Children of the Mind Read online

  "Why aren't we going to the ship?" asked Val.

  Miro shook his head. "We've found enough worlds," he said.

  "Does Jane say so?"

  "Jane is impatient with me today," said Miro, "which makes us about even."

  Val fixed her gaze on him. "Imagine my impatience then," she said. "You haven't even bothered to ask me what I want to do. Am I so inconsequential, then?"

  He glanced at her. "You're the one who's dying," he said. "I tried talking to Ender, but it didn't accomplish anything."

  "When did I ask you for help? And what exactly are you doing to help me right now?"

  "I'm going to the Hive Queen."

  "You might as well say you're going to see your fairy godmother."

  "Your problem, Val, is that you are completely dependent on Ender's will. If he loses interest in you, you're gone. Well, I'm going to find out how we can get you a will of your own."

  Val laughed and looked away from him. "You're so romantic, Miro. But you don't think things through."

  "I think them through very well," said Miro. "I spend all my time thinking things through. It's acting on my thoughts that gets tricky. Which ones should I act on, and which ones should I ignore?"

  "Act on the thought of steering us without crashing," said Val.

  Miro swerved to avoid a starship under construction.

  "She still makes more," said Miro, "even though we have enough."

  "Maybe she knows that when Jane dies, starflight ends for us. So the more ships, the more we can accomplish before she dies."

  "Who can guess how the Hive Queen thinks?" said Miro. "She promises, but even she can't predict whether her predictions will come true."

  "So why are you going to see her?"

  "The hive queens made a bridge one time, a living bridge to allow them to link their minds with the mind of Ender Wiggin when he was just a boy, and their most dangerous enemy. They called an aiua out of darkness and set it in place somewhere between the stars. It was a being that partook of the nature of the hive queens, but also of the nature of human beings, specifically of Ender Wiggin, as nearly as they could understand him. When they were done with the bridge--when Ender killed them all but the one they had cocooned to wait for him--the bridge remained, alive among the feeble ansible connections of humankind, storing its memory in the small, fragile computer networks of the first human world and its few outposts. As the computer networks grew, so did that bridge, that being, drawing on Ender Wiggin for its life and character."

  "Jane," said Val.

  "Yes, that's Jane. What I'm going to try to learn, Val, is how to get Jane's aiua into you."

  "Then I'll be Jane, and not myself."

  Miro smacked the joystick of the hovercar with his fist. The craft wobbled, then automatically righted itself.

  "Do you think I haven't thought of that?" demanded Miro. "But you're not yourself now! You're Ender--you're Ender's dream or his need or something like that."

  "I don't feel like Ender. I feel like me."

  "That's right. You have your memories. The feelings of your own body. Your own experiences. But none of those will be lost. Nobody's conscious of their own underlying will. You'll never know the difference."

  She laughed. "Oh, you're the expert now in what would happen, with something that has never been done before?"

  "Yes," said Miro. "Somebody has to decide what to do. Somebody has to decide what to believe, and then act on it."

  "What if I tell you that I don't want you to do this?"

  "Do you want to die?"

  "It seems to me that you're the one trying to kill me," said Val. "Or, to be fair, you want to commit the slightly lesser crime of cutting me off from my own deepest self and replacing that with someone else."

  "You're dying now. The self you have doesn't want you."

  "Miro, I'll go see the Hive Queen with you because that sounds like an interesting experience. But I'm not going to let you extinguish me in order to save my life."

  "All right then," said Miro, "since you represent the utterly altruistic side of Ender's nature, let me put it to you a different way. If Jane's aiua can be placed in your body, then she won't die. And if she doesn't die, then maybe, after they've shut down the computer links that she lives in and then reconnected them, confident that she's dead, maybe then she'll be able to link with them again and maybe then instantaneous starflight won't have to end. So if you die, you'll be dying to save, not just Jane, but the power and freedom to expand as we've never expanded before. Not just us, but the pequeninos and hive queens too."

  Val fell silent.

  Miro watched the route ahead of him. The Hive Queen's cave was nearing on the left, in an embankment by a stream. He had gone down there once before, in his old body. He knew the way. Of course, Ender had been with him then, and that was why he could communicate with the Hive Queen--she could talk to Ender, and because those who loved and followed him were philotically twined with him, they overheard the echoes of her speech. But wasn't Val a part of Ender? And wasn't he now more tightly twined to her than he had ever been with Ender? He needed Val with him to speak to the Hive Queen; he needed to speak to the Hive Queen in order to keep Val from being obliterated like his own old damaged body.

  They got out, and sure enough, the Hive Queen was expecting them; a single worker waited for them at the cavern's mouth. It took Val by the hand and led them wordlessly down into darkness, Miro clinging to Val, Val holding to the strange creature. It frightened Miro just as it had the first time, but Val seemed utterly unafraid.

  Or was it that she was unconcerned? Her deepest self was Ender, and Ender did not really care what happened to her. This made her fearless. It made her unconcerned with survival. All she was concerned with was keeping her connection to Ender--the one thing that was bound to kill her if she kept it up. To her it seemed as though Miro was trying to extinguish her; but Miro knew that his plan was the only way to save any part of her. Her body. Her memories. Her habits, her mannerisms, every aspect of her that he actually knew, those would be preserved. Every part of her that she herself was aware of or remembered, those would all be there. As far as Miro was concerned, that would mean her life was saved, if those endured. And once the change had been made, if it could be made at all, Val would thank him for it.

  And so would Jane.

  And so would everyone.

  said a voice in his mind, a low murmur behind the level of actual hearing,

  "That's a lie," said Miro to the Hive Queen. "He killed Human, didn't he? It was Human that he put on the line."

  Human was now one of the fathertrees that grew by the gate of the village of Milagre. Ender had killed him slowly, so that he could take root in the soil and go through the passage into the third life with all his memories intact.

  "I suppose Human didn't actually die," said Miro. "But Planter did, and Ender let him do that, too. And how many hive queens died in the final battle between your people and Ender? Don't brag to me about how Ender pays his own prices. He just sees to it that the price is paid, by whoever has the means to pay it."

  The Hive Queen's answer was immediate.

  "You don't want Jane to die either," said Miro.

  "I don't like her voice inside me," said Val softly.

  "Keep walking. Keep following."

  "I can't," said Val. "The worker--she let go of my hand."

  "You mean we're stranded here?" asked Miro.

  Val's answer was silence. They held hands tightly in the dark, not daring to step in any direction.

 

  "When I was here before," said Miro, "you told us how all the hive queens made a web to trap Ender, only they couldn't, so they made a bridge, they drew an aiua from Outside and made a bridge out of it and used it to speak to E
nder through his mind, through the fantasy game that he played on the computers in the Battle School. You did that once--you called an aiua from Outside. Why can't you find that same aiua and put it somewhere else? Link it to something else?"

 

  "All you're saying is that it's something new. Something you don't know how to do. Not that it can't be done."

 

  "So you can stop me," Miro murmured to Val.

  "She's not talking about me," Val answered.

 

  "It's Ender's. He has two others. This is a spare. He doesn't even want it himself."

 

  "We can't go away in the dark," said Miro.

  Miro felt Val pull her hand away from him.

  "No!" he cried. "Don't let go!"

 

  Miro knew the question was not directed toward him.

 

  Miro heard Val's voice--from surprisingly far away. She must be moving rapidly in the darkness. "If you and Jane are so concerned about saving my life," she said, "then give me and Miro a guide. Otherwise, who cares if I drop down some shaft and break my neck? Not Ender. Not me. Certainly not Miro."

  "Stop moving!" cried Miro. "Just hold still, Val!"

  "You hold still," Val called back to him. "You're the one with a life worth saving!"

  Suddenly Miro felt a hand groping for his. No, a claw. He gripped the foreclaw of a worker and she led him forward through the darkness. Not very far. Then they turned a corner and it was lighter, turned another and they could see. Another, another, and there they were in a chamber illuminated by light through a shaft that led to the surface. Val was already there, seated on the ground before the Hive Queen.

  When Miro saw her before, she had been in the midst of laying eggs--eggs that would grow into new hive queens, a brutal process, cruel and sensuous. Now, though, she simply lay in the damp earth of the tunnel, eating what a steady stream of workers brought to her. Clay dishes filled with a mash of amaranth and water. Now and then, gathered fruit. Now and then, meat. No interruption, worker after worker. Miro had never seen, had never imagined anyone eating so much.

 

  "We'll never stop the fleet without starflight," said Miro. "They're about to kill Jane, any day now. Shut down the ansible network, and she'll die. What then? What are your ships for then? The Lusitania Fleet will come and destroy this world."

 

  "I worry about everything," said Miro. "It's all my concern. Besides, my job is done. Finished. There are already enough worlds. More worlds than we can settle. What we need is more starships and more time, not more destinations."

 

  "Really? When did this change of assignment come about?"

 

  "Then why have Val and I been killing ourselves all these weeks? And that's literal, for Val--the work is so boring that it doesn't interest Ender and so she's fading."

 

  "You see, Val?" said Miro. "The Hive Queen knows--your memories are your self. If your memories live, then you're alive."

  "In a pig's eye," said Val softly. "What's the worse danger she's talking about?"

  "There is no worse danger," said Miro. "She just wants me to go away, but I won't go away. Your life is worth saving, Val. So is Jane's. And the Hive Queen can find a way to do it, if it can be done. If Jane could be the bridge between Ender and the hive queens, then why can't Ender be the bridge between Jane and you?"

 

  There was the catch: Ender had warned Miro long ago that the Hive Queen looks upon her own intentions as facts, just like her memories. But when her intentions change, then the new intention is the new fact, and she doesn't remember ever having intended anything else. Thus a promise from the Hive Queen was written on water. She would only keep the promises that still made sense for her to keep.

  Yet there was no better promise to be had.

  "You'll try," said Miro.

 

  "Do you ever intend," asked Val, "to consult with me?"

 

  Val sighed. "I suppose I am," she said. "Deep down inside myself, where I am really an old man who doesn't give a damn whether this young new puppet lives or dies--I suppose that at that level, I don't mind."

 

  "You've got it," said Val. "And don't tell me again that stupid lie that you don't mind dying because your daughters have your memories. You damn well do mind dying, and if keeping Jane alive might save your life, you want to do it."

 

  Jane was pouting. Miro tried to talk to her all the way back to Milagre, back to the starship, but she was as silent as Val, who would hardly look at him, let alone converse.

  "So I'm the evil one," said Miro. "Neither of you was doing a damn thing about it, but because I actually take action, I'm bad and you're the victims."

  Val shook her head and did not answer.

  "You're dying!" he shouted over the noise of the air rushing past them, over the noise of the engines. "Jane's about to be executed! Is there some virtue in being passive about this? Can't somebody at least make an effort?"

  Val said something that Miro didn't hear.

  "What?"

  She turned her head away.

  "You said something, now let me hear it!"

  The voice that answered was not Val's. It was Jane who spoke into his ear. "She said, You can't have it both ways."

  "What do you mean I can't have it both ways?" Miro spoke to Val as if she had actually repeated what she said.

  Val turned toward him. "If you save Jane, it's because she remembers everything about her life. It doesn't do any good if you just slip her into me as an unconscious source of will. She has to remain herself, so she can be restored when the ansible network is restored. And that would wipe me out. Or if I'm preserved, my memories and personality, then what difference does it make if it's Jane or Ender providing my will? You can't save us both."

  "How do you know?" demanded Miro.

  "The same way you know all these things you're saying as if they were facts when nobody can possibly know anything about it!" cried Val. "I'm reasoning it out! It seems reasonable. That's enough."

  "Why isn't it just as reasonable that you'll have your memories, and hers, too?"

  "Then I'd be insane, wouldn't I?" said Val. "Because I'd remember being a woman who sprang into being on a starship, whose first real memory is seeing you die and come to life. And I'd also remember three thousand years' worth of life outside this body, living somehow in space and--what kind of person can hold memories like that? Did you think of that? How can a human being possibly contain Jane and all t
hat she is and remembers and knows and can do?"

  "Jane's very strong," Miro said. "But then, she doesn't know how to use a body. She doesn't have the instinct for it. She's never had one. She'll have to use your memories. She'll have to leave you intact."

  "As if you know."

  "I do know," said Miro. "I don't know why or how I know it, but I know."

  "And I thought men were the rational ones," she said scornfully.

  "Nobody's rational," said Miro. "We all act because we're sure of what we want, and we believe that the actions we perform will get us what we want, but we never know anything for sure, and so all our rationales are invented to justify what we were going to do anyway before we thought of any reasons."

  "Jane's rational," said Val. "Just one more reason why my body wouldn't work for her."

  "Jane isn't rational either," said Miro. "She's just like us. Just like the Hive Queen. Because she's alive. Computers, now, those are rational. You feed them data, they reach only the conclusions that can be derived from that data--but that means they are perpetually helpless victims of whatever information and programs we feed into them. We living sentient beings, we are not slaves to the data we receive. The environment floods us with information, our genes give us certain impulses, but we don't always act on that information, we don't always obey our inborn needs. We make leaps. We know what can't be known and then spend our lives seeking to justify that knowledge. I know that what I'm trying to do is possible."

  "You mean you want it to be possible."

  "Yes," said Miro. "But just because I want it doesn't mean it can't be true."

  "But you don't know."

  "I know it as much as anyone knows anything. Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon. I don't know the sun will rise tomorrow. The Little Doctor might blow up the world before I wake. A volcano might rise out of the ground and blast us all to smithereens. But I trust that tomorrow will come, and I act on that trust."

  "Well, I don't trust that letting Jane replace Ender as my inmost self will leave anything resembling me in existence," said Val.

  "But I know--I know--that it's our only chance, because if we don't get you another aiua Ender is going to extinguish you, and if we don't get Jane another place to be her physical self, she's also going to die. What's your better plan?"

  "I don't have one," said Val. "I don't. If Jane can somehow be brought to dwell in my body, then it has to happen because Jane's survival is so important to the future of three raman species. So I won't stop you. I can't stop you. But don't think for a moment that I believe that I will live through it. You're deluding yourself because you can't bear to face the fact that your plan depends on one simple fact: I'm not a real person. I don't exist, I don't have a right to exist, and so my body is up for grabs. You tell yourself you love me and you're trying to save me, but you've known Jane a lot longer, she was your truest friend during your months of loneliness as a cripple, I understand that you love her and would do anything to save her life, but I won't pretend what you're pretending. Your plan is for me to die and Jane to take my place. You can call that love if you want, but I will never call it that."