Whistler looked at the girl with extreme curiosity. He wondered if she was a prodigy, given her advanced state of reasoning. It took him over a century to get that cynical.

"Okay, but. If people hadn't built and fortified," he countered, "the Roman empire wouldn't have existed. Or the Renaissance. If we didn't fight back, we wouldn't be here now, having this conversation."

He rubbed the back of his head. "I wouldn't, at any rate."