There's a story about two cadets looking at a Leopard-class DropShip. "I wonder how much it would take to buy one of those, " muses Cadet A. Cadet B, something of a smartass, caps with "If you have to ask, you can't afford it!" That was the little joke to begin my lecture. ff you were still yawning, like Clevitty over there, you 71 have to ask someone to tell you the punchline later. The topic in your previous class was the difference between ethical and moral behavior. Ethical behavior adheres to a set of guidelines; didn't I say, while moral behavior adheres to the mores, or accepted patterns, of a particular society or social group? It has often been postulated that there may be a universal set of ethics. Mores can't be universal unless all societies are the same. Now that thought would terrify even me. I heard you talking about the lecture on your way to my class. Honor. Is honor a universal ethical standard? That's about what I would have expected from an Academy class! Honor is universal, eh? And honor has no price to pay, therefore it is adhered to solely for ethical reasons? Do you agree with that, Novice Zhong? You do? Let me see what you make of this example: Sitting around barracks, my lance did a lot of talking. It's cheap, you see. The other Warhammer pilot, Andy Chang, came from the sort of family where they teach you that honor is something you owe to your family. Mack Kadegawafelt that honor came out of the business end of his Battlemaster's PPC. That is, honor to him meant doing well in battle, taking out a lot of the enemy. I was certainof nothing, except that I didn't care for their definitions. We didn't always sit around in barracks. Sometimes we had leave, and had money at the same time. In that case, no problem. Sometimes we had money and no leave. There are mail order catalogs, places like Thornhill Arms and Arcon Industries. You sit around and stare at the bright pictures, and finally you get to believing that "only fifteen C-bills down, and 25 a month" is a good price for a gadget to replace your antenna without opening your canopy, or that if your teeth manage to blind with their whiteness, you possess irresistible charm. In that case, the money is soon gone. No problem. Then there's the case of having leave, but no money. That can be a problem. The Ladies' Culture League of Milos gave theater tickets to any soldier who was willing to clean himself up on a Wednesday night and leave his sidearms in camp. Various of their unmated children served as volunteer ushers. I do not wish you to picture a VidStar Classics production; Henry the Fifth's right hand general had long blond braids and a lisp. Occasionally the curtain would fall down bump in the middle of the show. (We always cheered when this happened.) Chinese opera (every third Wednesday of the month) is hard to do well, though some of the travelling singers were good. It did beat the bull sessions in barracks. That particular week the play was Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 1. There's a famous speech in it about honor..I'll get to that in a minute. We were too broke to be drinking, we hadn't even that excuse. We were, well, giddy. We were laughing too much. Every mistake in the show brought out a storm of laughter. We laughed till we turned red in the face and choked. The play is about a man who wants to look good when he becomes a king, so he spends time with unworthy companions, so that when he gives them up, he'll shine by comparison. There's another man, Hotspur, who eats and breathes and lives for honor. His every action is judged as to whether or not it adds to his reknown. "From this nettle, Danger, we pluck the flower, Safety." That sort of thing. But the famous speech about honor is given by a fat old man with more sense than bravery, Sir John Falstaff. "What is honor? A word! Who has it? He who died last Wednesday!" Falstaff seems to claim that honor is just a word thought up by men to get other men to do what they want them to do. As I said, we were in one of those mischievous moods. Sometimes things seem logical when you're in a mood like that that just don't seem to make any sense at all later. We were quoting the play at the top of our field-trained lungs all the way through the lobby. And somehow, it seemed only natural -- you see, the converted store had only one entrance, one exit, for the public. Well, we ambushed them. We decided to find out if anybody knew what honor was, or felt they knew, or ever had known. I can't defend it. I was there, and I did it. It was less dishonorable than sleeping on watch, that's my only consolation. One of us would stop one of the audience, and the dialogue would go something like this: "I'm sorry, ma'am, but you can't leave yet." "I beg your pardon?" "You can't leave until you tell us what honor is." "Honor is not being rude to old ladies -- now get out of my way"' (We did.) "Honor? I guess, well you know, doing what your mom says and not letting guys get weird with you and stuff." "I think honor is not possible in the Thirty First Century. You need to have standards to have honor." "It's like in Rocky 40. Honor is getting beat up if that's the best you can do." "Not cheating on tests." (Red faced terminal giggles.) By this time, Mack and I were picking out people in the lobby, calling back and forth Here's a good one! and Let him go, he wouldn't know it if it bit him! In retrospect, we were making a real nuisance of ourselves; people couldn't get out. Everybody was trying to leave the theater now; the lobby was packed with bodies. That's why we didn't see the white uniforms. Com Guards, dress uniform, surrounding somebody tall. We were not so carried away by our own stupidity that we would have tried it on them. The first thing I knew somebody was holding Andy high off the ground. A mild voice asserted, "I think you'd better move now, my son." Andy's legs were scrabbling in the air, asserting his willingness to move now, anywhere, just let go! His voice seemed to have deserted him. I looked acrossthe lobby. Mack was staring, frozen. No help there. My feet were walking across to the little knot of people. So that's what the ComGuards look like! They look like football players from high-gravity planets! And nobody had asked them to check their weapons at the door! I was attracting notice. My feet kept taking me toward them. The crowd cleared a way. "Excuse me, sir." My voice came out in a strangled whisper. I cleared my throat. They looked at me. The tall man looked faintly amused. "Huh, uh, would you mind letting my friend here stand? I'd really appreciate it. Sir." Andy fell with a crash. He stayed down, but his eyes were darting wildly. "Why are you impeding the Precentor Martial's passage?" I faced the narrowed eyes of the nearest bodyguard. "Unintentionally. Really. Honestly. We, we were just playing, and I guess it got out of hand. We never would have tried it on you. Sir. Sirs." "Bring him here, Adept." It was the tall man, the one they all deferred to. I could see the long scar down his face where he had lost an eye. I felt embarrassed and stupid. Right then and there I'd have traded the rest of a long life if I could have sunk through the floor. But no such luck. I tried to explain. He responded more seriously than I deserved. "The Socratic method of teaching in one so young? You were trying to instruct them in honor? Just what lesson were you intending to teach by this means?" "Lesson, sir? I don't know enough about it to be teaching a lesson. It's just that we talk a lot about honor, you know, MechWarriors. If you haven't got some, well some reason for fighting, you're just a killer. And if you're like the soldiers that have no standards about what they do when they fight ... we've got a woman in our unit who left the Draconis Combine because the ISF security officer ordered her to kill unarmed hostages. You have to have something to call honor. I guess we got carried away, maybe because none of us know." "What honor is?" His gaze was far away. "in this age, you seek to live with honor?" An hour seemed to go by. I tried not to breathe, not to recall his notice to me. One of the ComGuard "linebackers" cleared his throat. The Precentor's gaze targeted on him. "Sir," now I really felt like a fool! I wasn't particularly being honorable. I didn't really feel I had a choice. We'd all been making fools of ourselves, you know. I didn't even know I was going to approach you till I did it." I felt it was important to be honest here. "I know my schedule, Adept. Perhaps for your interest in my affairs, you can answer the soldier's question." "I think I can, Precentor." "Please. Enlighten us." "For a working definition only, Precentor. Honor is not something you talk about; it's like the things we are taught early in training. A teacher can't describe it, he or she can only point to it until you see for yourself. Honor is not an idea about behavior; it is behavior. And it takes a lifetime to comprehend it." "Simplistic, but acceptable. Have you seen an example of it this evening?" "Yes, in this sergeant here. He can't have wanted to come up and speak to us. But we had one of his men here, so honor said that he had to, in order to take care of that one there." He waved a hand at Andy, who blinked. "You went forward, not back. That was the direction honor indicated." He paused. The room was silent as ice. "Well ... as most of the philosophers insist: you've come through a crisis with honor, your life is supposed o have changed? Do you think it has? His tone was ironic. I didn't feel much of anything. Under the interested gaze of five troopers -- and this extraordinary man -- I felt calm. Odd, wasn't it? I supposed idly that I wasn't going to die after all. The idea of going back to camp seemed faintly absurd. My voice was calmer now. "Do you know, sir, I believe it has." Even to myself I sounded surprised. A faint lift of his eyebrows was my salute. "Then what do you intend to do next?" It was like failing through a trapdoor only to land on the opening tilt of another. "Next, sir?" I thought. I couldn't put words to it, but I felt that I had closed a door in my life. And this man standing before me, with his massive patience, held the key to the next door. "Where can I go to learn that?" I asked him impulsively. "To learn what to do next, and how to be ... useful?" "That's always the hard question," he answered, his Lyran accent making the words slow. "I'm not certain that anyone can answer it, but it's still worth answering. At ComStar, we try to find those answers. Come to us when you're ready." He gave a little nod, almost friendly, then turned on his heel and left. I took a deep breath. The room seemed very small. Two months later I was in ComStar. Six years later, here I am at Sandhurst teaching you young gentle persons how to write a coherent essay. Very well, Acolytes. Did I pay a price in this instance? Wasn't the price of being thought honorable that l had to act honorably? Would The Precentor Martial even have spoken to me if the play hadn't challenged his own ethics, perhaps his memories? Turn in a ten page essay a week from Monday. For once, you may draw upon your personal experiences before ComStar training. THIS PERSONAL -EXPERIENCE STORY BEGINS BATTLE TECHNOLoGY's SERIES OF PROFILES ON CONTEMPORARY POLICY MAKERS OF THE THiRTY-FIRST CENTURY. THIS ANONYMOUS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE SEPTEMBER 3049 ISSUE OF COMSTAR's FREE MONTHLY MAGAZINE, COMSTAR TODAY. COMSTAR ASKS US TO REMIND YOU THAT THE MAGAZINE IS AVAILABLE ON THE SEVENTEENTH OF EACH MONTH AT ANY COMSTAR FACILITY, EDUCATION CENTER, OR READING ROOM. Back to BattleTechnology 14 Table of Contents Back to BattleTechnology List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1990 by Pacific Rim Publishing. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com