"And now the hive queen says that you've grown so big and complex that she can't hold the pattern of you in her mind any more."
"Must have gone through a growth spurt, back during my years of puberty."
"Right."
"Could I help it that humans kept adding computers and linking them up?"
"But it isn't the hardware, Jane. It's the programs. The mentation."
"I have to have the physical memory to hold all of that."
"You have the memory. The question is, can you access it without the ansibles?"
"I can try. As you said to her, it's like learning to flex a muscle I never knew I had."
"Or learning to live without one."
"I'll see what's possible."
What's possible. All the way home, the car floating over the capirn, he was also flying, exhilarated to know that something was possible after all, when till now he had felt nothing but despair. Coming home, though, seeing the burnt-over forest, the two solitary father trees with the only greenery left, the experimental farm, the new hut with the clean room where Planter lay dying, he realised how much there still was to lose, how many would still die, even if now they had found a way for Jane to live.
***
It was the end of the day. Han Fei-tzu was exhausted, his eyes hurting from all that he had read. He had adjusted the colours on the computer display a dozen times, trying to find something restful, but it didn't help. The last time he had worked so intensely was as a student, and then he had been young. Then, too, he had always found results. I was quicker, then, brighter. I could reward myself by achieving something. Now I'm old and slow, I'm working in areas that are new to me, and it may be that these problems have no solutions. So there's no reward to bolster me. Only the weariness. The pain at the top of my neck, the puffy, tired feeling in my eyes.
He looked at Wang-mu, curled up on the floor beside him. She tried so hard, but her education had begun too recently for her to be able to follow most of the documents that passed through the computer display as he searched for some conceptual framework for faster-than-light travel. At last her weariness triumphed over her will; she was sure she was useless, because she couldn't understand enough even to ask questions. So she gave up and slept.
But you are not useless, Si Wang-mu. Even in your perplexity you've helped me. A bright mind to which all things are new. Like having my own lost youth perched at my elbow.
As Qing-jao was, when she was little, before piety and pride claimed her.
Not fair. Not right to judge his own daughter that way. Until these last weeks, hadn't he been perfectly satisfied with her? Proud of her beyond all reason? The best and brightest of the god spoken, everything her father had worked for, everything her mother had hoped.
That was the part that chafed. Until a few weeks ago, he had been proudest of all of the fact that he had accomplished his oath to Jiang-qing. This was not an easy accomplishment, to bring up his daughter so piously that she never went through a period of doubt or rebellion against the gods. True, there were other children just as pious— but their piety was usually achieved at the expense of their education. Han Fei-tzu had let Qing-jao learn everything, and then had so deftly led her understanding of it that all fit well with her faith in the gods.
Now he had reaped his own sowing. He had given her a world-view that so perfectly preserved her faith that now, when he had discovered that the gods' "voices" were nothing but the genetic chains with which Congress had shackled them, nothing could convince her. If Jiang-qing had lived, Fei-tzu would no doubt have been in conflict with her over his loss of faith. In her absence, he had done so well at raising their daughter as Jiang-qing would have that Qing-jao was able to take her mother's view flawlessly.
Jiang-qing would also have left me, thought Han Fei-tzu. Even if I had not been widowed, I would have been wifeless on this day.
The only companion left to me is this servant girl, who pushed her way into my household only just in time to be the one spark of life in my old age, the one flicker of hope in my dark heart.
Not my daughter-of-the-body, but perhaps there will be time and opportunity, when this crisis is past, to make Wang-mu my daughter-of-the-mind. My work with Congress is finished. Shall I not be a teacher, then, with a single disciple, this girl? Shall I not prepare her to be the revolutionary who can lead the common people to freedom from the tyranny of the god spoken, and then lead Path to freedom from Congress itself? Let her be such a one, and then I can die in peace, knowing that at the end of my life I have created the undoing of all my earlier work that strengthened Congress and helped overcome all opposition to its power.
The soft breathing of the girl Wang-mu was like his own breath, like a baby's breath, like the sound of a breeze through tall grass. She is all motion, all hope, all freshness.
"Han Fei-tzu, I think you are not asleep."
He was not; but he had been half-dozing, for the sound of Jane's voice coming from the computer startled him as if he were waking up.
"No, but Wang-mu is," he said.
"Wake her, then," said Jane.
"What is it? She's earned her rest."
"She's also earned the right to hear this."
Ela's face appeared beside Jane's in the display. Han Fei-tzu knew her at once as the xenobiologist who had been entrusted with the study of the genetic samples he and Wang-mu had collected. There must have been a breakthrough.
He bowed himself down, reached out, shook the girl's hip as she lay there sleeping. She stirred. She stretched. Then, no doubt remembering her duty, she sat bolt upright. "Have I overslept? What is it? Forgive me for falling asleep, Master Han."
She might have bowed herself in her confusion, but Fei-tzu wouldn't let her. "Jane and Ela asked me to wake you. They wanted you to hear."
"I will tell you first," said Ela, "that what we hoped for is possible. The genetic alterations were crude and easily discovered— I can see why Congress has done its best to keep any real geneticists from working with the human population of Path. The OCD gene wasn't in the normal place, which is why it wasn't identified at once by natologists, but it works almost exactly as naturally-occurring OCD genes work. It can easily be treated separately from the genes that give the god spoken enhanced intellectual and creative abilities. I have already designed a splicer bacterium that, if injected into the blood, will find a person's sperm or ova, enter them, remove the OCD gene, and replace it with a normal one, leaving the rest of the genetic code unaffected. Then the bacterium will die out quickly. It's based on a common bacterium that should already exist in many labs on Path for normal immunology and birth-defect-prevention work. So any of the god spoken who wish to give birth to children without the OCD can do it."
Han Fei-tzu laughed. "I'm the only one on this planet who would wish for such a bacterium. The god spoken have no pity on themselves. They take pride in their affliction. It gives them honour and power."
"Then let me tell you the next thing we found. It was one of my assistants, a pequenino named Glass, who discovered this— I'll admit that I wasn't paying much personal attention to this project since it was relatively easy compared to the descolada problem we're working on."
"Don't apologise," said Fei-tzu. "We are grateful for any kindness. All is undeserved. "
"Yes. Well." She seemed flustered by his courtesy. "Anyway, what Glass discovered is that all but one of the genetic samples you gave us sort themselves neatly into god spoken and non-god spoken categories. We ran the test blind, and only afterward checked the sample lists against the identity lists you gave us— the correspondence was perfect. Every god spoken had the altered gene. Every sample that lacked the altered gene was also not on your list of god spoken."
"You said all but one."
"This one baffled us. Glass is very methodical— he has the patience of a tree. He was sure that the one exception was a clerical error or an error in interpreting the genetic data. He went over it many times, and had other assistants do
the same. There is no doubt. The one exception is clearly a mutation of the god spoken gene. It naturally lacks the OCD, while still retaining all of the other abilities Congress's geneticists so thoughtfully provided."
"So this one person already is what your splicer bacterium is designed to create."
"There are a few other mutated regions that we aren't quite sure of at the moment, but they have nothing to do with the OCD or the enhancements. Nor are they involved in any of the vital processes, so this person should be able to have healthy offspring that carry the trait. In fact, if this person should mate with a person who has been treated with the splicer bacterium, all her offspring will almost certainly carry the enhancements, and there'd be no chance of any of them having the OCD."
"How lucky for him," said Han Fei-tzu.
"Who is it?" asked Wang-mu.
"It's you," said Ela. "Si Wang-mu."
"Me?" She seemed baffled.
But Han Fei-tzu was not confused. "Ha!" he cried. "I should have known. I should have guessed! No wonder you have learned as quickly as my own daughter learned. No wonder you have had insights that helped us all even when you barely understood the subject you were studying. You are as god spoken as anyone on Path, Wang-mu-except that you alone are free of the shackles of the cleansing rituals."
Si Wang-mu struggled to answer, but instead of words, tears came, silently drifting down her face.
"Never again will I permit you to treat me as your superior," said Han Fei-tzu. "From now on you are no servant in my house, but my student, my young colleague. Let others think of you however they want. We know that you are as capable as anyone."
"As Mistress Qing-jao?" Wang-mu whispered.
"As anyone," said Fei-tzu. "Courtesy will require you to bow to many. But in your heart, you need bow to no one."
"I am unworthy," said Wang-mu.
"Everyone is worthy of his own genes. A mutation like that is much more likely to have crippled you. But instead, it left you the healthiest person in the world."
But she would not stop her silent weeping.
Jane must have been showing this to Ela, for she kept her peace for some time. Finally, though, she spoke. "Forgive me, but I have much to do," she said.
"Yes," said Han Fei-tzu. "You may go."
"You misunderstand me," said Ela. "I don't need your permission to go. I have more to say before I go."
Han Fei-tzu bowed his head. "Please. We are listening."
"Yes," whispered Wang-mu. "I'm listening too."
"There is a possibility— a remote one, as you will see, but a possibility nonetheless— that if we are able to decode the descolada virus and tame it, we can also make an adaptation that could be useful on Path."
"How so?" asked Han Fei-tzu. "Why should we want this monstrous artificial virus here?"
"The whole business of the descolada is entering a host organism's cells, reading the genetic code, and re-organising it according to the descolada's own plan. When we alter it, if we can, we'll remove its own plan from it. We'll also remove almost all of its self-defence mechanisms, if we can find them. At that point, it may be possible to use it as a super-splicer. Something that can effect a change, not just on the reproductive cells, but on all the cells of a living creature."
"Forgive me," said Han Fei-tzu, "but I have been reading in this field lately, and the concept of a super-splicer has been rejected, because the body starts to reject its own cells as soon as they're genetically altered."
"Yes," said Ela. "That's how the descolada kills. The body rejects itself to death. But that only happened because the descolada had no plan for dealing with humans. It was studying the human body as it went, making random changes and seeing what happened. It had no single plan for us, and so each victim ended up with many different genetic codes in his or her cells. What if we made a super-splicer that worked according to a single plan, transforming every cell in the body to conform with a single new pattern? In that case, our studies of the descolada assure us that the change could be effected in each individual person within six hours, usually-half a day at the most."
"Fast enough that before the body can reject itself—"
"It will be so perfectly unified that it will recognise the new pattern as itself."
Wang-mu's crying had stopped. She seemed as excited now as Fei-tzu felt, and despite all her self-discipline, she could not contain it. "You can change all the god spoken? Free even the ones who are already alive?"
"If we are able to decode the descolada, then not only would we be able to remove the OCD from the god spoken, we would also be able to install all the enhancements in the common people. It would have the most effect in the children, of course— older people have already passed the growth stages where the new genes would have the most effect. But from that time on, every child born on Path would have the enhancements."
"What then? Would the descolada disappear?"
"I'm not sure. I think we would have to build into the new gene a way for it to destroy itself when its work is done. But we would use Wang-mu's genes as a model. Not to stretch the point, Wang-mu, you would become a sort of genetic co-parent of the entire population of your world."
She laughed. "What a wonderful joke to play on them! So proud to be chosen, and yet their cure will come from one such as me!" At once, though, her face fell and she covered her face with her hands. "How could I say such a thing. I have become as haughty and arrogant as the worst of them."
Fei-tzu laid his hand on her shoulder. "Say nothing so harsh. Such feelings are natural. They come and go quickly. Only those who make them a way of life are to be condemned for them." He turned back to Ela. "There are ethical problems here."
"I know. And I think those problems should be addressed now, even though it may never be possible even to do this. We're talking about the genetic alteration of an entire population. It was an atrocity when Congress secretly did it to Path without the consent or knowledge of the population. Can we undo an atrocity by following the same path?"
"More than that," said Han Fei-tzu. "Our entire social system here is based on the god spoken. Most people will interpret such a transformation as a plague from the gods, punishing us. If it became known that we were the source, we would be killed. It's possible, though, that when it becomes known that the god spoken have lost the voice of the gods— the OCD— the people will turn on them and kill them. How will freeing them from the OCD have helped them then, if they're dead?"
"We've discussed this," said Ela. "And we have no idea what's the right thing to do. For now the question is moot because we haven't decoded the descolada and may never be able to. But if we develop the capability, we believe that the choice of whether to use it should be yours."
"The people of Path?"
"No," said Ela. "The first choices are yours, Han Fei-tzu, Si Wang-mu, and Han Qing-jao. Only you know of what has been done to you, and even though your daughter doesn't believe it, she does fairly represent the viewpoint of the believers and the god spoken of Path. If we get the capability, put the question to her. Put the question to yourselves. Is there some plan, some way to bring this transformation to Path, that would not be destructive? And if it can be done, should it be done? No— say nothing now, decide nothing now. Think about it yourselves. We are not part of this. We will only inform you when or whether we learn how to do it. From there it will be up to you."
Ela's face disappeared.
Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Saga 3 - Xenocide Page 52
