Leisha blinked. That kind of talk didn't follow contract theory at all, and it took her a few moments to make sense of it. There was nothing particularly wrong in what he was saying, or at least very little that struck her as glaringly immoral, but taken as a whole it was one of the most bizarrely anti-Yagaiist statements she'd ever heard. Daddy would have laughed at him for it.
Leisha didn't laugh.
Hadn't she promised him that she would at least try to consider what he was saying? And it was important to keep your word. That was contract. That meant something. And he was her teacher, wasn't he? That had to mean he expected her to pick it apart and look at the contradictions, the way her night tutors at home would have if they'd said something of the sort.
Leisha placed her hands flat on the table, regarded him openly. 'That's interesting,' she said. 'I'll agree that there are values high enough that they might be worth dying for. That's not the case in ordinary life but I already know your lives aren't ordinary. I'm thinking about the rest of it, though. I'm not comfortable at all with the notion of serving anything. Kenzo Yagai said once, something like that you can't serve a principle or an ideal that way, where there's service there are people accepting it, people who think they ought to be served by the sacrifice of others, and that's the bad kind of altruism, isn't it? Because it's not even about values any longer.'