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fiercest among them would be appalled by what you have shown us.
Unless, of course, it added hopefully in perfect English, what we have
witnessed just now is generated to serve some as yet unexplained philosophical
purpose.
The news is the news. It s reality, even if I don t like most of it myself.
As for the movies, they re only intended as entertainment. Will stared at the
bird-thing. It s the violence that troubles you, but not the amount? What
then?
The direction it often took, the Wais explained. In both the documentary
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and entertainment sequences
Humans were shown killing other Humans. Will frowned. So?
You fight among yourselves, Caldaq said, speaking slowly to insure that the
translator conveyed his response accurately.
Yeah, we do that. We re not proud of it. He rested a hand on the humming TV.
I m missing something here. You ve been battling these Amplitur for hundreds
of years. Why are you so upset to see that we do the same kind of thing? You
do not understand. It is conceivable that one species may come into conflict
with another, but once it has achieved a certain minimal level of technology
it is not possible for members of the same species to continue to war with
each other. It is contraevolutionary.
T var spoke up. Catastrophe theory proves that a species which fights among
itself cannot long survive.
It will quickly reduce its numbers below the level necessary to maintain a
civilization. This is axiomatic.
All I can tell you, said Will, is that we ve been fighting ourselves since
the start of recorded history, and that unfortunately we re still at it.
Impossible. The Wais repeated the comment in a number of languages. I m
afraid it isn t. We re still here, though whether we ve reached your minimal
level of technology I don t know. He stood there, the warm sun heating the
interior of the cabin, regarding these representatives of a vast civilization
unimaginably far away, and wondering why the hell they couldn t see the
obvious.
You re telling me that though you ve been going at it with these Amplitur for
hundreds of years, none of you has ever fought among yourselves? In the
subsequent silence he turned to Caldaq.
You told me that the Massood are your organization s principal warriors. Are
you saying that even early on in the history of your kind you never fought one
another?
On an individual basis, yes. In small extended family groups, yes. But as
soon as the first tribes grew large and settled they began to cooperate. That
is a fact of nature obvious to the most primitive peoples.
Cooperation is the only way for any race to advance out of barbarism. It is
impossible to achieve a reasonable level of technology if energy is dissipated
in internecine warfare. Caldaq wondered why he was having to spend so much
time explaining the self-evident. It was going to take strong minds to
interpret this unusual world and its even more peculiar people.
The notion of a civilized race warring among itself is inherently
contradictory. It is as bizarre as your geology.
Oh. Now there s something wrong with our geology? Will hardly knew what to
say. The situation demanded the presence of experts. But they weren t and he
was.
A world is divided between land and water, said T var. This is the
accepted, the anticipated norm.
Imagine our surprise when we began to examine your world and found its
principal landmass broken into many pieces. That s because of something
called plate tectonics. Will strained to remember his college sciences. I
think the continents all used to be part of one big landmass, a long time ago,
but internal forces drove it apart and set the pieces drifting.
Land is not driven. T var glanced at Caldaq, then back at the native.
Land remains where it s formed. It doesn t move around.
It does here, declared Will confidently.
I ve never heard of such a thing. T var muttered in uneven Massood. Do you
think, Caldaq said abruptly, that the unnatural hostility these people bear
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