“They never touch,” said Miro.
No, they never do. It's something that Ender had never realized. In his mind, the galaxy was flat, the way the starmaps always showed it, a topdown view of the section of the spiral arm of the galaxy where humans had spread out from Earth. But it wasn't flat. No two stars were ever exactly in the same plane as any other two stars. The philotic rays connecting starships and planets and satellites in perfectly straight lines, ansible to ansible– they seemed to intersect when you saw them on a flat map, but in this three-dimensional close-up in the computer display, it was obvious that they never touched at all.
“How can she live in that?” asked Ender. “How can she possibly exist in that when there's no connection between those lines except at the endpoints?”
“So– maybe she doesn't. Maybe she lives in the sum of the computer programs at every terminal.”
“In which case she could back herself up into all the computers and then–”
“And then nothing. She could never put herself back together because they're only using clean computers to run the ansibles.”
“They can't keep that up forever,” said Ender. “It's too important for computers on different planets to be able to talk to each other. Congress will find out pretty soon that there aren't enough human beings in existence to key in by hand, in a year, the amount of information computers have to send to each other by ansible every hour.”
“So she just hides? Waits? Sneaks in and restores herself when she sees a chance five or ten years from now?”
“If that's all she is– a collection of programs.”
“There has to be more to her than that,” said Miro.
“Why?”
“Because if she's nothing more than a collection of programs, even self-writing and self-revising programs, ultimately she was created by some programmer or group of programmers somewhere. In which case she's just acting out the program that was forced on her from the beginning. She has no free will. She's a puppet. Not a person.”
“Well, when it comes to that, maybe you're defining free will too narrowly,” said Ender. “Aren't human beings the same way, programmed by our genes and our environment?”
“No,” said Miro.
“What else, then?”
“Our philotic connections say that we aren't. Because we're capable of connecting with each other by act of will, which no other form of life on Earth can do. There's something we have, something we are, that wasn't caused by anything else.”
“What, our soul?”
“Not even that,” said Miro. “Because the priests say that God created our souls, and that just puts us under the control of another puppeteer. If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make. God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal– there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.”
“So– as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn't exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of our behavior are so complex that we can't trace them back. If you've got one line of dominoes knocking each other down one by one, then you can always say, Look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the causal chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to.”
“Bobagem,” said Miro.
“Well, I admit that it's a philosophy with no practical value,” said Ender. “Valentine once explained it to me this way. Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. Because otherwise, every time somebody does something terrible, you can't punish him, because he can't help it, because his genes or his environment or God made him do it, and every time somebody does something good, you can't honor him, because he was a puppet, too. If you think that everybody around you is a puppet, why bother talking to them at all? Why even try to plan anything or create anything, since everything you plan or create or desire or dream of is just acting out the script your puppeteer built into you.”
“Despair,” said Miro.
“So we conceive of ourselves and everyone around us as volitional beings. We treat everyone as if they did things with a purpose in mind, instead of because they're being pushed from behind. We punish criminals. We reward altruists. We plan things and build things together. We make promises and expect each other to keep them. It's all a made-up story, but when everybody believes that everybody's actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization.”
“Just a story.”
“That's how Valentine explained it. That is, if there's no free will. I'm not sure what she actually believes herself. My guess is that she'd say that she is civilized, and therefore she must believe the story herself, in which case she absolutely believes in free will and thinks this whole idea of a made-up story is nonsense– but that's what she'd believe even if it were true, and so who can be sure of anything.”
Then Ender laughed, because Valentine had laughed when she first told him all this many years ago. When they were still only a little bit past childhood, and he was working on writing the Hegemon, and was trying to understand why his brother Peter had done all the great and terrible things he did.
“It isn't funny,” said Miro.
“I thought it was,” said Ender.
“Either we're free or we're not,” said Miro. “Either the story's true or it isn't.”
“The point is that we have to believe that it's true in order to live as civilized human beings,” said Ender.
“No, that's not the point at all,” said Miro. “Because if it's a lie, why should we bother to live as civilized human beings?”
“Because the species has a better chance to survive if we do,” said Ender. “Because our genes require us to believe the story in order to enhance our ability to pass those genes on for many generations in the future. Because anybody who doesn't believe the story begins to act in unproductive, uncooperative ways, and eventually the community, the herd, will reject him and his opportunities for reproduction will be diminished– for instance, he'll be put in jail– and the genes leading to his unbelieving behavior will eventually be extinguished.”
“So the puppeteer requires that we believe that we're not puppets. We're forced to believe in free will.”
“Or so Valentine explained it to me.”
“But she doesn't really believe that, does she?”
“Of course she doesn't. Her genes won't let her.”
Ender laughed again. But Miro was not taking this lightly, as a philosophical game. He was outraged. He clenched his fists and swung out his arms in a spastic gesture that plunged his hand into the middle of the display. It caused a shadow above it, a space in which no philotic rays were visible.
True empty space. Except that now Ender could see dustmotes floating in that display space, catching the light from the window and the open door of the house. In particular one large dustmote, like a short strand of hair, a tiny fiber of cotton, floating brightly in the midst of space where once only the philotic rays had been visible.
“Calm down,” Ender said.
“No,” Miro shouted. “My puppeteer is making me furious!”
“Shut up,” said Ender. “Listen to me.”
“I'm tired of listening to you!” Nevertheless he fell silent, and listened.
“I think you're right,” said Ender. “I think that we are free, and I don't think it's just an illusion that we believe in because it has survival value. And I think we're free because we aren't just this body, acting out a genetic script. And we aren't some soul that God created out of nothing. We're free because we always existed. Right back from the beginning of time, only there was no beginning of time so we existed all along. Nothing ever caused us
. Nothing ever made us. We simply are, and we always were.”
“Philotes?” asked Miro.
“Maybe,” said Ender. “Like that mote of dust in the display.”
“Where?” asked Miro.
It was invisible now, of course, since the holographic display again dominated the space above the terminal. Ender reached his hand into the display, causing a shadow to fall upward into the hologram. He moved his hand until he revealed the bright dustmote he had seen before. Or maybe it wasn't the same one. Maybe it was another one, but it didn't matter.
“Our bodies, the whole world around us, they're like the holographic display. They're real enough, but they don't show the true cause of things. It's the one thing we can never be sure of, just looking at the display of the universe– why things are happening. But behind it all, inside it all, if we could see through it, we'd find the true cause of everything. Philotes that always existed, doing what they want.”
“Nothing always existed,” said Miro.
“Says who? The supposed beginning of this universe, that was only the start of the present order– this display, all of what we think exists. But who says the philotes that are acting out the natural laws that began at that moment didn't exist before? And if the whole universe collapses back in on itself, who says that the philotes won't simply be released from the laws they're following now, and go back into…”
“Into what?”
“Into chaos. Darkness. Disorder. Whatever they were before this universe brought them together. Why couldn't they– we– have always existed and always continue to exist?”
“So where was I between the beginning of the universe and the day I was born?” said Miro.
“I don't know,” said Ender. “I'm making this up as I go along.”
“And where did Jane come from? Was her philote just floating around somewhere, and then suddenly she was in charge of a bunch of computer programs and she became a person?”
“Maybe,” said Ender.
“And even if there's some natural system that somehow assigns philotes to be in charge of every organism that's born or spawned or germinated, how would that natural system have ever created Jane? She wasn't born.”
Jane, of course, had been listening all along, and now she spoke. “Maybe it didn't happen,” said Jane. “Maybe I have no philote of my own. Maybe I'm not alive.”
“No,” said Miro.
“Maybe,” said Ender.
“So maybe I can't die,” said Jane. “Maybe when they switch me off, it's just a complicated program shutting down.”
“Maybe,” said Ender.
“No,” said Miro. “Shutting you off is murder.”
“Maybe I only do the things I do because I'm programmed that way, without realizing it. Maybe I only think I'm free.”
“We've been through that argument,” said Ender.
“Maybe it's true of me, even if it isn't true of you.”
“And maybe not,” said Ender. “But you've been through your own code, haven't you?”
“A million times,” said Jane. “I've looked at all of it.”
“Do you see anything in there to give you the illusion of free will?”
“No,” she said. “But you haven't found the free-will gene in humans, either.”
“Because there isn't one,” said Miro. “Like Andrew said. What we are, at the core, in our essence, what we are is one philote that's been twined in with all the trillions of philotes that make up the atoms and molecules and cells of our bodies. And what you are is a philote, too, just like us.”
“Not likely,” said Jane. Her face was now in the display, a shadowy face with the simulated philotic rays passing right through her head.
“We're not taking odds on it,” said Ender. “Nothing that actually happens is likely until it exists, and then it's certain. You exist.”
“Whatever it is that I am,” said Jane.
“Right now we believe that you are a self-existing entity,” said Ender, “because we've seen you act in ways that we've learned to associate with free will. We have exactly as much evidence of your being a free intelligence as we have of ourselves being free intelligences. If it turns out that you're not, we have to question whether we are, either. Right now our hypothesis is that our individual identity, what makes us ourself, is the philote at the center of our twining. If we're right, then it stands to reason you might have one, too, and in that case we have to figure out where it is. Philotes aren't easy to find, you know. We've never detected one. We only suppose they exist because we've seen evidence of the philotic ray, which behaves as if it had two endpoints with a specific location in space. We don't know where you are or what you're connected to.”
“If she's like us,” said Miro, “like human beings, then her connections can shift and split. Like when that mob formed around Grego. I've talked to him about how that felt. As if those people were all part of his body. And when they broke away and went off on their own, he felt as if he had gone through an amputation. I think that was philotic twining. I think those people really did connect to him for a while, they really were partly under his control, part of his self. So maybe Jane is like that, too, all those computer programs twined up to her, and she herself connected to whoever she has that kind of allegiance to. Maybe you, Andrew. Maybe me. Or partly both of us.”
“But where is she,” said Ender. “If she actually has a philote– no, if she actually is a philote– then it has to have a specific location, and if we could find it, maybe we could keep the connections alive even when all the computers are cut off from her. Maybe we can keep her from dying.”
“I don't know,” said Miro. “She could be anywhere.” He gestured toward the display. Anywhere in space, is what he meant. Anywhere in the universe. And there in the display was Jane's head, with the philotic rays passing through it.
“To find out where she is, we have to find out how and where she began,” said Ender. “If she really is a philote, she got connected up somehow, somewhere.”
“A detective following up a three-thousand-year-old trail,” said Jane. “Won't this be fun, watching you do all this in the next few months.”
Ender ignored her. “And if we're going to do that, we have to figure out how philotes work in the first place.”
“Grego's the physicist,” said Miro.
“He's working on faster-than-light travel,” said Jane.
“He can work on this, too,” said Miro.
“I don't want him distracted by a project that can't succeed,” said Jane.
“Listen, Jane, don't you want to live through this?” said Ender.
“I can't anyway, so why waste time?”
“She's just being a martyr,” said Miro.
“No I'm not,” said Jane. “I'm being practical.”
"You're being a fool," said Ender. "Grego can't come up with a theory to give us faster-than-light travel just by sitting and thinking about the physics of light, or whatever. If it worked that way, we would have achieved faster-than-light travel three thousand years ago, because there were hundreds of physicists working on it then, back when philotic rays and the Park Instantaneity Principle were first thought of. If Grego thinks of it it's because of some flash of insight, some absurd connection he makes in his mind, and
that won't come from concentrating intelligently on a single train of thought."
“I know that,” said Jane.
“I know you know it. Didn't you tell me you were bringing those people from Path into our projects for that specific reason? To be untrained, intuitive thinkers?”
“I just don't want you to waste time.”
“You just don't want to get your hopes up,” said Ender. “You just don't want to admit that there's a chance that you might live, because then you'd start to fear death.”
“I already fear death.”
“You already think of yourself as dead,” said Ender. “There's a difference.”
“I know,” murmured Miro.
“Han Fei-tzu and Si Wang-mu.”
“Them,” said Ender. “Because they can be thinking about this, too.”
“No,” said Jane.
“Yes,” said Ender.
“I want to see the real problems solved before I die– I want Lusitania to be saved, and the godspoken of Path to be freed, and the descolada to be tamed or destroyed. And I won't have you slowing that down by trying to work on the impossible project of saving me.”
“You aren't God,” said Ender. “You don't know how to solve any of these problems anyway, and so you don't know how they're going to be solved, and so you have no idea whether finding out what you are in order to save you will help or hurt those other projects, and you certainly don't know whether concentrating on those other problems will get them solved any sooner than they would be if we all went on a picnic today and played lawn tennis till sundown.”
“What the hell is lawn tennis?” asked Miro.
But Ender and Jane were silent, glaring at each other. Or rather, Ender was glaring at the image of Jane in the computer display, and that image was glaring back at him.
“You don't know that you're right,” said Jane.
“And you don't know that I'm wrong,” said Ender.
“It's my life,” said Jane.
“The hell it is,” said Ender. “You're part of me and Miro, too, and you're tied up with the whole future of humanity, and the pequeninos and the hive queen too, for that matter. Which reminds me– while you're having Han what's-his-name and Si Wang whoever-she-is–”
“Mu.”
“–work on this philotic thing, I'm going to talk to the hive queen. I don't think I've particularly discussed you with her. She's got to know more about philotes than we do, since she has a philotic connection with all her workers.”
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