Did he convince you that you should work with him? - of course he did. There are lotsa smart competent non-murderers, you know.

:- Honestly he was not very convincing when he was arguing for it. And working with him would take considerable effort on my part, because he is still suspicious that we are making up the existence of Velgarth: Sigh. :To be honest, if using Velgarth mind-control were at all a reasonable strategy on causing highly intelligent and ambitious people to work cleverly toward exactly the goal you want, I would have ordered Nayoki to do that already. But it is not very good at that, so I am left with social manipulation as my best lever against him. And - well, I have only your limited perspective on who else is smart and competent and trustworthy, here, and it seems all the candidates have political agendas to push: 

Sigh. 

:- I think I need to be forthright with you about my own past and my recent projects. And then - you can decide, how much I am really like your father, at which point you will be in a better position to convince me to instead take him prisoner and haul him back to Earth, which I have a contingency-plan for: His lips twitch briefly. :Or you might decide that I am evil and you want nothing to do with me, I suppose. But - you are my ally, here, you are the only ally in this star system in whom I have significant trust, and I believe it is important for allies to be honest with one another, despite that risk: 

Of course every decent smart person has a 'political agenda'. If you're decent and a smart person you'd try to do something about the world.

:- Indeed. I have agendas of my own back in Velgarth. It is not surprising, or an indication that they are less trustworthy, but it is a complication for me. And...the protomolecule changes everything, right: 

Leareth is SO ANNOYED at the Earthers, that they found this and their first thought was to turn it into a weapon. It's going to make everything else so much harder.  

He takes a deep breath. 

:I am immortal, and almost two thousand years old. In my first life, I was - more recognizably like your father, I think. Though perhaps I also had some things in common with you and the Belters you work with? I grew up in abject poverty, in a country called Predain. The neighbouring country was Tantara, and - things were much better, there. When I realized I was mage-gifted, I traveled there, to study under the best and brightest mage in the known world, Urtho, at his Tower. ...I was very young, and I was ambitious and ruthless and determined, and - not always careful enough. But I returned to Predain, and I rose to become an advisor to the King, and in a decade I managed to drastically curtail Predain's infant mortality, improve crop yields to end the famine of the decade before it, and enforce much better rule of law. I used some unsavoury strategies - our biggest infrastructure projects were fueled with blood-magic, from the executions of convicted criminals - but I tried very hard to weigh the costs and benefits, and on net I saved many, many lives: 

He watches Julie closely, trying to gauge her reaction. 

Sorry, did you say you're two thousand years old? Or did I imagine that part?

:I said that. Immortality is - difficult and costly, but possible, with Velgarth magic: 

That's such a long time! That's like - the Han Dynasty era.

I, uh, don't think it says that much about someone's character to be a brutal dictator in the year 200 AD, they hadn't, like, invented human rights back then, though, hmmm, I guess I'd probably be pissed with him if we lived in the Han Dynasty and he was feeding people to bears but - sorry, go on -

:I am fairly sure I never fed anyone to bears! And - our world was perhaps not very analogous to yours. Urtho definitely had opinions on human rights. Different ones than what your world holds now, I am sure, and he had blind spots, but nonetheless. His era was - much more advanced in many ways than the current one, in Velgarth. It was all lost, though. In a way that was...significantly my fault: 

He closes his eyes. All these centuries later, and it still hurts to recount. 

:- I did not start out gifted at politics, and I did learn, but...not enough. Urtho was alarmed by my ambition, and - had an ideological objection to mages seeking political power as well. I thought it would be enough, to write to him often and reassure him that conquering Tantara was not in my interests and I had no intention of starting a war. He was my first mentor and - in many ways my oldest and only friend. I thought we could trust one another. I was wrong. He became alarmed enough to start a pre-emptive war - which was stupid, but he never claimed to be a politician. I fought back. We were winning. He - was desperate enough to destroy his own tower before it could fall into my people's hands. He sent a strike team with a powerful superweapon he had built, in secret; he was a gifted inventor. I...had no idea. And he must not have realized just how dangerous his weapon was, because if he had known...: 

He takes a ragged breath. 

:The world was nearly destroyed. I - was killed, of course. But one of my immortality backup plans survived the Cataclysm, and I woke up in a new body, surrounded by devastation: 

That...sucks? I'm sorry? This feels kind of inappropriate to the situation but she can't really think what else you're supposed to say when someone confides in you about dying in a magic nuclear war that was started by people scared of them.

Leareth bows his head, acknowledging this. 

:- I spent a very very long time trying to rebuild. I had seen what was possible, right, at Urtho's Tower. I...did some very bad things, in the pursuit of that goal. I killed bandits for blood-power, so that the mages working for me could use weather-magic - the Cataclysm caused the climate to be chaotic for hundreds of years, it was nearly impossible to grow crops without weather-magic to mitigate those effects. It saved an order of magnitude more lives than it cost - mostly the lives of innocent children - but it was, nonetheless, a ruthless and awful path to take. I did it anyway: 

He pauses, thinking. 

:- Over centuries, I consolidated an empire again, and I tried to bring back the more advanced technologies lost with Urtho's Tower. It...kept failing. Over and over, in ways that it was eventually clear could not be mere bad luck. I was assassinated a truly implausible number of times, but - my failsafe worked, and I came back, and I kept working. The empire I eventually raised was...not a pleasant place, in many ways, it was very authoritarian, but at least no children were starving there, and its people were educated, and it was fairly prosperous. I abandoned it to its own devices after most of a millennium, when it was clear that luck - which I had by then realized meant the gods of Velgarth - was never on my side, and that this was as far as I could go. The empire still stands now. It is - still not a nice place. But nobody there is starving. I can be proud of that much, I suppose: 

- sorry, the gods were - you mean, people had a religious objection to the things you were trying to do?

:- No, I mean our world contains very powerful alien entities that have opinions about what happens on the planet, and intervene when They dislike what humans are doing: 

- oh. Uh, that seems important, no one mentioned it before.

:Oh. Really? I...apologize for that, I - have not been able to think very clearly lately:

People said things about religion but I figured it was like Earth religion which doesn't involve powerful aliens.

:Ah. Well, Velgarth also has religions that, according to my best guess, do not actually involve the worshippers interacting with the god in question. But here I am talking about the gods' direct interventions. They - seem to perceive the world mainly via Foresight, which is also a Gift that some Velgarth humans have: 

None of his people on this mission do; if they did, he would be very curious if the protomolecule could learn that as well. 

:Anyway. It seems that They dislike technological progress, for reasons I do not fully understand. They are - not very good at communicating with humans - a little like the protomolecule in that sense, I suppose - and They seemed uninterested in talking to me. My attempts to open communications always failed, and often resulted in my body's death. So I...spent a very long time thinking about the problem, and eventually concluded that I needed a different solution: 

Some people think we should've just stayed hunter gatherers. I don't think it's a majority opinion but - there's sure a lot of things getting worse before things even start getting better.

What Leareth is thinking is that he's pretty sure the people with that opinion never experienced growing up among nomadic cowherders. He doesn't say this.

:Perhaps. It depends how one defines 'worse', I suppose. Anyway. I...eventually settled on an incredibly ruthless plan to fight the gods on this directly. It is moot now, circumstances have obviously changed, but - I was never, ever going to give up and let Velgarth remain permanently in its current state. You saw rural Valdemar; you know what it would mean. And - I think that is a kind of ambition that I share with your father: 

....we...haven't got powerful aliens, except the proto, stopping us from improving our society. We can just improve it, you know, without any genocide.

:- Yes, and that would dramatically change my approach. But - he is not wrong, that learning the protomolecule's capabilities has vast upsides. I am very irritated that he seems to have posed it to Errinwright as a potential weapon, but...he realizes what else it could do, and what humanity could learn to do by studying it. It could end resource scarcity forever - for Belters, for everyone. It could end death. It could let both our worlds colonize other stars. I saw that immediately, and I want it. So does he: 

(And leaking through in the overtones of Leareth's Mindspeech are echoes - of a tower against a starry sky - an endless determination colouring everything - a vow to never ever ever give up never to walk away never to die before the work is done -) 

What exactly were you trying to do, back in Velgarth?

:I was going to create a new god. One that would be aligned with humanity's flourishing - one we could trust, and communicate with: 

Pause. 

He has to tell her. It's a critical part of understanding him, and - he needs her to understand him. 

:- it is moot now, because there will obviously be another way, but - at the time my only workable plan, for the energy cost, was - ten million lives, for power. I hoped I could bring them back afterward, once a god existing which was willing to help. I was not sure, though: 

Wow.

So you think Dad's relatable.

:- I think he is wrong, on some of the tradeoffs he is choosing. I think if he - knew what I do now, after two thousand years - he would realize how much he is playing with fire. I am terrified that he will misjudge something, as I did in my first lifetime, and he is working at a scale where one mistake could destroy your world. ...But, yes, I feel that I understand him, better than - better than almost anyone else could: 

Julie sits up. 

I think there are lots of people like that, actually. In our world, before it was unified, there were - people who collectivized all the farms, and sure, some millions of people starved to death, but it was in the service of industrialization, of prosperity, of the common good! There were people who rampaged across enemy territory decapitating babies and raping five-year-olds and opening fire on crowds of civilians. There were civil wars that swallowed up millions of lives, over which of a couple of evil assholes should be in charge. There was - all of that in the space of thirty years, within fifty miles of where I grew up. 

I don't even know that I can say 'and see, they were all wrong'. Probably they were right, by their own lights. Probably they figured if some peasants starved for the glory of the nation, that was worth it. Probably they figured the other side winning the civil war would be even worse. Probably they figured that the world didn't need more foreigner babies in it, anyway. It's not that they were failing to accomplish their goals, or that there's some grand beautiful unifying truth they could've understood that would've stopped them in their tracks. It's just that they - wanted something more than they wanted to not kill millions of innocent people. 

And probably that's - most people, probably most people want something more than they want to not kill millions of people, especially if they're far away, and strangers. Just, they haven't actually got the option to make that trade, because they're not clever and powerful with a brand new weapon no one understands. It's not about judging them. It's not about my father being - a rare breed of something, something awful we could clear out of the world. You and him don't have something special in common. It's just, people will do that, if they can, and if you stop them, then millions of people will be alive, and if you go along with them, then millions of people will be dead.