“I used to be big on well-defined parameters. Now, though . . .” Lily thought about some of the lines she’d crossed. Some of the things she’d done or left undone. “Now I think that learning what is and isn’t right action is the job of a lifetime. The real answers, the true ones, have to come from within. Rules can guide us, especially when we’re young, but not all the way. Even if we think a lot about the rules, what they mean, why they exist, that only takes us so far. When you come right down to it, the rules are made out of words. Words are . . . they’re signposts pointing at the thing, not the thing itself. And the thing moves. It changes. What the words point at looks so different by the time you’re thirty than it did when—” She broke off, surprised and alarmed by how much she’d said. What was wrong with her?
She gave her tea a suspicious look. She didn’t feel drugged. Dizzy with fatigue, but not drugged. “I’m surprised by your interest. From what I’ve been told, you aren’t concerned with right action. Only with what benefits you.”
He didn’t look insulted. Or bored. Or anything else she could decipher. Lily had dealt with witnesses whose faces gave away little, but this guy beat them all. “All beings are interested in right action. We merely define it differently. Pursuing my own interests is rational. Placing the interests of others above my own would be irrational.”
“Sam wouldn’t agree.”
“Do you expect the opinion of this Sam to weigh with me?”
“It might. He’s also known as Sun Tsao—in your manner of naming, Tsao Sun—or the black dragon.”
“Ah.” At last, a reaction. He sat back slightly. His eyes were so bright. Intense. They made her think of a summer sky, of sunlight ping-ponging off air molecules until the air itself shouted blue. “You know him well?”
“Not well, but . . . no, that’s wrong. I don’t know all of him, but what I do know runs deep.”
“And you believe he espouses altruism, just as you do.”
“I don’t think his values are the same as mine. Or maybe I mean his priorities. He is a dragon, after all.” Sam didn’t place much stock in community, for example, or in kindness . . . no, that didn’t feel quite right. Dragon kindness arrived with teeth and claws, forcing you to fight your way past some trouble rather than rescuing you from it. “But he does believe in a higher good. He doesn’t act only to benefit himself.”
“What you perceive in him is enlightened self-interest.”
“I’ve seen that, sure, but I’ve also seen him act in ways that go beyond any self-interest. How do you know anything about the black dragon?”
“What do you see as the difference between enlightened self-interest and altruism?”
“Why don’t you answer my question, then I’ll answer yours?”
“Because I have no need to please you. You, however, may wish to please me, or at least delay the unpleasantness to come. What do you see as the difference between enlightened self-interest and altruism?”
“When you talk about unpleasantness, you make it hard for me to focus on other subjects.”
“Make an attempt.”
Might as well. He hadn’t asked her for anything that touched on the secrets she wanted to keep. “I guess the difference is that you have to reason your way into enlightened self-interest. Figure out the pluses and minuses of helping someone. With altruism, you help them for their sake, not your own. You don’t expect a benefit.”
“You would say, then, that altruistic actions are not the result of rational thought, but arise from an innate desire for the well-being of another?”
“I don’t think we can eliminate rational thought altogether. Sometimes humans have to lean on rules because we . . . well, we haven’t yet seen where they point, you might say. Not clearly.”
“Let us test that hypothesis. Have you finished your tea?”
“Not quite.”
“Finish it now and hand me the cup.”
She no longer wanted the damn tea. Throwing it in his face sounded good. She suppressed the urge. “Why?”
“So I can tie your arm to the chair. I can do so without your cooperation, but you are surely intelligent enough not to waste strength struggling when it serves no purpose. Also, I would prefer to not break either the cup or your arm.”
She was intelligent enough to not want to get into any bad habits, either. Such as obeying him just because he scared the shit out of her. Still, she didn’t want the damn tea, and she did want to find out something. He’d have to touch her to tie her up, wouldn’t he? Skin to skin.
She handed him the cup.
He took it in his left hand, set it down, stood up—and seized her wrist, lizard-quick, holding it immobile.
Neither of them passed out. She’d pretty much decided that wouldn’t happen, so no surprise there. Mostly she’d expected his magic to feel like dragon magic, order and chaos tumbling together in a complex dance that created a tactile sensation like no other. Or she might not have felt anything. Grandmother had said that magically the spawn were more of an absence than a presence, and Kongqi’s mind was invisible to Lily. She thought that maybe his magic would be, too.
Instead she felt ice, slick and cold. So cold.
“I have had to amend my usual test,” he was saying as he tied a tidy knot that pinned her arm to the arm of the chair. “Your magic precludes the use of jùdà téng, which I have used on my other experimental subjects.”
Wait, what? He wanted to test her, conduct some kind of experiment, not question her? That made no sense. “What are you talking about?”
He stood looking down at her with those bright blue eyes and no expression at all. “Jùdà téng is a form of body magic that causes agony but no physical damage. Clearly I won’t be able to use that on you, which is less than satisfactory. Nor can I use traditional methods of inflicting pain without risking a breach of our agreement to deliver you as undamaged as possible. Still, I’ve contrived a decent substitute for jùdà téng.”
Lily’s mouth was horribly dry. “What in the hell are you trying to test?”
“Altruism. It is a curiously persistent and widespread delusion among what are called sentient species. I wish to determine whether it is a purely social delusion that develops because it is useful for weak mammals such as humans, who must gather in packs to survive, or if there is some biological basis for it. So far my results have been ambiguous, but I’ve recently adjusted my methods. I believe my current test accounts better for outside variables.”
He was mad. Hadn’t Sam said the spawn were insane? She hadn’t realized, hadn’t understood . . . “Where I come from, scientists have MRIs to look at brain activity. I don’t see how you can find out much without being able to see what’s happening in the brains of your test subjects.”
“Pain,” he said simply, turning away to move to the table. “If there is an innate altruistic response to find, I must first break down your executive function so that your response will be unthinking and not a product of social conditioning. Previous tests have shown that high levels of pain do this quite effectively.”
Her executive function was trying to shut down already, being filled with oh shit oh shit oh shit.
“Earlier you referred to my decision to allow you time to bathe. My reply was accurate but incomplete. It was necessary to delay testing you anyway, so why not allow you a bath? I had to be certain I could achieve a degree of pain similar to jùdà téng by other means.” He turned back to face her, a large glass jar in one hand. “My brother assured me I could, but I needed to conduct my own tests. That took time. I had to revive two of the subjects before I could question them about the experience.”