Evans understood that if Nakamura chose, it would be indiscriminately and their number would include the sickest--and perhaps most likely the sickest, because they were of least use to Nakamura--and that all of them would die. If, on the other hand, he, Dorrigo, chose, he could pick the fittest, the ones he thought had the best chance of living. And most would die anyway. That was his choice: to refuse to help the agent of death, or to be his servant.