ted in was learning the
facts. I know, that sounds like 'I didn't know it was loaded,' but--"

"It sounds to me like those Fourth Level Europo-American Sector
physicists who are giving themselves guilt-complexes because they
designed an atomic bomb," Verkan Vall replied. "All you were
interested in was learning the facts. Well, as a scientist, that's all
you're supposed to be interested in. You don't have to worry about any
social or political implications. People have to learn to live with
newly-discovered facts; if they don't, they die of them."

"But, Vall; that sounds dreadfully irresponsible--"

"Does it? You're worrying about the results of your reincarnation
memory-recall discoveries, the shootings and riotings and the bombing
we saw." He touched the pommel of Olirzon's knife, which he still
wore. "You're no more guilty of that than the man who forged this
blade is guilty of the death of Marnark of Bashad; if he'd never
lived, I'd have killed Marnark with some other knife somebody else
made. And what's more, you can't know the results of your discoveries.
All you can see is a thin film of events on the surface of an
immediate situation, so you can't say whether the long-term results
will be beneficial or calamitous.

"Take this Fourth Level Europo-American atomic bomb, for example. I
choose that because we both know that sector, but I could think of a
hundred other examples in other paratime areas. Those people, because
of deforestation, bad agricultural methods and general mismanagement,
are eroding away their arable soil at an alarming rate. At the same
time, they are breeding like rabbits. In other words, each successive
generation has less and less food to divide among more and more
people, and, for inherited traditional and superstitious reasons, they
refuse to adopt any rational program of birth-control and
population-limitation.

"But, fortunately, they now have the atomic bomb, and they are
developing radioactive poisons, weapons of mass-effect. And their
racial, nationalistic and ideological conflicts are rapidly reaching
the explosion point. A series of all-out atomic wars is just what that
sector needs, to bring their population down to their world's carrying
capacity; in a century or so, the inventors of the atomic bomb will be
hailed as the saviors of their species."

"But how about my work on the Akor-Neb Sector?" Dalla asked. "It seems
that my memory-recall technique is more explosive than a