Children of the Mind Page 4

  "Excuse me, but if God wanted to do everything himself, what did he make us for in the first place?"

  "Yes, well, I seem to recall that one of your parents was a heretic, which is no doubt where your strangest ideas come from." It was an old joke between them, but this time neither of them laughed.

  "I believe in you," Ender said.

  "But you consult with Jane."

  He reached into his pocket, then held out his hand to show her what he had found there. It was a jewel, with several very fine wires leading from it. Like a glowing organism ripped from its delicate place amid the fronds of life in a shallow sea. She looked at it for a moment uncomprehending, then realized what it was and looked at the ear where, for all the years she had known him, he had worn the jewel that linked him to Jane, the computer-program-come-to-life who was his oldest, dearest, most reliable friend.

  "Andrew, no, not for me, surely."

  "I can't honestly say these walls contain me, as long as Jane was there to whisper in my ear," he said. "I talked it out with her. I explained it. She understands. We're still friends. But not companions anymore."

  "Oh, Andrew," said Novinha. She wept openly now, and held him, clung to him. "If only you had done it years ago, even months ago."

  "Maybe I don't believe in Christ the way that you do," said Ender. "But isn't it enough that I believe in you, and you believe in him?"

  "You don't belong here, Andrew."

  "I belong here more than anywhere else, if this is where you are. I'm not so much world-weary, Novinha, as I am will-weary. I'm tired of deciding things. I'm tired of trying to solve things."

  "We try to solve things here," she said, pulling away from him.

  "But here we can be, not the mind, but the children of the mind. We can be the hands and feet, the lips and tongue. We can carry out and not decide." He squatted, knelt, then sat in the dirt, the young plants brushing and tickling him on either side. He put his dirty hands to his face and wiped his brow with them, knowing that he was only smearing dirt into mud.

  "Oh, I almost believe this, Andrew, you're so good at it," said Novinha. "What, you've decided to stop being the hero of your own saga? Or is this just a ploy? Be the servant of all, so you can be the greatest among us?"

  "You know I've never tried for greatness, or achieved it, either."

  "Oh, Andrew, you're such a storyteller that you believe your own fables."

  Ender looked up at her. "Please, Novinha, let me live with you here. You're my wife. There's no meaning to my life if I've lost you."

  "We live as man and wife here, but we don't . . . you know that we don't . . ."

  "I know that the Filhos forswear sexual intercourse," said Ender. "I'm your husband. As long as I'm not having sex with anyone, it might as well be you that I'm not having sex with." He smiled wryly.

  Her answering smile was only sad and pitying.

  "Novinha," he said. "I'm not interested in my own life anymore. Do you understand? The only life I care about in this world is yours. If I lose you, what is there to hold me here?"

  He wasn't sure what he meant by this himself. The words had come unbidden to his lips. But he knew as he said them that it was not self-pity, but rather a frank admission of the truth. Not that he was thinking of suicide or exile or any other such low drama. Rather he felt himself fading. Losing his hold. Lusitania seemed less and less real to him. Valentine was still there, his dear sister and friend, and she was like a rock, her life was so real, but it was not real to him because she didn't need him. Plikt, his unasked-for disciple, she might need Ender, but not the reality of him, only the idea of him. And who else was there? The children of Novinha and Libo, the children that he had raised as his own, and loved as his own, he loved them no less now, but they were adults, they didn't need him. Jane, who once had been virtually destroyed by an hour of his inattention, she no longer needed him either, for she was there in the jewel in Miro's ear, and in another jewel in Peter's ear. . . .

  Peter. Young Valentine. Where had they come from? They had stolen his soul and taken it with them when they left. They were doing the living acts that once he would have done himself. While he waited here in Lusitania and . . . faded. That's what he meant. If he lost Novinha, what would tie him to this body that he had carried around the universe for all these thousands of years?

  "It's not my decision," Novinha said.

  "It's your decision," said Ender, "whether you want me with you, as one of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo. If you do, then I believe I can make my way through all the other obstacles."

  She laughed nastily. "Obstacles? Men like you don't have obstacles. Just steppingstones."

  "Men like me?"

  "Yes, men like you," said Novinha. "Just because I've never met any others. Just because no matter how much I loved Libo he was never for one day as alive as you are in every minute. Just because I found myself loving as an adult for the first time when I loved you. Just because I have missed you more than I miss even my children, even my parents, even the lost loves of my life. Just because I can't dream of anyone but you, that doesn't mean that there isn't somebody else just like you somewhere else. The universe is a big place. You can't be all that special, really. Can you?"

  He reached through the potato plants and leaned a hand gently on her thigh. "You do still love me, then?" he asked.

  "Oh, is that what you came for? To find out if I love you?"

  He nodded. "Partly."

  "I do," she said.

  "Then I can stay?"

  She burst into tears. Loud weeping. She sank to the ground; he reached through the plants to embrace her, to hold her, caring nothing for the leaves he crushed between them. After he held her for a long while, she broke off her crying and turned to him and held him at least as tightly as he had been holding her.

  "Oh, Andrew," she whispered, her voice cracking and breaking from having wept so much. "Does God love me enough to give you to me now, again, when I need you so much?"

  "Until I die," said Ender.

  "I know that part," she said. "But I pray that God will let me die first this time."

  3

  "THERE ARE TOO MANY

  OF US"

  "Let me tell you the most beautiful story I know.

  A man was given a dog, which he loved very much.

  The dog went with him everywhere,

  but the man could not teach it to do anything useful.

  The dog would not fetch or point,

  it would not race or protect or stand watch.

  Instead the dog sat near him and regarded him,

  always with the same inscrutable expression.

  'That's not a dog, it's a wolf,' said the man's wife.

  'He alone is faithful to me,' said the man,

  and his wife never discussed it with him again.

  One day the man took his dog with him into his private airplane

  and as they flew over high winter mountains,

  the engines failed

  and the airplane was torn to shreds among the trees.

  The man lay bleeding,

  his belly torn open by blades of sheared metal,

  steam rising from his organs in the cold air,

  but all he could think of was his faithful dog.

  Was he alive? Was he hurt?

  Imagine his relief when the dog came padding up

  and regarded him with that same steady gaze.

  After an hour the dog nosed the man's gaping abdomen,

  then began pulling out intestines and spleen and liver

  and gnawing on them,

  all the while studying the man's face.

  'Thank God,' said the man.

  'At least one of us will not starve.' "

  from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

  Of all the faster-than-light starships that were flitting Outside and back In under Jane's command, only Miro's looked like an ordinary spacecraft, for the good reason that it was nothing more than the shuttle that had
once taken passengers and cargo to and from the great starships that came to orbit around Lusitania. Now that the new starships could go immediately from one planet's surface to another's, there was no need for life support or even fuel, and since Jane had to hold the entire structure of each craft in her memory, the simpler they were the better. Indeed, they could hardly be called vehicles anymore. They were simple cabins now, windowless, almost unfurnished, bare as a primitive schoolroom. The people of Lusitania referred to space travel now as encaixarse, which was Portuguese for "going into the box," or, more literally, "to box oneself up."

  Miro, however, was exploring, searching for new planets capable of sustaining the lives of the three sentient species, humans, pequeninos, and hive queens. For this he needed a more traditional spacecraft, for though he still went from planet to planet by way of Jane's instant detour through the Outside, he could not usually count on arriving at a world where he could breathe the air. Indeed, Jane always started him out in orbit high above each new planet, so he could observe, measure, analyze, and only land on the most promising ones to make the final determination of whether the world was usable.

  He did not travel alone. It would have been too much for one person to accomplish, and he needed everything he did to be double-checked. Yet of all the work being done by anyone on Lusitania, this was the most dangerous, for he never knew when he cracked open the door of his spaceship whether there would be some unforeseeable menace on the new world. Miro had long regarded his own life as expendable. For several long years trapped in a brain-damaged body he had wished for death; then, when his first trip Outside enabled him to recreate his body in the perfection of youth, he regarded any moment, any hour, any day of his life as an undeserved gift. He would not waste it, but he would not shrink from putting it at risk for the good of others. But who else could share his easy self-disregard?

  Young Valentine was made to order, in every sense, it seemed. Miro had seen her come into existence at the same time as his own new body. She had no past, no kin, no links to any world except through Ender, whose mind had created her, and Peter, her fellow makeling. Oh, and perhaps one might consider her to be linked to the original Valentine, "the real Valentine," as Young Val called her; but it was no secret that Old Valentine had no desire to spend even a moment in the company of this young beauty who mocked her by her very existence. Besides, Young Val was created as Ender's image of perfect virtue. Not only was she unconnected, but also she was genuinely altruistic and quite willing to sacrifice herself for the good of others. So whenever Miro stepped into the shuttle, there was Young Val as his companion, his reliable assistant, his constant backup.

  But not his friend. For Miro knew perfectly well who Val really was: Ender in disguise. Not a woman. And her love and loyalty to him were Ender's love and loyalty, often tested, well-trusted, but Ender's, not her own. There was nothing of her own in her. So while Miro had become used to her company, and laughed and joked with her more easily than with anyone in his life till now, he did not confide in her, did not allow himself to feel affection any deeper than camaraderie for her. If she noticed the lack of connection between them she said nothing; if it hurt her, the pain never showed.

  What showed was her delight in their successes and her insistence that they push themselves ever harder. "We don't have a whole day to spend on any world," she said right from the start, and proved it by holding them to a schedule that let them make three voyages in a day. They came home after each three voyages to a Lusitania already quiet with sleep; they slept on the ship and spoke to others only to warn them of particular problems the colonists were likely to face on whatever new worlds had been found that day. And the three-a-day schedule was only on days when they dealt with likely planets. When Jane took them to worlds that were obvious losers--waterbound, for instance, or unbiotized--they moved on quickly, checking the next candidate world, and the next, sometimes five and six on those discouraging days when nothing seemed to work. Young Val pushed them both on to the edge of their endurance, day after day, and Miro accepted her leadership in this aspect of their voyaging because he knew that it was necessary.

  His friend, however, had no human shape. For him she dwelt in the jewel in his ear. Jane, the whisper in his mind when he first woke up, the friend who heard everything he subvocalized, who knew his needs before he noticed them himself. Jane, who shared all his thoughts and dreams, who had stayed with him through the worst of his cripplehood, who had led him Outside to where he could be renewed. Jane, his truest friend, who would soon die.

  That was their real deadline. Jane would die, and then this instant starflight would be at an end, for there was no other being that had the sheer mental power to take anything more complicated than a rubber ball Outside and back In again. And Jane's death would come, not by any natural cause, but because the Starways Congress, having discovered the existence of a subversive program that could control or at least access any and all of their computers, was systematically closing down, disconnecting, and sweeping out all their networks. Already she was feeling the injury of those systems that had been taken offline to where she could not access them. Someday soon the codes would be transmitted that would undo her utterly and all at once. And when she was gone, anyone who had not been taken from the surface of Lusitania and transplanted to another world would be trapped, waiting helplessly for the arrival of the Lusitania Fleet, which was coming ever closer, determined to destroy them all.

  A grim business, this, in which despite all of Miro's efforts, his dearest friend would die. Which, he knew full well, was part of why he did not let himself become a true friend to Young Val--because it would be disloyal to Jane to learn affection for anyone else during the last weeks or days of her life.

  So Miro's life was an endless routine of work, of concentrated mental effort, studying the findings of the shuttle's instruments, analyzing aerial photographs, piloting the shuttle to unsafe, unscouted landing zones, and finally--not often enough--opening the door and breathing alien air. And at the end of each voyage, no time either to mourn or rejoice, no time even to rest: he closed the door, spoke the word, and Jane took them home again to Lusitania, to start it all over again.

  On this homecoming, however, something was different. Miro opened the door of the shuttle to find, not his adoptive father Ender, not the pequeninos who prepared food for him and Young Val, not the normal colony leaders wanting a briefing, but rather his brothers Olhado and Grego, and his sister Elanora, and Ender's sister Valentine. Old Valentine, come herself to the one place where she was sure to meet her unwelcome young twin? Miro saw at once how Young Val and Old Valentine glanced at each other, eyes not really meeting, and then looked away, not wanting to see each other. Or was that it? Young Val was more likely looking away from Old Valentine because she virtuously wanted to avoid giving offense to the older woman. No doubt if she could do it Young Val would willingly disappear rather than cause Old Valentine a moment's pain. And, since that was not possible, she would do the next best thing, which was to remain as unobtrusive as possible when Old Valentine was present.

  "What's the meeting?" asked Miro. "Is Mother ill?"

  "No, no, everybody's in good health," said Olhado.

  "Except mentally," said Grego. "Mother's as mad as a hatter, and now Ender's crazy too."

  Miro nodded, grimaced. "Let me guess. He joined her among the Filhos."

  Immediately Grego and Olhado looked at the jewel in Miro's ear.

  "No, Jane didn't tell me," said Miro. "I just know Ender. He takes his marriage very seriously."

  "Yes, well, it's left something of a leadership vacuum here," said Olhado. "Not that everybody isn't doing their job just fine. I mean, the system works and all that. But Ender was the one we all looked to to tell us what to do when the system stops working. If you know what I mean."

  "I know what you mean," said Miro. "And you can speak of it in front of Jane. She knows she's going to be shut down as soon as Starways Congress gets their plan
s in place."

  "It's more complicated than that," said Grego. "Most people don't know about the danger to Jane--for that matter, most don't even know she exists. But they can do the arithmetic to figure out that even going full tilt, there's no way to get all the humans off Lusitania before the fleet gets here. Let alone the pequeninos. So they know that unless the fleet is stopped, somebody is going to be left here to die. There are already those who say that we've wasted enough starship space on trees and bugs."

  "Trees" referred, of course, to the pequeninos, who were not, in fact, transporting fathertrees and mothertrees; and "bugs" referred to the Hive Queen, who was also not wasting space sending a lot of workers. But every world they were settling did have a large contingent of pequeninos and at least one hive queen and a handful of workers to help her get started. Never mind that it was the hive queen on every world that quickly produced workers who were doing the bulk of the labor getting agriculture started; never mind that because they were not taking trees with them, at least one male and female in every group of pequeninos had to be "planted"--had to die slowly and painfully so that a fathertree and mothertree could take root and maintain the cycle of pequenino life. They all knew--Grego more than any other, since he'd recently been in the thick of it--that under the polite surface was an undercurrent of competition between species.

  And it was not just among the humans, either. While on Lusitania the pequeninos still outnumbered humans by vast numbers, on the new colonies the humans predominated. "It's your fleet coming to destroy Lusitania," said Human, the leader of the fathertrees these days. "And even if every human on Lusitania died, the human race would continue. While for the Hive Queen and for us, it is nothing less than the survival of our species that is at stake. And yet we understand that we must let humans dominate for a time on these new worlds, because of your knowledge of skills and technologies we have not yet mastered, because of your practice at subduing new worlds, and because you still have the power to set fires to burn our forests." What Human said so reasonably, his resentment couched in polite language, many other pequeninos and fathertrees said more passionately: "Why should we let these human invaders, who brought all this evil upon us, save almost all their population, while most of us will die?"