John removed his shoes, pulled his pants up to his knees, and dunked his feet into the pool.

Plumb-hair, still smiling roguishly as she hugged her knees at the edge of the pool, was joined by four other Alii.

One Alii lay back on her elbows, crossed her legs at the knee, and bobbed her foot. One lay on her belly and held her head in her hands as she smiled coyishly at John. One sat her legs sideways, resting her weight on one arm. One entered the water, facing away from John, curving her back as she rested her elbows on the side of the pool.

John noticed the old crone reposition to a pool behind him. Plumb-hair asked, “What do you believe the word kauwa means?”

John stuttered a little before replying, “It means house. Heiau means clan. Li and Oli mean soldier. Ele and Mele mean scientist. Kid and adult versions of each. Alii means…something like head of the house. And Pono means mother. Nani means the Alii’s on a council of some type.”

The Alii all giggled, stealing more quick looks, behaving demurely and the opposite of demure at the same time. I can’t take much more of this, thought John.

“So confident! But still wrong, Kahaka. Close on a few. Li used to mean warrior and Ele used to mean wise, but those words mean so much more now.

“And the meaning of kauwa is far from house as you understand the word. Kauwa means all necessities will be provided. It means belonging. It means acceptance. It means someone cares a great deal. It means pleasure will be earned and given. Kauwa is love. Us Alii are very loving. We love to love. Do you find me attractive, Kahaka?”

John rubbed his face with his hand then shook his head violently trying to clear it of the fog but only managed to upset his head injury further. The Alii all giggled. He took a deep and cleansing breath but the aroma he took in made things worse. “You know I do. I can’t help but find you so.”

Plumb-hair giggled enchantingly again. “Why do you say that as if it were wrong to find me attractive? It’s not wrong to want me. To want my flower. It is good and right to.”

The fog and images in John’s mind wouldn’t relent. These were his enemies. He would be the instrument of their destruction. He couldn’t tell the truth, but he couldn’t think of a lie. He couldn’t think of much at all besides what his mind forced him to.

John wiped his face, shook his head again, and looked around. He finally thought of something to say. He yelled out, “Thank you, Nani Victory. Your guy gave me the crystals for…for the bet…I…the…thing.”

The Alii smiled brightly, waved, and said, “It’s Victor. All three Alii of Nani Victor are here, Kahaka. This is our hall. But thank you! You performed wonderfully in the arena. That head injury looks bad. I hope you’re okay. Watching you battle made my flower gush a great deal of dew. I’d love it if some of your credits were used to cover your stamen in its juices. I want to feel you inside me very badly, Kahaka.”

Curse these witches! John thought about how much simpler his life was during the thousands of years he had no desire for women at all. He wished he could purge himself of it again.

Hazy and confused, as if he were drugged, John’s head lolled, aggravating his injury. “What…what are you doing to me?”

Plumb-hair’s roguish smile grew wide enough to show her perfect teeth. “Your own body does it to you, Kahaka. You have desires, and that is good. In our society, unlike others, we want strong males to fulfill their desires. All their desires. If he has the credits, he can have any of us. We are not greedy and possessive. As I said, we love to love. We love being loved.”

Anger cleared John’s head a little. He had loved. He had loved greatly. The sick society of the Peerless was completely lacking in it. All types of it. The love a mother felt for her children. Marriage wasn’t about the type of love he felt for Amber, but husbands and wives usually grew to love one another in a far stronger and sturdier way.

Love is having someone that cares about you and specifically you more than any other, having someone in your corner cheering you on, having someone to help lighten the burden when life gets heavy, having someone to help pick up the pieces when life breaks apart.

Love is having someone, the same someone, to go through life with. Un-alone. Together. It is beautiful and good. Unequivocally good. Every decent man deserves a good woman of his own, from the poorest of peasants on up. Every decent woman deserves a good man to have children with, provide for her, and protect her.

Family. Family is love. Family is a synonym of love. Family is the best way, the only way, society should be structured. The Peerless destroy all that is good and right. All of it. Masking it with superficial beauty and pleasure and saying it’s better because it’s prettier. It isn’t.

A part of John told him he needed to keep his opinion to himself. His foggy head and clouded thinking were too far gone to listen to that part. “None of you have the slightest idea what love is. Real love. Love isn’t desire. My world…my world got that wrong too. They think it’s desire now too. My Amber, she doesn’t understand either. She has too much Lilly in her. I just want someone that loves me and only me. Only me.”

The Alii leaning back stopped bobbing her foot. The one in the pool stopped arching her back. The one with her legs sidewards stopped lightly running her fingers up and down her calf. The roguish smile disappeared from Plumb-hair’s mouth.

Some compulsion caused John to stand, turn around, and walk to the small pool occupied by the old crone. He sat and dunked his feet into the new pool and the compulsion ended. No other Alii were in his field of view. Just the old crone.

The crone’s eyes were downcast. She waved her hand and the air cleared. John’s mind cleared a little too. Without looking up at John, she asked, “Do you ever consider if you’re wrong?”

“Yes, Alii. All the time.”

A small, sad smile formed on the crone’s mouth. “We do too. All the time. Tell me your thoughts on this – a mother has five children, but one is sickly and weak and requires a lot of resources to nurse and foster. She can guarantee her other four children can be healthy, happy, and successful by sacrificing the sickly one. What should she do?”

John had never desired to be a great thinker. He wanted to be a great warrior. But the question posed to him was an old one, as old as mothers and kings, and he had pondered it often, especially when he himself was king. It boiled down to ‘should rulers do the most good for the majority at the expense of the minority?’

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Decisions had tradeoffs. Few choices were ever between two solely beneficial things. Most choices, every hard choice, required picking between the lesser of two negatives, or the best or most acceptable mix of positives and negatives. What modern society called pros and cons.

John had always disliked it when people couldn’t see that. If people were asked if they had to have a missing arm or leg, many would say, “Neither, they’re both bad,” dismissing the ‘had to’ part completely as if they possessed a great wit.

For John, he would rather have a missing arm. As he lived his life, missing an arm wasn’t nearly as bad as losing mobility. For some people, especially if they had certain vocations, a missing arm would be far more devastating to their livelihood than a missing leg. It was all just tradeoffs.

John wouldn’t be a fool with the question asked of him. He knew where it was leading – the crone was justifying the sick eugenics of the Peerless. Animal husbandry was a good thing. Improving beasts, making them more useful, more able to perform their useful function, was good. But those were animals, not people.

The question as posed didn’t consider the larger society. Just the mother and children. A family. Something the Peerless had no experience with.

“I believe the best type of mother would see all her children as a part of herself and necessary,” answered John. “A good family would sacrifice to help a member of it. Siblings love their siblings. Mothers love their children.

“Unless the sickly child was constantly suffering in intolerable pain, the mother, the family, should sacrifice for it, and do so without reservation or regret. Maybe the father must work more and work harder to cover additional expenses. The future is unknown – all five children could grow to be healthy, happy, and prosperous. And if the children later found out their sibling was sacrificed so they could benefit, how would they feel about that?

“Besides, I’ve seen many cripples you’d label as too defective to live, rise to the very top and strike fear into the hearts of their enemies. Their genetics far worthier than any other in their family to pass on, proven by deed and accomplishment.”

The small, sad smile never left the crone’s lips. Without looking up, she said, “Fair enough. We do horrible things, evil things, in the name of progress. We justify it by knowing the greater good demands it. Long-term gains and benefits for short-term suffering and evil. Untold numbers in the future benefit from sacrifices we make in the present.”

The Alii sighed. “We’ve eradicated most of the usual issues that plague people and society. Our hierarchy is much flatter than in most other societies. No Peerless needs to worry about going hungry, or being discarded, or arming himself, or ever wondering where and how he fits in. There’s no jealousy or cheating or infidelity. No boy pining over a beautiful girl out of his reach due to status or because she’s already taken by another boy. If he earns the credits, he can have the girl he desires. Any girl he desires. Just not to himself.”

The crone finally looked up at John. “Just as mothers often ruled your small families on Terra as benevolent dictators, so do ours here. The families are just much larger. In every society, there are those that rule. Corruption comes from the rulers trying to advantage only themselves or their small families over those they rule or have their ideology win against competing ones. Resources are distributed unfairly causing discontent and suffering. People opposed to the current ideology are angered and want their own to have all the power.

“The answers to all those problems are built right into our society. Laid out in the Aikapu for all to see in black and white. We raised up the lowly to greatness. We Alii rule as only loving mothers can. There’s a push and pull, but never any corruption. Only worthy genes are passed on, ever improving us. No competing ideologies. No crime. No jealousy. No greed. All are strong and secure. Just superior beings in a superior society. Hardly any defectives or subhumans are born. Anymore.”

Sadness filled the eyes of the crone and some tears left them. “I’ve given birth to many children. Near a thousand. About 40 of mine have been defective. All but one known while in the sac. One was born and grew to mid-phase. I had to exile my own son to Palm. My own flesh and blood.”

The crone wiped the tears from her eyes. John thought it was an overly dramatic reaction since Alii didn’t raise their own children, nor did they give much if any attention to them from what he had seen. He sat silently and waited for the old woman to compose herself.

After some time, the crone continued. “We always consider if we’re wrong. And if we are, we try to never be wrong again. We suffer so future generations don’t have to. We take the hard decisions on ourselves, hoping none must bear the burden of making that choice in the future. None of the Alii in this hall have birthed a defective. None know the pain of having a child aborted in the sac. None know the heartbreak of exiling their own son. Because I helped ensure that.”

The old crone shifted her seat and sighed again. “John, tell me of the bookie you assaulted. Was he a bad man? I know little of betting, but even I know the bookies were right to refund old bets and offer new terms for the…the competitions that were drastically altered. You wanted to kill a peaceful man for doing what he should. For earning a living honestly, because you disliked the new odds. If you were in his shoes, would you have done anything differently?

“Answer honestly, John, do you ever consider if you’re wrong?”

John hadn’t interacted with many Alii. He hardly saw any, even the one he was trapped with for a year during the flight to Gani.

This was the first time an Alii had used John’s name as a name should be used. The Peerless didn’t use names because they wanted a constant reminder that they were equal and part of a larger whole with little room for independence and individualism.

John knew he was sometimes wrong for wanting to kill someone for a poor reason. The bookmaker was a great example, and having it spelled out made him feel guilt and shame. He was completely wrong in that instance.

But that was one issue with one man based on strong emotion and desperation. Poor judgment in the heat of the moment. There was being wrong and then there was what the Peerless were doing.

“I agree, I was wrong, and the bookmaker was right,” replied John. “I was foolish and I’m ashamed of my actions. I let my desperation get the better of me. Even when I cooled off, I still wanted to harm a man that did me no harm. It’s shameful, and I wish it weren’t true. It speaks little of me.

“But that’s incomparable to the horrors you Peerless are inflicting on my people back on Earth. You’re destroying them. You’re ripping families apart, slaughtering peaceful people. Slaughtering cripples that have it hard enough as is. Taking away from people the best things in life – their children, their spouses, their families. It’s wrong at a level I could never compete with. I can’t even understand it.

“What was wrong with your son? Why’d he get exiled? I bet it was nonsense. No good reason, wasn’t it?”

The crone sighed. “He wasn’t attracted enough to Alii. The defect of homosexuality, of preferring one’s own sex more than the opposite. Such boys have no place among the Peerless. That defect has been weeded out almost entirely from the generations after my own. Exiling my son broke my heart more than…let’s just say it hurt. It hurt badly. But his kind are not useless. He lived happily among the subhumans of Palm and others sharing his defect, so he was glad to go.

“And yes, we are doing terrible things on Terra. Terrible, unimaginable things. But for a reason. A grand purpose. Not for petty vengeance or ego. Many suffer now so future generations won’t have to. What we are doing will eradicate nearly all defects from terran stock while increasing their grade many times. We’ve ended the gross inequality terrans have always known, ended corruption, and we’re making a much happier, safer, and useful society for future generations to enjoy.

“We’re unlocking potential, raising you all up from subhumans to peers, as my late husband and father, the glorious Akua, did for us, and he also had to do terrible things to those he loved to help them and make them superior. It may not seem so now but we’re doing something wonderful and fantastic for your people. We love your people.

“This universe, every universe, every reality, is broken. The false-God won’t help. The core only cares about their own. Only we can make it so future prosperity is ensured. Only we can end the threat of demons and the g’athu once and for all. Only we can raise subhumans up as our own peers.

“If wanting everyone, every single being everywhere, to one day be happy, safe, content, and to live in peace without worry means I’m evil, then I am very evil. But such lofty goals aren’t easily achieved and require sacrifice. A lot of sacrifice now so a time will come when no one ever needs to sacrifice again. It will take far more pain and suffering to ensure the end of pain and suffering. We don’t need the false-God to bring us to His Heaven. We are bringing heaven to everyone.”