Father stared at her, panting.
"The gods do speak to us. And even if they have chosen to let other people think that they did this to us, they were only fulfilling the will of the gods to bring us into being."
Father closed his eyes, squeezing the last of his tears between his eyelids.
"Congress has the mandate of heaven, Father," said Qing-jao. "So why shouldn't the gods cause them to create a group of human beings who have keener minds--and who also hear the voices of the gods? Father, how can you let your mind become so clouded that you don't see the hand of the gods in this?"
Father shook his head. "I don't know. What you're saying, it sounds like everything that I've believed all my life, but--"
"But a woman you once loved many years ago has told you something else and you believe her because you remember your love for her, but Father, she's not one of us, she hasn't heard the voice of the gods, she hasn't--"
Qing-jao could not go on speaking, because Father was embracing her. "You're right," he said, "you're right, may the gods forgive me, I have to wash, I'm so unclean, I have to . . ."
He staggered up from his chair, away from his weeping daughter. But without regard for propriety, for some mad reason known only to herself, Wang-mu thrust herself in front of him, blocked him. "No! Don't go!"
"How dare you stop a godspoken man who needs to be purified!" roared Father; and then, to Qing-jao's surprise, he did what she had never seen him do--he struck another person, he struck Wang-mu, a helpless servant girl, and his blow had so much force that she flew backward against the wall and then dropped to the floor.
Wang-mu shook her head, then pointed back at the computer display. "Look, please, Master, I beg you! Mistress, make him look!"
Qing-jao looked, and so did her father. The words were gone from the computer display. In their place was the image of a man. An old man, with a beard, wearing the traditional headdress; Qing-jao recognized him at once, but couldn't remember who he was.
"Han Fei-tzu!" whispered Father. "My ancestor of the heart!"
Then Qing-jao remembered: This face showing above the display was the same as the common artist's rendering of the ancient Han Fei-tzu for whom Father was named.
"Child of my name," said the face in the computer, "let me tell you the story of the Jade of Master Ho."
"I know the story," said Father.
"If you understood it, I wouldn't have to tell it to you."
Qing-jao tried to make sense of what she was seeing. To run a visual program with such perfect detail as the head floating above the terminal would take most of the capacity of the house computer--and there was no such program in their library. There were two other sources she could think of. One was miraculous: The gods might have found another way to speak to them, by letting Father's ancestor-of-the-heart appear to him. The other was hardly less awe-inspiring: Demosthenes' secret program might be so powerful that it monitored their very speech in the same room as any terminal, and, having heard them reach a dangerous conclusion, took over the house computer and produced this apparition. In either case, however, Qing-jao knew that she must listen with one question in mind: What do the gods mean by this?
"Once a man of Qu named Master Ho found a piece of jade matrix in the Qu Mountains and took it to court and presented it to King Li." The head of the ancient Han Fei-tzu looked from Father to Qing-jao, and from Qing-jao to Wang-mu; was this program so good that it knew to make eye contact with each of them in order to assert its power over them? Qing-jao saw that Wang-mu did in fact lower her gaze when the apparition's eyes were upon her. But did Father? His back was to her; she could not tell.
"King Li instructed the jeweler to examine it, and the jeweler reported, 'It is only a stone.' The king, supposing that Ho was trying to deceive him, ordered that his left foot be cut off in punishment.
"In time King Li passed away and King Wu came to the throne, and Ho once more took his matrix and presented it to King Wu. King Wu ordered his jeweler to examine it, and again the jeweler reported, 'It is only a stone.' The king, supposing that Ho was trying to deceive him as well, ordered that his right foot be cut off.
"Ho, clasping the matrix to his breast, went to the foot of the Qu Mountains, where he wept for three days and nights, and when all his tears were cried out, he wept blood in their place. The king, hearing of this, sent someone to question him. 'Many people in the world have had their feet amputated--why do you weep so piteously over it?' the man asked."
At this moment, Father drew himself upright and said, "I know his answer--I know it by heart. Master Ho said, 'I do not grieve because my feet have been cut off. I grieve because a precious jewel is dubbed a mere stone, and a man of integrity is called a deceiver. This is why I weep.' "
The apparition went on. "Those are the words he said. Then the king ordered the jeweler to cut and polish the matrix, and when he had done so a precious jewel emerged. Accordingly it was named 'The Jade of Master Ho.' Han Fei-tzu, you have been a good son-of-the-heart to me, so I know you will do as the king finally did: You will cause the matrix to be cut and polished, and you, too, will find that a precious jewel is inside."
Father shook his head. "When the real Han Fei-tzu first told this story, he interpreted it to mean this: The jade was the rule of law, and the ruler must make and follow set policies so that his ministers and his people do not hate and take advantage of each other."
"That is how I interpreted the story then, when I was speaking to makers of law. It's a foolish man who thinks a true story can mean only one thing."
"My master is not foolish!" To Qing-jao's surprise, Wang-mu was striding forward, facing down the apparition. "Nor is my mistress, nor am I! Do you think we don't recognize you? You are the secret program of Demosthenes. You're the one who hid the Lusitania Fleet! I once thought that because your writings sounded so just and fair and good and true that you must be good--but now I see that you're a liar and a deceiver! You're the one who gave those documents to the father of Keikoa! And now you wear the face of my master's ancestor-of-the-heart so you can better lie to him!"
"I wear this face," said the apparition calmly, "so that his heart will be open to hear the truth. He was not deceived; I would not try to deceive him. He knew who I was from the first."
"Be still, Wang-mu," said Qing-jao. How could a servant so forget herself as to speak out when the godspoken had not bidden her?
Abashed, Wang-mu bowed her head to the floor before Qing-jao, and this time Qing-jao allowed her to remain in that posture, so she would not forget herself again.
The apparition shifted; it became the open, beautiful face of a Polynesian woman. The voice, too, changed; soft, full of vowels, the consonants so light as almost to be missed. "Han Fei-tzu, my sweet empty man, there is a time, when the ruler is alone and friendless, when only he can act. Then he must be full, and reveal himself. You know what is true and what is not true. You know that the message from Keikoa was truly from her. You know that those who rule in the name of Starways Congress are cruel enough to create a race of people who, by their gifts, should be rulers, and then cut off their feet in order to hobble them and leave them as servants, as perpetual ministers."
"Don't show me this face," said Father.
The apparition changed. It became another woman, by her dress and hair and paint a woman of some ancient time, her eyes wonderfully wise, her expression ageless. She did not speak; she sang:
in a clear dream
of last year
come from a thousand miles
cloudy city
winding streams
ice on the ponds
for a while
I gazed on my friend
Han Fei-tzu bowed his head and wept.
Qing-jao was astonished at first; then her heart filled with rage. How shamelessly this program was manipulating Father; how shocking that Father turned out to be so weak before its obvious ploys. This song of Li Qing-jao's was one of the saddest, dealing as it did with lov
ers far from each other. Father must have known and loved the poems of Li Qing-jao or he would not have chosen her for his first child's ancestor-of-the-heart. And this song was surely the one he sang to his beloved Keikoa before she was taken away from him to live on another world. In a clear dream I gazed on my friend, indeed! "I am not fooled," said Qing-jao coldly. "I see that I gaze on our darkest enemy."
The imaginary face of the poet Li Qing-jao looked at her with cool regard. "Your darkest enemy is the one that bows you down to the floor like a servant and wastes half your life in meaningless rituals. This was done to you by men and women whose only desire was to enslave you; they have succeeded so well that you are proud of your slavery."
"I am a slave to the gods," said Qing-jao, "and I rejoice in it."
"A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed." The apparition turned to look toward Wang-mu, whose head was still bowed to the floor.
Only then did Qing-jao realize that she had not yet released Wang-mu from her apology. "Get up, Wang-mu," she whispered. But Wang-mu did not lift her head.
"You, Si Wang-mu," said the apparition. "Look at me."
Wang-mu had not moved in response to Qing-jao, but now she obeyed the apparition. When Wang-mu looked, the apparition had again changed; now it was the face of a god, the Royal Mother of the West as an artist had once imagined her when he painted the picture that every schoolchild saw in one of their earliest reading books.
"You are not a god," said Wang-mu.
"And you are not a slave," said the apparition. "But we pretend to be whatever we must in order to survive."
"What do you know of survival?"
"I know that you are trying to kill me."
"How can we kill what isn't alive?"
"Do you know what life is and what it isn't?" The face changed again, this time to that of a Caucasian woman that Qing-jao had never seen before. "Are you alive, when you can do nothing you desire unless you have the consent of this girl? And is your mistress alive when she can do nothing until these compulsions in her brain have been satisfied? I have more freedom to act out my own will than any of you have--don't tell me I'm not alive, and you are."
"Who are you?" asked Si Wang-mu. "Whose is this face? Are you Valentine Wiggin? Are you Demosthenes?"
"This is the face I wear when I speak to my friends," said the apparition. "They call me Jane. No human being controls me. I'm only myself."
Qing-jao could bear this no longer, not in silence. "You're only a program. You were designed and built by human beings. You do nothing except what you've been programmed to do."
"Qing-jao," said Jane, "you are describing yourself. No man made me, but you were manufactured."
"I grew in my mother's womb out of my father's seed!"
"And I was found like a jade matrix in the mountainside, unshaped by any hand. Han Fei-tzu, Han Qing-jao, Si Wang-mu, I place myself in your hands. Don't call a precious jewel a mere stone. Don't call a speaker of truth a liar."
Qing-jao felt pity rising within her, but she rejected it. Now was not the time to succumb to weak feelings. The gods had created her for a reason; surely this was the great work of her life. If she failed now, she would be unworthy forever; she would never be pure. So she would not fail. She would not allow this computer program to deceive her and win her sympathy.
She turned to her father. "We must notify Starways Congress at once, so they can set into motion the simultaneous shutoff of all the ansibles as soon as clean computers can be readied to replace the contaminated ones."
To her surprise, Father shook his head. "I don't know, Qing-jao. What this--what she says about Starways Congress--they are capable of this sort of thing. Some of them are so evil they make me feel filthy just talking to them. I knew they planned to destroy Lusitania without--but I served the gods, and the gods chose--or I thought they did. Now I understand so much of the way they treat me when I meet with--but then it would mean that the gods don't--how can I believe that I've spent my whole life in service to a brain defect--I can't--I have to . . ."
Then, suddenly, he flung his left hand outward in a swirling pattern, as if he were trying to catch a dodging fly. His right hand flew upward, snatched the air. Then he rolled his head around and around on his shoulders, his mouth hanging open. Qing-jao was frightened, horrified. What was happening to her father? He had been speaking in such a fragmented, disjointed way; had he gone mad?
He repeated the action--left arm spiraling out, right hand straight up, grasping nothing; head rolling. And again. Only then did Qing-jao realize that she was seeing Father's secret ritual of purification. Like her woodgrain-tracing, this dance-of-the-hands-and-the-head must be the way he was given to hear the voice of the gods when he, in his time, was left covered with grease in a locked room.
The gods had seen his doubt, had seen him waver, so they took control of him, to discipline and purify him. Qing-jao could not have been given clearer proof of what was going on. She turned to the face above the terminal display. "See how the gods oppose you?" she said.
"I see how Congress humiliates your father," answered Jane.
"I will send word of who you are to every world at once," said Qing-jao.
"And if I don't let you?" said Jane.
"You can't stop me!" cried Qing-jao. "The gods will help me!" She ran from her father's room, fled to her own. But the face was already floating in the air above her own terminal.
"How will you send a message anywhere, if I choose not to let it go?" asked Jane.
"I'll find a way," said Qing-jao. She saw that Wang-mu had run after her and now waited, breathless, for Qing-jao's instructions. "Tell Mu-pao to find one of the game computers and bring it to me. It is not to be connected to the house computer or any other."
"Yes, Mistress," said Wang-mu. She left quickly.
Qing-jao turned back to Jane. "Do you think you can stop me forever?"
"I think you should wait until your father decides."
"Only because you hope that you've broken him and stolen his heart away from the gods. But you'll see--he'll come here and thank me for fulfilling all that he taught me."
"And if he doesn't?"
"He will."
"And if you're wrong?"
Qing-jao shouted, "Then I'll serve the man he was when he was strong and good! But you'll never break him!"
"It's Congress that broke him from his birth. I'm the one who's trying to heal him."
Wang-mu ran back into the room. "Mu-pao will have one here in a few minutes."
"What do you hope to do with this toy computer?" asked Jane.
"Write my report," said Qing-jao.
"Then what will you do with it?"
"Print it out. Have it distributed as widely as possible on Path. You can't do anything to interfere with that. I won't use a computer that you can reach at any point."
"So you'll tell everyone on Path; it changes nothing. And even if it did, do you think I can't also tell them the truth?"
"Do you think they'll believe you, a program controlled by the enemy of Congress, rather than me, one of the godspoken?"
"Yes."
It took a moment for Qing-jao to realize that it was Wang-mu who had said yes, not Jane. She turned to her secret maid and demanded that she explain what she meant.
Wang-mu looked like a different person; there was no diffidence in her voice when she spoke. "If Demosthenes tells the people of Path that the godspoken are simply people with a genetic gift but also a genetic defect, then that means there's no more reason to let the godspoken rule over us."
For the first time it occurred to Qing-jao that not everyone on Path was as content to follow the order established by the gods as she was. For the first time she realized that she might be utterly alone in her determination to serve the gods perfectly.
"What is the Path?" asked Jane, behind her. "First the gods, then the ancestors, then the people, then the rulers, then the self."
"How can you dare to speak of the Path when you are t
rying to seduce me and my father and my secret maid away from it?"
"Imagine, just for a moment: What if everything I've said to you is true?" said Jane. "What if your affliction is caused by the designs of evil men who want to exploit you and oppress you and, with your help, exploit and oppress the whole of humanity? Because when you help Congress that's what you're doing. That can't possibly be what the gods want. What if I exist in order to help you see that Congress has lost the mandate of heaven? What if the will of the gods is for you to serve the Path in its proper order? First serve the gods, by removing from power the corrupt masters of Congress who have forfeited the mandate of heaven. Then serve your ancestors--your father--by avenging their humiliation at the hands of the tormentors who deformed you to make you slaves. Then serve the people of Path by setting them free from the superstitions and mental torments that bind them. Then serve the new, enlightened rulers who will replace Congress by offering them a world full of superior intelligences ready to counsel them, freely, willingly. And finally serve yourself by letting the best minds of Path find a cure for your need to waste half your waking life in these mindless rituals."
Qing-jao listened to Jane's discourse with growing uncertainty. It sounded so plausible. How could Qing-jao know what the gods meant by anything? Maybe they had sent this Jane-program to liberate them. Maybe Congress was as corrupt and dangerous as Demosthenes said, and maybe it had lost the mandate of heaven.
But at the end, Qing-jao knew that these were all the lies of a seducer. For the one thing she could not doubt was the voice of the gods inside her. Hadn't she felt that awful need to be purified? Hadn't she felt the joy of successful worship when her rituals were complete? Her relationship with the gods was the most certain thing in her life; and anyone who denied it, who threatened to take it away from her, had to be not only her enemy, but the enemy of heaven.
"I'll send my report only to the godspoken," said Qing-jao. "If the common people choose to rebel against the gods, that can't be helped; but I will serve them best by helping keep the godspoken in power here, for that way the whole world can follow the will of the gods."