Children of the Mind

by Orson Scott Card

  None of this had been done with any human participation on Lusitania. All the programming that was required had been accomplished by the relentlessly efficient workers of the Hive Queen, with the help of pequeninos now and then. Olhado and Grego had been invited at the last minute, as observers only. But they understood. Jane was talking to the Hive Queen and the Hive Queen talked to the fathertrees. Jane had not worked through humans because the Lusitanian humans she worked with had been Miro, who had other work to do for her, and Ender, who had removed the jewel from his ear before he died. Olhado and Grego had talked this out as soon as the pequenino Waterjumper had explained to them what was going on and asked them to come observe. "I think she was feeling a bit defiant," said Olhado. "If Ender rejected her and Miro was busy--"

  "Or gaga-eyed over Young Valentine, don't forget," said Grego.

  "Well, she'd do it without human help."

  "How can it work?" said Grego. "She was connected to billions of computers before. At most she'll have several thousand now, at least directly usable. It's not enough. Ela and Quara are never coming home. Or Miro."

  "Maybe not," said Olhado. "It won't be the first time we've lost family members in the service of a higher cause." He thought of Mother's famous parents, Os Venerados, who lacked only the years now for sainthood--if a representative of the Pope should ever come to Lusitania to examine the evidence. And their real father, Libo, and his father, both of whom died before Novinha's children ever guessed that they were kin. All dead in the cause of science, Os Venerados in the struggle to contain the descolada, Pipo and Libo in the effort to communicate with and understand the pequeninos. Their brother Quim had died as a martyr, trying to heal a dangerous breach in the relationship between humans and pequeninos on Lusitania. And now Ender, their adoptive father, had died in the cause of trying to find a way to save Jane's life and, with her, faster-than-light travel. If Miro and Ela and Quara should die in the effort to establish communications with the descoladores, it would be a part of the family tradition. "What I wonder," said Olhado, "is what's wrong with us, that we haven't been asked to die in a noble cause."

  "I don't know about noble causes," said Grego, "but we do have a fleet aimed at us. That will do, I think, for getting us dead."

  A sudden flurry of activity at the computer terminals told them that their wait was over. "We've linked with Samoa," said Waterjumper. "And now Memphis. And Path. Hegira." He did the little jig that pequeninos invariably did when they were delighted. "They're all going to come online. The snooper programs didn't find them."

  "But will it be enough?" asked Grego. "Do the starships move again?"

  Waterjumper shrugged elaborately. "We'll know when your family gets back, won't we?"

  "Mother doesn't want to schedule Ender's funeral until they're back," said Grego.

  At the mention of Ender's name, Waterjumper slumped. "The man who took Human into the Third Life," he said. "And there's almost nothing of him to bury."

  "I'm just wondering," said Grego, "if it will be days or weeks or months before Jane finds her way back into her powers--if she can do it at all."

  "I don't know," said Waterjumper.

  "They only have a few weeks of air," said Grego.

  "He doesn't know, Grego," said Olhado.

  "I know that," said Grego. "But the Hive Queen knows. And she'll tell the fathertrees. I thought . . . word might have seeped down."

  "How could even the Hive Queen know what will happen in the future?" asked Olhado. "How can anyone know what Jane can or can't accomplish? We've linked again with worlds outside of this one. Some parts of her core memory have been restored to the ansible net, however surreptitiously. She might find them. She might not. If found, they might be enough, or might not. But Waterjumper doesn't know."

  Grego turned away. "I know," he said.

  "We're all afraid," said Olhado. "Even the Hive Queen. None of us wants to die."

  "Jane died, but didn't stay dead," said Grego. "According to Miro, Ender's aiua is supposedly off living as Peter on some other world. Hive queens die and their memories live on in their daughters' minds. Pequeninos get to live as trees."

  "Some of us," said Waterjumper.

  "But what of us?" said Grego. "Will we be extinguished? What difference does it make then, the ones of us who had plans, what does it matter the work we've done? The children we've raised?" He looked pointedly at Olhado. "What will it matter then, that you have such a big happy family, if you're all erased in one instant by that . . . bomb?"

  "Not one moment of my life with my family has been wasted," said Olhado quietly.

  "But the point of it is to go on, isn't it? To connect with the future?"

  "That's one part, yes," said Olhado. "But part of the purpose of it is now, is the moment. And part of it is the web of connections. Links from soul to soul. If the purpose of life was just to continue into the future, then none of it would have meaning, because it would be all anticipation and preparation. There's fruition, Grego. There's the happiness we've already had. The happiness of each moment. The end of our lives, even if there's no forward continuation, no progeny at all, the end of our lives doesn't erase the beginning."

  "But it won't have amounted to anything," said Grego. "If your children die, then it was all a waste."

  "No," said Olhado quietly. "You say that because you have no children, Greguinho. But none of it is wasted. The child you hold in your arms for only a day before he dies, that is not wasted, because that one day is enough of a purpose in itself. Entropy has been thrown back for an hour, a day, a week, a month. Just because we might all die here on this little world does not undo the lives before the deaths."

  Grego shook his head. "Yes it does, Olhado. Death undoes everything."

  Olhado shrugged. "Then why do you bother doing everything, Grego? Because someday you will die. Why should anyone ever have children? Someday they will die, their children will die, all children will die. Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we were there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth--what is, what was, what will be--not what could be, what should have been, what never can be. If we die, then our death has meaning to the rest of the universe. Even if our lives are unknown, the fact that someone lived here, and died, that will have repercussions, that will shape the universe."

  "So that's meaning enough for you?" said Grego. "To die as an object lesson? To die so that people can feel awful about having killed you?"

  "There are worse meanings for a life to have."

  Waterjumper interrupted them. "The last of the ansibles we expected is online. We have them all connected now."

  They stopped talking. It was time for Jane to find her way back into herself, if she could.

  They waited.

  Through one of her workers, the Hive Queen saw and heard the news of the restoration of the ansible links. she told the fathertrees.

 

  said the Hive Queen.

 

  said the Hive Queen.

 

 

 

 

  At his terminal on the stranded starship, the Hive Queen's worker suddenly looked up, then arose from her seat and walked to Jane.

  Jane looked up from her work. "What is it?" she asked distractedly. And then, remembering the signal she was waiting for, she looked over at Miro, who had turned to see what was happening. "I've got to go now," she said.

  Then she flopped back in her seat as if she had fainte
d.

  At once Miro was out of his chair; Ela wasn't far behind. The worker had already unfastened Jane from the chair and was lifting her off. Miro helped her draw Jane's body through the corridors of weightless space to the beds in the back of the ship. There they laid her down and secured her to a bed. Ela checked her vital signs.

  "She's sleeping deeply," said Ela. "Breathing very slowly."

  "A coma?" asked Miro.

  "She's doing the minimum to stay alive," said Ela. "Other than that, there's nothing."

  "Come on," said Quara from the door. "Let's get back to work."

  Miro rounded on her, furious--but Ela restrained him. "You can stay and watch over her if you want," she said, "but Quara's right. We have work to do. She's doing hers."

  Miro turned back to Jane and touched her hand, took it, held it. The others left the sleeping quarters. You can't hear me, you can't feel me, you can't see me, Miro said silently. So I guess I'm not here for you. Yet I can't leave you. What am I afraid of? We're all dead if you don't succeed at what you're doing now. So it isn't your death I fear.

  It's your old self. Your old existence among the computers and the ansibles. You've had your fling in a human body, but when your old powers are restored, your human life will be just a small part of you again. Just one sensory input device among millions. One small set of memories lost in an overwhelming sea of memory. You'll be able to devote one tiny part of your attention to me, and I'll never know that I am perpetually an afterthought in your life.

  That's just one of the drawbacks when you love somebody so much greater than yourself, Miro told himself. I'll never know the difference. She'll come back and I'll be happy with all the time we have together and I'll never know how little time and effort she actually devotes to being with me. A diversion, that's what I am.

  Then he shook his head, let go of her hand, and left the room. I will not listen to the voice of despair, he told himself. Would I tame this great being and make her so much my slave that every moment of her life belongs to me? Would I focus her eyes so they can see nothing but my face? I must rejoice that I am part of her, instead of resenting that I'm not more of her.

  He returned to his place and got back to work. But a few moments later he got up again and went back to her. He was useless until she came back. Until he knew the outcome, he could think of nothing else.

  Jane was not precisely adrift. She had her unbroken connection to the three ansibles of Lusitania, and she found them easily. And just as easily found the new connections to ansibles on a half dozen worlds. From there, she quickly found her way through the thicket of interrupts and cutouts that protected her back door into the system from discovery by Congress's snoop programs. All was as she and her friends had planned.

  It was small, cramped, as she had known it would be. But she had almost never used the full capacity of the system--except when she was controlling starships. Then she needed every scrap of fast memory to hold the complete image of the ship she was transporting. Obviously mere wasn't enough capacity on these mere thousands of machines. Yet it was such a relief, nonetheless, to tap back into the programs that she had so long used to do so much of her thought for her, servants she made use of like the Hive Queen's workers--just one more way that I am like her, Jane realized. She got them running, then explored the memories that for these long days had been so painfully missing. Once again she was in possession of a mental system that allowed her to maintain dozens of levels of attention to simultaneously running processes.

  And yet it was still all wrong. She had been in her human body only a day, and yet already the electronic self that once had felt so copious was far too small. It wasn't just because there were so few computers where once there had been so many. Rather it was small by nature. The ambiguity of flesh made for a vastness of possibility that simply could not exist in a binary world. She had been alive, and so she knew now that her electronic dwellingplace gave her only a fraction of a life. However much she had accomplished during her millennia of life in the machine, it brought no satisfaction compared to even a few minutes in that body of flesh and blood.

  If she had thought she might ever leave the Val-body, she knew now that she never could. That was the root of her, now and forever. Indeed, she would have to force herself to spread out into these computer systems when she needed them. By inclination, she would not readily go into them.

  But there was no reason to speak to anyone of her disappointment. Not yet. She would tell Miro when she got back to him. He would listen and talk to no one else. Indeed, he would probably be relieved. No doubt he was worried that she would be tempted to remain in the computers and not go back into the body that she could still feel, strong and insistent on her attention, even in the slackness of such a deep sleep. But he had no reason to fear. Hadn't he spent many long months in a body that was so limited he could hardly bear to live in it? She would as soon go back to being just a computer-dweller as he would go back to the brain-damaged body that had so tortured him.

  Yet it is myself, part of myself. That's what these friends had given to her, and she would not tell them how painful it was to fit into this small sort of life again. She brought up her old familiar Jane-face above a terminal in each world, and smiled at them, and spoke:

  "Thank you, my friends. I will never forget your love and loyalty to me. It will take a while for me to find out how much is open to me, and how much is closed. I'll tell you what I know when I know it. But be assured that whether or not I can achieve anything comparable to what I did before, I owe this restoration of myself to you, to all of you. I was already your friend forever; I am forever in your debt."

  They answered; she heard all the answers, conversed with them using only small parts of her attention.

  The rest of her explored. She found the hidden interfaces with the main computer systems that the Starways Congress's programmers had designed. It was easy enough to raid them for whatever information she wanted--indeed, within moments she had found her way into the most secret files of the Starways Congress and found out every technical specification and every protocol of the new nets. But all her probing was done at second-hand, as if she were dipping into a cookie jar in the darkness, unable to see what she could touch. She could send out little finder programs that brought back to her whatever she wanted; they were guided by fuzzy protocols that let them even be somewhat serendipitous, dragging back tangential information that had somehow tickled them into bringing it aboard. She certainly had the power to sabotage, if she had wanted to punish them. She could have crashed everything, destroyed all the data. But none of that, neither finding secrets nor wreaking vengeance, had anything to do with what she needed now. The information most vital to her had been saved by her friends. What she needed was capacity, and it wasn't there. The new networks were stepped back and delayed far enough from the immediacy of the ansibles that she couldn't use them for her thought. She tried to find ways to offload and reload data quickly enough that she could use it to push a starship Out and In again, but it simply wasn't fast enough. Only bits and pieces of each starship would go Out, and almost nothing would make it come back Inside.

  I have all my knowledge. I just haven't got the space.

  Through all of this, however, her aiua was making its circuit. Many times a second it passed through the Val-body strapped to a bed in the starship. Many times a second it touched the ansibles and computers of its restored, if truncated, network. And many times a second it wandered the lacy links among the mothertrees.

  A thousand, ten thousand times her aiua made these circuits before she finally realized that the mothertrees were also a storage place. They had so few thoughts of their own, but the structures were there that could hold memories, and there were no delays built in. She could think, could hold the thought, could retrieve it instantly. And the mothertrees were fractally deep; she could store memory mapped in layers, thoughts within thoughts, farther and farther into the structures and patterns of the living cells,
without ever interfering with the dim sweet thoughts of the trees themselves. It was a far better storage system than the computer nets had ever been; it was inherently larger than any binary device. Though there were far fewer mothertrees than there were computers, even in her new shrunken net, the depth and richness of the memory array meant that there was far more room for data that could be recalled far more rapidly. Except for retrieving basic data, her own memories of past starflights, Jane would not need to use the computers at all. The pathway to the stars now lay along an avenue of trees.

  Alone in a starship on the surface of Lusitania, a worker of the Hive Queen waited. Jane found her easily, found and remembered the shape of the starship. Though she had "forgotten" how to do starflight for a day or so, the memory was back again and she did it easily, pushing the starship Out, then bringing it back In an instant later, only many kilometers away, in a clearing before the entrance to the Hive Queen's nest. The worker arose from its terminal, opened the door, and came outside. Of course there was no celebration. The Hive Queen merely looked through the worker's eyes to verify that the flight had been successful, then explored the worker's body and the starship itself to make sure that nothing had been lost or damaged in the flight.

  Jane could hear the Hive Queen's voice as if from a distance, for she recoiled instinctively from such a powerful source of thought. It was the relayed message that she heard, the voice of Human speaking in her mind. Human said to her.

  She returned then to the starship that contained her own living body. When she transported other people, she left it to their own aiuas to watch over their flesh and hold it intact. The result of that had been the chaotic creations of Miro and Ender, with their hunger for bodies different from the ones they actually lived in. But that effect was now prevented easily by letting travelers linger only a moment, a tiny fraction of a second Outside, just long enough to make sure the bits of everything and everyone were all together. This time, though, she had to hold a starship and the Val-body together, and also drag along Miro, Ela, Firequencher, Quara, and a worker of the hive queen's. There could be no mistakes.