Mikah was about to speak, then thought for a moment. "Perhaps you are
right. I am 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 am not intolerant, but I do tend to expect everyone else
to live up to certain criteria I have met 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-full
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 will
have to explain yourself," he said. "For you are 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 Truth with a capital T 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 are incredibly wrong!" Mikah said, leaning forward, stabbing with
his finger. "Truth is a philosophical abstraction, one of the tools that our
minds have used to raise us 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. Forgetting for the moment who is right and who is wrong, 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 hairsplitting. "Ethics is the discipline
dealing with what is good or bad, or right and 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