Children of the Mind (Ender's Saga 4)

"I found their visit very disturbing," said Aimaina. "Something that they told me was not true, and I need more information in order to find out what it was. I do not wish to violate their privacy, but are there matters of public record--perhaps their school attendance, or places of employment, or some matters of family connections . . ."

"Yasunari has told us that all things you ask for are for a wise purpose. Let me search."

The face disappeared for a moment, then flickered back almost immediately.

"This is very odd. Have I made a mistake?" She spelled the names carefully.

"That's correct," said Aimaina. "Exactly like yesterday."

"I remember them, too. They live in an apartment only a few blocks from your house. But I can't find them at all today. And here I search the apartment building and find that the apartment they occupied has been empty for a year. Aimaina, I am very surprised. How can two people exist one day and not exist the next day? Did I make some mistake, either yesterday or today?"

"You made no mistake, helper of my friend. This is the information I needed. Please, I beg you to think no more about it. What looks like a mystery to you is in fact a solution to my questions."

They bade each other polite farewells.

Aimaina walked from his garden workroom past the struggling leaves that bowed under the pressure of the sunlight. The ancestors have pressed wisdom on me, he thought, like sunlight on the leaves; and last night the water flowed through me, carrying this wisdom through my mind like sap through the tree. Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-mu were flesh and blood, and filled with lies, but they came to me and spoke the truth that I needed to hear. Is this not how the ancestors bring messages to their living children? I have somehow launched ships armed with the most terrible weapons of war. I did this when I was young; now the ships are near their destination and I am old and I cannot call them back. A world will be destroyed and Congress will look to the Necessarians for approval and they will give it, and then the Necessarians will look to me for approval, and I will hide my face in shame. My leaves will fall and I will stand bare before them. That is why I should not have lived my life in this tropical place. I have forgotten winter. I have forgotten shame and death.

Perfect simplicity--I thought I had achieved it. But instead I have been a bringer of bad fortune.

He sat in the garden for an hour, drawing single characters in the fine gravel of the path, then wiping it smooth and writing again. At last he returned to the garden shed and on the computer typed the message he had been composing:

Ender the Xenocide was a child and did not know the war was real; yet he chose to destroy a populated planet in his game. I am an adult and have known all along that the game was real; but I did not kno

w I was a player. Is my blame greater or less than the Xenocide's if another world is destroyed and another raman species obliterated? What is my path to simplicity now?

His friend would know few of the circumstances surrounding this query; but he would not need more. He would consider the question. He would find an answer.

A moment later, an ansible on the planet Pacifica received his message. On the way, it had already been read by the entity that sat astride all the strands of the ansible web. For Jane, though, it was not the message that mattered so much as the address. Now Peter and Wang-mu would know where to go for the next step in their quest.

5

"NOBODY IS RATIONAL"

"My father often told me,

We have servants and machines

in order that our will may be carried out

beyond the reach of our own arms.

Machines are more powerful than servants

and more obedient and less rebellious,

but machines have no judgment

and will not remonstrate with us

when our will is foolish,

and will not disobey us

when our will is evil.

In times and places where people despise the gods,

those most in need of servants have machines,