"That's right. You have your memories. The feelings of your own body. Your own experiences. But none of those will be lost. Nobody's conscious of their own underlying will. You'll never know the difference."
She laughed. "Oh, you're the expert now in what would happen, with something that has never been done before?"
"Yes," said Miro. "Somebody has to decide what to do. Somebody has to decide what to believe, and then act on it."
"What if I tell you that I don't want you to do this?"
"Do you want to die?"
"It seems to me that you're the one trying to kill me," said Val. "Or, to be fair, you want to commit the slightly lesser crime of cutting me off from my own deepest self and replacing that with someone else."
"You're dying now. The self you have doesn't want you."
"Miro, I'll go see the Hive Queen with you because that sounds like an interesting experience. But I'm not going to let you extinguish me in order to save my life."
"All right then," said Miro, "since you represent the utterly altruistic side of Ender's nature, let me put it to you a different way. If Jane's aiua can be placed in your body, then she won't die. And if she doesn't die, then maybe, after they've shut down the computer links that she lives in and then reconnected them, confident that she's dead, maybe then she'll be able to link with them again and maybe then instantaneous starflight won't have to end. So if you die, you'll be dying to save, not just Jane, but the power and freedom to expand as we've never expanded before. Not just us, but the pequeninos and hive queens too."
Val fell silent.
Miro watched the route ahead of him. The Hive Queen's cave was nearing on the left, in an embankment by a stream. He had gone down there once before, in his old body. He knew the way. Of course, Ender had been with him then, and that was why he could communicate with the Hive Queen--she could talk to Ender, and because those who loved and followed him were philotically twined with him, they overheard the echoes of her speech. But wasn't Val a part of Ender? And wasn't he now more tightly twined to her than he had ever been with Ender? He needed Val with him to speak to the Hive Queen; he needed to speak to the Hive Queen in order to keep Val from being obliterated like his own old damaged body.
They got out, and sure enough, the Hive Queen was expecting them; a single worker waited for them at the cavern's mouth. It took Val by the hand and led them wordlessly down into darkness, Miro clinging to Val, Val holding to the strange creature. It frightened Miro just as it had the first time, but Val seemed utterly unafraid.
Or was it that she was unconcerned? Her deepest self was Ender, and Ender did not really care what happened to her. This made her fearless. It made her unconcerned with survival. All she was concerned with was keeping her connection to Ender--the one thing that was bound to kill her if she kept it up. To her it seemed as though Miro was trying to extinguish her; but Miro knew that his plan was the only way to save any part of her. Her body. Her memories. Her habits, her mannerisms, every aspect of her that he actually knew, those would be preserved. Every part of her that she herself was aware of or remembered, those would all be there. As far as Miro was concerned, that would mean her life was saved, if those endured. And once the change had been made, if it could be made at all, Val would thank him for it.
And so would Jane.
And so would everyone.
said a voice in his mind, a low murmur behind the level of actual hearing,
"That's a lie," said Miro to the Hive Queen. "He killed Human, didn't he? It was Human that he put on the line."
Human was now one of the fathertrees that grew by the gate of the village of Milagre. Ender had killed him slowly, so that he could take root in the soil and go through the passage into the third life with all his memories intact.
"I suppose Human didn't actually die," said Miro. "But Planter did, and Ender let him do that, too. And how many hive queens died in the final battle between your people and Ender? Don't brag to me about how Ender pays his own prices. He just sees to it that the price is paid, by whoever has the means to pay it."
The Hive Queen's answer was immediate.
"You don't want Jane to die either," said Miro.
"I don't like her voice inside me," said Val softly.
"Keep walking. Keep following."
"I can't," said Val. "The worker--she let go of my hand."
"You mean we're stranded here?" asked Miro.
Val's answer was silence. They held hands tightly in the dark, not daring to step in any direction.
"When I was here before," said Miro, "you told us how all the hive queens made a web to trap Ender, only they couldn't, so they made a bridge, they drew an aiua from Outside and made a bridge out of it and used it to speak to E
nder through his mind, through the fantasy game that he played on the computers in the Battle School. You did that once--you called an aiua from Outside. Why can't you find that same aiua and put it somewhere else? Link it to something else?"
"All you're saying is that it's something new. Something you don't know how to do. Not that it can't be done."
"So you can stop me," Miro murmured to Val.