Page 108 of Sway's Peace
Her hand tightened around the slim body of the tower like lamp, but she didn’t throw it. However, he looked at the object, at the pillow, at the tray and the food dripping down the walls, and he made a disgusted face.
“I’m not surprised,” he said, his tone resigned and hard. “You are just like the rest of the barbaric, violent, backwards universe.”
“Says the man who just condemned his own son to death.”
“Exile.”
“Death in all but name,” she scoffed, looking down her nose at him. Quite a feat, since he was taller than her, but her mother’s training was finally coming in good for something.
Veesway was very obviously angered by her sense of self-righteousness. “Do you even understand what he did?”
“Doyou?” She countered, dropping the lamp and crossing her arms, hip popping out.
“I’ve read his file,” he said, with the strained horror of a male staring stoically into the abyss and very nearly being overwhelmed by it. “The things he was accused of… A delicate female like you-”
“Murder. Torture. Maiming. Yeah. I got it. They’re getting progressively less horrifying the more you throw them in my face.”
Veesway made a face. “Of course. You wouldn’t understand. None of you outworlders would. Just how horrific what he did was. To your people, it’s normal. Expected even. But he is afarasie. He has a biological aversion to violence. We pride ourselves on our peaceful ways. On the fact that our history has no major wars in it.”
“How did your people join the Coalition?”
Veesway hesitated, clearly unprepared for that particular question. But he still answered it, probablybecauseit caught him unprepared. “The proper way, of course. Our people achieved space travel. We had detected signs of the Coalition long before we breached our solar system. And once we did, they extended an invitation that we gladly accepted.”
“Immediately?”
“Naturally.”
“Why?”
He was glaring at her now. “What does it matter?”
“It matters because you and your people have the very fortunate circumstances of never having to make the choices that he did.” Grace dropped her arms, staring him down. “The farasie people come from the planet Hov Awee. A planet where you have no predators, where you are the natural top of the food chain, and where there is an abundance of food and space for all your people.”
“That has-”
“Your people have never had any major wars, only minor conflicts, because you have abundance. You don’t suffer the way others do. And the system of government you implemented,even during the early days, prevented greed and corruption from coming to power. That is very lucky. That alone is something almost no one else can claim. And it’s something that you don’t appreciate nearly enough as a people.”
He sneered. “We chose our system of government. You claim we’re lucky?”
“You’re ridiculously lucky. Your circumstances allowed you to be peaceful, to not need power. You were able to learn and develop as a people without war, and that’s because your planet allowed it to happen. You are lucky, and the fact that you don’t realize it is a privilege you don’t even realize you possess.”
“What does that have to do with-”
“Because you, as a people, have never needed to make the hard choices. You’ve never had to sacrifice parts of yourself to survive. You can look down on Sway and everything he’s done because you are fortunate enough to never be in it. Even now, your people are protected. You became members of the Coalition immediately. You never had to contend with another species trying to take over your planet, or claim your resources, or hurt your people. Other species didn’t have that fortune. There are Coalition species that were enslaved for generations. There are Coalition species that were on the verge of extinction, and everyone was forced to fight and kill just to survive. You immediately got the protection and resources of the Coalition. You’ve never had to worry about danger from the insideorthe outside.”
He scoffed. “You are condemning us for being smart and safe?”
“I am condemning you for not recognizing your own luck and not realizing that not everyone has the same benefits. Sway was removed from all the privileges and protections of beinga farasie. He had to face the same horrors and darkness that the rest of the universe can be subjected to. And when he did, he reacted exactly the same way the rest of us would. He did anything he had to in order to survive. He committed atrocities, sacrificed others, to protect his own life. And while we can call it horrible and cruel, none of us can say we don’t understand why he did it. You revile him because he is the harsh truth that your people are not some biologically superior beings that are betternaturally.”
Veesway remained unimpressed. If anything, his expression only became stoney and closed off. He refused to hear what she was saying. To understand Sway at all.
“Even if you’re right,” he started slowly, “it changes nothing. Even if we are fortunate, it doesn’t change who we are as a people. And who we are could never tolerate, never forgive, who he has become.”
“And I can accept that. I can.” She nodded. “He’s done something that goes completely against what your people believe in. It makes sense thattheycan’t accept him as he is. But you are hisfather. You’ve spent your life searching for him. You built an entire city, this entire Song, for the express purpose of finding and rescuing other farasie for just the barest hope that you might be able to find your son again. And now that you have, after everything he’s done to survive this long, you would turn your back on him. Just likethat?!”
“You think this is easy for me!?” He shouted back, his voice breaking on the words. “To look into the face of my son, my precious boy, and see what he has become. Do you have any idea what it felt like to read his file. To find out what he had done?! I am sick. I am horrified. I would have preferred he had just died!”
The echo of the sentiment continued to ring in the silence of the room. Veesway was staring at her, breathing hard. The look on his face was that of someone who had just witnessed a tragedy, and it had scarred him deeply.
