"Not just some things."

"The weak-minded never notice it, Lady Patience.

Everything fits for them, because they simply don't remember the things that don't belong. They never happened, the memory is gone. But for those who live in the mind, the places that don't fit, they don't disappear.

They become a terrible hunger in the mind. Why, they shout. Why, why, why. And you can't be content until you know the connection. Even if it means breaking apart all the network that existed before. Once there was a time when mankind was locked on a single planet, and they thought their star circled that planet, because that was all they saw. That was the evidence of their eyes.

But there were some who looked closely, and saw that it didn't fit, and the why pressed upon them until they had an answer. And when it all fit, they were able to send starships to worlds like this."

"Every child asks why," said Patience.

"But most children stop asking," said Will. "They finally get a system that works well enough. They have enough stories to account for everything they care about, and anything their stories can't handle, they ignore."

"The priests say that the self is in the memory-that we are what we remember doing."

"That's what they say."

"But I remember doing the acts of hundreds of Heptarchs, and a few geblings, too. Are they part of myself?"

"You see the problem as few people see it," said Will. "The self isn't in the memory, only the story we believe about ourselves. It can also be revised. It's constantly being revised. We see what it was we did, and we make up a story to account for it, and believe the story, and think that we understand ourself."

"Except the dwelfs, who can't hold long memories in their conscious minds."

"Yes."

"So what did you tell Heffiji-that she had no soul?"

"Only that her soul had no story. Because ourself is something else."

She knew what he would say; it was clear to her now.

"The will, of course. It's strange, Will, that you're named for the thing that you think is most important. Or did you decide it was important because it was your name?

"Will wasn't the name I was born with. I took that name the day Reck looked at me and said, 'Who are you?' "

"What's the desire of the will, then? You said all three parts of the soul had their desire."

"The will makes only a simple choice, and it's already made. Your whole life is nothing but acting out the choice that defines who you really are."

"What's that?"

"The choice between good and evil."

She let him see her disappointment. "All this talk, and we come to that?"

"I'm not talking about the choice between killing people and not killing people, or between stealing and not stealing. Sometimes killing a person is evil. Sometimes killing a person is good. You know that."

"Which is why I decided not to care about good and evil a long time ago."

"No. You decided not to care about legal and illegal."

"I decided there wasn't any absolute good and there wasn't any absolute evil. You just said the same thing."

"No I didn't," said Will.

"You said sometimes killing is good and sometimes it's evil."

"So. Killing isn't absolute. But now, when you go to Unwyrm, what's wrong with doing what he wants? What's wrong with you having his children?"

"Because I don't want to."

"Why? You know he'll give you pleasure. And your children-they'll be human, perfectly human, only stronger and smarter, wiser and quicker, and they'll no doubt have a perfect connection between their minds, all of them like Unwyrm combined with the best human traits.

You'll be the mother of the master race. The most magnificent intelligent beings ever created. The next step in human evolution. Why don't you desire it?"

"I don't know," she said.

"If you don't know, then at the crucial moment, when you are with him, and all your desire is for him, you still won't know. You'll still refuse, but perhaps not with all your strength. And it'll take all your strength to resist him, I promise you."

"Come with me," she said. "Kill him for me."

"I'll come with you, if I can. And I'll kill him, if I can. But I think I won't be able to. I think there's only one person who'll ever come close enough to hurt him, to stop him."

"Then tell me. What is it I need to know?"

"It's simple. Nothing exists except in relation to something else. An atom is not an atom. It doesn't exist, except in relation to other atoms. If it never responded to anything else, it would not exist. All existence is like that-utterly isolated pieces that only come into existence in their interaction with other pieces. Human beings too.

We don't exist except in relation to the other events of the world. Everything we do, everything we are depends on our responses to other events, and other events' responses to us."

"I knew that."

"You didn't know that. It's so obvious that no one knows it. If nothing you did caused any change in the world outside, and nothing in the world outside caused any change in you, then you wouldn't know there was a world outside, and it wouldn't know you existed, and so it would be meaningless to speak of your existence at all.

So your existence, all our existence, depends on every piece, every person in the universe behaving according to certain set patterns. The system. The order in which everything exists. The laws that bind atoms and molecules are very firm. They have no freedom to vary, because as soon as they vary, they cease to be. But life-ah, there the freedom begins. And we who think we are intelligent, we are the freest of all. We make our own patterns and change them as we like. We build systems and orders and tear them down. But you'll notice that none of our choices have any effect whatever on the way that atoms and molecules behave. Just as we have no idea what any particular molecule is doing, they have no notion of what we're doing. We can't change their order at all. We can use it, but we can't break down their system and cause them to wink out of existence."

"I suppose that's true. We can burn wood, but the atoms that are torn from certain molecules combine again with others, and the system hangs together."

"Exactly. So we can't do good or evil to most of the universe. Only to other living things. Mostly to each other. Because the systems of human beings are ours to control. They're every bit as real as the universe itself, and they are what gives us our existence-but we can manipulate them. We can change the systems that create the terms of our life. And we do change those systems, according to the single simple choice of our will."

"What's the choice?"

"It arises from the desire of the will. And the desire of the will is simple. To grow."

"I don't want to grow."

"Every living thing has this same desire. Patience.

Angel touched on it, in his childish way, when he spoke of people who own things. That's the most pathetic way people have of growing. The way Sken makes this boat part of herself-it makes her larger. Eating .also makes her larger."

Patience smiled. "You're being ridiculous now."

"I'm not. Kings also make themselves larger, because their kingdom is part of themselves. Parents make themselves larger through their children. Some few people, though, have such a powerful hunger that they can't be satisfied until their self includes everything alive."

"The King's House is all the world," murmured Patience.

"What did you say?"

"Something my father taught me."

"Oh."

"So, is it good or evil to desire to be larger?"

"Neither. It's how you choose to grow larger. The system lives on sacrifice. No order could exist in which every person in it received everything he desired all the time. The system that gives us our existence depends on people making sacrifices. I give up something I desire, so that others can receive some of what they desire. In turn, they give up something they want, so I can have some of what I want. Every human society depends on that simple principle."