He sounded angry, making overly bold
statements and Mikah fell right into the trap. He handed the volume to
Jason, using both hands since it was very thick, metal bound and
heavy.

"Now listen closely and try and understand, even if it is difficult
for you," Jason said, opening the book. Mikah smiled wryly at this
assumption of his ignorance. "This is a stellar ephemeris, just as
packed with facts as an egg is with meat. In some ways it is a history
of mankind. Now look at the jump screen there on the control console
and you will see what I mean. Do you see the horizontal green line?
Well, that's our course."

"Since this is my ship and I'm flying it I'm aware of that," Mikah
said. "Get on with your proof."

"Bear with me," Jason told him. "I'll try and keep it simple. Now the
red dot on the green line is our ship's position. The number above the
screen our next navigational point, the spot where a star's
gravitational field it strong enough to be detected in jump space. The
number is the star's code listing. DB89-046-229. I'll look it up in
the book"—he quickly flipped the pages—"and find its listing. No
name. A row of code symbols though that tell a lot about it. This
little symbol means that there is a planet or planets suitable for man
to live on. Doesn't say if any people are there though."

"Where does this all lead to?" Mikah interrupted.

"Patience—you'll see in a moment. Now look, at the screen. The green
dot approaching on the course line is the PMP. Point of Maximum
Proximity. When the red dot and green dot coincide...."

"Give me that book," Mikah ordered, stepping forward. Aware suddenly
that something was wrong. He was just an instant too late.

"Here's your proof," Jason said, and hurled the heavy book through the
jump screen into the delicate circuits behind. Before it hit he had
thrown the second book. There was a tinkling crash, a flare of light
and the crackle of shorted circuits.

The floor gave a tremendous heave as the relays snapped open, dropping
the ship through into normal space.

Mikah grunted in pain, clubbed to the floor by the suddenness of the
transition. Locked into the chair, Jason fought the heaving of his
stomach and the blackness before his eyes. As Mikah dragged himself to
his feet, Jason took careful aim and sent the tray and dishes hurtling
into the smoking ruin of the jump computer.

"There's your fact," he said in cheerful triumph. "Your
incontrovertible, gold-plated, uranium-cored fact.

"We're not going to Cassylia any more!"

"You've killed us both," Mikah said with his face strained and white
but his voice under control.

"Not quite," Jason told him cheerily. "But I have killed the jump
control so we can't get to another star. However there's nothing wrong
with our space drive, so we can make a landing on one of the
planets—you saw for yourself that there is at least one suitable for
habitation."

"Where I will fix the jump drive and continue the voyage to Cassylia.
You will have gained nothing."