Xenocide

by Orson Scott Card

  "Now you're anthropomorphizing," said Valentine.

  "Maybe," said Miro. "Maybe not."

  "Human beings are organisms," said the image. "But human philotic twinings go way beyond those of any other life form."

  "Now you're talking about that stuff that came from Ganges a thousand years ago," said Valentine. "Nobody's been able to get consistent results from those experiments." The researchers--Hindus all, and devout ones--claimed that they had shown that human philotic twinings, unlike those of other organisms, did not always reach directly down into the planet's core to twine with all other life and matter. Rather, they claimed, the philotic rays from human beings often twined with those of other human beings, most often with families, but sometimes between teachers and students, and sometimes between close co-workers--including the researchers themselves. The Gangeans had concluded that this distinction between humans and other plant and animal life proved that the souls of some humans were literally lifted to a higher plane, nearer to perfection. They believed that the Perfecting Ones had become one with each other the way that all of life was one with the world. "It's all very pleasingly mystical, but nobody except Gangean Hindus takes it seriously anymore."

  "I do," said Miro.

  "To each his own," said Jakt.

  "Not as a religion," said Miro. "As science."

  "You mean metaphysics, don't you?" said Valentine.

  It was the Miro-image that answered. "The philotic connections between people change fastest of all, and what the Gangeans proved is that they respond to human will. If you have strong feelings binding you to your family, then your philotic rays will twine and you will be one, in exactly the same way that the different atoms in a molecule are one."

  It was a sweet idea--she had thought so when she first heard it, perhaps two thousand years ago, when Ender was speaking for a murdered revolutionary on Mindanao. She and Ender had speculated then on whether the Gangean tests would show that they were twined, as brother and sister. They wondered whether there had been such a connection between them as children, and if it had persisted when Ender was taken off to Battle School and they were separated for six years. Ender had liked that idea very much, and so had Valentine, but after that one conversation the subject never came up again. The notion of philotic connections between people had remained in the pretty-idea category in her memory. "It's nice to think that the metaphor of human unity might have a physical analogue," said Valentine.

  "Listen!" said Miro. Apparently he didn't want her to dismiss the idea as "nice."

  Again his image spoke for him. "If the Gangeans are right, then when a human being chooses to bond with another person, when he makes a commitment to a community, it is not just a social phenomenon. It's a physical event as well. The philote, the smallest conceivable physical particle--if we can call something with no mass or inertia physical at all--responds to an act of the human will."

  "That's why it's so hard for anyone to take the Gangean experiments seriously."

  "The Gangean experiments were careful and honest."

  "But no one else ever got the same results."

  "No one else ever took them seriously enough to perform the same experiments. Does that surprise you?"

  "Yes," said Valentine. But then she remembered how the idea had been ridiculed in the scientific press, while it was immediately picked up by the lunatic fringe and incorporated into dozens of fringe religions. Once that happened, how could a scientist hope to get funding for such a project? How could a scientist expect to have a career if others came to think of him as a proponent of a metaphysical religion? "No, I suppose it doesn't."

  The Miro-image nodded. "If the philotic ray twines in response to the human will, why couldn't we suppose that all philotic twining is willed? Every particle, all of matter and energy, why couldn't every observable phenomenon in the universe be the willing behavior of individuals?"

  "Now we're beyond Gangean Hinduism," said Valentine. "How seriously am I supposed to take this? What you're talking about is Animism. The most primitive kind of religion. Everything's alive. Stones and oceans and--"

  "No," said Miro. "Life is life."

  "Life is life," said the computer program. "Life is when a single philote has the strength of will to bind together the molecules of a single cell, to entwine their rays into one. A stronger philote can bind together many cells into a single organism. The strongest of all are the intelligent beings. We can bestow our philotic connections where we will. The philotic basis of intelligent life is even clearer in the other known sentient species. When a pequenino dies and passes into the third life, it's his strong-willed philote that preserves his identity and passes it from the mammaloid corpse to the living tree."

  "Reincarnation," said Jakt. "The philote is the soul."

  "It happens with the piggies, anyway," said Miro.

  "The hive queen as well," said the Miro-image. "The reason we discovered philotic connections in the first place was because we saw how the buggers communicated with each other faster than light--that's what showed us it was possible. The individual buggers are all part of the hive queen; they're like her hands and feet, and she's their mind, one vast organism with thousands or millions of bodies. And the only connection between them is the twining of their philotic rays."

  It was a picture of the universe that Valentine had never conceived of before. Of course, as a historian and biographer she usually conceived of things in terms of peoples and societies; while she wasn't ignorant of physics, neither was she deeply trained in it. Perhaps a physicist would know at once why this whole idea was absurd. But then, perhaps a physicist would be so locked into the consensus of his scientific community that it would be harder for him to accept an idea that transformed the meaning of everything he knew. Even if it were true.

  And she liked the idea well enough to wish it were true. Of the trillion lovers who had whispered to each other, We are one, could it be that some of them really were? Of the billions of families who had bonded together so closely they felt like a single soul, wouldn't it be lovely to think that at the most basic level of reality it was so?

  Jakt, however, was not so caught up in the idea. "I thought we weren't supposed to talk about the existence of the hive queen," he said. "I thought that was Ender's secret."

  "It's all right," said Valentine. "Everyone in this room knows."

  Jakt gave her his impatient look. "I thought we were coming to Lusitania to help in the struggle against Starways Congress. What does any of this have to do with the real world?"

  "Maybe nothing," said Valentine. "Maybe everything."

  Jakt buried his face in his hands for a moment, then looked back up at her with a smile that wasn't really a smile. "I haven't heard you say anything so transcendental since your brother left Trondheim."

  That stung her, particularly because she knew it was meant to. After all these years, was Jakt still jealous of her connection with Ender? Did he still resent the fact that she could care about things that meant nothing to him? "When he went," said Valentine, "I stayed." She was really saying, I passed the only test that mattered. Why should you doubt me now?

  Jakt was abashed. It was one of the best things about him, that when he realized he was wrong he backed down at once. "And when you went," said Jakt, "I came with you." Which she took to mean, I'm with you, I'm really not jealous of Ender anymore, and I'm sorry for sniping at you. Later, when they were alone, they'd say these things again openly. It wouldn't do to reach Lusitania with suspicions and jealousy on either's part.

  Miro, of course, was oblivious to the fact that Jakt and Valentine had already declared a truce. He was only aware of the tension between them, and thought he was the cause of it. "I'm sorry," said Miro. "I didn't mean to . . ."

  "It's all right," said Jakt. "I was out of line."

  "There is no line," said Valentine, with a smile at her husband. Jakt smiled back.

  That was what Miro needed to see; he visibly relaxed.

&n
bsp; "Go on," said Valentine.

  "Take all that as a given," said the Miro-image.

  Valentine couldn't help it--she laughed out loud. Partly she laughed because this mystical Gangean philote-as-soul business was such an absurdly large premise to swallow. Partly she laughed to release the tension between her and Jakt. "I'm sorry," she said. "That's an awfully big 'given.' If that's the preamble, I can't wait to hear the conclusion."

  Miro, understanding her laughter now, smiled back. "I've had a lot of time to think," he said. "That really was my speculation on what life is. That everything in the universe is behavior. But there's something else we want to tell you about. And ask you about, too, I guess." He turned to Jakt. "And it has a lot to do with stopping the Lusitania Fleet."

  Jakt smiled and nodded. "I appreciate being tossed a bone now and then."

  Valentine smiled her most charming smile. "So--later you'll be glad when I break a few bones."

  Jakt laughed again.

  "Go on, Miro," said Valentine.

  It was the image-Miro that responded. "If all of reality is the behavior of philotes, then obviously most philotes are only smart enough or strong enough to act as a meson or hold together a neutron. A very few of them have the strength of will to be alive--to govern an organism. And a tiny, tiny fraction of them are powerful enough to control--no, to be--a sentient organism. But still, the most complex and intelligent being--the hive queen, for instance--is, at core, just a philote, like all the others. It gains its identity and life from the particular role it happens to fulfill, but what it is is a philote."

  "My self--my will--is a subatomic particle?" asked Valentine.

  Jakt smiled, nodded. "A fun idea," he said. "My shoe and I are brothers."

  Miro smiled wanly. The Miro-image, however, answered. "If a star and a hydrogen atom are brothers, then yes, there is a kinship between you and the philotes that make up common objects like your shoe."

  Valentine noticed that Miro had not subvocalized anything just before the Miro-image answered. How had the software producing the Miro-image come up with the analogy with stars and hydrogen atoms, if Miro didn't provide it on the spot? Valentine had never heard of a computer program capable of producing such involved yet appropriate conversation on its own.

  "And maybe there are other kinships in the universe that you know nothing of till now," said the Miro-image. "Maybe there's a kind of life you haven't met."

  Valentine, watching Miro, saw that he seemed worried. Agitated. As if he didn't like what the Miro-image was doing now.

  "What kind of life are you talking about?" asked Jakt.

  "There's a physical phenomenon in the universe, a very common one, that is completely unexplained, and yet everyone takes it for granted and no one has seriously investigated why and how it happens. This is it: None of the ansible connections has ever broken."

  "Nonsense," said Jakt. "One of the ansibles on Trondheim was out of service for six months last year--it doesn't happen often, but it happens."

  Again Miro's lips and jaw were motionless; again the image answered immediately. Clearly he was not controlling it now. "I didn't say that the ansibles never break down. I said that the connections--the philotic twining between the parts of a split meson--have never broken. The machinery of the ansible can break down, the software can get corrupted, but never has a meson fragment within an ansible made the shift to allow its philotic ray to entwine with another local meson or even with the nearby planet."

  "The magnetic field suspends the fragment, of course," said Jakt.

  "Split mesons don't endure long enough in nature for us to know how they naturally act," said Valentine.

  "I know all the standard answers," said the image. "All nonsense. All the kind of answers parents give their children when they don't know the truth and don't want to bother finding out. People still treat the ansibles like magic. Everybody's glad enough that the ansibles keep on working; if they tried to figure out why, the magic might go out of it and then the ansibles would stop."

  "Nobody feels that way," said Valentine.

  "They all do," said the image. "Even if it took hundreds of years, or a thousand years, or three thousand years, one of those connections should have broken by now. One of those meson fragments should have shifted its philotic ray--but they never have."

  "Why?" asked Miro.

  Valentine assumed at first that Miro was asking a rhetorical question. But no--he was looking at the image just like the rest of them, asking it to tell him why.

  "I thought this program was reporting your speculations," said Valentine.

  "It was," said Miro. "But not now."

  "What if there's a being who lives among the philotic connections between ansibles?" asked the image.

  "Are you sure you want to do this?" asked Miro. Again he was speaking to the image on the screen.

  And the image on the screen changed, to the face of a young woman, one that Valentine had never seen before.

  "What if there's a being who dwells in the web of philotic rays connecting the ansibles on every world and every starship in the human universe? What if she is composed of those philotic connections? What if her thoughts take place in the spin and vibration of the split pairs? What if her memories are stored in the computers of every world and every ship?"

  "Who are you?" asked Valentine, speaking directly to the image.

  "Maybe I'm the one who keeps all those philotic connections alive, ansible to ansible. Maybe I'm a new kind of organism, one that doesn't twine rays together, but instead keeps them twined to each other so that they never break apart. And if that's true, then if those connections ever broke, if the ansibles ever stopped moving--if the ansibles ever fell silent, then I would die."

  "Who are you?" asked Valentine again.

  "Valentine, I'd like you to meet Jane," said Miro. "Ender's friend. And mine."

  "Jane."

  So Jane wasn't the code name of a subversive group within the Starways Congress bureaucracy. Jane was a computer program, a piece of software.

  No. If what she had just suggested was true, then Jane was more than a program. She was a being who dwelt in the web of philotic rays, who stored her memories in the computers of every world. If she was right, then the philotic web--the network of crisscrossing philotic rays that connected ansible to ansible on every world--was her body, her substance. And the philotic links continued working with never a breakdown because she willed it so.

  "So now I ask the great Demosthenes," said Jane. "Am I raman or varelse? Am I alive at all? I need your answer, because I think I can stop the Lusitania Fleet. But before I do it, I have to know: Is it a cause worth dying for?"

  Jane's words cut Miro to the heart. She could stop the fleet--he could see that at once. Congress had sent the M.D. Device with several ships of the fleet, but they had not yet sent the order to use it. They couldn't send the order without Jane knowing it beforehand, and with her complete penetration of all the ansible communications, she could intercept the order before it was sent.

  The trouble was that she couldn't do it without Congress realizing that she existed--or at least that something was wrong. If the fleet didn't confirm the order, it would simply be sent again, and again, and again. The more she blocked the messages, the clearer it would be to Congress that someone had an impossible degree of control over the ansible computers.

  She might avoid this by sending a counterfeit confirmation, but then she would have to monitor all the communications between the ships of the fleet, and between the fleet and all planetside stations, in order to keep up the pretense that the fleet knew something about the kill order. Despite Jane's enormous abilities, this would soon be beyond her--she could pay some degree of attention to hundreds, even thousands of things at a time, but it didn't take Miro long to realize that there was no way she could handle all the monitoring and alterations this would take, even if she did nothing else.

  One way or another, the secret would be out. And as Jane expl
ained her plan, Miro knew that she was right--her best option, the one with the least chance of revealing her existence, was simply to cut off all ansible communications between the fleet and the planetside stations, and between the ships of the fleet. Let each ship remain isolated, the crew wondering what had happened, and they would have no choice but to abort their mission or continue to obey their original orders. Either they would go away or they would arrive at Lusitania without the authority to use the Little Doctor.

  In the meantime, however, Congress would know that something had happened. It was possible that with Congress's normal bureaucratic inefficiency, no one would ever figure out what happened. But eventually somebody would realize that there was no natural or human explanation of what happened. Someone would realize that Jane--or something like her--must exist, and that cutting off ansible communications would destroy her. Once they knew this, she would surely die.

  "Maybe not," Miro insisted. "Maybe you can keep them from acting. Interfere with interplanetary communications, so they can't give the order to shut down communications."

  No one answered. He knew why: she couldn't interfere with ansible communications forever. Eventually the government on each planet would reach the conclusion on its own. She might live on in constant warfare for years, decades, generations. But the more power she used, the more humankind would hate and fear her. Eventually she would be killed.

  "A book, then," said Miro. "Like the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Like the Life of Human. The Speaker for the Dead could write it. To persuade them not to do it."

  "Maybe," said Valentine.

  "She can't die," said Miro.

  "I know that we can't ask her to take that chance," said Valentine. "But if it's the only way to save the hive queen and the pequeninos--"

  Miro was furious. "You can talk about her dying! What is Jane to you? A program, a piece of software. But she's not, she's real, she's as real as the hive queen, she's as real as any of the piggies--"

  "More real to you, I think," said Valentine.

  "As real," said Miro. "You forget--I know the piggies like my own brothers--"