‘His own what?’
‘Thomas Paine. But then you’ve never heard of him, of course. Look him up in our library when you get a chance. Very inspiring stuff. Now about your assignment. It would be easy enough to put you on a desk job here-your friend Zebadiah has been working sixteen hours a day trying to straighten out our filing system. But I can’t waste you two on clerical jobs. What is your savvy subject, your specialty?’
‘Why, I haven’t had any P.G. work yet, sir.’
‘I know. But what did you stand high in? How were you in applied miracles, and mob psychology?’
‘I was fairly good in miracles, but I guess I’m too wooden for psychodynamics. Ballistics was my best subject.’
‘Well, we can’t have everything. I could use a technician in morale and propaganda, but if you can’t, you can’t.’
‘Zeb stood one in his class in mob psychology, Master. The Commandant urged him to aim for the priesthood.’
‘I know and we’ll use him, but not here. He is too much interested in Sister Magdalene; I don’t believe in letting couples work together. It might distort their judgments in a pinch. Now about you. I wonder if you wouldn’t make a good assassin?’
He asked the question seriously but almost casually; I had trouble believing it. I had been taught-I had always taken it for granted that assassination was one of the unspeakable sins, like incest, or blasphemy. I blurted out. ‘The brethren use assassination?’
‘Eh? Why not?’ Van Eyck studied my face. ‘I keep forgetting. John, would you kill the Grand Inquisitor if you got a chance?’
‘Well-yes, of course. But I’d want to do it in a fair fight.’
‘Do you think you will ever be given that chance? Now let’s suppose we are back at the day Sister Judith was arrested by him. Suppose you could stop him by killing him-but only by poisoning him, or knifing him in the back. What would you do?’
I answered savagely, ‘I would have killed him!’
‘Would you have felt any shame, any guilt?’
‘None!’
‘So. But he is only one of many in this foulness. The man who eats meat cannot sneer at the butcher-and every bishop, every minister of state, every man who benefits from this tyranny, right up to the Prophet himself, is an accomplice before the fact in every murder committed by the inquisitors. The man who condones a sin because he enjoys the result of the sin is equally guilty of the sin. Do you see that?’
Oddly enough, I did see it, for it was orthodox doctrine as I had learned it. I had choked over its new application. But Master Peter was still talking: ‘But we don’t indulge in vengeance-vengeance still belongs to the Lord. I would never send you against the Inquisitor because you might be tempted to exult in it personally. We don’t tempt a man with sin as a bait. What we do do, what we are doing, is engaging in a calculated military operation in a war already commenced. One key man is often worth a regiment; we pick out that key man and kill him. The bishop in one diocese may be such a man; the bishop in the next state may be just a bungler, propped up by the system. We kill the first, let the second stay where he is. Gradually we are eliminating their best brains. Now-‘He leaned toward me. ‘- do you want a job picking off those key men? It’s very important work.’
It seemed to me that, in this business, someone was continually making me face up to facts, instead of letting me dodge unpleasant facts the way most people manage to do throughout their lives. Could I stomach such an assignment? Could I refuse it-since Master Peter had implied at least that assassins were volunteers-refuse it and try to ignore in my heart that it was going on and that I was condoning it?
Master Peter was right; the man who buys the meat is brother to the butcher. It was squeamishness, not morals-like the man who favors capital punishment but is himself too ‘good’ to fit the noose or swing the axe. Like the person who regards war as inevitable and in some circumstances moral, but who avoids military service because he doesn’t like the thought of killing.