"And so, you understand the principle of the argument to this point?"

"Yes," I answered him. I'd come to his Dongri mansion that night, a week before, to give him a report on the changes I'd recommended and initiated in the passport factory run by Abdel Ghani. With Ghani's approval and support, we'd expanded the operation to include a full package of identity documents- driver's licences, bank accounts, credit cards, even memberships of sports clubs. Khader was delighted with the progress of those innovations, but he soon changed the subject to talk of his favourite themes: good and evil, and the purpose of life. "Perhaps you can tell it back to me," he nodded, looking into the playful fling and splash of the fountain's plumes of water. His elbows rested on the arms of the white cane armchair, and the temple of his fingertips peaked at his lips and the neat, silver grey moustache.

"Ah... sure. You were saying that the whole universe is moving toward some ultimate complexity. This has been going on since the universe began, and physicists call it the tendency toward complexity. And... anything that kicks this along and helps it is good, and anything that hinders it is evil."

"Very good," Khader said, raising one eyebrow in the smile he offered me. As was so often the case, I wasn't sure if he was expressing approval or mockery or both. It seemed, with Khader, that he never felt or expressed any one emotion without feeling something of its opposite. That might be true for all of us, to some extent. But with him, with lord Abdel Khader Khan, it wasn't possible to know what he really thought or felt about you. The one and only time that I saw the whole of the truth in his eyes- on a snow-covered mountain called Sorrow's Reward-it was already too late, and I never saw it again.

"And this final complexity," he added, "it can be called God, or the Universal Spirit, or the Ultimate Complexity, as you please.

For myself, there is no problem in calling it God. The whole universe is moving toward God, in a tendency toward the ultimate complexity that God is."

"That still leaves me with the question I asked you last time.

How do you decide how any one thing is good or evil?"

"That is true. I promised you an answer to this very good question then, young Mr. Lin, and you will have it. But, first, you must answer a question for me. Why is killing wrong?"

"Well, I don't think it is always wrong."

"Ah," he mused, his amber eyes glittering in the same wry smile.

"Well, I must tell you that it _is always wrong. This will become clear, later in our discussion. For now, concentrate on the type of killing that you do think is wrong, and tell me why it is wrong."

"Yeah, well, it's the unlawful taking of a life."

"By whose law?"

"Society's law. The law of the land," I offered, sensing that the philosophical ground was slipping away beneath me.

"Who makes this law?" he asked gently. "Politicians pass laws. Criminal laws are inherited from... from civilisation. The laws against unlawful killing go all the way back-maybe all the way back to the cave."

"And why was killing wrong for them?"

"You mean... well, I'd say, because there's only one life. You only get one shot at it, and to take it away is a terrible thing."

"A lightning storm is a terrible thing. Does that make it wrong, or evil?"

"No, of course not," I replied more irritably. "Look, I don't know why we need to know what's behind the laws against killing.

We have one life, and if you take a life without a good reason you do something wrong."

"Yes," he said patiently. "But why is it wrong?"

"It just _is, that's all."

"This is the point we all reach," Khader concluded, more serious in his tone. He put his hand on my wrist as it rested on the arm of my chair beside him, and he tapped out the important points with his fingers. "If you ask people why killing, or any other crime, is wrong, they will tell you that it is against the law, or that the Bible, or the Upanishads, or the Koran, or the Buddha's eight-fold path, or their parents, or some other authority tells them it is wrong. But they don't know why it is wrong. It may be true, what they say, but they don't know why it is true.

"In order to know about any act or intention or consequence, we must first ask two questions. One, what would happen if everyone did this thing? Two, would this help or hinder the movement toward complexity?"

He paused as a servant entered with Nazeer. The servant brought sweet, black suleimani chai, in long glasses, and a variety of irresistible sweets on a silver tray. Nazeer brought a questioning glance for Khaderbhai and a scowl of unmitigated contempt for me. Khader thanked him and the servant, and they left us alone once more.

"In the case of killing," Khader continued, after he'd sipped the tea through a cube of white sugar. "What would happen if everyone killed people? Would that help or hinder? Tell me."

"Obviously, if everyone killed people, we would wipe each other out. So... that wouldn't help."

"Yes. We human beings are the most complex arrangement of matter that we know of, but we are not the last achievement of the universe. We, too, will develop and change with the rest of the universe. But if we kill indiscriminately, we will not get there.

We will wipe out our species, and all the development that led to us across millions of years- billions of years-will be lost. The same can be said for stealing. What would happen if everyone stole things? Would that help us, or would it hinder us?"

"Yeah. I get the point. If everyone was stealing off everyone else we'd be so paranoid, and we'd waste so much time and money on it, that it would slow us down, and we'd never get-"

"To the ultimate complexity," he completed the thought for me.

"This is why killing and stealing are wrong-not because a book tells us they are wrong, or a law tells us they are wrong, or a spiritual guide tells us they are wrong, but because if everyone did them we would not move toward the ultimate complexity that is God, with the rest of the universe. And the opposite of these is also true. Why is love good? Well, what would happen if everyone loved everyone else? Would that help us or would it hold us back?"

"It would help," I agreed, laughing from within the trap he'd set for me.

"Yes. In fact, such universal love would greatly accelerate the movement toward God. Love is good. Friendship is good. Loyalty is good. Freedom is good. Honesty is good. We knew that these things were good before-we have always known this in our hearts, and all the great teachers have always told us this-but now, with this definition of good and evil, we can see why they are good.

Just as we can see why stealing and lying and killing are evil."

"But sometimes..." I protested, "you know, what about self defence? What about killing to defend yourself?"

"Yes, a good point, Lin. I want you to imagine a scene for me.

You are standing in a room with a desk in front of you. On the other side of the room is your mother. A vicious man holds a knife to the throat of your mother. The man will kill your mother. On the table in front of you there is a button. If you press it, the man will die. If you do not, he will kill your mother. These are the only possible outcomes. If you do nothing, your mother dies. If you press the button, the man dies and your mother is saved. What would you do?"

"The guy's history," I answered without hesitation.

"Just so," he sighed, perhaps wishing that I'd wrestled with the decision a little longer before pressing the button. "And if you did this, if you saved your mother from this vicious killer, would you be doing the wrong thing or the right thing?" "The right thing," I said just as swiftly.

"No, Lin, I'm afraid not," he frowned. "We have just seen that in the terms of this new, objective definition of good and evil, killing is always wrong because, if everyone did it, we would not move toward God, the ultimate complexity, with the rest of the universe. So it is wrong to kill. But your reasons were good. So therefore, the truth of this decision is that you did the wrong thing, for the right reasons..."