Children of the Mind Read online

  "I can't believe you're saying this."

  "So you didn't know me after all," said Val, wearing a prim little smile.

  "I don't like you smug," said Miro.

  "Good," said Val. "Then you won't be so sad when I die." She turned her back on him. He watched her for a while in silence, baffled. She sat there, leaning back in her chair, looking at the data coming in from the probes on their starship. Sheets of information queued up in the air in front of her; she pushed a button and the front sheet disappeared, the next one moved forward. Her mind was engaged, of course, but there was something else. An air of excitement. Tension. It made him afraid.

  Afraid? Of what? It was what he had hoped for. In the past few moments Young Valentine had achieved what Miro, in his conversation with Ender, had failed to do. She had won Ender's interest. Now that she knew she was searching for the home planet of the descolada, now that a great moral issue was involved, now that the future of the raman races might depend on her actions, Ender would care about what she was doing, would care at least as much as he cared about Peter. She wasn't going to fade. She was going to live now.

  "Now you've done it," said Jane in his ear. "Now she won't want to give me her body."

  Was that what Miro was afraid of? No, he didn't think so. He didn't want Val to die, despite her accusations. He was glad she was suddenly so much more alive, so vibrant, so involved--even if it made her annoyingly smug. No, there was something else.

  Maybe it was nothing more complicated than fear for his own life. The home planet of the descolada virus must be a place of unimaginably advanced technology to be able to create such a thing and send it world to world. To create the antivirus that would defeat and control it, Miro's sister Ela had had to go Outside, because the manufacture of such an antivirus was beyond the reach of any human technology. Miro would have to meet the creators of the descolada and communicate with them to stop sending out destructive probes. It was beyond his ability. He couldn't possibly carry out such a mission. He would fail, and in failing would endanger all the raman species. No wonder he was afraid.

  "From the data," said Miro, "what do you think? Is this the world we're looking for?"

  "Probably not," said Val. "It's a newish biosphere. No animals larger than worms. Nothing that flies. But a full range of species at those lower levels. No lack of variety. Doesn't look like a probe was ever here."

  "Well," said Miro. "Now that we know our real mission, are we going to waste time making a full colonization report on this planet, or shall we move on?"

  Jane's face appeared again above Miro's terminal.

  "Let's make sure Valentine is right," said Jane. "Then move on. There are enough colony worlds, and time's getting short."

  Novinha touched Ender's shoulder. He was breathing heavily, loudly, but it was not the familiar snore. The noisiness was coming from his lungs, not from the back of his throat; it was as if he had been holding his breath for a long time, and now had to take deep draughts of air to make up for it, only no breath was deep enough, his lungs couldn't hold enough. Gasp. Gasp.

  "Andrew. Wake up." She spoke sharply, for her touch had always been enough to waken him before, and this time it was not enough, he kept on gasping for air yet didn't open his eyes.

  The fact he was asleep at all surprised her. He wasn't an old man yet. He didn't take naps in the late morning. Yet here he was, lying in the shade on the croquet lawn of the monastery when he had told her he was going to bring them both a drink of water. And for the first time it occurred to her that he wasn't taking a nap at all, that he must have fallen, must have collapsed here, and only the fact that he ended up lying on his back in a patch of shade, his hands lying flat on his chest, deceived her into thinking that he had chosen to lie here. Something was wrong. He wasn't an old man. He shouldn't be lying here like this, breathing air that didn't hold enough of what he needed.

  "Ajuda-me!" she cried out. "Me ajuda, por favor, venga agora!" Her voice rose until, quite against her custom, it became a scream, a frantic sound that frightened her even more. Her own scream frightened her. "Ele vai morrer! Socorro!" He's going to die, that's what she heard herself shouting.

  And in the back of her mind, another litany began: I brought him here to this place, to the hard work of this place. He's as fragile as other men, his heart is as breakable, I made him come here because of my selfish pursuit of holiness, of redemption, and instead of saving myself from guilt for the deaths of the men I love, I have added another one to the list, I have killed Andrew just as I killed Pipo and Libo, just as I should have somehow saved Estevao and Miro. He is dying and it's again my fault, always my fault, whatever I do brings death, the people I love have to die to get away from me. Mamae, Papae, why did you leave me? Why did you put death into my life from childhood on? No one that I love can stay.

  This is not helpful, she told herself, forcing her conscious mind away from the familiar chant of self-blame. It won't help Andrew for me to lose myself in irrational guilt right now.

  Hearing her cries, several men and women came running from the monastery, and some from the garden. Within moments they were carrying Ender into the building as someone rushed for a doctor. Some stayed with Novinha, too, for her story was not unknown to them, and they suspected that the death of another beloved one would be too much for her.

  "I didn't want him to come," she murmured. "He didn't have to come."

  "It isn't being here that made him sick," said the woman who held her. "People get sick without it being anyone's fault. He'll be all right. You'll see."

  Novinha heard the words but in some deep place inside her she could not believe them. In that deep place she knew that it was all her fault, that dread evil arose out of the dark shadows of her heart and seeped into the world poisoning everything. She carried the beast inside her heart, the devourer of happiness. Even God was wishing she would die.

  No, no, it's not true, she said silently. It would be a terrible sin. God does not want my death, not by my own hand, never by my own hand. It wouldn't help Andrew, it wouldn't help anyone. Wouldn't help, would only hurt. Wouldn't help, would only . . .

  Silently chanting her mantra of survival, Novinha followed her husband's gasping body into the monastery, where perhaps the holiness of the place would drive all thoughts of self-destruction from her heart. I must think of him now, not of me. Not of me. Not of me me me me.

  6

  "LIFE IS A SUICIDE MISSION"

  "Do the gods of different nations

  talk to each other?

  Do the gods of Chinese cities

  speak to the ancestors of the Japanese?

  To the lords of Xibalba?

  To Allah? Yahweh? Vishnu?

  Is there some annual get-together

  where they compare each other's worshippers?

  Mine will bow their faces to the floor

  and trace woodgrain lines for me, says one.

  Mine will sacrifice animals, says another.

  Mine will kill anyone who insults me, says a third.

  Here is the question I think of most often:

  Are there any who can honestly boast,

  My worshippers obey my good laws,

  and treat each other kindly,

  and live simple generous lives?"

  from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

  Pacifica was as widely varied a world as any other, with its temperate zones, polar ice sheets, tropical rain forests, deserts and savannas, steppes and mountains, lakes and seas, woodlands and beaches. Nor was Pacifica a young world. In more than two thousand years of human habitation, all the niches into which humans could comfortably fit were filled. There were great cities and vast rangelands, villages amid patchwork farms and research stations in the remotest locations, highest and lowest, farthest north and south.

  But the heart of Pacifica had always been and remained today the tropical islands of the ocean called Pacific in memory of the largest sea on Earth. The dwellers on these islan
ds lived, not precisely in the old ways, but with the memory of old ways still in the background of all sounds and at the edges of all sights. Here the sacred kava was still sipped in the ancient ceremonies. Here the memories of ancient heroes were kept alive. Here the gods still spoke into the ears of holy men and women. And if they went home to grass huts containing refrigerators and networked computers, what of that? The gods did not give unreceivable gifts. The trick of it was finding a way to let new things into one's life without killing that life to accommodate them.

  There were many on the continents, in the big cities, on the temperate farms, in the research stations--there were many who had little patience with the endless costume dramas (or comedies, depending on one's point of view) that took place on those islands. And certainly the people of Pacifica were not uniformly Polynesian in race. All races were here, all cultures; all languages were spoken somewhere, or so it seemed. Yet even the scoffers looked to the islands for the soul of the world. Even the lovers of cold and snow took their pilgrimage--a holiday, they probably called it--to tropical shores. They plucked fruit from the trees, they skimmed over the sea in the outrigger canoes, their women went bare-breasted and they all dipped fingers into taro pudding and pulled fishmeat from the bones with wet fingers. The whitest of them, the thinnest, the most elegant of the people of this place called themselves Pacifican and spoke at times as if the ancient music of the place rang in their ears, as if the ancient stories spoke of their own past. Adopted into the family, that's what they were, and the true Samoans, Tahitians, Hawaiians, Tongans, Maoris, and Fijians smiled and let them feel welcome even though these watch-wearing, reservation-making, hurrying people knew nothing of the true life in the shadow of the volcano, in the lee of the coral barrier, under the sky sparked with parrots, inside the music of the waves against the reef.

  Wang-mu and Peter came to a civilized, modern, westernized part of Pacifica, and once again found their identities waiting for them, prepared by Jane. They were career government workers trained on their home planet, Moskva, and given a couple of weeks' vacation before starting service as bureaucrats in some Congress office on Pacifica. They needed little knowledge of their supposed home planet. They just had to show their papers to get an airplane out of the city where they had supposedly just shuttled down from a starship recently arrived from Moskva. Their flight took them to one of the larger Pacific islands, and they soon showed their papers again to get a couple of rooms in a resort hotel on a sultry tropical shore.

  There was no need for papers to get aboard a boat to the island where Jane told them they should go. No one asked them for identification. But then, no one was willing to take them as passengers, either.

  "Why you going there?" asked one huge Samoan boatman. "What business you got?"

  "We want to speak to Malu on Atatua."

  "Don't know him," said the boatman. "Don't know nothing about him. Maybe you try somebody else who knows what island he's on."

  "We told you the island," said Peter. "Atatua. According to the atlas it isn't far from here."

  "I heard of it but I never went there. Go ask somebody else."

  That's how it was, time and again.

  "You get the idea that papalagis aren't wanted there?" said Peter to Wang-mu back on the porch of Peter's room. "These people are so primitive they don't just reject ramen, framlings, and utlannings. I'm betting even a Tongan or a Hawaiian can't get to Atatua."

  "I don't think it's a racial thing," said Wang-mu. "I think it's religious. I think it's protection of a holy place."

  "What's your evidence for that?" asked Peter.

  "Because there's no hatred or fear of us, no veiled anger. Just cheerful ignorance. They don't mind our existence, they just don't think we belong in the holy place. You know they'd take us anywhere else."

  "Maybe," said Peter. "But they can't be that xenophobic, or Aimaina wouldn't have become good enough friends with Malu to send a message to him."

  At that, Peter cocked his head a bit to listen as Jane apparently spoke in his ear.

  "Oh," said Peter. "Jane was skipping a step for us. Aimaina didn't send a message directly to Malu. He messaged a woman named Grace. But Grace immediately went to Malu and so Jane figured we might as well go straight to the source. Thanks Jane. Love how your intuition always works out."

  "Don't be snide to her," said Wang-mu. "She's coming up against a deadline. The order to shut down could come any day. Naturally she wants to hurry."

  "I think she should just kill any such order before anyone receives it and take over all the damn computers in the universe," said Peter. "Thumb her nose at them."

  "That wouldn't stop them," said Wang-mu. "It would only terrify them more."

  "In the meantime, we're not going to get to Malu by boarding a boat."

  "So let's find this Grace," said Wang-mu. "If she can do it, then it is possible for an outsider to get access to Malu."

  "She's not an outsider, she's Samoan," said Peter. "She has a Samoan name as well--Teu 'Ona--but she's worked in the academic world and it's easier to have a Christian name, as they call it. A Western name. Grace is the name she'll expect us to use. Says Jane."

  "If she had a message from Aimaina, she'll know at once who we are."

  "I don't think so," said Peter. "Even if he mentioned us, how could she possibly believe that the same people could be on his world yesterday and on her world today?"

  "Peter, you are the consummate positivist. Your trust in rationality makes you irrational. Of course she'll believe we're the same people. Aimaina will also be sure. The fact that we traveled world-to-world in a single day will merely confirm to them what they already believe--that the gods sent us."

  Peter sighed. "Well, as long as they don't try to sacrifice us to a volcano or anything, I suppose it doesn't hurt to be gods."

  "Don't trifle with this, Peter," said Wang-mu. "Religion is tied to the deepest feelings people have. The love that arises from that stewing pot is the sweetest and strongest, but the hate is the hottest, and the anger is the most violent. As long as outsiders stay away from their holy places, the Polynesians are the peacefullest people. But when you penetrate within the light of the sacred fire, watch your step, because no enemy is more ruthless or brutal or thorough."

  "Have you been watching vids again?" asked Peter.

  "Reading," said Wang-mu. "In fact, I was reading some articles, written by Grace Drinker."

  "Ah," said Peter. "You already knew about her."

  "I didn't know she was Samoan," said Wang-mu. "She doesn't talk about herself. If you want to know about Malu and his place in the Samoan culture on Pacifica--maybe we should call it Lumana'i, as they do--you have to read something written by Grace Drinker, or someone quoting her, or someone arguing with her. She had an article on Atatua, which is how I came across her writing. And she's written about the impact of the philosophy of Ua Lava on the Samoan people. My guess is that when Aimaina was first studying Ua Lava, he read some works by Grace Drinker, and then wrote to her with questions, and that's how the friendship began. But her connection with Malu has nothing to do with Ua Lava. He represents something older. Before Ua Lava, but Ua Lava still depends on it, at least here in its homeland it does."

  Peter regarded her steadily for a few moments. She could feel him reevaluating her, deciding that she had a mind after all, that she might, marginally, be useful. Well, good for you, Peter, thought Wang-mu. How clever you are, to finally notice that I've got an analytical mind as well as the intuitive, gnomic, mantic one you decided was all I was good for.

  Peter unfolded himself from his chair. "Let's go meet her. And quote her. And argue with her."

  The Hive Queen lay in stillness. Her work of egglaying was done for the day. Her workers slept in the dark of night, though it wasn't darkness that stopped them down in the cave of her home. Rather it was her need to be alone inside her mind, to set aside the thousand distractions of the eyes and ears, the arms and legs of her workers. All of them
demanded her attention, at least now and then, in order to function; but it also took all her thought to reach out in her mind and walk the webs that the humans had taught her to think of as The pequenino fathertree named Human had explained to her that in one of the human languages this had something to do with love. The connections of love. But the Hive Queen knew better. Love was the savage coupling of the drones. Love was the genes of all creatures demanding that they be replicated, replicated, replicated. The philotic twining was something else. There was a voluntary component to it, when the creature was truly sentient. It could bestow its loyalty where it wanted. This was greater than love, because it created something more than random offspring. Where loyalty bound creatures together, they became something larger, something new and whole and inexplicable.

  she said to Human, by way of launching their conversation tonight. They spoke every night like this, mind to mind, though they had never met. How could they, she always in the dark of her deep home, he always rooted by the gate of Milagre? But the conversation of the mind was truer than any language, and they knew each other better than they ever could have by use of mere sight and touch.

  said Human.

  Then she told him all that had passed between her and Young Valentine and Miro today.

  said Human.

 

 

 

  said Human.

  The Hive Queen understood that he was answering her question.

  asked the Hive Queen.