It was an ancient calculation: in hard times it paid to sacrifice the vulnerable young, and to keep alive mature individuals who might breed again in an upturn.
But the infant was almost old enough to feed herself. Just a little longer and she would have survived to independence. And this was Ultimate’s baby: the first one she had had, and perhaps the only one she would ever be permitted to have. Ancient drives warred. It was a failure of adaptation, this battling of one instinct against another.
It was a primordial calculus, an ancient story told over and over again, in Purga’s time, in Juna’s, for uncounted grandmothers lost and unimaginable in the dark. But for Ultimate, here at the end of time, the dilemma hurt as much as if it had just been minted in the fires of hell.
Stephen Baxter, Evolution
Application to rationality? An exceptionally poetic reminder that tragedies endlessly repeated are still tragedies, each time.
Stephen Baxter, Evolution
Application to rationality? An exceptionally poetic reminder that tragedies endlessly repeated are still tragedies, each time.