ETHICS
Ben was teaching Cormac how to observe. They had wedged themselves comfortably into a limestone cleft, looking down over the hills with their groves and their deep runnels from water and their pale houses. The lower they looked, the more green it was. Up high, it was windswept and exposed and bare rock.
“This is a shaped landscape,” he explained. “Olives, grapes and the crops over the river. Sheep and goats and charcoal.”
“The briefing said that. It’s the Middle Ages.” Cormac was being intentionally dense. Ben was playing the carry-on-regardless game.
“I know. But already. We should have come two thousand years ago. Or ten thousand. Before forest was turned into garrigue.”
“Medieval Warm Period,” said Luke, passing. “Very important for climate research. You said so.”
“Shut up,
