Second Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

I answered.
    "You came to find a way to whip us!"
    It was not a question and I had no necessity to answer.
    "Have you found the way?"
    "No."
    "If you do, and you are able, will you use that knowledge to kill us?"
    "No."
    Trobt's eyebrows raised. "No?" he repeated. "Then why do you want it?"
    "I hope to find a solution that will not harm either side."
    "But if you found that a solution was not possible, you would be willing to use your knowledge to defeat us?"
    "Yes."
    "Even if it meant that you had to exterminate us—man, woman, and child?"
    "Yes."
    "Why? Are you so certain that you are right, that you walk with God, and that we are knaves?"
    "If the necessity to destroy one civilization or the other arose, and the decision were mine to make, I would rule against you because of the number of sentient beings involved." Trobt cut the argument out from under me. "What if the situation were reversed, and your side was in the minority? Would you choose to let them die?"
    I bowed my head as I gave him the truthful answer. "I would choose for my own side, no matter what the circumstances."
    The interrogation was over.
    * * *
    On the drive to Trobt's home I was dead tired, and must have slept for a few minutes with my eyes open. With a start I heard Trobt say, ". . . that a man with ability enough to be a games—chess—master is given no authority over his people, but merely consulted on occasional abstract questions of tactics."
    "It is the nature of the problem." I caught the gist of his comment from his last words and did my best to answer it. I wanted nothing less than to engage in conversation, but I realized that the interest he was showing now was just the kind I had tried to guide him to, earlier in the evening. If I could get him to understand us better, our motivations and ideals, perhaps even our frailties, there would be more hope for a compatible meeting of minds. "Among peoples of such mixed natures, such diverse histories and philosophies, and different ways of life, most administrative problems are problems of a choice of whims, of changing and conflicting goals; not how to do what a people want done, but what they want done, and whether their next generation will want it enough to make work on it, now, worthwhile."
    "They sound insane," Trobt said. "Are your administrators supposed to serve the flickering goals of demented minds?"
    "We must weigh values. What is considered good may be a matter of viewpoint, and may change from place to place, from generation to generation. In determining what people feel and what their unvoiced wants are, a talent of strategy, and an impatience with the illogic of others, are not qualifications."
    "The good is good, how can it change?" Trobt asked. "I do not understand." I saw that truly he could not understand, since he had seen nothing of the clash of philosophies among a mixed people. I tried to think of ways it could be explained; how to show him that a people who let their emotions control them more than their logic, would unavoidably do many things they could not justify or take pride in—but that that emotional predominance was what had enabled them to grow, and spread throughout their part of the galaxy—and be, in the main, happy.
    * * *
    I was tired, achingly tired. More, the events of the long day, and Velda's heavier gravity had taken me to the last stages of exhaustion. Yet I wanted to keep that weakness from Trobt. It was possible that he, and the other Veldians, would judge the Humans by what they observed in me. Trobt's attention was on his driving and he did not notice that I followed his conversation only with difficulty. "Have you had only the two weeks of practice in the Game, since you came?" he asked. I kept my eyes open with an effort and breathed deeply. Velda's one continent, capping the planet on its upper third; merely touched what would have been a temperate zone. During its short summer its mean temperature hung in the low sixties. At night it dropped