Orson Card - Children of the Mind

Jane could hear the Hive Queen's voice as if from a distance, for she recoiled instinctively from such a powerful source of thought. It was the relayed message that she heard, the voice of Human speaking in her mind. Human said to her.

She returned then to the starship that contained her own living body. When she transported other people, she left it to their own aiúas to watch over their flesh and hold it intact. The result of that had been the chaotic creations of Miro and Ender, with their hunger for bodies different from the ones they actually lived in. But that effect was now prevented easily by letting travelers linger only a moment, a tiny fraction of a second Outside, just long enough to make sure the bits of everything and everyone were all together. This time, though, she had to hold a starship and the Val-body together, and also drag along Miro, Ela, Firequencher, Quara, and a worker of the hive queen's. There could be no mistakes.

Yet it functioned easily enough. The familiar shuttle she easily held in memory; the people she had carried so often before she carried along. Her new body was already so well known to her that, to her relief, it took no special effort to hold it together along with the ship. The only novelty was that instead of sending and pulling back, she went along. Her own aiúa went with the rest of them Outside.

That was itself the only problem. Once Outside, she had no way of telling how long they had been there. It might have been an hour. A year. A picosecond. She had never herself gone Outside before. It was distracting, baffling, then frightening to have no root or anchor. How can I get back in? What am I connected to?

In the very asking of the panicked question, she found her anchor, for no sooner had her aiúa done a single circuit of the Val-body Outside than it jumped to do her circuit of the mothertrees. In that moment she called the ship and all within it back again, and placed them where she wanted, in the landing zone of the starport on Lusitania.

She inspected them quickly. All were there. It had worked. They would not die in space. She could still do starflight, even with herself aboard. And though she would not often take herself along on voyages -- it had been too frightening, even though her connection with the mothertrees sustained her -- she now knew she could put the ships back into flight without worry.

Malu shouted and the others turned to look at him. They had all seen the Jane-face in the air above the terminals, a hundred Jane-faces around the room. They had all cheered and celebrated at the time. So Wang-mu wondered: What could this be now?

"The god has moved her starship!" Malu cried. "The god has found her power again!"

Wang-mu heard the words and wondered mutely how he knew. But Peter, whatever he might have wondered, took the news more personally. He threw his arms around her, lifted her from the ground, and spun around with her. "We're free again," he cried, his voice as joyful as Malu's had been. "We're free to roam again!"

At that moment Wang-mu finally realized that the man she loved was, at the deepest level, the same man, Ender Wiggin, who had wandered world to world for three thousand years. Why had Peter been so silent and glum, only to relax into such exuberance now? Because he couldn't bear the thought of having to live out his life on only one world.

What have I got myself into? Wang-mu wondered. Is this going to be my life, a week here, a month there?

And then she thought: What if it is? If the week is with Peter, if the month is at his side, then that may well be home enough for me. And if it's not, there'll be time enough to work out some sort of compromise. Even Ender settled down at last, on Lusitania.

Besides, I may be a wanderer myself. I'm still young -- how do I even know what kind of life I want to lead? With Jane to take us anywhere in just a heartbeat, we can see all of the Hundred Worlds and all the newest colonies, and anything else we want to see before we even have to think of settling down.

Someone was shouting out in the control room. Miro knew he should get up from Jane's sleeping body and find out. But he did not want to let go of her hand. He did not want to take his eyes away from her.

"We're cut off!" came the cry again -- Quara, shouting, terrified and angry. "I was getting their broadcasts and suddenly now there's nothing ."

Miro almost laughed aloud. How could Quara fail to understand? The reason she couldn't receive the descolador broadcasts anymore was because they were no longer orbiting the planet of the descoladores. Couldn't Quara feel the onset of gravity? Jane had done it. Jane had brought them home.

But had she brought herself? Miro squeezed her hand, leaned over, kissed her cheek. "Jane," he whispered. "Don't be lost out there. Be here. Be here with me."

"All right," she said.

He raised his face from hers, looked into her eyes. "You did it," he said.

"And rather easily, after all that worry," she said. "But I don't think my body was designed to sleep so deeply. I can't move."

Miro pushed the quick release on her bed, and all the straps came free.

"Oh," she said. "You tied me down."

She tried to sit up, but lay back down again immediately.

"Feeling faint?" Miro asked.

"The room is swimming," she said. "Maybe I can do future starflights without having to lay my own body out so thoroughly."

The door crashed open. Quara stood in the doorway, quivering with rage. "How dare you do it without so much as a warning!"

Ela was behind her, remonstrating with her. "For heaven's sake, Quara, she got us home, isn't that enough?"

"You could have some decency!" Quara shouted. "You could tell us that you were performing your experiment!"

"She brought you with us, didn't she?" said Miro, laughing.

His laughter only infuriated Quara more. "She isn't human! That's what you like about her, Miro! You never could have fallen in love with a real woman. What's your track record? You fell in love with a woman who turned out to be your half-sister, then Ender's automaton, and now a computer wearing a human body like a puppet. Of course you laugh at a time like this. You have no human feelings."

Jane was up now, standing on somewhat shaky legs. Miro was pleased to see that she was recovering so quickly from her hour in a comatose state. He hardly noticed Quara's vilification.

"Don't ignore me, you smug self-righteous son-of-a-bitch!" Quara screamed in his face.

He ignored her, feeling, in fact, rather smug and self-righteous as he did. Jane, holding his hand, followed close behind him, past Quara, out of the sleeping chamber. As she passed, Quara shouted at her, "You're not some god who has a right to toss me from place to place without even asking!" and she gave Jane a shove.

It wasn't much of a shove. But Jane lurched against Miro. He turned, worried she might fall. Instead he got himself turned in time to see Jane spread her fingers against Quara's chest and shove her back, much harder. Quara knocked her head against the corridor wall and then, utterly off balance, she fell to the floor at Ela's feet.

"She tried to kill me!" cried Quara.

"If she wanted to kill you," said Ela mildly, "you'd be sucking space in orbit around the planet of the descoladores."

"You all hate me!" Quara shouted, and then burst into tears.

Miro opened the shuttle door and led Jane out into sunlight. It was her first step onto the surface of a planet, her first sight of sunlight with these human eyes. She stood there, frozen, then turned her head to see more, raised her face up to the sky, and then burst into tears and clung to Miro. "Oh, Miro! It's too much to bear! It's all too beautiful!"