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may be carried out
beyond the reach of our own arms.
Machines are more powerful than servants and more obedient and less
rebellious, but machines have no judgment and will not remonstrate with us
when our will is foolish, and will not disobey us when our will is evil.
In times and places where people despise the gods, those most in need of
servants have machines, or choose servants who will behave like machines.
I believe this will continue until the gods stop laughing."
from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao
The hovercar skimmed over the fields of amaranth being tended by buggers under
the morning sun of Lusitania. In the distance, clouds already arose, cumulus
stacks billowing upward, though it was not yet noon.
"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
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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 aiúa 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 aiúa 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 aiúa 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
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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?
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