His friend — his only friend in the whole world — was completely different. Shorter, bulkier, with hard muscles and a deep tan. Hair that was as black and glossy as crow feathers, and a hairline that plunged down his forehead in a dagger-point widow’s peak. A saturnine face, thin lips, and eyes as dark as midnight. His given name was Leviticus Kingsley Grant, but he called himself Leviticus King. Like Prospero, Leviticus hated his father, and unlike his friend he had gone a step farther and forsworn the use of the family name.
They had met in “re-training,” which was the Ballard academy’s soft-soap nickname for the punishment room. Both boys had given up keeping track of the number of times they had been beaten, or made to kneel on grains of rice, or forced to stand barefoot on the hard rims of metal barrels hour after hour. None of these tortures were ever reported to their parents, and both boys knew that if they tried to report them, their fathers would not care and the punishments would likely intensify. It was a locked system, a no-win scenario until they were eighteen. And even then Prospero did not believe they would escape. Paperwork was already on file to induct them into the military, and though conscription was technically illegal, all the right hands had been greased. They would go into the army and any attempts to escape that machine would result in federal prison. It was a trap and they were fully aware that they were not the first sons of rich men to be sacrificed on the altar of expediency and offered up to the gods of profit. Nor were they the first blue blood embarrassments to be hidden away from public scrutiny and paparazzi cameras. Not by a long shot. Some of the older boys and instructors bragged of having gone through these tortures themselves and having “seen the light” in the process.
The light.
Seeing the light was a big thing at Ballard. It was all about seeing the light, the light, seeing the goddamn light.
Which is why Prospero and Leviticus sat in the darkness.
They had a couple of joints King had stolen from the locker of one of the grounds crew, and the marijuana was laced with chemicals Prospero cooked up in his lab. They were edging toward being nicely baked. Getting high helped. Anything that sanded the edges off the world helped.
Prospero took a long hit off the joint, elbowed King lightly, and handed it to him. He held the smoke until they were both ready to burst and then they blew the smoke into the cold furnace behind them. It was summer and the big iron beast was off, and this late at night no one would see the smoke rising from the chimney many floors above them. This was a practiced routine, one they’d thought through and knew was safe.
“Evil is just a word,” said Prospero, picking up the thread of their meandering conversation. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yeah,” said King. “That’s the part I don’t get. You’re saying there’s no such thing as evil?”
“No, I’m saying it’s the wrong word to use. It’s too broad, too easy.”
King took a hit and passed the joint. “How is ‘evil’ easy?”
“Because it’s not a real thing,” said Prospero. “Think about it. You and I use the word the wrong way. We call our dads evil. We call the sergeants and the cadet trustees evil because of the things they do to us, but are they actually evil?”
King took another deep hit. “Yeah, I’m half-gone, man, so you’re going to have to explain that to me. Because they seem pretty goddamn evil to me.”
“Maybe,” said Prospero. “Okay, context. As a society we call people like Charlie Manson evil. We call serial killers evil, and we call Hitler evil. But at the same time people use that word to describe everything from cancer to a natural disaster.”
“Okay, some of that I get,” said King. “People calling cancer evil is stupid.”
“It’s imprecise,” corrected Prospero. “The word loses its meaning when it’s applied to anything natural.”
“Okay, sure. So?”
“Go the next step. We use it to describe moral crimes.”
“Like mass murders.”
“Sure, like mass murders, but then you have to step back and look at the nature of morality. Killing a dozen people and cutting out their hearts is wrong because the current set of laws in America says it’s wrong, right?”
King blinked in confusion and then got the point. He nodded.
“But go back through history and you’ll understand where I’m going with this. Take ancient Egypt,” said Prospero, warming to his topic. “It was a common and accepted practice for the retainers of a pharaoh to be sacrificed in order for wealthy nobles and pharaohs to enjoy the same kind of lifestyle after death that they had during their lifetime.”
“Harsh,” said King. “But I get what you’re saying. It was okay back then. Okay for the pharaohs, I mean. I don’t think the staff was all that jazzed about it.”
“Probably not,” agreed Prospero, “but the culture did not take their opinions into consideration. What the rulers did was culturally acceptable and therefore not evil. Same thing for the Aztecs.”
“Yeah, those cats loved cutting hearts out. An Aztec? Shit, he’d cut out a heart just for shits and giggles. No big thing to them.”
“Not evil to them,” said Prospero, nodding. “Even though it’s exactly the same action as other kinds of ritual killing.”
King took a hit and passed the joint back. “So… you’re saying that serial killers aren’t evil because they believe that what they’re doing is correct as they see things?”
Prospero patted him on the thigh. “Yes. A lot of them are in their own headspace. For some it’s damage from their upbringing, for some it’s bad brain chemistry. Whatever. The point is that the act of killing is not evil to them.”
His friend was silent for a moment, looking deep into the shadows around them. In a quiet, almost cautious voice he said, “They still hide their crimes, though. They do a lot of stuff not to get caught. They know they’re breaking laws.”
“Which only shows that they have cunning, and in some cases intelligence. They know that there are people around them who believe in an entirely different set of laws, or a different moral code, or even a different religious viewpoint. Knowing that, and understanding that these people feel that theirs is the only valid viewpoint and that they are willing to impose those rules and the accompanying punishment on anyone who doesn’t share those views is common. That happens all the time. Salem witch trials. The way the Puritans persecuted the Quakers. The way whites treated the blacks — and still do. Persecution and violent enforcement of a self-created set of rules does not make the persecutors ‘good’ any more than it accurately defines the rule breakers as evil. If it did, then the Founding Fathers would be considered ‘evil’ because they violently rebelled against the rule and laws of England. But nobody here calls their killings ‘murders’ and they don’t label them as evil.”
“Where are you going with this, man, ’cause you’re harshing my buzz.”
“First, I’m trying to establish that evil is not really a religious concept. It’s entirely secular.”
“Why? Because religion is for shit? Because the whole ‘God’ thing is total bullshit?”
“No,” said Prospero quickly. “I’m not saying that at all. We’re not talking about the existence of God. Or gods. Or anything like that. We’re talking about evil as a cultural concept. As I see it — and history supports this view — evil exists as a label used by one side in an unequal dispute over behavior.”
King smoked and thought about that. “What about Nazis?”
“If they’d won the war and conquered the world,” said Prospero, “the widely accepted belief — or at least the dominant social policy — would be that their actions — things like the Final Solution — were a means to an end, and that end was the unification of the world. They might even have ended war and future historians might have looked back on them with admiration.”