The Ambassador, Part I

This is a short story draft that I never quite finished putting up, so it seems due for a completion as well as a revision.

Nobody except the Matriarch of Syan knows exactly what happened to my predecessor, but I can imagine many of the details, some of which are likely true. The Matriarch of Syan does not at first give an impression of extraordinary power. One hears of Matriarchs who have done so, but it is not the look that makes a Matriarch. I am not sure what does; but perhaps it is the the ability to smile coolly at the destruction of enemies. And I have no doubt that the Matriarch was smiling coolly as my predecessor  sat down to dinner with her.

He was a cautious man, and carefully ate nothing except what was tasted by the food-tasters, a young man and a young woman. I hope they were well-paid for what must be a harrowing occupation; but perhaps they, like canaries in the coal mine, were simply drafted. But everything was tasted by one or the other, and the Matriarch herself began to eat, and so he ate.

"I have heard an interesting rumor," the Matriarch said abstractedly as she looked down at her wine and swirled it in her cup. "I have heard that you have had a meeting with the ambassador from the Five Cities Republic."

"'Having a meeting' is hardly the name for it," said the ambassador. "We happened to meet in passing and exchanged some words."

"Half an hour of words, it seems."

"That is certainly an exaggeration." You have to give the man credit, after all; he was part steel, the sort of man who could lie like that and calmly continue eating.

"Rumors often are," she said carelessly. "I only bring it up because there are interesting things happening in the Republic. Or perhaps they are rumors, as well."

"Those rumors I have heard," he said, clearing his throat, then clearing his throat again. He drank some wine. "The Republic appears less stable than it used to be."

"Republics are always less stable than they used to be," said the Matriarch. "I am thinking more particularly of the tales I've heard that certain statesmen there are interested in trying to destabilize the Matriarchate."

The ambassador perhaps turned slightly pale, but no other sign of distress would have showed. "Indeed? But I am not really surprised. The Five Cities are always a cesspool of intrigue, as you know. I am sure that they are plotting and plotting to unsettle the Empire in half a dozen ways, as well."

"No doubt," said the Matriarch. "The Republican ambassador said nothing to you about the matter?"

"Nothing whatsoever," was the reply.

"Interesting." The Matriarch carefully cut her steak. It is a quirk of hers, the extraordinary care with which she eats her food, everything in precise bites.

After a few minutes of quiet eating, she spoke again. "I actually wanted to ask you about the Imperial training exercises."

The ambassador would have cleared his throat. "Training exercises?" he said, his forehead getting slightly damp.

"Training exercises," she said. "That is what the excuse would have been, would it not? 'We are not really building up our forces in preparation for an invasion. It is a training exercise. It is only near your borders because the location allows for' -- what would it be? -- 'because the location is ideal for practicing mountain maneuvers'? Let's see. Ah, yes, 'all routine; if you would like we can arrange for observers from Syan, but it would take time to get the permission, since you would have to notify the Imperial City and the local commanders.' Something like that would be the excuse, would it not?"

"Well," said the ambassador, perhaps a little weakly, "there are some training maneuvers going on, but there always are, you know. They don't keep me informed of every detail. Surely it is not so many that you could regard it as a serious threat."

"I am sorry to be so blunt, Your Excellency, but the Empire is long past being a serious threat to anyone, regardless of numbers. Nonetheless, it seems somewhat reckless to engage in 'training exercises' so close to the border without any prior notification. It seems only a matter of courtesy to let us know. After all, it could be taken very badly. To take just an example, there are all these rumors about the Five Cities plotting to assassinate me, and should I be out of the way, who would not think that the Empire might be tempted to annex the mines across the border, just to take advantage of a temporary moment of weakness on the part of Syan? Or perhaps to lend troops in assisting the Five Cities in opposing the Infanta? Or perhaps the Empire would be happy to cut a deal with the Republic to recognize and support its invasion in exchange for some valuable favors? There are so many possibilities for bad interpretation in the whole matter."

The pallor of the face and the beads of sweat on the forehead were quite pronounced. The ambassador cleared his throat. "If you wish," he said weakly, "I can file an official report registering your protest, in addition to any your ambassador to the Empire might file directly." He cleared his throat again.

"That would be very kind," she said. "You see, it is not the single event that causes consternation. But there are combinations of things that should always be avoided, even if singly they are perfectly harmless." She took a drink of wine.

"I heard about one that will no doubt amuse you," she continued. "There was an incident in my predecessor's day of someone important dying suddenly and mysteriously. And it turned out that the death was caused by two completely harmless substances. You see, when they are separate, they have no ill effect. But if you were to mix the two under just the right circumstances, they convert to a highly toxic compound. As it happened in that case, one of the substances had been in the food, and another in the drink. If he had just taken wine, or had water instead of the wine, he would have been perfectly fine; but he had both, and as it turns out, the acids of the stomach are the perfect conditions for the combination of the two compounds. Is that not remarkable?"

Whether the ambassador thought it remarkable would doubtless be difficult to determine, since he would by this point be sweating profusely, breathing raspily, and doubled over as if in pain. It would not be long before he slid onto the floor, dead.

The Matriarch had his body shipped back to the Empire in grandest honors, expressing her deepest sorrow at having lost someone who had worked so hard for the mutual benefit of the Empire and the Matriarchate. The official story was food poisoning; which I suppose was completely true.

Of course, as I said, no one knows precisely what happened except the Matriarch; these details are all how I imagine it, but they are well-founded details. I like to think that my predecessor took it stoically, in the finest Imperial tradition, as his forefathers would have. I hated the man myself, but he was an Imperial citizen, after all, of an old senatorial family, and I would hope that some of that would show itself in the end. And, I suppose, being killed by the Matriarch, which you can guarantee will be an inconveniently undignified and unpleasant death, cannot but make me have some sympathy for him. After all, I am likely to go the same way one day.

Obviously my own involvement in the matter began after the body had been shipped back to the Empire with all the crocodile tears the Matriarch could ship with it. Had I had any sense whatsoever, I would have 'come down' with a terrible illness the moment I was invited to the Second Consul's office. Nothing good could come of such an invitation. But I suppose I, being an incurable optimist, took it as a sign the ice was finally thawing, and I walked into the office as innocent as a lamb gamboling up to the door of the slaughterhouse. I do not know how long I could have held it off, in any case; a consul can only be put off so long before soldiers come by to haul you in.

"How is your father?" he asked, with a big smile. Both the question and the smile should also have set alarms ringing in my head.

"He is doing quite well," I replied. "As active as ever. He is away with my brother, looking into buying a seaside villa. Our rents have been excellent the past few years."

"That is good," he said. "Would you like a drink?"

In general, you should never take a drink from someone who favors your family's enemies, but you should also never refuse an offer of a drink from a consul. Caught between two irreconcilable political truths, I took the drink with thanks.

"I hope you will allow me to be frank," he said, after we had shared empty comments about the quality of the oak-aged brandy. "Your family's political fortunes have not exactly been at their highest in past years. I have always felt the situation to be regrettable, but the shifting political winds have never blown quite right for me to do anything about it. And I am not sure that they do so now. But necessity may accomplish what diplomacy cannot. An ambassadorial position has recently come open, one that can only be filled by someone of highest senatorial pedigree. It may be the route to restoring your family's political position. It is a politically sensitive position, and I do not claim that it would be easy in every way, but things are in motion that if properly kept in motion would ensure the finest political laurels."

It was this that in fact set off alarms in my very slow-witted head. I started running through all the ambassadorial positions that I knew were open, wondering in what edge-of-everything hole-in-the-wall they were going to try to stuff me, and thinking through the excuses that might get me out of them. The trouble is that there are very few excuses that you can give a consul to his face. Part of my mind also began trying to figure out what my father could have possibly done that, despite not knowing about it, could lead the Second Consul to think that he could move directly rather than through a senatorial committee; consuls normally went through great lengths to preserve the public fiction of neutrality.

I sipped my drink, trying to sort this all out in my head. "What is the position?" I finally asked, unable to come to any likely possibilities on my own.

"The Matriarchate of Syan."

I choked on my brandy. It was worse than I had thought. Syan is where you send enemies whose careers you no longer need to destroy. It took me a while to quit coughing.

After I had recovered, I sighed. "I take it that the position was artificially rather than naturally opened."

"Officially, it was a natural opening. Unofficially, he was certainly poisoned; we think he got sloppy and the Matriarch got wind of what he was doing."

"And we are just letting the Matriarchate get away with it."

"To do otherwise, we would have to be in a position to do otherwise. You know how touchy they are; and we are in no shape to go to war over an assassination they can just deny. We could never get our allies to give money or troops for that, and the Mercenary Legion is dealing with the vice-governorates of the Southern March."

He put down his snifter. "Look," he said, "I know you exactly what you are thinking. And normally you would be right. The recently deceased and entirely unlamented ambassador was stuffed into the position to keep him safely out of the way until precisely something like this would happen, or until he was too old to be useful. And, one way or another, in Syan it's a rare ambassador who grows old. But he was more cunning than his enemies expected, and he was somehow able to use the position to leverage some crucially important concessions from the Five Cities. Concessions we need. The Republic is planning to move against Syan. In the deal, we get the concessions by not intervening, at least until matters are in hand, beyond providing some minor cover. It is ideal for us. But we need someone there to reduce the chance that they will try to renege on the deal, and it is here that we face a fundamental problem. The Matriarch knows us nearly as well as we do; she knows that it is a position given to members of disgraced high-level families; sending someone from a minor family would be taken as an insult, and sending someone from a family on the upswing would make her suspicious. We need a trustworthy black sheep, a loyal disgrace. Even people who hate your family concede that you are, one and all, good citizens of the Empire. And you were deemed the least risky of your family. The circumstances chose you, not I." He spread his hands. "Such is politics; we are all puppets held by the strings of the very webs we weave."

"I take it, then, that there is no room for me to turn down this offer."

"Let us simply say that it is your duty as an Imperial citizen, and, as I said, whatever others may think of your family, nobody impugns your sense of duty." In senatorial circles, that is a polite way of telling you to shut up and just accept that you have no alternative.

And they lost no time sending me on my suicide mission; I was packed off on the next transport to Syan.

to be continued

Kind and Cruel

April Sonnet No. I: April Kind
by Francis Bennoch

April, though treacherous and changeling named,
Wanton and wayward in thy nature, still
Revealest thou those mysteries that fill
All hearts with love's deep sympathy, and famed
For blooms that odorous balm distil.
Birthtime of beauty and of poesy:
When birds betrothed melodions from the hill
Rain down their morning song of ecstasy.
When amorous bees toy fondly with the flower,
And drain its humid sweets deliriously,
Faint with excess, in love's delicious bower
Softly infolded, blossom-couched he lies:
Whilst draughts of fragrant dew oblivious sleep supplies.

April, 1855.

April Sonnet No. II: April Cruel
by Francis Bennoch

April, ah me! how swiftly changes come,
How soon the month we love we learn to hate,
When boughs deflowered hang down disconsolate,
And clouds of grief make dark our garden home,
Where genial sunshine lingering loved to wait;
With joy we grafted in thy wounded rind
The fairest branch that ever blossom bore;
Clasped close, incorporate as one combined,
A newborn rapture trembled in thy core
As budding life expanded, more and more
We longed to reap the fruit; but woke to find
Hope in a morning blighted; from the shore
A ruthless wind stole with untimely frost,
And all thy cherished bloom was shrivelled, loosed, and lost.

April, 1855.

Looking Upon the Inner Truth

Do teachers hold that it is their thoughts that are perceived and grasped rather than the very disciplines they take themselves to pass on by speaking? After all, who is so foolishly curious as to send his son to school to learn what the teacher thinks? When the teachers have explained by means of words all the disciplines they profess to teach, even the disciplines of virtue and of wisdom, then those who are called 'students' consider within themselves whether truths have been stated. They do so by looking upon the inner Truth, according to their abilities. That is therefore the point at which they learn.

[Augustine in the De Magistro, from Against the Academicians and The Teacher, King, tr., Hackett (Indianapolis: 1995) p. 145.]

Nobis and Dudley on Abortion

 Nathan Nobis and Jonathan Dudley have an article in Salon in which they argue that the case against abortion is ethically weak, and it is so absurd as to be almost funny. The essential idea is right -- a very large number of pro-choice arguments do not touch on moral questions at all, or only obliquely, whereas almost of the primary pro-life arguments are moral to their root. But their grand argument that the pro-life arguments are weak is....an argument from analogy.

Their first step is based on living organ donation:

First, in every U.S. state and most countries, if a person elects to be an organ donor, their organs can be removed for transplant when that person suffers complete brain death—even if their body is still alive. Organ harvesting involves cutting living human beings open and their organs being removed one-by-one until, at last, the heart is detached and the human being dies, having been directly killed by the procedure. 

Almost everybody thinks that this is acceptable, they say, so it goes to show that really we all believe that "it's not always wrong to kill human beings", even innocent ones.

I'm afraid, alas, that I literally burst out laughing when I originally read this first step of their argument, and I'm still having difficulty keeping from doing so in going over it again for this post. There is of course one very, very important word in their set-up that complicates this supposedly lucid case, namely, that they explicitly say that they are already talking about human beings that are regarded as having already died for other reasons -- "complete brain death", i.e., irreversible cessation of brain functions so that the person can be regarded as dead. What Nobis and Dudley have really shown in their first step is that people generally don't think you can kill a human being who is already dead, so the moral worries that would come with killing a human being don't arise for people who have reached the point of their brain irreversibly shutting down so as to be classified as dead. Their argument depends on recognizing that a body can be dead one way (brain death) and still alive for a while another way (until heart death), and then assuming that only the latter actually matters. Needless to say, the people Nobis and Dudley are talking about are not treating the latter case as the point of death for the human being. Thus it's simply false to say that they are treating the case as one where it is acceptable to kill a human being, because they obviously hold that the human being is already dead and the body is just still undergoing its shut-down process, and the organs can more easily save lives if taken from this dead person now rather than late. Contrary to what Nobis and Dudley, suggest, there are in fact pro-life people who worry about the moral questions involved in such live organ donation, but the many who don't have a moral problem with it quite clearly do not themselves see it as killing a human being, no matter how Nobis and Dudley might think of it. We can even assume that Nobis and Dudley are right, if you'd like; it doesn't follow that people are actually interpreting the case in this supposedly-right way. Most people make the judgment of moral permissibility they do in this case because they take it that a person can be irreversibly dead while parts of their body are still alive, and thus assimilate to the case of taking organs from the recently dead (in cases where both brain death and the stopping of the heart have happened) for precisely the reason that they regard it as nothing but taking organs from the even more recently dead.

The second step of their argument is based on the case of anencephalic infants -- i.e., infants who are born without a large part of the brain. These are generally delivered and simply given palliative care; because they lack brains capable of adequate functioning, they eventually inevitably die. Nobis and Dudley say that this practice "ends their life, but is not morally wrong". Well, no, what ends their lives is not having a brain capable of supporting life for very long; reverting to only palliative care even for adults would not generally be regarded as 'ending someone's life', because that suggests deliberate killing. That is precisely not what is happening in palliative care cases; you have a reached a point where death is not actually avoidable, more aggressive interventions might make things worse, and so you focus instead on trying to make the inevitable easier.

Where they are heading with this is the combination argument: as we don't mind killing brain-dead people and we don't mind 'ending the life' of anencephalic infants with inadequately formed brains, we should not mind abortion in cases where the brain is not yet fully developed. The problem with this argument by analogy is that Nobis and Dudley clearly think that the morally key point of similarity among the cases is the lack of a fully working brain, whereas this is definitely not what pro-lifers regard as the key point in all these cases -- the fact that anencephalic infants are given palliative care is proof in and of itself of that. Rather, it's clear that the key issue in the moral decisions people are making about this is inevitability -- in particular, unavoidable death. Those who have undergone brain death have reached the point where nothing can be done to save their life; with organ donation -- as you will find people explicitly saying when asked why they are donors -- at least they can save other people's lives. Nothing can be done to save anencephalic infants (they are not infants born simply with survivable brain problems); they are given palliative care, just like adults who have reached a point of no return. In both these cases the reason for this is the brain, but it could happen in other cases for other reasons (e.g., palliative care for those with radiation poisoning), showing that the brain is not actually the essential component, and it is clear that what people take to be significant here is that we have reached a point where actual remedy is no longer possible at all. But while there are cases in which embryos are nonviable, and so forth, these are not what we are usually talking about in discussing abortion; most abortions are of embryos and fetuses that have not passed any point of no return. Their lack or limitation of brain function is because they are still developing, and it will pass in time. There is nothing inevitable about the death of the one in the womb in the case of most abortions; it's deliberately induced on one who would probably survive, and reach full functioning, if they were not aborted.

And it is very noticeable that, while the key analogy in an a moral argument should be directly linked to the acts taken in each case, this is precisely not the case as Nobis and Dudley frame it. We have the following cases and common responses:

BRAIN-DEATH: having received prior permission, we wait until they are pronounced irreversibly dead so that we cannot possibly save their life, and then take their organs specifically for the very major good of saving someone else's life.

ANENCEPHALY: as we are unable to save their lives, we give them palliative care until their inevitable death.

ABORTION: for reasons that vary quite widely, we surgically rip them apart to make sure they won't survive and usually throw away the remains as medical waste.

These are not the same kinds of moral actions. The analogy on the most salient point for moral questions -- our actual response to the situation -- is somewhat lacking. If, on the other hand, you tweak the circumstances of the last so that response can be closer to one of the other two, it quickly becomes obvious that pretty much any pro-life position can in principle handle these cases consistently. For instance, opponents of abortion almost universally recognize that cases in which you are saving the life of the mother are different moral cases for which the usual considerations are inadequate -- because (as with the organ donation case) you have introduced the great good of saving the life of another, in this case the mother. This makes both situation and response much more similar to the organ donation case, and you find correspondingly a general sense among opponents of abortion, regardless of their specific views about this kind of case, that this situation introduces further moral considerations that at least have to be addressed.  But in either direction -- whether one nuances and qualifies in this very specific case or not -- there is no fundamental inconsistency; it depends on exactly the role you see for the good of saving the life of another, and your conclusion can't be assumed to generalize to other cases in which this is not even in view.

And if we looked at making our response more like that of the anencephaly case, then we would be giving 'palliative care' until it was no longer necessary -- which, since most pregnancies are not inevitable death cases, sounds awfully like seeing the pregnancy through until they are born.

Thus the sophomore undergraduate attempt to force a dilemma doesn't actually work. Nobis and Dudley say:

Pro-life intellectuals argue that organ donors are not really "human beings." But surely they are human beings—they are living human organisms, with heartbeats. The pro-life premise that it's always wrong to kill human beings implies that organ donation practices are wrong, so this is a good reason to reject the assumption and its application to abortion.

It is in fact not the case that "it's always wrong to kill human beings" is a "pro-life premise"; for instance, defense to save one's own life or another's is often not considered wrong. (This is a problem throughout the argument, since Nobis and Dudley in all their reading of "pro-life 'intellectuals'" have apparently only managed to pick up a kindergarten-version of the pro-life position.) But Nobis and Dudley are committed to saying that you can kill people who are recognized as dead, which is the real point at which you are going to find people baffled here. The reason we call it 'brain death' is that it is regarded by people as a clear case of irreversible death. (There is, of course, 'reversible death', i.e., cases where people die in some sense but can be brought to life, which has always been recognized as a thing that rarely happens and in our age of medical wonders actually happens a fair amount. But even there we generally take it that if there's a real chance of reversing it, one should try. By definition, in the irreversible cases there is no point in trying.) Nobis and Dudley perfectly well could argue that 'brain death' is not death in the right sense for moral judgments here; there are (contrary to what they imply) actually quite a few pro-life people who hold this. What they can't do (but which they in fact are trying to do) is argue that people who do regard brain-death, an irreversible state, as actual death are being inconsistent in saying that they are dead and thus aren't being killed when their organs are used to save the lives of other people, or that they are inconsistent in holding that prohibitions against killing don't apply to those they regard as dead, but only to those that they regard as alive. And again, Nobis and Dudley perfectly well could argue that embryos are human beings in exactly the same sense as the brain-dead, but what they can't do (and yet try to do) is argue that people who think that this is false are inconsistent in treating it as false. (It is, of course, also the case that live organ donation of the sort being discussed is not so sacrosanct that concluding that it is wrong would danger anything in the way they suggest. There are lots of things we rightly refuse to do in order to have a supply of transferable organs; you can't just assume that the fact that something is one kind of organ donation that it is automatically a morally acceptable kind; this has to be established.)

A further fundamental problem is that arguing against "It's wrong to kill human beings" is not adequate. For instance, if I murder somebody and try to justify my actions by saying that there are rare cases where it's not wrong to kill human beings, even if we suppose I was right about those cases, it does not actually address the issue, which is that you can't just regard yourself as having the right to go around killing human beings. That is, the fact that there is some case to which we don't think the principle applies (if that is so) does not establish that in fact you need no justification to say it does not apply here. Thus, while it would establish that we couldn't completely handle the matter at the level of general principle, it wouldn't establish that if one case is fine the other must be; that would have to be argued at the level of specific justification. There are reasons people say things like, "It's wrong to kill human beings", even if this is just a shorthand for a much more complicated principle; and, not having addressed the reasons, you haven't actually established that similarities between the case are related to this more complicated principle in the same way. And it is, in fact, generally the case that it's wrong to kill human beings, and it remains generally the case even taking it in a sense in which it admits of exceptions, and therefore continues to be relevant. If I argue that I should be able to kill a sedated person for their organs because I claim it's a lot like the brain-death case, which shows that it can be OK to kill human beings, I would rightly be regarded as both intellectually stupid and morally obtuse. But this is precisely what both Nobis and Dudley are doing. The person who insists that killing a sedated person for organ donation can't be done because it's wrong to kill human beings is still at least more right and reasonable than someone who thinks it's enough to say that "Well, sometimes you can kill human beings" and then points out a few quick similarities between those supposed cases and this. No, even if you think there are exceptions (and as I've noted, almost everyone does to this particular statement as Nobis and Dudley insist on stating it), it's still a very good rule, and you still need a positive justification for why it doesn't apply here.

It's difficult not to be harsh about such a blatant case, but in fairness it should be said that on this particular point, Nobis and Dudley are making an error I often see people make, due to the fact that even professional philosophers often don't really have a very clear idea of how counterexamples work. If you have a general principle, P, and you have a counterexample, C, it's common to assume that C refutes P; but this is not in fact the case. What C does is show that, if there is a domain in which P is true, it is at least a domain that doesn't include C. The only way to refute P is to show that it can't apply to any relevant domain; counterexamples just show that the principle at least has to be restricted. And even if you've established a counterexample -- neither of which is this case in Nobis and Dudley's argument, since the principle is "It is wrong to kill human beings" but the examples are not cases that would usually be characterized as killing (in one case, the person is usually taken already to be dead, and in the other the person dies on their own because we have no way to help them) -- even if, I say, you've established a counterexample, any other example has to be established as sufficiently similar in precisely those points that contribute to the counterexample's being a counterexample. 

Suppose it is in fact OK to kill human beings sometimes. Does that establish it as OK in any given case? It does not. And all Nobis and Dudley have to offer for going beyond this is their own vague sense of analogy between cases -- not, as they repeatedly mischaracterize it, how people generally see the matter. This is very weak argument, since it really means that they've given an argument not that opponents of abortion should not have the positions they do but that they, Nobis and Dudley, given how they see it, are committed to rejecting the pro-life position. And it is an argument that depends for what little strength it has on assuming that Nobis and Dudley haven't missed important relevant differences (which, as we've seen, they have) and that there is not some other, more accurate principle involved that nonetheless still distinguishes these particular cases in the way the crude, rule-of-thumb way does (which they don't even consider).

Nobis and Dudley do at least try to give some kind of positive argument as well as negative argument for thinking abortion morally permissible. It isn't very good; in their formulation of it, based on the idea that interests are what grounds rights, they gloss over both the fact that there is a great deal of controversy over the best way to characterize interests and the fact that there are, in fact, arguments that those in the womb have interests from the beginning -- indeed, it's hard to make sense of most actual medical advice to pregnant women without assuming that they do, since it seems to be able to require being able to recognize healthy development, and health a reason for attributing interests, and to recognize that what you do now can affect their lives later, which is a reason for attributing interests. (Indeed, given that there have been arguments for decades that plants have interests, arguments that are increasingly popular, it's a little baffling that their argument depends on the by-now very old-fashioned assumption that all you have to look at is the brain. It's like being teleported to the 80s and 90s.)  And, of course, there is always the position, more common than Nobis and Dudley suggest, that interests, while relevant to rights, are not what actually grounds them (since, among other things, some of the ways we characterize some interests seem to suggest that we already are presupposing rights). Of course, one can still reasonably hold that some version of their argument holds by holding that this particular formulation is just a handy approximation  -- but as Nobis and Dudley don't allow any room for such formulations on the opposition side, they can hardly complain if someone refuses to allow them that same room.

The best I can handwave in favor of the authors is that their real audience is supporters of abortion rights, and that their real argument is not the permissibility of abortion but that it's reasonable for such people to stake their ground on definitely moral arguments. But that's a weak defense, since it would really require showing that the moral arguments have powerful bite when arguing against opponents of abortion, which they haven't really done. Their most substantive arguments depend on (1) assuming a controversial view of what cut-off we should regard as death specifically for moral purposes relevant to the killing of human beings and (2) treating a fact about whether the brain is functioning as in and of itself the decisive issue, rather than a contributing factor. But it seems doubtful that it's a good strategy for pro-choicers to chain themselves to the assumption that irreversible brain failure is not a morally significant change, and most people, I think, would hold, perhaps rightly, that it would be better to bypass assumptions like these if that's possible.

So, in short, it's true that the real issues here are moral, and it is plausible that this is where it is best to focus if possible (although it is entirely understandable that people would prefer to avoid this difficult terrain if they could); nothing in what I've said suggests that this can't be done by supporters of rights to abortion; but Nobis and Dudley's overly quick and amateurish attempt is not a model for doing so, and it is all the worse for not being someone's rough first-approximation but being put forward as if it were some kind of model. And, of course, this is all before we even get to the political and social complications; there are good reasons why the pro-choice movement has tended to do a lot of elaborate work to avoid any kind of argument that makes them sound like a Kill-Human-Beings movement, reasons that are obviously not being considered by those, like Nobis and Dudley, whose first instinct is to argue that it is morally permissible to kill human beings.

Abyss & Sea 7

6

After a light breakfast of smoked fish and small beer, Disan spent most of his day away from the Porphyry Mountain, meeting with the captain about whatever arrangements needed to be made for their departure the next day and visiting the markets. He bought several small trinkets for Baia and was for a short while sorely tempted to buy her a pair of monals from the Khalad mountains. Male monals were highly prized in the Great Realm because of the almost metallic shine of their feathers and the brightness of their colors -- in this case shimmering green along the crest, copper on the neck, and bright blue in the wings. He finally decided not to buy it, to the great disappointment of the merchant, upon reflecting that he did not know how Ker would feel about it.

Returning to the Porphyry Mountain, he met briefly with the High King to discuss specifics of the fleet-building plan, and then prepared for the great farewell feast that evening in his honor. The feast was lively, with jugglers, dancers, and musicians. The dishes were varied as well. Talans and Tavrans, who made up the majority of the court, were great eaters of beef, so there were great plates of roast beef, smelling of clove and nutmeg, and there was roast cygnet stuffed with beef, and heron stuffed with beef, and a pie of stork and beef. Disan, who was certainly not Talan, ate lightly of it, and mostly confined himself to the seafood; the chefs of the Porphyry Mountain did a passable imitation of Sorean mussels with garum. Mostly, however, Disan watched the entertainments and listened to the singers tell the tales of the realm: the raising of the land by Fulné and Trethin, Ardalan's wooing of Asaria, the humorous Song of the Valiant Carpenter, and so forth. But the one Disan liked best was the Song of the Cherry Tree Maiden, an old Sorean song, which was sung by a young Sorean woman. As it happens, it is of all the songs of those days the only one to survive in full, although as a translation of a translation, so it is fitting to write it here.

The Song of the Cherry Tree Maiden

Prince Essan held a mighty bow,
a hunter great was he,
and knew all paths and woodland ways
from river to the sea.

He hunted deer and hunted elk
and all their kin and kind
and one day set in swift pursuit
of silver-splendid hind.

By thicket, coppice, stream, and hill
the silver hind he sought
until it through the thick, dark trees
his winding way had brought.

And in the forest's ancient heart
he found a cherry tree,
around which danced a maiden fair
with hair down to the knee.

His heart was seized; it melted through;
he loved her then and there,
the maiden graceful in her dance
with foot and ankle bare.

"I love you well," the prince then said,
"come be my lovely bride;
such beauty like the cherry tree
should not in forest hide."

"I cannot go," the maiden said,
"to be your lovely bride;
by chantments greater far than you
I to this tree am tied.

"No human maiden can I be;
my soul is blossom-born
and if I leave this cherry tree
it shall be from me torn."

For many days Prince Essan came
to see her dance in shade,
and never would she come with him,
no matter how he prayed.

He ached inside; he could not eat;
no sleep would brush his face;
but though the maiden loved him well
she would not leave her place.

Upon a day Prince Essan came
with axe of steely blade
and set it to the cherry tree
that held the lovely maid.

"Now come with me, now come," he cried,
"that you and I be wed!"
And on the ground the cherry tree
was dying as it bled.

She took a step to go with him,
the sweetly dancing maid;
like mist she grew, and windborn cloud,
and then began to fade.

She took a step to go with him,
then vanished with a sigh;
for what is severed from its root
will surely come to die.

The entertainments of that night were many and bright, the dancer's costumes brightly colored, the songs and melodies sweet. But when Disan went to bed that night, it was the tale of the cherry tree that echoed in his head as he went to sleep, and it was still echoing there in the pause between first sleep and second sleep.

The Soreans began their journey back home in the early morning.

****

Baia was busy. She had been overseeing the temporary settling of the Visitation Court at a small manor, the largest in this rural area of the country, but a little small for the large-scale traffic of the royal honor, and thus had had to do a considerable of negotiation in order to get all of her Court housed and provisioned properly. Then one of her ladies-in-waiting, and her best seamstress at that, had married, and that had to be properly done; Baia suspected that the marriage was rushed for purposes of covering prior indiscretions, but the lady had always been one of her best. The wedding affair was as nice as could be quickly arranged, and all at the Queen's expense; and the lady was granted the honor of being Queen-for-the-Feast, which required making sure she had appropriately queenly gear. And, of course, she still held audiences to hear grievances and petitions.

In the midst of it all, Sosan came to her with a honey merchant from Tavra. Honey merchants are usually not exactly poor, but to make their money with a cart selling odds and ends as well as pots of honey, they spend most of their time in hard traveling, and Sosan had had some trouble locating him. He stood, hat in hand, his silk coat worn and a little ragged at the hem, and obviously unsure what to do in the presence of a Queen.

"Tell the Queen what you have told me," Sosan prompted. The honey merchant fumbled a bit, so Sosan went on, "You have a regular route from Tavra...."

"Yes, Your Highness," said the honey merchant to Baia, "I have a regular route from Tavra; hard work, but good money. Excellent wares, some even from the apiaries of the Tavran royal estates. Your minister," here he bobbed in Sosan's direction, "has asked me about my route, and it does seem to be my route, and I was likely in the area when he suggests. But," he said in a more anxious tone, "the honey I sold on that route was of the highest quality; it is a good part of the route for the royal honey. And I do not understand why I would be questioned about any death; honey is good, and even if the bees drink where they shouldn't, it could never be enough to cause harm, and the bees from royal estates have only the best flowers, and I would never harm my honey, because it is my livelihood, and I...."

Baia cut in. "Nobody accuses you of anything; we are simply investigating and so need your answers. Did you see anything amiss on your route at the time Sosan gave you?"

The honey merchant shook his head, "No, Your Highness."

"And you are reasonably sure that the honey you would have sold would have been from the royal estates of Tavra?"

He nodded, "I do not keep records of precisely what is sold where, but most of the honey sold in that area is so."

"How do you obtain royal honey?"

The honey merchant had a little flicker of the eyes and was a little slow to answer. "Well, Your Highness, it's like this, I have a cousin who works with the beekeepers, and when there is surplus, he lets me know, and I buy it at a fair price."

"Hmm," said Baia, looking off to the side a moment. Then, returning to the honey merchant, she said, "We thank you for your assistance. You may go now. Sosan, please make sure that this helpful merchant receives a gift for his assistance; a box of the extra ribbons from the wedding will do." Sosan nodded and showed the honey merchant out.

When he returned, he said drily to Baia, "I could ask, if you like, but I doubt that there is much in the way of record of this negotiation."

"Yes," said Baia, "but what passes under the table in Tavra is not our primary concern here. Whatever the deal was, my suspicion is that some of the honey he received for it was not the usual royal honey."

She spent a few minutes in thought while Sosan patiently waited, then she said, "Sosan, I will be in need of a new lady-in-waiting. Perhaps in the spirit of unity among the kingdoms, we should look for a Tavran girl of highborn family."

"I will begin to make inquiries," said Sosan.

Fortnightly Book, April 11

But that's another story and shall be told another time.

Michael Ende (1929-1995) can be said to have experienced the full range of the twentieth century. His father was a surrealist painter who, banned from painting by the Nazis, painted in secret; but most of his father's work up to 1944 went up in flames in the bombing of Munich. Michael himself, who had already developed a taste for Romantic poetry, became courier for a resistance group at the age of 16. He completed his high school education at a Waldorf School, run by the Anthroposophists who followed the ideas of Rudolf Steiner; there he fell in love with the Expressionist movement. He tried his hand at drama; that largely failed, although it made a lot of travel possible. He wrote a novel, Jim Button, in the 1950s, but struggled to get it published; publishers thought it a weird book, too adult for children and too childish for adults. When he finally did get it published, it became an instant award-winner, which was good for him because by that point he had become completely broke and in serious debt. He continued to do well, but without question the work everybody thinks of when they think of Michael Ende was the one he published in 1979, Die unendliche Geschichte: da A bis Z, better known in English by the title it received with its 1983 translation, The Neverending Story. It could originally only be obtained in a hardcover with red and green letters, like the book of the same title that Bastian steals from the bookshop. I have a paperback, in which form The Neverending Story will be the next fortnightly book. I don't think I've actually read it since middle school, so it will be interesting to come back to it.

In the US, of course, the title evokes the movie of the same name, which is a classic in its own right. Ende himself, while originally excited to be having a movie, ended up hating it with a passion, and actually tried to prevent it from coming out by lawsuit. The lawsuit failed, but Ende never stopped hating the movie, whose changes from the book he saw as fatal -- e.g., the fact that Bastian in the book is fat and insecure about his looks rather than the slim, good-looking boy played by Barret Oliver, and Ende's view that the movie depicts a perversely kitschy and distorted view of how imagination works. In any case, Ende or not, I will probably be re-watching it, as well.

A Poem Draft

The Poetry Workshop

The spirits came, my soul to steal,
so I put my soul in a spinning wheel
and kept it safe, as I ever will
when I walk in the shadow-realms.

and we will sing in darknesss
for a city we never knew

the silent stairway up my mind
to attic sunlight-filtered room

the Lord rides the willows
the clouds of glory are under Him

He is the Word
I am a word in letters

the brain
is a hurricane
swift with wind
thick with rain

when all our sins rise upward
we take their tally and their tale
with those who came before us
to fight the rod and flail
they march with us
they march in us
they march and will prevail

the highest form of military art
is to win battles before they start

gota del mar
like two drops of water, the mother and son
cool drops of grace
a little drop from the divine ocean
teacher of the sea of human souls
the exalted light of grace
the sea-fire
the sea-bitterness of the Passion
and there will be no sea in New Jerusalem

O maiden, maiden, I will die
unless you in my arms will sigh

in Soria Moria castle
I met my dream
it was foolish
I was foolish
but oh!
it glittered and gleamed

laughter touches lightly on the moon
the wishful whispers of the soul
time is twisted, death is near

the angels play like children
their puddles are the lakes
virtue is their singing
stars their sugar-cakes
their care-free happy laughing
is in the nova's fire
they run only by loving
and never tire

to be a Mine, not cattle,
a man might kill or die

from plain to plane it rises high
a flame as vast as endless sky
upon a golden-laden pyre
it rises high and ever higher
with rubicund and orangey hues
the burning all the world imbues
and tinctures with a boundless blaze
embroidery of golden rays

The shadows hunted in a time of pox,
so I put my skin in a strong oak box
and they were defeated by its silver locks
as I walked in the shadow-realms.

the meaning of a mime
the myth of mummery

the ruler in his castle
the canmore on his throne
however great and mighty
they all will die alone

where the hallways of the soul
become the highways of the realm
the roads of the philosopher-kings

like gold slimed over
human souls
shine out obscurely
the world grows darker,
ash on eye

we always die sideways
orthogonal spin
and fall out of living
we children of men

the iron wheels of history will crush us underneath
and we will dwell in little graves long days beneath the heath

above the sea of clouds the moon
in argent glow its wings extends
a path it races through the wisps
on far horizon lies a single star

the future blooms with flower
silent stars
sing with cantillation
as in the showers
here and there are falling
spring-time warm
the ghosts are in the hallway
and don't exist
like shining rain
or wafts of evening mist

Emerentiana near the Via Romentana
sought by holy union to have union with her friend

water-laden clouds on high
whisper wisps of lullaby

joyful are my feet on the mountain
although the trail is steep
good news is the fountain
from which my heart drinks deep

outlawed and outcast it moved
from pale to gold, and beyond the pale
it met its sunrise dawn

I was afraid when they sought my heart
but I placed it in stone by a powerful art
though I was wounded by a mistletoe-dart
as I walked in the shadow-realms.

the wishes ripple through the mind
with God all things are possible
sometimes they just stay possible

I almost love you sometimes
I guess it's a flaw in me
a shadow and a flicker
of a warm inconstancy

the candle lights the darkening room
in which the bride glides swiftly to the groom
the night is deep but holds no gloom
a child is woven on the loom

when all in heaven spake your name in awe
and I was captive by the chains of law
tired of face
weary of feet
standing in the saintless sleet
as icy-shower heavens fall

but angels die upwards
in splendor and grace
to wear greater joy
the life of their race

the beaver is building his dam in the stream
half of gnawed wood and half of gnawed dream
the breeze is now blowing perfume from the West
my head is now nodding in time on my chest

listening to words
we sit in chairs and yawn
thinking of lunch or dinner
wondering why that prig
sitting in the second row
just keeps talking
when no one cares what he says

I almost think about you
as I walk upon the way
maybe in the black of night
maybe in the day

my heart is halfway broken
burning like bright fires
a captive caught in tangles
born of deep desires

the power of a kiss to enchant and disenchant
there is a madness sprung from God
the sheen of rain on slate at night

the sea-wave rises up
falls down
foams 
and subsides

when stars are singing, full of flame
the canticles of sacred name
crafting great devices, swarthy elves
rule in halls of diamond

my pen I take to write a verse
and subtle sundry themes rehearse

the candle sheds its silent tears
it weeps for time, which burns away
in minutes stretched as long as years
the memories of yesterday

the softest words are heavy on the mind

entangled with Christ on His Cross

poetry is the most human thing
I guess
so nobody reads poetry
too busy growing the materials

I am pent with passion; its penalty is pain
misfortune made of misery beyond the lot of men

the spatters of the thunderstorm in sputters swiftly fall

a dialogue of afternoons
my heart is carved like marzipan
a phony jack-o-lantern smashed to smithereens

when the archangels of Zion
bring out their trumpets,
their trumpets blaring,
and the lambs lie down with the lion,
the asp its haven with child sharing

teak, teak ataki wheat
wheat eat teeth eat
teak, teak ataki sweet

the cat is leaping
nightly creeping
never sleeping save in day

all who love to read
bring to the task a mind
crowned with joy of deed
drawn from depths of time

the drooping boughs of trees are dripping droplets from the rain
rivulets of reason run through little rills again

the scrolling curve of time with gliding stroke moves on

who wills the end must will the means
or else a field of nothing gleans

followable way is not equal to stable way
to follow what can be followed is not changeless following
doctrines that can be spoken are not enduring doctrines

to speak the thing that can't be said
but buzzes still inside the head

On a dark, moonless night, they came for my eye
and then I was sure that I would soon die
'till I placed it safe on a mountain high
when I walked in the shadow-realms.

for the dead, weep not,
nor for him moan
for the exile weep
for he goes away
no more shall he return
nor see his native land

we are born at all adventure
in the happenstance of days
short our life, and soon our death
and tedious our ways
but we are made immortal
by a God who in our hearts
has placed eternal glory
and a thirst for higher parts
in the choir of the ages
where the angels sing His praise
in the music of the heavens
like stars we may yet raise
the envy of the devil
brought death unto our race
and death they find who turn away
from God's most holy face

you are the ark on trouble's flood

the sun is bitter in my eyes

far from the shallows, the pillars of shell
spiral like currents in byssal-deep sea
the maidens are moving and swaying in dance
lotus-dressed beauties pearl-crowned in the deep

without forgiveness, death prevails,
endless devils, endless hells

the world is worn like mummy-rags
I feel buried and sore
as if I had from broken crags
just fallen and failed to soar

all things fall and all things die
the world is but a gusting sigh

and I am sorrow-laden with the past,
moonlight-cloaked and burdened with a task

I wish, though I know it is a wish in vain,
that I could be a whole man again,
but then I know that I would be slain
as I walk in the shadow-realms.

diverse ways to one road leads
one road to diverse ways

standing there, soaking, dripping with doom
wreathed by the silence of flawless perfume

perhaps some day the gilding thins
upon my smile; perhaps some day
the sanctity is hidden under sins
the substance shadowed by its style

tell all among the nations
the Lord reigns from the wood

somehow folly whispers in my ear
a dash of hope with a pinch of fear
when the sight or hint of you draws near
the world becomes unsure, unclear

there is a world inside me
to Luthany I fly

the analogical angels, like anagrams
combine and ever combine in holy choir

and high in the sky
I see stars shining bright
but the moon hides its face
from our wickedness tonight

I know not why
your burning eye
upon my eye does rest
but if it cry
I surely die
for I do love you best

I quaff the dawn at sunrise
and drink the quiddity of life
the flagon of the heavens pours
the beverage into my mug

there is a god inside me
to Luthany I flee

the background angelic murmur of thought
music of the spheres
circles of the different and the same
the sempiternal conversation
the colloquium of minds

up to Limbo with its balance,
which the Buddhists call nibbana
the Cross upon the Lotus
adorned with God's salvation

in the heart is a star with a light that endures

The stones are made of wishing,
the goblets made of gold,
and winter winds come swishing
through hallways grand and old.

our words are wanton, written on air,
pollinating ready ear,
then all gone and never there
but words are written in the heart
deeper than the heart can hold
you are of God's plan a part
so be bold

Words of wonder, white as bone,
drifting through the world alone,
wraiths of music, subtle tunes,
wander lost beneath the moons;
magic made of heart's despair,
thunder-brutal, forest-fair.

I keep my words in a leathern pouch,
safe from the creeping beasts that crouch,
that follow me with hunting slouch
as I walk through the shadow-realms.