It had never once steered me wrong in the terms it understood, which were survival and advantage and the holding of power.

The trouble, which I was only now beginning to grasp, was that those were not the only terms there were, and that a man who listens to that voice and no other will win every argument it is capable of having and lose his life entire without ever noticing it is gone.

“If I burn this,” I said, and my voice came out dead calm, the voice I used when men needed to understand I was not bluffing, “the trust fails.

The conditions are never met.