Jack of Harts 2.5: Wolfenheim Rising Read Online Free PDF Page B

“I see.”  Then he shook his head as another suspicion arose in his mind.  “Is that the only reason for your policy?”
    Callahan met his gaze with calm eyes and shrugged.  “No.  I remember a time before AIs.  Back when humans did far more of the work that maintains our civilization.  We’ve become soft and lazy because we can rely on computers to think for us.”  He turned to look at Dawn.  There was no malice in his eyes, but there was also no give in them.  “My policy forces my people to use their own minds.”
    “You’re a smart man,” Dawn whispered.  “I wish more of your people were as motivated.”
    Callahan’s eyes narrowed and studied her carefully.  “Do you?  Really?  Or do you wish we would just roll over like the Peloran?”
    Dawn simply sighed and aimed a sad smile at Callahan.  “That…is a very serious charge.”
    Callahan pursed his lips and shook his head.  “Yes it is.  But you’ve become family.  And sometimes family has to ask hard questions.”
    Dawn returned his look for a moment, and then smiled.  “We don’t control them.  They do what they want.  But they were never meant to be another Race of Humanity.”  She sighed and looked away from them all.  “The Albion genetically engineered them to be super soldiers who wanted nothing more than to live in peace.  Tailored them to lack the dream of freedom that so many other humans have, so they would never consider rebelling.”  Dawn snorted and shook her head.  “The Albion gave them a single driving purpose, and they embraced that as their entire meaning for being.  When the Albion died, most of them found the nearest planet and started grooming trees like they were programmed to.”
    Malcolm’s mind actually recoiled at Dawn’s frank description.  He’d never heard the Peloran described like that.  They were super soldiers, with reaction times and senses far above the human base levels.  But he’d never considered the Peloran to be victims of actual mental twisting before.  They always seemed so calm and collected.  Never victims of what Dawn made sound almost like mind rape.
    “We did what we had to do,” Dawn continued as Malcolm’s mind raced through the idea.  “We worked with the oh so very rare number of Peloran who had the…drive that you take for granted and built a society they could all live in.  We gave the rest of them the peace they craved, literally on a genetic level.  Can you honestly tell me that you would want to live a life like that?  To have life itself provided for you?  To never see something and think that maybe you could do it better?  To never have the drive to try ?”
    “Some of us would love a world like that,” Callahan said in a hard tone, and Malcolm nodded in understanding of what the older man meant.
    He’d read a book as a kid about a man who invented a time machine and went far into the future.  He found a world exactly like what Dawn described.  And the people of that time had been helpless.  They had no reason to fight, even to defend their lives.  Since everything was free, nothing had value.  None of the Peloran he’d met acted like that, but there weren’t many genetic Peloran in Terran space.  Maybe she was right that they were simply the few who rose above the rest of their kind.
    Dawn met Callahan’s questioning gaze and answered it with a calm smile.  “And that is why we never choose to be the partners of such people.  We will never do to you what the Albion did to the Peloran,” she finished, her tone that of a woman making an unbreakable oath.
    Malcolm considered her words, everything she’d said in answer to Callahan’s question, and wondered at the possibilities and ideas that they brought to mind.  He looked into Dawn’s wide-open eyes and saw her hesitation.  She’d never said anything like this before to him, and he’d never once considered any of it.  But now that he thought about it, he could see what she