Orson Card - Children of the Mind

Young Valentine was made to order, in every sense, it seemed. Miro had seen her come into existence at the same time as his own new body. She had no past, no kin, no links to any world except through Ender, whose mind had created her, and Peter, her fellow makeling. Oh, and perhaps one might consider her to be linked to the original Valentine, "the real Valentine," as Young Val called her; but it was no secret that Old Valentine had no desire to spend even a moment in the company of this young beauty who mocked her by her very existence. Besides, Young Val was created as Ender's image of perfect virtue. Not only was she unconnected, but also she was genuinely altruistic and quite willing to sacrifice herself for the good of others. So whenever Miro stepped into the shuttle, there was Young Val as his companion, his reliable assistant, his constant backup.

But not his friend. For Miro knew perfectly well who Val really was: Ender in disguise. Not a woman. And her love and loyalty to him were Ender's love and loyalty, often tested, well-trusted, but Ender's, not her own. There was nothing of her own in her. So while Miro had become used to her company, and laughed and joked with her more easily than with anyone in his life till now, he did not confide in her, did not allow himself to feel affection any deeper than camaraderie for her. If she noticed the lack of connection between them she said nothing; if it hurt her, the pain never showed.

What showed was her delight in their successes and her insistence that they push themselves ever harder. "We don't have a whole day to spend on any world," she said right from the start, and proved it by holding them to a schedule that let them make three voyages in a day. They came home after each three voyages to a Lusitania already quiet with sleep; they slept on the ship and spoke to others only to warn them of particular problems the colonists were likely to face on whatever new worlds had been found that day. And the three-a-day schedule was only on days when they dealt with likely planets. When Jane took them to worlds that were obvious losers -- waterbound, for instance, or unbiotized -- they moved on quickly, checking the next candidate world, and the next, sometimes five and six on those discouraging days when nothing seemed to work. Young Val pushed them both on to the edge of their endurance, day after day, and Miro accepted her leadership in this aspect of their voyaging because he knew that it was necessary.

His friend, however, had no human shape. For him she dwelt in the jewel in his ear. Jane, the whisper in his mind when he first woke up, the friend who heard everything he subvocalized, who knew his needs before he noticed them himself Jane, who shared all his thoughts and dreams, who had stayed with him through the worst of his cripplehood, who had led him Outside to where he could be renewed. Jane, his truest friend, who would soon die.

That was their real deadline. Jane would die, and then this instant starflight would be at an end, for there was no other being that had the sheer mental power to take anything more complicated than a rubber ball Outside and back In again. And Jane's death would come, not by any natural cause, but because the Starways Congress, having discovered the existence of a subversive program that could control or at least access any and all of their computers, was systematically closing down, disconnecting, and sweeping out all their networks. Already she was feeling the injury of those systems that had been taken offline to where she could not access them. Someday soon the codes would be transmitted that would undo her utterly and all at once. And when she was gone, anyone who had not been taken from the surface of Lusitania and transplanted to another world would be trapped, waiting helplessly for the arrival of the Lusitania Fleet, which was coming ever closer, determined to destroy them all.

A grim business, this, in which despite all of Miro's efforts, his dearest friend would die. Which, he knew full well, was part of why he did not let himself become a true friend to Young Val -- because it would be disloyal to Jane to learn affection for anyone else during the last weeks or days of her life.

So Miro's life was an endless routine of work, of concentrated mental effort, studying the findings of the shuttle's instruments, analyzing aerial photographs, piloting the shuttle to unsafe, unscouted landing zones, and finally -- not often enough -- opening the door and breathing alien air. And at the end of each voyage, no time either to mourn or rejoice, no time even to rest: he closed the door, spoke the word, and Jane took them home again to Lusitania, to start it all over again.

On this homecoming, however, something was different. Miro opened the door of the shuttle to find, not his adoptive father Ender, not the pequeninos who prepared food for him and Young Val, not the normal colony leaders wanting a briefing, but rather his brothers Olhado and Grego, and his sister Elanora, and Ender's sister Valentine. Old Valentine, come herself to the one place where she was sure to meet her unwelcome young twin? Miro saw at once how Young Val and Old Valentine glanced at each other, eyes not really meeting, and then looked away, not wanting to see each other. Or was that it? Young Val was more likely looking away from Old Valentine because she virtuously wanted to avoid giving offense to the older woman. No doubt if she could do it Young Val would willingly disappear rather than cause Old Valentine a moment's pain. And, since that was not possible, she would do the next best thing, which was to remain as unobtrusive as possible when Old Valentine was present.

"What's the meeting?" asked Miro. "Is Mother ill?"

"No, no, everybody's in good health," said Olhado.

"Except mentally," said Grego. "Mother's as mad as a hatter, and now Ender's crazy too."

Miro nodded, grimaced. "Let me guess. He joined her among the Filhos."

Immediately Grego and Olhado looked at the jewel in Miro's ear.

"No, Jane didn't tell me," said Miro. "I just know Ender. He takes his marriage very seriously."

"Yes, well, it's left something of a leadership vacuum here," said Olhado. "Not that everybody isn't doing their job just fine. I mean, the system works and all that. But Ender was the one we all looked to to tell us what to do when the system stops working. If you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," said Miro. "And you can speak of it in front of Jane. She knows she's going to be shut down as soon as Starways Congress gets their plans in place."

"It's more complicated than that," said Grego. "Most people don't know about the danger to Jane -- for that matter, most don't even know she exists. But they can do the arithmetic to figure out that even going full tilt, there's no way to get all the humans off Lusitania before the fleet gets here. Let alone the pequeninos. So they know that unless the fleet is stopped, somebody is going to be left here to die. There are already those who say that we've wasted enough starship space on trees and bugs."

"Trees" referred, of course, to the pequeninos, who were not, in fact, transporting fathertrees and mothertrees; and "bugs" referred to the Hive Queen, who was also not wasting space sending a lot of workers. But every world they were settling did have a large contingent of pequeninos and at least one hive queen and a handful of workers to help her get started. Never mind that it was the hive queen on every world that quickly produced workers who were doing the bulk of the labor getting agriculture started; never mind that because they were not taking trees with them, at least one male and female in every group of pequeninos had to be "planted" -- had to die slowly and painfully so that a fathertree and mothertree could take root and maintain the cycle of pequenino life. They all knew -- Grego more than any other, since he'd recently been in the thick of it -- that under the polite surface was an undercurrent of competition between species.