Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

"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 levels 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."