Children of the Mind

by Orson Scott Card

  "Ouch," said Peter, as if his pain were a joke.

  Wang-mu showed no mercy--she was not a servant now. "You're so proud of knowing more than me, but everything you know is either what Ender put in your head or what Jane whispers in your ear. I have no Jane, I had no Ender. Everything I know, I learned the hard way. I lived through it. So please don't treat me with contempt again. If I have any value on this expedition, it will come from my knowing everything you know--because everything you know, I can be taught, but what I know, you can never learn."

  The joking was over. Peter's face reddened with anger. "How . . . who . . ."

  "How dare I," said Wang-mu, echoing the phrases she assumed he had begun. "Who do I think I am."

  "I didn't say that," said Peter softly, turning away.

  "I'm not staying in my place, am I?" she asked. "Han Fei-tzu taught me about Peter Wiggin. The original, not the copy. How he made his sister Valentine take part in his conspiracy to seize the hegemony of Earth. How he made her write all of the Demosthenes material--rabble-rousing demagoguery--while he wrote all the Locke material, the lofty, analytical ideas. But the low demagoguery came from him."

  "So did the lofty ideas," said Peter.

  "Exactly," said Wang-mu. "What never came from him, what came only from Valentine, was something he never saw or valued. A human soul."

  "Han Fei-tzu said that?"

  "Yes."

  "Then he's an ass," said Peter. "Because Peter had as much of a human soul as Valentine had." He stepped toward her, looming. "I'm the one without a soul, Wang-mu."

  For a moment she was afraid of him. How did she know what violence had been created in him? What dark rage in Ender's aiua might find expression through this surrogate he had created?

  But Peter did not strike a blow. Perhaps it was not necessary.

  Aimaina Hikari came out himself to the front gate of his garden to let them in. He was dressed simply, and around his neck was the locket that all the traditional Japanese of Divine Wind wore: a tiny casket containing the ashes of all his worthy ancestors. Peter had already explained to her that when a man like Hikari died, a pinch of the ashes from his locket would be added to a bit of his own ashes and given to his children or his grandchildren to wear. Thus all of his ancient family hung above his breastbone, waking and sleeping, and formed the most precious gift he could give his posterity. It was a custom that Wang-mu, who had no ancestors worth remembering, found both thrilling and disturbing.

  Hikari greeted Wang-mu with a bow, but held out his hand for Peter to shake. Peter took it with some small show of surprise.

  "Oh, they call me the keeper of the Yamato spirit," said Hikari with a smile, "but that doesn't mean I must be rude and force Europeans to behave like Japanese. Watching a European bow is as painful as watching a pig do ballet."

  As Hikari led them through the garden into his traditional paper-walled house, Peter and Wang-mu looked at each other and grinned broadly. It was a wordless truce between them, for they both knew at once that Hikari was going to be a formidable opponent, and they needed to be allies if they were to learn anything from him.

  "A philosopher and a physicist," said Hikari. "I looked you up when you sent your note asking for an appointment. I have been visited by philosophers before, and physicists, and also by Europeans and Chinese, but what truly puzzles me is why the two of you should be together."

  "She found me sexually irresistible," said Peter, "and I can't get rid of her." Then he grinned his most charming grin.

  To Wang-mu's pleasure, Peter's Western-style irony left Hikari impassive and unamused, and she could see a blush rising up Peter's neck.

  It was her turn--to play the gnome for real this time. "The pig wallows in mud, but he warms himself on the sunny stone."

  Hikari turned his gaze to her--remaining just as impassive as before. "I will write these words in my heart," he said.

  Wang-mu wondered if Peter understood that she had just been the victim of Hikari's oriental-style irony.

  "We have come to learn from you," said Peter.

  "Then I must give you food and send you on your way disappointed," said Hikari. "I have nothing to teach a physicist or a philosopher. If I did not have children, I would have no one to teach, for only they know less than I."

  "No, no," said Peter. "You're a wise man. The keeper of the Yamato spirit."

  "I said that they call me that. But the Yamato spirit is much too great to be kept in so small a container as my soul. And yet the Yamato spirit is much too small to be worthy of the notice of the powerful souls of the Chinese and the European. You are the teachers, as China and Europe have always been the teachers of Japan."

  Wang-mu did not know Peter well, but she knew him well enough to see that he was flustered now, at a loss for how to proceed. In Ender's life and wanderings, he had lived in several oriental cultures and even, according to Han Fei-tzu, spoke Korean, which meant that Ender would probably be able to deal with the ritualized humility of a man like Hikari--especially since he was obviously using that humility in a mocking way. But what Ender knew and what he had given to his Peter-identity were obviously two different things. This conversation would be up to her, and she sensed that the best way to play with Hikari was to refuse to let him control the game.

  "Very well," she said. "We will teach you. For when we show you our ignorance, then you will see where we most need your wisdom."

  Hikari looked at Peter for a moment. Then he clapped his hands. A serving woman appeared in a doorway. "Tea," said Hikari.

  At once Wang-mu leapt to her feet. Only when she was already standing did she realize what she was going to do. That peremptory command to bring tea was one that she had heeded many times in her life, but it was not a blind reflex that brought her to her feet. Rather it was her intuition that the only way to beat Hikari at his own game was to call his bluff: She would be humbler than he knew how to be.

  "I have been a servant all my life," said Wang-mu honestly, "but I was always a clumsy one," which was not so honest. "May I go with your servant and learn from her? I may not be wise enough to learn the ideas of a great philosopher, but perhaps I can learn what I am fit to learn from the servant who is worthy to bring tea to Aimaina Hikari."

  She could see from his hesitation that Hikari knew he had been trumped. But the man was deft. He immediately rose to his feet. "You have already taught me a great lesson," he said. "Now we will all go and watch Kenji prepare the tea. If she will be your teacher, Si Wang-mu, she must also be mine. For how could I bear to know that someone in my house knew a thing that I had not yet learned?"

  Wang-mu had to admire his resourcefulness. He had once again placed himself beneath her.

  Poor Kenji, the servant! She was a deft and well-trained woman, Wang-mu saw, but it made her nervous having these three, especially her master, watch her prepare the tea. So Wang-mu immediately reached in and "helped"--deliberately making a mistake as she did. At once Kenji was in her element, and confident again. "You have forgotten," said Kenji kindly, "because my kitchen is so inefficiently arranged." Then she showed Wang-mu how the tea was prepared. "At least in Nagoya," she said modestly. "At least in this house."

  Wang-mu watched carefully, concentrating only on Kenji and what she was doing, for she quickly saw that the Japanese way of preparing tea--or perhaps it was the way of Divine Wind, or merely the way of Nagoya, or of humble philosophers who kept the Yamato spirit--was different from the pattern she had followed so carefully in the house of Han Fei-tzu. By the time the tea was ready, Wang-mu had learned from her. For, having made the claim to be a servant, and having a computer record that asserted that she had lived her whole life in a Chinese community on Divine Wind, Wang-mu might have to be able to serve tea properly in exactly this fashion.

  They returned to the front room of Hikari's house, Kenji and Wang-mu each bearing a small tea table. Kenji offered her table to Hikari, but he waved her over to Peter, and then bowed to him. It was Wang-mu who served Hika
ri. And when Kenji backed away from Peter, Wang-mu also backed away from Hikari.

  For the first time, Hikari looked--angry? His eyes flashed, anyway. For by placing herself on exactly the same level as Kenji, she had just maneuvered him into a position where he either had to shame himself by being prouder than Wang-mu and dismissing his servant, or disrupt the good order of his own house by inviting Kenji to sit down with the three of them as equals.

  "Kenji," said Hikari. "Let me pour tea for you."

  Check, thought Wang-mu. And mate.

  It was a delicious bonus when Peter, who had finally caught on to the game, also poured tea for her, and then managed to spill it on her, which prompted Hikari to spill a little on himself in order to put his guest at ease. The pain of the hot tea and then the discomfort as it cooled and dried were well worth the pleasure of knowing that while Wang-mu had proved herself a match for Hikari in outrageous courtesy, Peter had merely proved himself to be an oaf.

  Or was Wang-mu truly a match for Hikari? He must have seen and understood her effort to place herself ostentatiously beneath him. It was possible, then, that he was--humbly--allowing her to win pride of place as the more humble of the two. As soon as she realized that he might have done this, then she knew that he certainly had done it, and the victory was his.

  I'm not as clever as I thought.

  She looked at Peter, hoping that he would now take over and do whatever clever thing he had in mind. But he seemed perfectly content to let her lead out. Certainly he didn't jump into the breach. Did he, too, realize that she had just been bested at her own game, because she failed to take it deep enough? Was he giving her the rope to hang herself?

  Well, let's get the noose good and tight.

  "Aimaina Hikari, you are called by some the keeper of the Yamato spirit. Peter and I grew up on a Japanese world, and yet the Japanese humbly allow Stark to be the language of the public school, so that we speak no Japanese. In my Chinese neighborhood, in Peter's American city, we spent our childhoods on the edge of Japanese culture, looking in. So if there is any particular part of our vast ignorance that will be most obvious to you, it is in our knowledge of Yamato itself."

  "Oh, Wang-mu, you make a mystery out of the obvious. No one understands Yamato better than those who see it from the outside, just as the parent understands the child better than the child understands herself."

  "Then I will enlighten you," said Wang-mu, discarding the game of humility. "For I see Japan as an Edge nation, and I cannot yet see whether your ideas will make Japan a new Center nation, or begin the decay that all Edge nations experience when they take power."

  "I grasp a hundred possible meanings, most of them surely true of my people, for your term 'Edge nation,'" said Hikari. "But what is a Center nation, and how can a people become one?"

  "I am not well-versed in Earth history," said Wang-mu, "but as I studied what little I know, it seemed to me that there were a handful of Center nations, which had a culture so strong that they swallowed up all conquerors. Egypt was one, and China. Each one became unified and then expanded no more than necessary to protect their borders and pacify their hinterland. Each one took in its conquerors and swallowed them up for thousands of years. Egyptian writing and Chinese writing persisted with only stylistic modifications, so that the past remained present for those who could read."

  Wang-mu could see from Peter's stiffness that he was very worried. After all, she was saying things that were definitely not gnomic. But since he was completely out of his depth with an Asian, he was still making no effort to intrude.

  "Both of these nations were born in barbarian times," said Hikari. "Are you saying that no nation can become a Center nation now?"

  "I don't know," said Wang-mu. "I don't even know if my distinction between Edge nations and Center nations has any truth or value. I do know that a Center nation can keep its cultural power long after it has lost political control. Mesopotamia was continually conquered by its neighbors, and yet each conqueror in turn was more changed by Mesopotamia than Mesopotamia was changed. The kings of Assyria and Chaldea and Persia were almost indistinguishable after they had once tasted the culture of the land between the rivers. But a Center nation can also fall so completely that it disappears. Egypt staggered under the cultural blow of Hellenism, fell to its knees under the ideology of Christianity, and finally was erased by Islam. Only the stone buildings reminded the children of what and who their ancient parents had been. History has no laws, and all patterns that we find there are useful illusions."

  "I see you are a philosopher," said Hikari.

  "You are generous to call my childish speculations by that lofty name," said Wang-mu. "But let me tell you now what I think about Edge nations. They are born in the shadow--or perhaps one could say, in the reflected light--of other nations. As Japan became civilized under the influence of China. As Rome discovered itself in the shadow of the Greeks."

  "The Etruscans first," said Peter helpfully.

  Hikari looked at him blandly, then turned back to Wang-mu without comment. Wang-mu could almost feel Peter wither at having been thus deemed irrelevant. She felt a little sorry for him. Not a lot, just a little.

  "Center nations are so confident of themselves that they generally don't need to embark on wars of conquest. They are already sure they are the superior people and that all other nations wish to be like them and obey them. But Edge nations, when they first feel their strength, must prove themselves, they think, and almost always they do so with the sword. Thus the Arabs broke the back of the Roman Empire and swallowed up Persia. Thus the Macedonians, on the edge of Greece, conquered Greece; and then, having been so culturally swallowed up that they now thought themselves Greek, they conquered the empire on whose edge the Greeks had become civilized--Persia. The Vikings had to harrow Europe before peeling off kingdoms in Naples, Sicily, Normandy, Ireland, and finally England. And Japan--"

  "We tried to stay on our islands," said Hikari softly.

  "Japan, when it erupted, rampaged through the Pacific, trying to conquer the great Center nation of China, and was finally stopped by the bombs of the new Center nation of America."

  "I would have thought," said Hikari, "that America was the ultimate Edge nation."

  "America was settled by Edge peoples, but the idea of America became the new envigorating principle that made it a Center nation. They were so arrogant that, except for subduing their own hinterland, they had no will to empire. They simply assumed that all nations wanted to be like them. They swallowed up all other cultures. Even on Divine Wind, what is the language of the schools? It was not England that imposed this language, Stark, Starways Common Speech, on us all."

  "It was only by accident that America was technologically ascendant at the moment the Hive Queen came and forced us out among the stars."

  "The idea of America became the Center idea, I think," said Wang-mu. "Every nation from then on had to have the forms of democracy. We are governed by the Starways Congress even now. We all live within the American culture whether we like it or not. So what I wonder is this: Now that Japan has taken control of this Center nation, will Japan be swallowed up, as the Mongols were swallowed up by China? Or will the Japanese culture retain its identity, but eventually decay and lose control, as the Edge-nation Turks lost control of Islam and the Edge-nation Manchu lost control of China?"

  Hikari was upset. Angry? Puzzled? Wang-mu had no way of guessing.

  "The philosopher Si Wang-mu says a thing that is impossible for me to accept," said Hikari. "How can you say that the Japanese are now in control of Starways Congress and the Hundred Worlds? When was this revolution that no one noticed?"

  "But I thought you could see what your teaching of the Yamato way had accomplished," said Wang-mu. "The existence of the Lusitania Fleet is proof of Japanese control. This is the great discovery that my friend the physicist taught me, and it was the reason we came to you."

  Peter's look of horror was genuine. She could guess what he was t
hinking. Was she insane, to have tipped their hand so completely? But she also knew mat she had done it in a context that revealed nothing about their motive in coming.

  And, never having lost his composure, Peter took his cue and proceeded to explain Jane's analysis of Starways Congress, the Necessarians, and the Lusitania Fleet, though of course he presented the ideas as if they were his own. Hikari listened, nodding now and then, shaking his head at other times; the impassivity was gone now, the attitude of amused distance discarded.

  "So you tell me," Hikari said, when Peter was done, "that because of my small book about the American bombs, the Necessarians have taken control of government and launched the Lusitania Fleet? You lay this at my door?"

  "Not as a matter either for blame or credit," said Peter. "You did not plan it or design it. For all I know you don't even approve of it."

  "I don't even think about the politics of Starways Congress. I am of Yamato."

  "But that's what we came here to learn," said Wang-mu. "I see that you are a man of the Edge, not a man of the Center. Therefore you will not let Yamato be swallowed up by the Center nation. Instead the Japanese will remain aloof from their own hegemony, and in the end it will slip from their hands into someone else's hands."

  Hikari shook his head. "I will not have you blame Japan for this Lusitania Fleet. We are the people who are chastened by the gods, we do not send fleets to destroy others."

  "The Necessarians do," said Peter.

  "The Necessarians talk," said Hikari. "No one listens."

  "You don't listen to them," said Peter. "But Congress does."

  "And the Necessarians listen to you," said Wang-mu.

  "I am a man of perfect simplicity!" cried Hikari, rising to his feet. "You have come to torture me with accusations that cannot be true!"

  "We make no accusation," said Wang-mu softly, refusing to rise. "We offer an observation. If we are wrong, we beg you to teach us our mistake."

  Hikari was trembling, and his left hand now clutched the locket of his ancestors' ashes that hung on a silk ribbon around his neck. "No," he said. "I will not let you pretend to be humble seekers after truth. You are assassins. Assassins of the heart, come to destroy me, come to tell me that in seeking to find the Yamato way I have somehow caused my people to rule the human worlds and use that power to destroy a helplessly weak sentient species! It is a terrible lie to tell me, that my life's work has been so useless. I would rather you had put poison in my tea, Si Wang-mu. I would rather you had put a gun to my head and blown it off, Peter Wiggin. They named you well, your parents--proud and terrible names you both bear. The Royal Mother of the West? A goddess? And Peter Wiggin, the first hegemon! Who gives their child such a name as that?"