Children of the Mind
Page 24
Yasujiro bowed again and went out into his reception room. Aimaina Hikari was still standing. His secretary, also standing, shrugged helplessly, as if to say, He would not sit down. Yasujiro bowed deeply, and again, and then again, before he asked if he could present his friends.
Aimaina frowned and asked softly, "Are these the Shigeru Fushimis who claim to be descended from a noble family--which died out two thousand years before suddenly coming up with new offspring?"
Yasujiro felt suddenly faint with dread that Aimaina, who was, after all, guardian of the Yamato spirit, would humiliate him by challenging the Fushimis' claim to noble blood. "It is a small and harmless vanity," said Yasujiro quietly. "A man may be proud of his family."
"As your namesake, the founder of the Tsutsumi fortune, was proud to forget that his ancestors were Korean."
"You have said yourself," said Yasujiro, absorbing the insult to himself with equanimity, "that all Japanese are Korean in origin, but those with the Yamato spirit crossed over to the islands as quickly as they could. Mine followed yours by only a few centuries."
Aimaina laughed. "You are still my sly quick-witted student! Take me to your friends, I would be honored to meet them."
There followed ten minutes of bows and smiles, pleasant compliments and self-abnegations. Yasujiro was relieved that there wasn't a hint of condescension or irony when Aimaina said the name "Fushimi," and that Young Shigeru was so dazzled to meet the great Aimaina Hikari that the insult of the interrupted meeting was clearly forgotten. The two Shigerus went away with a half dozen holograms of their meeting with Aimaina, and Yasujiro was pleased that Old Shigeru had insisted that Yasujiro stand right there in the holograms with the Fushimis and the great philosopher.
Finally, Yasujiro and Aimaina were alone in his office with the door closed. At once Aimaina went to the window and drew open the curtain to reveal the other tall buildings of Nagoya's financial district and then a view of the countryside, thoroughly farmed in the flatlands, but still wild woodland in the hills, a place of foxes and badgers.
"I am relieved to see that even though a Tsutsumi is here in Nagoya, there is still undeveloped land within sight of the city. I had not thought this possible."
"Even if you disdain my family, I am proud to have our name on your lips," said Yasujiro. But silently he wanted to ask, Why are you determined to insult my family today?
"Are you proud of the man you were named for? The buyer of land, the builder of golf courses? To him all wild country cried out for cabins or putting greens. For that matter, he never saw a woman too ugly to try to get a child with her. Do you follow him in that, too?"
Yasujiro was baffled. Everyone knew the stories of the founder of the Tsutsumi fortune. They had not been news for three thousand years. "What have I done to bring such anger down on my head?"
"You have done nothing," said Hikari. "And my anger is not at you. My anger is at myself, because I also have done nothing. I speak of your family's sins of ancient times because the only hope for the Yamato people is to remember all our sins of the past. But we forget. We are so rich now, we own so much, we build so much, that there is no project of any importance on any of the Hundred Worlds that does not have Yamato hands somewhere in it. Yet we forget the lessons of our ancestors."
"I beg to learn from you, master."
"Once long ago, when Japan was still struggling to enter the modern age, we let ourselves be ruled by our military. Soldiers were our masters, and they led us into an evil war, to conquer nations that had done us no wrong."
"We paid for our crimes when atomic bombs fell on our islands."
"Paid?" cried Aimaina. "What is to pay or not to pay? Are we suddenly Christians, who pay for sins? No. The Yamato way is not to pay for error, but to learn from it. We threw out the military and conquered the world with the excellence of our design and the reliability of our labor. The language of the Hundred Worlds may be based on English, but the money of the Hundred Worlds came originally from the yen."
"But the Yamato people still buy and sell," said Yasujiro. "We have not forgotten the lesson."
"That was only half the lesson. The other half was: We will not make war."
"But there is no Japanese fleet, no Japanese army."
"That is the lie we tell ourselves to cover our crimes," said Aimaina. "I had a visit two days ago from two strangers--mortal humans, but I know the god sent them. They rebuked me because it is the Necessarian school that provided the pivotal votes in the Starways Congress to send the Lusitania Fleet. A fleet whose sole purpose is to repeat the crime of Ender the Xenocide and destroy a world that harbors a frail species of raman who do no harm to anyone!"
Yasujiro quailed under the weight of Aimaina's anger. "But master, what do I have to do with the military?"
"Yamato philosophers taught the theory that Yamato politicians acted upon. Japanese votes made the difference. This evil fleet must be stopped."
"Nothing can be stopped today," said Yasujiro. "The ansibles are all shut down, as are all the computer networks while the terrible all-eating virus is expelled from the system."
"Tomorrow the ansibles will come back again," said Aimaina. "And so tomorrow the shame of Japanese participation in xenocide must be averted."
"Why do you come to me?" said Yasujiro. "I may bear the name of my great ancestor, but half the boys in my family are named Yasujiro or Yoshiaki or Seiji. I am master of the Tsutsumi holdings in Nagoya--"
"Don't be modest. You are the Tsutsumi of the world of Divine Wind."
"I am listened to in other cities," said Yasujiro, "but the orders come from the family center on Honshu. And I have no political influence at all. If the problem is the Necessarians, talk to them!"
Aimaina sighed. "Oh, that would do no good. They would spend six months arguing about how to reconcile their new position with their old position, proving that they had not changed their minds after all, that their philosophy embraced the full 180-degree shift. And the politicians--they are committed. Even if the philosophers change their minds, it would be at least a political generation--three elections, the saying goes--before the new policy would be in effect. Thirty years! The Lusitania Fleet will have done all its evil before then."
"Then what is there to do but despair and live in shame?" asked Yasujiro. "Unless you're planning some futile and stupid gesture." He grinned at his master, knowing that Aimaina would recognize the words he himself always used when denigrating the ancient practice of seppuku, ritual suicide, as something the Yamato spirit had left behind as a child leaves its diapers.
Aimaina did not laugh. "The Lusitania Fleet is seppuku for the Yamato spirit." He came and stood looming over Yasujiro--or so it felt, though Yasujiro was taller than the old man by half a head. "The politicians have made the Lusitania Fleet popular, so the philosophers cannot now change their minds. But when philosophy and elections cannot change the minds of politicians, money can!"
"You are not suggesting something so shameful as bribery, are you?" said Yasujiro, wondering as he said it whether Aimaina knew how widespread the buying of politicians was.
"Do you think I keep my eyes in my anus?" asked Aimaina, using an expression so crude that Yasujiro gasped and averted his gaze, laughing nervously. "Do you think I don't know that there are ten ways to buy every crooked politician and a hundred ways to buy every honest one? Contributions, threats of sponsoring opponents, donations to noble causes, jobs given to relatives or friends--do I have to recite the list?"
"You seriously want Tsutsumi money committed to stopping the Lusitania Fleet?"
Aimaina walked again to the window and spread out his arms as if to embrace all that could be seen of the outside world. "The Lusitania Fleet is bad for business, Yasujiro. If the Molecular Disruption Device is used against one world, it will be used against another. And the military, when it has such power placed again in its hands, this time will not let it go."
"Will I persuade the heads of my family by quoting your prophecy,
master?"
"It is not a prophecy," said Aimaina, "and it is not mine. It is a law of human nature, and it is history that teaches it to us. Stop the fleet, and Tsutsumi will be known as the saviors, not only of the Yamato spirit, but of the human spirit as well. Do not let this grave sin be on the heads of our people."
"Forgive me, master, but it seems to me that you are the one putting it there. No one noticed that we bore responsibility for this sin until you said it here today."
"I do not put the sin there. I merely take off the hat that covers it. Yasujiro, you were one of my best students. I forgave you for using what I taught you in such complicated ways, because you did it for your family's sake."
"And this that you ask of me now--this is perfectly simple?"
"I have taken the most direct action--I have spoken plainly to the most powerful representative of the richest of the Japanese trading families that I could reach on this day. And what I ask of you is the minimum action required to do what is necessary."
"In this case the minimum puts my career at great risk," said Yasujiro thoughtfully.
Aimaina said nothing.
"My greatest teacher once told me," said Yasujiro, "that a man who has risked his life knows that careers are worthless, and a man who will not risk his career has a worthless life."
"So you will do it?"
"I will prepare my messages to make your case to all the Tsutsumi family. When the ansibles are linked again, I will send them."
"I knew you would not disappoint me."
"Better than that," said Yasujiro. "When I am thrown out of my job, I will come and live with you."
Aimaina bowed. "I would be honored to have you dwell in my house."
The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally. Minutes passed in which Val-Jane held the weeping Miro, and then time dried his tears, time loosened her embrace, and time, finally, ended Ela's patience.
"Let's get back to work," said Ela. "I'm not unfeeling, but our predicament is unchanged."
Quara was surprised. "But Jane's not dead. Doesn't that mean we can get back home?"
Val-Jane at once got up and moved back to her computer terminal. Every movement was easy because of the reflexes and habits the Val-brain had developed; but the Jane-mind found each movement fresh and new; she marveled at the dance of her fingers pressing the keys to control the display. "I don't know," Jane said, answering the question that Quara had voiced, but all were asking. "I'm still uncertain in this flesh. The ansibles haven't been restored. I do have a handful of allies who will relink some of my old programs to the network once it is restored--some Samoans on Pacifica, Han Fei-tzu on Path, the Abo university on Outback. Will those programs be enough? Will the new networking software allow me to tap the resources I need to hold all the information of a starship and so many people in my mind? Will having this body interfere? Will my new link to the mothertrees be a help or a distraction?" And then the most important question: "Do we wish to be my first test flight?"
"Somebody has to," said Ela.
"I think I'll try one of the starships on Lusitania, if I can reestablish contact with them," said Jane. "With only a single hive queen worker on board. That way if it is lost, it will not be missed." Jane turned to nod to the worker who was with them. "Begging your pardon, of course."
"You don't have to apologize to the worker," said Quara. "It's really just the Hive Queen anyway."
Jane looked over at Miro and winked. Miro did not wink back, but the look of sadness in his eyes was answer enough. He knew that the workers were not quite what everyone thought. The hive queens sometimes had to tame them, because not all of them were utterly subjected to their mother's will. But the was-it-or-wasn't-it-slavery of the workers was a matter for another generation to work out.
"Languages," said Jane. "Carried by genetic molecules. What kind of grammar must they have? Are they linked to sounds, smells, sights? Let's see how smart we all are without me inside the computers helping." That struck her as so amazingly funny that she laughed aloud. Ah, how marvelous it was to have her own laughter sounding in her ears, bubbling upward from her lungs, spasming her diaphragm, bringing tears to her eyes!
Only when her laughter ended did she realize how leaden the sound of it must have been to Miro, to the others. "I'm sorry," she said, abashed, and felt a blush rising up her neck into her cheeks. Who could have believed it could burn so hot! It almost made her laugh again. "I'm not used to being alive like this. I know I'm rejoicing when the rest of you are grim, but don't you see? Even if we all die when the air runs out in a few weeks, I can't help but marvel at how it feels to me!"
"We understand," said Firequencher. "You have passed into your Second Life. It's a joyful time for us, as well."
"I spent time among your trees, you know," said Jane. "Your mothertrees made space for me. Took me in and nurtured me. Does that make us brother and sister now?"
"I hardly know what it would mean, to have a sister," said Firequencher. "But if you remember the life in the dark of the mothertree, then you remember more than I do. We have dreams sometimes, but no real memories of the First Life in darkness. Still, that makes this your Third Life after all."
"Then I'm an adult?" asked Jane, and she laughed again.
And again felt how her laugh stilled the others, hurt them.
But something odd happened as she turned, ready to apologize again. Her glance fell upon Miro, and instead of saying the words she had planned--the Jane-words that would have come out of the jewel in his ear only the day before--other words came to her lips, along with a memory. "If my memories live, Miro, then I'm alive. Isn't that what you told me?"
Miro shook his head. "Are you speaking from Val's memory, or from Jane's memory when she--when you--overheard us speaking in the Hive Queen's cave? Don't comfort me by pretending to be her."
Jane, by habit--Val's habit? or her own?--snapped, "When I comfort you, you'll know it."
"And how will I know?" Miro snapped back.
"Because you'll be comfortable, of course," said Val-Jane. "In the meantime, please keep in mind that I'm not listening through the jewel in your ear now. I see only with these eyes and hear only with these ears."
This was not strictly true, of course. For many times a second, she felt the flowing sap, the unstinting welcome of the mothertrees as her aiua satisfied its hunger for largeness by touring the vast network of the pequenino philotes. And now and then, outside the mothertrees, she caught a glimmer of a thought, of a word, a phrase, spoken in the language of the fathertrees. Or was it their language? Rather it was the language behind the language, the underlying speech of the speechless. And whose was that other voice? I know you--you are of the kind that made me. I know your voice.
Jane was not prepared for the swelling of pride that glowed through her entire Val-body; she felt the physical effect of the emotion as Val, but her pride came from the praise of a hive-mother. I am a daughter of hive queens, she realized, and so it matters when she speaks to me, and tells me I have done well.
And if I'm the hive queens' daughter, I am Ender's daughter, too, his daughter twice over, for they made my lifestuff partly from his mind, so I could be a bridge between them; and now I dwell in a body that also came from him, and whose memories are from a time when he dwelt here and lived this body's life. I am his daughter, but once again I cannot speak to him.
All this time, all these thoughts, and yet she did not show or even feel the slightest lapse of concentration on what she was doing with her computer on the starship circling the descolada planet. She was still Jane. It wasn't the computerness of her that had allowed her, all these years, to maintain many layers of attention and focus on many tasks at once. It was her hive-queen nature that allowed this.
Which of you is speaking to me? asked Jane.
Am I still myself, then? Will I have again all the powers I lost when the Starways Congress killed my old virtual body?
And now she felt the sharp disappointment from a parent's unconcern, a sinking feeling in the stomach, a kind of shame. But this was a human emotion; it arose from the Val-body, though it was in response to her relationship with her hive-queen mothers. Everything was more complicated--and yet it was simpler. Her feelings were now flagged by a body, which responded before she understood what she felt herself. In the old days, she scarcely knew she had feelings. She had them, yes, even irrational responses, desires below the level of consciousness--these were attributes of all aiuas, when linked with others in any kind of life--but there had been no simple signals to tell her what her feelings were. How easy it was to be a human, with your emotions expressed on the canvas of your own body. And yet how hard, because you couldn't hide your feelings from yourself half so easily.
Thank you, she said silently . . . and backed away.
At dawn the sun came up over the mountain that was the spine of the island, so that the sky was light long before any sunlight touched the trees directly. The wind off the sea had cooled them in the night. Peter awoke with Wang-mu curled into the curve of his body, like shrimps lined up on a market rack. The closeness of her felt good; it felt familiar. Yet how could it be? He had never slept so close to her before. Was it some vestigial Ender memory? He wasn't conscious of having any such memories. It had disappointed him, actually, when he realized it. He had thought that perhaps when his body had complete possession of the aiua, he would become Ender--he would have a lifetime of real memories instead of the paltry faked-up memories that had come with his body when Ender created it. No such luck.