Arturo nodded. I got the feeling he wasn’t arguing with me. He was trying to understand. “And that’s worth it to you,” he said. “To risk war, to risk them deciding to exterminate you after all. To risk your life and the lives of everyone you love, the lives of your whole people. To avoid being judged by them.” “It’s not only that they judge us,” I said. It was so hard to define, but I felt the resistance to everything the Superiority stood for like it was a part of me. “It’s that they judge us and find us wanting. And if we cooperate with them, it’s like we’re admitting they’re right. That we
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