Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

“Humans make a machine, and then fool themselves into believing that their own brains are no better than the machines. This allows them to believe that their creation, the computer, is as brill

iant as their own minds. But it’s a ridiculous self-deception. Computers aren’t even in the same league.”

“The man who called himself my father,” said Rigg, “was a computer, and I can tell you he was far smarter than me.”

“He was very good at pretending to be smarter. He could give you data, teach you how to perform operations. But he was never your equal when it came to actual thought. That’s what the mice quickly came to understand. They could think rings around the expendables. They were the equals of any humans.”

“I thought you said that dozens of them were more intelligent than humans,” said Umbo.

“More capable of feats of memory and calculation,” said Loaf. “But a mind is a mind. Thought is thought. The Odinfolders’ improvements have increased brain capacity, given better tools, but the mind is not identical with the organic machinery it inhabits.”

“Now the philosopher comes out,” said Olivenko. “You’ve discovered the soul.”

“Rigg did,” said Loaf. “And Umbo.”

“When?” Umbo demanded.

“Not me,” said Rigg.

“The paths, Rigg,” said Loaf. “The part of you that sees into the past. Where is that in the genome?”

“The Odinfolders said that they had clipped the genes that had those powers and . . .” Then Rigg fell silent. They had left him with that impression, but no, they hadn’t actually said so.

“If they could find the genes that produced time-shifting,” said Loaf, “what would they need you for?”

“They’re searching for those genes,” said Olivenko.

“They’ve spent all these months studying every genetic trace you’ve left behind,” said Loaf. “They have the mice gather them up. They have the mice study them.”

“And have the mice found nothing?”

“There’s nothing to find,” said Loaf. “It’s not in the genes. The part of us that lays down paths through time, tied to the gravity of a planet—it’s not in the brain.”

“Animals leave paths, too,” said Rigg. “Even plants, in their fashion.”

“Life is the soul,” said Loaf. “Living things have souls, have minds, have thought. Living individuals have their own relationship to the planet they dwell on. Their past is dragged along with their world through space and time. But it persists. Long after the organism dies, its path remains, and all that it was can be recovered, every moment it lived through can be seen, can be revisited.”

Rigg blushed with embarrassment before he could even speak aloud the thought he had just had. “I should have seen it all along.”

“Should have, but didn’t,” said Loaf.

“Seen what!” demanded Umbo.

“That the paths of the mice in Odinfold aren’t mousepaths,” said Loaf.

“You read minds now?” asked Olivenko.

“I knew what he had to be thinking about,” said Loaf. “And when he realized, and blushed—”

“Their paths are small,” said Rigg, “but they’re bright. And they have the same—it’s not color, but it’s like color—they have the same feel as human paths. It’s right there in front of me, and I didn’t even realize it, because—”

“Because you have a human mind,” said Loaf. “The brain sees all, but the mind has focus. That’s our great power, the ability to home in on something and understand it to its roots—the brain can’t do that. But that same focus shuts out things that the brain is constantly aware of. So we don’t notice what we can plainly see; and yet we understand things that we can’t see.”

“And all living things can do this?” said Umbo.

“At some level or other,” said Loaf. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about this. Because the facemask lets me see like a beast, even though I think about what I see the way a man does. I can see a range of detail that is impossible to an ordinary human. But the facemask, which perceives it all, can’t do anything with it, because its mind is at such a primitive level. When mice were bred with human genes inside them, it was as if humans were born in tiny bodies. They have human souls, or close to it.”

“What are they, where do they come from?” demanded Olivenko.