"All this is meaningless," said Jane. "Even if all the godspoken believe what you believe, you'll never get a word of it off this world unless I want you to."
"There are starships," said Qing-jao.
"It will take two generations to spread your message to every world. By then Starways Congress will have fallen."
Qing-jao was forced now to face the fact that she had been avoiding: As long as Jane controlled the ansible, she could shut down communication from Path as thoroughly as she had cut off the fleet. Even if Qing-jao arranged to have her report and recommendations transmitted continuously from every ansible on Path, Jane would see to it that the only effect would be for Path to disappear from the rest of the universe as thoroughly as the fleet had disappeared.
For a moment, filled with despair, she almost threw herself to the ground to begin a terrible ordeal of purification. I have let down the gods--surely they will require me to trace lines until I'm dead, a worthless failure in their eyes.
But when she examined her own feelings, to see what penance would be necessary, she found that none was required at all. It filled her with hope--perhaps they recognized the purity of her desire, and would forgive her for the fact that it was impossible for her to act.
Or perhaps they knew a way that she could act. What if Path did disappear from the ansibles of every other world? How would Congress make sense of it? What would people think? The disappearance of any world would provoke a response--but especially this world, if some in Congress did believe the gods' disguise for the creation of the godspoken and thought they had a terrible secret to keep. They would send a ship from the nearest world, which was only three years' travel away. What would happen then? Would Jane have to shut down all communications from the ship that reached them? Then from the next world, when the ship returned? How long would it be before Jane had to shut down all the ansible connections in the Hundred Worlds herself? Three generations, she said. Perhaps that would do. The gods were in no hurry.
It wouldn't necessarily take that long for Jane's power to be destroyed, anyway. At some point it would become obvious to everyone that a hostile power had taken control of the ansibles, making ships and worlds disappear. Even without learning about Valentine and Demosthenes, even without guessing that it was a computer program, someone on every world would realize what had to be done and shut down the ansibles themselves.
"I have imagined something for you," said Qing-jao. "Now imagine something for me. I and the other godspoken arrange to broadcast nothing but my report from every ansible on Path. You make all those ansibles fall silent at once. What does the rest of humanity see? That we have disappeared just like the Lusitania Fleet. They'll soon realize that you, or something like you, exists. The more you use your power, the more you reveal yourself to even the dimmest minds. Your threat is empty. You might as well step aside and let me send the message simply and easily now; stopping me is just another way of sending the very same message."
"You're wrong," said Jane. "If Path suddenly disappears from all ansibles at once, they might just as easily conclude that this world is in rebellion just like Lusitania--after all, they shut down their ansible, too. And what did Starways Congress do? They sent a fleet with the M.D. Device on it."
"Lusitania was already in rebellion before their ansible was shut down."
"Do you think Congress isn't watching you? Do you think they're not terrified of what might happen if the godspoken of Path ever discovered what had been done to them? If a few primitive aliens and a couple of xenologers frightened them into sending a fleet, what do you think they'll do about the mysterious disappearance of a world with so many brilliant minds who have ample reason to hate Starways Congress? How long do you think this world would survive?"
Qing-jao was filled with a sickening dread. It was always possible that this much of Jane's story was true: that there were people in Congress who were deceived by the disguise of the gods, who thought that the godspoken of Path had been created solely by genetic manipulation. And if there were such people, they might act as Jane described. What if a fleet came against Path? What if Starways Congress had ordered them to destroy the whole world without any negotiation? Then her reports would never be known, and everything would be gone. It would all be for nothing. Could that possibly be the desire of the gods? Could Starways Congress still have the mandate of heaven and yet destroy a world?
"Remember the story of I Ya, the great cook," said Jane. "His master said one day, 'I have the greatest cook in all the world. Because of him, I have tasted every flavor known to man except the taste of human flesh.' Hearing this, I Ya went home and butchered his own son, cooked his flesh and served it to his master, so that his master would lack nothing that I Ya could give him."
This was a terrible story. Qing-jao had heard it as a child, and it made her weep for hours. What about the son of I Ya? she had cried. And her father had said, A true servant has sons and daughters only to serve his master. For five nights she had woken up screaming from dreams in which her father roasted her alive or carved slices from her onto a plate, until at last Han Fei-tzu came to her and embraced her and said, "Don't believe it, my Gloriously Bright daughter. I am not a perfect servant. I love you too much to be truly righteous. I love you more than I love my duty. I am not I Ya. You have nothing to fear at my hands." Only after Father said that to her could she sleep.
This program, this Jane, must have found Father's account of this in his journal, and now was using it against her. Yet even though Qing-jao knew she was being manipulated, she couldn't help but wonder if Jane might not be right.
"Are you a servant like I Ya?" asked Jane. "Will you slaughter your own world for the sake of an unworthy master like Starways Congress?"
Qing-jao could not sort out her own feelings. Where did these thoughts come from? Jane had poisoned her mind with her arguments, just as Demosthenes had done before her--if they weren't the same person all along. Their words could sound persuasive, even as they ate away at the truth.
Did Qing-jao have the right to risk the lives of all the people of Path? What if she was wrong? How could she know anything? Whether everything Jane said was true or everything she said was false, the same evidence would lie before her. Qing-jao would feel exactly as she felt now, whether it was the gods or some brain disorder causing the feeling.
Why, in all this uncertainty, didn't the gods speak to her? Why, when she needed the clarity of their voice, didn't she feel dirty and impure when she thought one way, clean and holy when she thought the other? Why were the gods leaving her unguided at this cusp of her life?
In the silence of Qing-jao's inward debate, Wang-mu's voice came as cold and harsh as the sound of metal striking metal. "It will never happen," said Wang-mu.
Qing-jao only listened, unable even to bid Wang-mu to be still.
"What will never happen?" asked Jane.
"What you said--Starways Congress blowing up this world."
"If you think they wouldn't do it you're even more of a fool than Qing-jao thinks," said Jane.
"Oh, I know they'd do it. Han Fei-tzu knows they'd do it--he said they were evil enough men to commit any terrible crime if it suited their purpose."
"Then why won't it happen?"
"Because you won't let it happen," said Wang-mu. "Since blocking off every ansible message from Path might well lead to the destruction of this world, you won't block those messages. They'll get through. Congress will be warned. You will not cause Path to be destroyed."
"Why won't I?"
"Because you are Demosthenes," said Wang-mu. "Because you are full of truth and compassion."
"I am not Demosthenes," said Jane.
The face in the terminal display wavered, then changed into the face of one of the aliens. A pequenino, its porcine snout so disturbing in its strangeness. A moment later, another face appeared, even more alien: it was a bugger, one of the nightmare creatures that had once terrified all of humanity. Even having read the Hive Queen
and the Hegemon, so that she understood who the buggers were and how beautiful their civilization had been, when Qing-jao saw one face to face like this it frightened her, though she knew it was only a computer display.
"I am not human," said Jane, "even when I choose to wear a human face. How do you know, Wang-mu, what I will and will not do? Buggers and piggies both have killed human beings without a second thought."
"Because they didn't understand what death meant to us. You understand. You said it yourself--you don't want to die."
"Do you think you know me, Si Wang-mu?"
"I think I know you," said Wang-mu, "because you wouldn't have any of these troubles if you had been content to let the fleet destroy Lusitania."
The bugger in the display was joined by the piggy, and then by the face that represented Jane herself. In silence they looked at Wang-mu, at Qing-jao, and said nothing.
"Ender," said the voice in his ear.
Ender had been listening in silence, riding on the car that Varsam was driving. For the last hour Jane had been letting him listen in on her conversation with these people of Path, translating for him whenever they spoke in Chinese instead of Stark. Many kilometers of prairie had passed by as he listened, but he had not seen it; before his mind's eye were these people as he imagined them. Han Fei-tzu--Ender well knew that name, tied as it was to the treaty that ended his hope that a rebellion of the colony worlds would put an end to Congress, or at least turn its fleet away from Lusitania. But now Jane's existence, and perhaps the survival of Lusitania and all its peoples, hinged on what was thought and said and decided by two young girls in a bedroom on an obscure colony world.
Qing-jao, I know you well, thought Ender. You are such a bright one, but the light you see by comes entirely from the stories of your gods. You are like the pequenino brothers who sat and watched my stepson die, able at any time to save him by walking a few dozen steps to fetch his food with its anti-descolada agents; they weren't guilty of murder. Rather they were guilty of too much belief in a story they were told. Most people are able to hold most stories they're told in abeyance, to keep a little distance between the story and their inmost heart. But for these brothers--and for you, Qing-jao--the terrible lie has become the self-story, the tale that you must believe if you are to remain yourself. How can I blame you for wanting us all to die? You are so filled with the largeness of the gods, how can you have compassion for such small concerns as the lives of three species of raman? I know you, Qing-jao, and I expect you to behave no differently from the way you do. Perhaps someday, confronted by the consequences of your own actions, you might change, but I doubt it. Few who are captured by such a powerful story are ever able to win free of it.
But you, Wang-mu, you are owned by no story. You trust nothing but your own judgment. Jane has told me what you are, how phenomenal your mind must be, to learn so many things so quickly, to have such a deep understanding of the people around you. Why couldn't you have been just one bit wiser? Of course you had to realize that Jane could not possibly act in such a way as to cause the destruction of Path--but why couldn't you have been wise enough to say nothing, wise enough to leave Qing-jao ignorant of that fact? Why couldn't you have left just enough of the truth unspoken that Jane's life might have been spared? If a would-be murderer, his sword drawn, had come to your door demanding that you tell him the whereabouts of his innocent prey, would you tell him that his victim cowers behind your door? Or would you lie, and send him on his way? In her confusion, Qing-jao is that killer, and Jane her first victim, with the world of Lusitania waiting to be murdered afterward. Why did you have to speak, and tell her how easily she could find and kill us all?
"What can I do?" asked Jane.
Ender subvocalized his response. "Why are you asking me a question that only you can answer?"
"If you tell me to do it," said Jane, "I can block all their messages, and save us all."
"Even if it led to the destruction of Path?"
"If you tell me to," she pleaded.
"Even though you know that in the long run you'll probably be discovered anyway? That the fleet will probably not be turned away from us, in spite of all you can do?"
"If you tell me to live, Ender, then I can do what it takes to live."
"Then do it," said Ender. "Cut off Path's ansible communications."
Did he detect a tiny fraction of a second in which Jane hesitated? She could have had many hours of inward argument during that micropause.
"Command me," said Jane.
"I command you."
Again that tiny hesitation. Then: "Make me do it," she insisted.
"How can I make you do it, if you don't want to?"
"I want to live," she said.
"Not as much as you want to be yourself," said Ender.
"Any animal is willing to kill in order to save itself."
"Any animal is willing to kill the Other," said Ender. "But the higher beings include more and more living things within their self-story, until at last there is no Other. Until the needs of others are more important than any private desires. The highest beings of all are the ones who are willing to pay any personal cost for the good of those who need them."
"I would risk hurting Path," said Jane, "if I thought it would really save Lusitania."
"But it wouldn't."
"I'd try to drive Qing-jao into helpless madness, if I thought it could save the hive queen and the pequeninos. She's very close to losing her mind--I could do it."
"Do it," said Ender. "Do what it takes."
"I can't," said Jane. "Because it would only hurt her, and wouldn't save us in the end."
"If you were a slightly lower animal," said Ender, "you'd have a much better chance of coming out of this thing alive."
"As low as you were, Ender the Xenocide?"
"As low as that," said Ender. "Then you could live."
"Or perhaps if I were as wise as you were then."
"I have my brother Peter inside me, as well as my sister Valentine," said Ender. "The beast as well as the angel. That's what you taught me, back when you were nothing but the program we called the Fantasy Game."
"Where is the beast inside me?"
"You don't have one," said Ender.
"Maybe I'm not really alive at all," said Jane. "Maybe because I never passed through the crucible of natural selection, I lack the will to survive."
"Or maybe you know, in some secret place within yourself, that there's another way to survive, a way that you simply haven't found yet."
"That's a cheerful thought," said Jane. "I'll pretend to believe in that."
"Peco que deus te abencoe," said Ender.
"Oh, you're just getting sentimental," said Jane.
For a long time, several minutes, the three faces in the display gazed in silence at Qing-jao, at Wang-mu. Then at last the two alien faces disappeared, and all that remained was the face named Jane. "I wish I could do it," she said. "I wish I could kill your world to save my friends."
Relief came to Qing-jao like the first strong breath to a swimmer who nearly drowned. "So you can't stop me," she said triumphantly. "I can send my message!"
Qing-jao walked to the terminal and sat down before Jane's watching face. But she knew that the image in the display was an illusion. If Jane watched, it was not with those human eyes, it was with the visual sensors of the computer. It was all electronics, infinitesimal machinery but machinery nonetheless. Not a living soul. It was irrational to feel ashamed under that illusionary gaze.
"Mistress," said Wang-mu.
"Later," said Qing-jao.
"If you do this, Jane will die. They'll shut down the ansibles and kill her."
"What doesn't live cannot die," said Qing-jao.
"The only reason you have the power to kill her is because of her compassion."
"If she seems to have compassion it's an illusion--she was programmed to simulate compassion, that's all."
"Mistress, if you kill every manifestation of this pr
ogram, so that no part of her remains alive, how are you different from Ender the Xenocide, who killed all the buggers three thousand years ago?"
"Maybe I'm not different," said Qing-jao. "Maybe Ender also was the servant of the gods."
Wang-mu knelt beside Qing-jao and wept on the skirt of her gown. "I beg you, Mistress, don't do this evil thing."
But Qing-jao wrote her report. It stood as clear and simple in her mind as if the gods had given the words to her. "To Starways Congress: The seditious writer known as Demosthenes is a woman now on or near Lusitania. She has control of or access to a program that has infested all ansible computers, causing them to fail to report messages from the fleet and concealing the transmission of Demosthenes' own writings. The only solution to this problem is to extinguish the program's control over ansible transmissions by disconnecting all ansibles from their present computers and bringing clean new computers online, all at once. For the present I have neutralized the program, allowing me to send this message and probably allowing you to send your orders to all worlds; but that cannot be guaranteed now and certainly cannot be expected to continue indefinitely, so you must act quickly. I suggest you set a date exactly forty standard weeks from today for all ansibles to go offline at once for a period of at least one standard day. All the new ansible computers, when they go online, must be completely unconnected to any other computer. From now on ansible messages must be manually re-entered at each ansible computer so that electronic contamination will never be possible again. If you retransmit this message immediately to all ansibles, using your code of authority, my report will become your orders; no further instructions will be needed and Demosthenes' influence will end. If you do not act immediately, I will not be responsible for the consequences."
To this report Qing-jao affixed her father's name and the authority code he had given her; her name would mean nothing to Congress, but his name would be heeded, and the presence of his authority code would ensure that it was received by all the people who had particular interest in his statements.
The message finished, Qing-jao looked up into the eyes of the apparition before her. With her left hand resting on Wang-mu's shuddering back, and her right hand over the transmit key, Qing-jao made her final challenge. "Will you stop me or will you allow this?"