“Mistress, whoever controls this program has enormous power, and yet we've never heard of them and they've never used this power until now.”
“They've used it,” said Qing-jao. “To hide Demosthenes' true identity. This Valentine Wiggin is very rich, too, but her ownerships are all concealed so that no one realizes how much she has, that all of her possessions are part of the same fortune.”
“This powerful program has dwelt in every ansible computer since starflight began, and yet all it ever did was hide this woman's fortune?”
“You're right,” said Qing-jao, “it makes no sense at all. Why didn't someone with this much power already use it to take control of things? Or perhaps they did. They were there before Starways Congress was formed, so maybe they… but then why would they oppose Congress now?”
“Maybe,” said Wang-mu, “maybe they just don't care about power.”
“Who doesn't?”
“Whoever controls this secret program.”
“Then why would they have created the program in the first place? Wangmu, you aren't thinking.”
No, of course not, I never think. Wang-mu bowed her head.
“I mean you are thinking, but you're not thinking of this: Nobody would create such a powerful program unless they wanted that much power– I mean, think of what this program does, what it can do– intercept every message from the fleet and make it look like none were ever sent! Bring Demosthenes' writings to every settled planet and yet hide the fact that those messages were sent! They could do anything, they could alter any message, they could spread confusion everywhere or fool people into thinking– into thinking there's a war, or give them orders to do anything, and how would anybody know that it wasn't true? If they really had so much power, they'd use it! They would!”
“Unless maybe the programs don't want to be used that way.”
Qing-jao laughed aloud. “Now, Wang-mu, that was one of our first lessons about computers. It's all right for the common people to imagine that computers actually decide things, but you and I know that computers are only servants, they only do what they're told, they never actually want anything themselves.”
Wang-mu almost lost control of herself, almost flew into a rage. Do you think that never wanting anything is a way that computers are similar to servants? Do you really think that we servants do only what we're told and never want anything ourselves? Do you think that just because the gods don't make us rub our noses on the floor or wash our hands till they bleed that we don't have any other desires?
Well, if computers and servants are just alike, then it's because computers have desires, not because servants don't have them. Because we want. We yearn. We hunger. What we never do is act on those hungers, because if we did you godspoken ones would send us away and find others more obedient.
“Why are you angry?” asked Qing-jao.
Horrified that she had let her feelings show on her face, Wang-mu bowed her head. “Forgive me,” she said.
“Of course I forgive you, I just want to understand you as well,” said Qing-jao. “Were you angry because I laughed at you? I'm sorry– I shouldn't have. You've only been studying with me for these few months, so of course you sometimes forget and slip back to the beliefs you grew up with, and it's wrong of me to laugh. Please, forgive me for that.”
"Oh, Mistress, it's not my place to forgive you. You must forgive me.
“No, I was wrong. I know it– the gods have shown me my unworthiness for laughing at you.”
Then the gods are very stupid, if they think that it was your laughter that made me angry. Either that or they're lying to you. I hate your gods and how they humiliate you without ever telling you a single thing worth knowing. So let them strike me dead for thinking that thought!
But Wang-mu knew that wouldn't happen. The gods would never lift a finger against Wang-mu herself. They'd only make Qing-jao– who was her friend, in spite of everything– they'd make Qing-jao bow down and trace the floor until Wang-mu felt so ashamed that she wanted to die.
“Mistress,” said Wang-mu, “you did nothing wrong and I was never offended.”
It was no use. Qing-jao was on the floor. Wang-mu turned away, buried her face in her hands– but kept silent, refusing to make a sound even in her weeping, because that would force Qing-jao to start over again. Or it would convince her that she had hurt Wang-mu so badly that she had to trace two lines, or three, or– let the gods not require it! –the whole floor again. Someday, thought Wang-mu, the gods will tell Qing-jao to trace every line on every board in every room in the house and she'll die of thirst or go mad trying to do it.
To stop herself from weeping in frustration, Wang-mu forced herself to look at the terminal and read the report that Qing-jao had read. Valentine Wiggin was born on Earth during the Bugger Wars. She had started using the name Demosthenes as a child, at the same time as her brother Peter, who used the name Locke and went to on to be Hegemon. She wasn't simply a Wiggin– she was one of the Wiggins, sister of Peter the Hegemon and Ender the Xenocide. She had been only a footnote in the histories– Wang-mu hadn't even remembered her name till now, just the fact that the great Peter and the monster Ender had a sister. But the sister turned out to be just as strange as her brothers; she was the immortal one; she was the one who kept on changing humanity with her words.
Wang-mu could hardly believe this. Demosthenes had already been important in her life, but now to learn that the real Demosthenes was sister of the Hegemon! The one whose story was told in the holy book of the speakers for the dead: the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Not that it was holy only to them. Practically every religion had made a space for that book, because the story was so strong– about the destruction of the first alien species humanity ever discovered, and then about the terrible good and evil that wrestled in the soul of the first man ever to unite all of humanity under one government. Such a complex story, and yet told so simply and clearly that many people read it and were moved by it when they were children. Wang-mu had first heard it read aloud when she was five. It was one of the deepest stories in her soul.
She had dreamed, not once but twice, that she met the Hegemon himself– Peter, only he insisted that she call him by his network name, Locke. She was both fascinated and repelled by him; she could not look away. Then he reached out his hand and said, Si Wang-mu, Royal Mother of the West, only you are a fit consort for the ruler of all humanity, and he took her and married her and she sat beside him on his throne.
Now, of course, she knew that almost every poor girl had dreams of marrying a rich man or finding out she was really the child of a rich family or some other such nonsense. But dreams were also sent from the gods, and there was truth in any dream you had more than once; everyone knew that. So she still felt a strong affinity for Peter Wiggin; and now, to realize that Demosthenes, for whom she had also felt great admiration, was his sister– that was almost too much of a coincidence to bear. I don't care what my mistress says, Demosthenes! cried Wang-mu silently. I love you anyway, because you have told me the truth all my life. And I love you also as the sister of the Hegemon, who is the husband of my dreams.
Wang-mu felt the air in the room change; she knew the door had been opened. She looked, and there stood Mu-pao, the ancient and most dreaded housekeeper herself, the terror of all servants– including Wang-mu, even though Mu-pao had relatively little power over a secret maid. At once Wang-mu moved to the door, as silently as possible so as not to interrupt Qing-jao's purification.
Out in the hall, Mu-pao closed the door to the room so Qing-jao wouldn't hear.
“The Master calls for his daughter. He's very agitated; he cried out a while ago, and frightened everyone.”
“I heard the cry,” said Wang-mu. “Is he ill?”
“I don't know. He's very agitated. He sent me for your mistress and says he must talk to her at once. But if she's communing with the gods, he'll understand; make sure you tell her to come to him as soon as she's done.”
“I'll t
ell her now. She has told me that nothing should stop her from answering the call of her father,” said Wang-mu.
Mu-pao looked aghast at the thought. “But it's forbidden to interrupt when the gods are–”
“Qing-jao will do a greater penance later. She will want to know her father is calling her.” It gave Wang-mu great satisfaction to put Mu-pao in her place. You may be ruler of the house servants, Mu-pao, but I am the one who has the power to interrupt even the conversation between my godspoken mistress and the gods themselves.
As Wang-mu expected, Qing-jao's first reaction to being interrupted was bitter frustration, fury, weeping. But when Wang-mu bowed herself abjectly to the floor, Qing-jao immediately calmed. This is why I love her and why I can bear serving her, thought Wang-mu, because she does not love the power she has over me and because she has more compassion than any of the other godspoken I have heard of. Qing-jao listened to Wang-mu's explanation of why she had interrupted, and then embraced her. “Ah, my friend Wang-mu, you are very wise. If my father has cried out in anguish and then called to me, the gods know that I must put off my purification and go to him.”
Wang-mu followed her down the hallway, down the stairs, until they knelt together on the mat before Han Fei-tzu's chair.
Qing-jao waited for Father to speak, but he said nothing. Yet his hands trembled. She had never seen him so anxious.
“Father,” said Qing-jao, “why did you call me?”
He shook his head. “Something so terrible– and so wonderful– I don't know whether to shout for joy or kill myself.” Father's voice was husky and out of control. Not since Mother died– no, not since Father had held her after the test that proved she was godspoken– not since then had she heard him speak so emotionally.
“Tell me, Father, and then I'll tell you my news– I've found Demosthenes, and I may have found the key to the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet.”
Father's eyes opened wider. “On this day of all days, you've solved the problem?”
“If it is what I think it is, then the enemy of Congress can be destroyed. But it will be very hard. Tell me what you've discovered!”
“No, you tell me first. This is strange– both happening on the same day. Tell me!”
“It was Wang-mu who made me think of it. She was asking questions about– oh, about how computers work– and suddenly I realized that if there were in every ansible computer a hidden program, one so wise and powerful that it could move itself from place to place to stay hidden, then that secret program could be intercepting all the ansible communications. The fleet might still be there, might even be sending messages, but we're not receiving them and don't even know that they exist because of these programs.”
“In every ansible computer? Working flawlessly all the time?” Father sounded skeptical, of course, because in her eagerness Qing-jao had told the story backward.
“Yes, but let me tell you how such an impossible thing might be possible. You see, I found Demosthenes.”
Father listened as Qing-jao told him all about Valentine Wiggin, and how she had been writing secretly as Demosthenes all these years. “She is clearly able to send secret ansible messages, or her writings couldn't be distributed from a ship in flight to all the different worlds. Only the military is supposed to be able to communicate with ships that are traveling near the speed of light– she must have either penetrated the military's computers or duplicated their power. And if she can do all that, if the program exists to allow her to do it, then that same program would clearly have the power to intercept the ansible messages from the fleet.”
“If A, then B, yes– but how could this woman have planted a program in every ansible computer in the first place?”
“Because she did it at the first! That's how old she is. In fact, if Hegemon Locke was her brother, perhaps– no, of course– he did it! When the first colonization fleets went out, with their philotic double-triads aboard to be the heart of each colony's first ansible, he could have sent that program with them.”
Father understood at once; of course he did. “As Hegemon he had the power, and the reason as well– a secret program under his control, so that if there were a rebellion or a coup, he would still hold in his hands the threads that bind the worlds together.”
“And when he died, Demosthenes– his sister– she was the only one who knew the secret! Isn't it wonderful? We've found it. All we have to do is wipe all those programs out of memory!”
“Only to have the programs instantly restored through the ansible by other copies of the program on other worlds,” said Father. “It must have happened a thousand times before over the centuries, a computer breaking down and the secret program restoring itself on the new one.”
“Then we have to cut off all the ansibles at the same time,” said Qing-jao. “On every world, have a new computer ready that has never been contaminated by any contact with the secret program. Shut the ansibles down all at once, cut off the old computers, bring the new computers online, and wake up the ansibles. The secret program can't restore itself because it isn't on any of the computers, Then the power of Congress will have no rival to interfere!”
“You can't do it,” said Wang-mu.
Qing-jao looked at her secret maid in shock. How could the girl be so ill-bred as to interrupt a conversation between two of the godspoken in order to contradict them?
But Father was gracious– he was always gracious, even to people who had overstepped all the bounds of respect and decency. I must learn to be more like him, thought Qing-jao. I must allow servants to keep their dignity even when their actions have forfeited any such consideration.
“Si Wang-mu,” said Father, “why can't we do it?”
“Because to have all the ansibles shut off at the same time, you would have to send messages by ansible,” said Wang-mu. “Why would the program allow you to send messages that would lead to its own destruction?”
Qing-jao followed her father's example by speaking patiently to Wang-mu. “It's only a program– it doesn't know the content of messages. Whoever rules the program told it to hide all the communications from the fleet, and to conceal the tracks of all the messages from Demosthenes. It certainly doesn't read the messages and decide from their contents whether to send them.”
“How do you know?” asked Wang-mu.
“Because such a program would have to be– intelligent!”
“But it would have to be intelligent anyway,” said Wang-mu. “It has to be able to hide from any other program that would find it. It has to be able to move itself around in memory to conceal itself. How would it be able to tell which programs it had to hide from, unless it could read them and interpret them? It might even be intelligent enough to rewrite other programs so they wouldn't look in the places where this program was hiding.”
Qing-jao immediately thought of several reasons why a program could be smart enough to read other programs but not intelligent enough to understand human languages. But because Father was there, it was his place to answer Wang-mu. Qing-jao waited.
“If there is such a program,” said Father, “it might be very intelligent indeed.”
Qing-jao was shocked. Father was taking Wang-mu seriously. As if Wang-mu's ideas were not those of a naive child.
“It might be so intelligent that it not only intercepts messages, but also sends them.” Then Father shook his head. “No, the message came from a friend. A true friend, and she spoke of things that no one else could know. It was a real message.”
“What message did you receive, Father?”
“It was from Keikoa Amaauka; I knew her face to face when we were young. She was the daughter of a scientist from Otaheiti who was here to study genetic drift of Earthborn species in their first two centuries on Path. They left– they were sent away quite abruptly …” He paused, as if considering whether to say something. Then he decided, and said it: “If she had stayed she might have become your mother.”
Qing-jao was both thrilled and frig
htened to have Father speak of such a thing to her. He never spoke of his past. And now to say that he once loved another woman besides his wife who gave birth to Qing-jao, this was so unexpected that Qing-jao didn't know what to say.
“She was sent somewhere very far away. It's been thirty-five years. Most of my life has passed since she left. But she only just arrived, a year ago. And now she has sent me a message telling me why her father was sent away. To her, our parting was only a year ago. To her, I'm still–”
“Her lover,” said Wang-mu.
The impertinence! thought Qing-jao. But Father only nodded. Then he turned to his terminal and paged through the display. “Her father had stumbled onto a genetic difference in the most important Earthborn species on Path.”
“Rice?” asked Wang-mu.
Qing-jao laughed. “No, Wang-mu. We are the most important Earthborn species on this world.”
Wang-mu looked abashed. Qing-jao patted her shoulder. This was as it should be– Father had encouraged Wang-mu too much, had led her to think she understood things that were still far beyond her education. Wang-mu needed these gentle reminders now and then, so she did not get her hopes too high. The girl must not allow herself to dream of being the intellectual equal of one of the godspoken, or her life would be filled with disappointment instead of contentment.
“He detected a consistent, inheritable genetic difference in some of the people of Path, but when he reported it, his transfer came almost immediately. He was told that human beings were not within the scope of his study.”
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