So during the last half of the voyage to Lusitania, it was the four of them who traveled in Miro's ship: Valentine, Miro, Jakt, and Plikt. Or so Valentine thought at first. It was on the third day since the rendezvous that she learned of the fifth traveler who had been with them all along.
That day, as always, the four of them were gathered on the bridge. There was nowhere else to go. This was a cargo ship– besides the bridge and the sleeping quarters, there was only a tiny galley and the toilet. All the other space was designed to hold cargo, not people– not in any kind of reasonable comfort.
Valentine didn't mind the loss of privacy, though. She was slacking off now on her output of subversive essays; it was more important, she felt, to get to know Miro– and, through him, Lusitania. The people there, the pequeninos, and, most particularly, Miro's family– for Ender had married Novinha, Mira's mother. Valentine did glean much of that kind of information, of course– she couldn't have been a historian and biographer for all these years without learning how to extrapolate much from scant bits of evidence.
The real prize for her had turned out to be Miro himself. He was bitter, angry, frustrated, and filled with loathing for his crippled body, but all that was understandable– his loss had happened only a few months before, and he was still trying to redefine himself. Valentine didn't worry about his future– she could see that he was very strong-willed, the kind of man who didn't easily fall apart. He would adapt and thrive.
What interested her most was his thought. It was as if the confinement of his body had freed his mind. When he had first been injured his paralysis was almost total. He had had nothing to do but lie in one place and think. Of course, much of his time had been spent brooding about his losses, his mistakes, the future he couldn't have. But he had also spent many hours thinking about the issues that busy people almost never think about. And on that third day together, that's what Valentine was trying to draw out of him.
“Most people don't think about it, not seriously, and you have,” said Valentine.
“Just because I think about it doesn't mean I know anything,” said Miro. She really was used to his voice now, though sometimes his speech was maddeningly slow. It took a real effort of will at times to keep from showing any sign of inattention.
“The nature of the universe,” said Jakt.
“The sources of life,” said Valentine. “You said you had thought about what it means to be alive, and I want to know what you thought.”
“How the universe works and why we all are in it.” Miro laughed. “It's pretty crazy stuff.”
“I've been trapped alone in an ice floe in a fishing boat for two weeks in a blizzard with no heat,” said Jakt. “I doubt you've come up with anything that'll sound crazy to me.”
Valentine smiled. Jakt was no scholar, and his philosophy was generally confined to holding his crew together and catching a lot of fish. But he knew that Valentine wanted to draw Miro out, and so he helped put the young man at ease, helped him know that he'd be taken seriously.
And it was important for Jakt to be the one who did that– because Valentine had seen, and so had Jakt, how Miro watched him. Jakt might be old, but his arms and legs and back were still those of a fisherman, and every movement revealed the suppleness of his body. Miro even commented on it once, obliquely, admiringly: “You've got the build of a twenty-year-old.” Valentine heard the ironic corollary that must have been in Miro's mind: While I, who am young, have the body of an arthritic ninety-year-old. So Jakt meant something to Miro– he represented the future that Miro could never have. Admiration and resentment; it would have been hard for Miro to speak openly in front of Jakt, if Jakt had not taken care to make sure Miro heard nothing but respect and interest from him.
Plikt, of course, sat in her place, silent, withdrawn, effectively invisible.
“All right,” said Miro. “Speculations on the nature of reality and the soul.”
“Theology or metaphysics?” asked Valentine.
“Metaphysics, mostly,” said Miro. “And physics. Neither one is my specialty. And this isn't the kind of story you said you needed me for.”
“I don't always know exactly what I'll need.”
“All right,” said Miro. He took a couple of breaths, as if he were trying to decide where to begin. “You know about philotic twining.”
“I know what everybody knows,” said Valentine. “And I know that it hasn't led anywhere in the last twenty-five hundred years because it can't really be experimented with.” It was an old discovery, from the days when scientists were struggling to catch up with technology. Teenage physics students memorized a few wise sayings: “Philotes are the fundamental building blocks of all matter and energy. Philotes have neither mass nor inertia. Philotes have only location, duration, and connection.” And everybody knew that it was philotic connections– the twining of philotic rays– that made ansibles work, allowing instantaneous communication between worlds and starships many light-years apart. But no one knew why it worked, and because philotes could not be “handled,” it was almost impossible to experiment with them. They could only be observed, and then only through their connections.
“Philotics,” said Jakt. “Ansibles?”
“A by-product,” said Miro.
“What does it have to do with the soul?” asked Valentine.
Miro was about to answer, but he grew frustrated, apparently at the thought of trying to give a long speech through his sluggish, resisting mouth. His jaw was working, his lips moving slightly. Then he said aloud, “I can't do it.”
“We'll listen,” said Valentine. She understood his reluctance to try extended discourse with the limitations of his speech, but she also knew he had to do it anyway.
“No,” said Miro.
Valentine would have tried further persuasion, but she saw his lips were still moving, though little sound came out. Was he muttering? Cursing?
No– she knew it wasn't that at all.
It took a moment for her to realize why she was so sure. It was because she had seen Ender do exactly the same thing, moving his lips and jaw, when he was issuing subvocalized commands to the computer terminal built into the jewel he wore in his ear. Of course: Miro has the same computer hookup Ender has, so he'll speak to it the same way.
In a moment it became clear what command Miro had given to his jewel. It must have been tied in to the ship's computer, because immediately afterward one of the display screens cleared and then showed Miro's face. Only there was none of the slackness that marred his face in person. Valentine realized: It was Miro's face as it used to be. And when the computer image spoke, the sound coming from the speakers was surely Miro's voice as it used to be– clear. Forceful. Intelligent. Quick.
“You know that when philotes combine to make a durable structure– a meson, a neutron, an atom, a molecule, an organism, a planet– they twine up.”
“What is this?” demanded Jakt. He hadn't yet figured out why the computer was doing the talking.
The computer image of Miro froze on the screen and fell silent. Miro himself answered. “I've been playing with this,” he said. “I tell it things, and it remembers and speaks for me.”
Valentine tried to imagine Miro experimenting until the computer program got his face and voice just right. How exhilarating it must have been, to re-create himself as he ought to be. And also how agonizing, to see what he could have been and know that it could never be real. “What a clever idea,” said Valentine. “Sort of a prosthesis for the personality.”
Miro laughed– a single “Ha!”
“Go ahead,” said Valentine. “Whether you speak for yourself or the computer speaks for you, we'll listen.”
The computer image came back to life, and spoke again in Miro's strong, imaginary voice. “Philotes are the smallest building blocks of matter and energy. They have no mass or dimension. Each philote connects itself to the rest of the universe along a single ray, a one-dimensional line that connects it to all the other philotes
in its smallest immediate structure– a meson. All those strands from the philotes in that structure are twined into a single philotic thread that connects the meson to the next larger structure– a neutron, for instance. The threads in the neutron twine into a yarn connecting it to all the other particles of the atom, and then the yarns of the atom twine into the rope of the molecule. This has nothing to do with nuclear forces or gravity, nothing to do with chemical bonds. As far as we can tell, the philotic connections don't do anything. They're just there.”
“But the individual rays are always there, present in the twines,” said Valentine.
“Yes, each ray goes on forever,” answered the screen.
It surprised her– and Jakt, too, judging from the way his eyes widened– that the computer was able to respond immediately to what Valentine said. It wasn't just a preset lecture. This had to be a sophisticated program anyway, to simulate Miro's face and voice so well; but now to have it responding as if it were simulating Miro's personality …
Or had Miro given some cue to the program? Had he subvocalized the response? Valentine didn't know– she had been watching the screen. She would stop doing that now– she would watch Miro himself.
“We don't know if the ray is infinite,” said Valentine. “We only know that we haven't found where the ray ends.”
“They twine together, a whole planetful, and each planet's philotic twine reaches to its star, and each star to the center of the galaxy–”
“And where does the galactic twine go?” said Jakt. It was an old question– schoolchildren asked it when they first got into philotics in high school. Like the old speculation that maybe galaxies were really neutrons or mesons inside a far vaster universe, or the old question, If the universe isn't infinite, what is beyond the edge?
“Yes, yes,” said Miro. This time, though, he spoke from his own mouth. “But that's not where I'm going. I want to talk about life.”
The computerized voice– the voice of the brilliant young man– took over. “The philotic twines from substances like rock or sand all connect directly from each molecule to the center of the planet. But when a molecule is incorporated into a living organism, its ray shifts. Instead of reaching to the planet, it gets twined in with the individual cell, and the rays from the cells are all twined together so that each organism sends a single fiber of philotic connections to twine up with the central philotic rope of the planet.”
“Which shows that individual lives have some meaning at the level of physics,” said Valentine. She had written an essay about it once, trying to dispel some of the mysticism that had grown up about philotics while at the same time using it to suggest a view of community formation. “But there's no practical effect from it, Miro. Nothing you can do with it. The philotic twining of living organisms simply is. Every philote is connected to something, and through that to something else, and through that to something else– living cells and organisms are simply two of the leels where those connections can be made.”
“Yes,” said Miro. “That which lives, twines.”
Valentine shrugged, nodded. It probably couldn't be proven, but if Miro wanted that as a premise in his speculations, that was fine.
The computer-Miro took over again. “What I've been thinking about is the endurance of the twining. When a twined structure is broken– as when a molecule breaks apart– the old philotic twining remains for a time. Fragments that are no longer physically joined remain philotically connected for a while. And the smaller the particle, the longer that connection lasts after the breakup of the original structure, and the more slowly the fragments shift to new twinings.”
Jakt: frowned. “I thought the smaller things were, the faster things happened.”
“It is counterintuitive,” said Valentine.
“After nuclear fission it takes hours for the philotic rays to sort themselves back out again,” said the computer-Miro. “Split a smaller particle than an atom, and the philotic connection between the fragments will last much longer than that.”
“Which is how the ansible works,” said Miro.
Valentine looked at him closely. Why was he talking sometimes in his own voice, sometimes through the computer? Was the program under his control or wasn't it?
“The principle of the ansible is that if you suspend a meson in a powerful magnetic field,” said computer-Miro, “split it, and carry the two parts as far away as you want, the philotic twining will still connect them. And the connection is instantaneous. If one fragment spins or vibrates, the ray between them spins and vibrates, and the movement is detectable at the other end at exactly the same moment. It takes no time whatsoever for the movement to be transmitted along the entire length of the ray, even if the two fragments are carried light-years away from each other. Nobody knows why it works, but we're glad it does. Without the ansible, there'd be no possibility of meaningful communication between human worlds.”
“Hell, there's no meaningful communication now,” said Jakt. “And if it wasn't for the ansibles, there'd be no warfleet heading for Lusitania right now.”
Valentine wasn't listening to Jakt, though. She was watching Miro. This time Valentine saw when he moved his lips and jaw, slightly, silently. Sure enough, after he subvocalized, the computer image of Miro spoke again. He was giving commands. It had been absurd for her to think otherwise– who else could be controlling the computer?
“It's a hierarchy,” said the image. “The more complex the structure, the faster the response to change. It's as if the smaller the particle is, the stupider it is, so it's slower to pick up on the fact that it's now part of a different structure.”
“Now you're anthropomorphizing,” said Valentine.
“Maybe,” said Miro. “Maybe not.”
“Human beings are organisms,” said the image. “But human philotic twinings go way beyond those of any other life form.”
“Now you're talking about that stuff that came from Ganges a thousand years ago,” said Valentine. “Nobody's been able to get consistent results from those experiments.” The researchers– Hindus all, and devout ones– claimed that they had shown that human philotic twinings, unlike those of other organisms, did not always reach directly down into the planet's core to twine with all other life and matter. Rather, they claimed, the philotic rays from human beings often twined with those of other human beings, most often with families, but sometimes between teachers and students, and sometimes between close co-workers– including the researchers themselves. The Gangeans had concluded that this distinction between humans and other plant and animal life proved that the souls of some humans were literally lifted to a higher plane, nearer to perfection. They believed that the Perfecting Ones had become one with each other the way that all of life was one with the world. “It's all very pleasingly mystical, but nobody except Gangean Hindus takes it seriously anymore.”
“I do,” said Miro.
“To each his own,” said Jakt.
“Not as a religion,” said Miro. “As science.”
“You mean metaphysics, don't you?” said Valentine.
It was the Miro-image that answered. “The philotic connections between people change fastest of all, and what the Gangeans proved is that they respond to human will. If you have strong feelings binding you to your family, then your philotic rays will twine and you will be one, in exactly the same way that the different atoms in a molecule are one.”
It was a sweet idea– she had thought so when she first heard it, perhaps two thousand years ago, when Ender was speaking for a murdered revolutionary on Mindanao. She and Ender had speculated then on whether the Gangean tests would show that they were twined, as brother and sister. They wondered whether there had been such a connection between them as children, and if it had persisted when Ender was taken off to Battle School and they were separated for six years. Ender had liked that idea very much, and so had Valentine, but after that one conversation the subject never came up again. The notion of philotic connections between peo
ple had remained in the pretty-idea category in her memory. “It's nice to think that the metaphor of human unity might have a physical analogue,” said Valentine.
“Listen!” said Miro. Apparently he didn't want her to dismiss the idea as “nice.”
Again his image spoke for him. “If the Gangeans are right, then when a human being chooses to bond with another person, when he makes a commitment to a community, it is not just a social phenomenon. It's a physical event as well. The philote, the smallest conceivable physical particle– if we can call something with no mass or inertia physical at all– responds to an act of the human will.”
“That's why it's so hard for anyone to take the Gangean experiments seriously.”
“The Gangean experiments were careful and honest.”
“But no one else ever got the same results.”
“No one else ever took them seriously enough to perform the same experiments. Does that surprise you?”
“Yes,” said Valentine. But then she remembered how the idea had been ridiculed in the scientific press, while it was immediately picked up by the lunatic fringe and incorporated into dozens of fringe religions. Once that happened, how could a scientist hope to get funding for such a project? How could a scientist expect to have a career if others came to think of him as a proponent of a metaphysical religion? “No, I suppose it doesn't.”
The Miro-image nodded. “If the philotic ray twines in response to the human will, why couldn't we suppose that all philotic twining is willed? Every particle, all of matter and energy, why couldn't every observable phenomenon in the universe be the willing behavior of individuals?”
“Now we're beyond Gangean Hinduism,” said Valentine. “How seriously am I supposed to take this? What you're talking about is Animism. The most primitive kind of religion. Everything's alive. Stones and oceans and–”
“No,” said Miro. “Life is life.”
“Life is life,” said the computer program. “Life is when a single philote has the strength of will to bind together the molecules of a single cell, to entwine their rays into one. A stronger philote can bind together many cells into a single organism. The strongest of all are the intelligent beings. We can bestow our philotic connections where we will. The philotic basis of intelligent life is even clearer in the other known sentient species. When a pequenino dies and passes into the third life, it's his strong-willed philote that preserves his identity and passes it from the mammaloid corpse to the living tree.”
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