Xenocide

She said nothing.

“Don't leave me,” he said.

“I don't leave my friends if I don't have to,” she said. “Some people do, but I don't.”

“Just don't,” he said again. He was crying. Could she see that, sense it somehow through the jewel in his ear?

“I'll try.”

“Find another way. Find another way to stop them. Find some way to put yourself outside the philotic net so they can't kill you.”

“That's what Ender said.”

“Then do it!”

“I can search for such a way, but who knows if it exists?”

“It has to.”

“This is why I wonder sometimes whether I'm alive or not. You living creatures, you think that because you want something very much, it has to happen. That wishing something with all your heart will make it so.”

“How can you search for something if you don't believe that it exists?”

“Either I search or I don't,” said Jane. “I don't get distracted or bored like humans do. I'll try to think of something else.”

“Think of this, too,” said Miro. “Think of who you are. Of how your mind works. You can't possibly find a way of saving your life until you understand how you came to life in the first place. And once you understand yourself–”

“Then maybe I can make a copy and store it somewhere.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” she echoed.

But he knew she didn't believe it, and neither did he. She existed in the philotic network of the ansibles; she could store her memories in the network of computers on every world and every ship in space, but there was nowhere that she could put her self, not if it required a network of philotic links.

Unless.

“What about the fathertrees on Lusitania? They communicate philotically, don't they?”

“It's not the same thing,” said Jane. “It isn't digital. It isn't coded the way the ansibles are.”

“It may not be digital, but the information gets transferred somehow, it works philotically. And the hive queen, too– she communicates with the buggers that way.”

“No chance of that,” said Jane. “The structure's too simple. Her communication with them isn't a network. They're all co

“How do you know it won't work, when you don't even know for sure how you function?”

“All right. I'll think about it.”

“Think hard,” he said.

“I only know one way to think,” said Jane.

“I mean, pay attention to it.”

She could follow many trains of thought at once, but her thoughts were prioritized, with many different levels of attention. Miro didn't want her relegating her self-investigation to some low order of attention.

“I'll pay attention,” she said.

“Then you'll think of something,” he said. “You will.”

She didn't answer for a while. He thought this meant that the conversation was over. His thoughts began to wander. To try to imagine what life would be like, still in this body, only without Jane. It could happen before he even arrived on Lusitania. And if it did, this voyage would have been the most terrible mistake of his life. By traveling at lightspeed, he was skipping thirty years of realtime. Thirty years that might have been spent with Jane. He might be able to deal with losing her then. But losing her now, only a few weeks into knowing her– he knew that his tears arose from self-pity, but he shed them all the same.

“Miro,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“How can I think of something that's never been thought of before?”

For a moment he didn't understand.

“Miro, how can I figure out something that isn't just the logical conclusion of things that human beings have already figured out and written somewhere?”

“You think of things all the time,” said Miro.

“I'm trying to conceive of something inconceivable. I'm trying to find answers to questions that human beings have never even tried to ask.”

“Can't you do that?”

“If I can't think original thoughts, does that mean that I'm nothing but a computer program that got out of hand?”

“Hell, Jane, most people never have an original thought in their lives.” He laughed softly. “Does that mean they're just ground-dwelling apes that got out of hand?”

“You were crying,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You don't think I can think of a way out of this. You think I'm going to die.”

“I believe you can think of a way. I really do. But that doesn't stop me from being afraid.”

“Afraid that I'll die.”

“Afraid that I'll lose you.”

“Would that be so terrible? To lose me?”

“Oh God,” he whispered.

“Would you miss me for an hour?” she insisted. “For a day? For a year?”

What did she want from him? Assurance that when she was gone she'd be remembered? That someone would yearn for her? Why would she doubt that? Didn't she know him yet?

Maybe she was human enough that she simply needed reassurance of things she already knew.

“Forever,” he said.

It was her turn to laugh. Playfully. “You won't live that long,” she said.

“Now you tell me,” he said.

This time when she fell silent, she didn't come back, and Miro was left alone with his thoughts.

Valentine, Jakt, and Plikt had remained together on the bridge, talking through the things they had learned, trying to decide what they might mean, what might happen. The only conclusion they reached was that while the future couldn't be known, it would probably be a good deal better than their worst fears and nowhere near as good as their best hopes. Wasn't that how the world always worked?

“Yes,” said Plikt. “Except for the exceptions.”

That was Plikt's way. Except when she was teaching, she said little, but when she did speak, it had a way of ending the conversation. Plikt got up to leave the bridge, headed for her miserably uncomfortable bed; as usual, Valentine tried to persuade her to go back to the other starship.

“Varsam and Ro don't want me in their room,” said Plikt.

“They don't mind a bit.”

“Valentine,” said Jakt, “Plikt doesn't want to go back to the other ship because she doesn't want to miss anything.”

“Oh,” said Valentine.

Plikt gri

Soon after, Jakt also left the bridge. His hand rested on Valentine's shoulder for a moment as he left. “I'll be there soon,” she said. And she meant it at the moment, meant to follow him almost at once. Instead she remained on the bridge, thinking, brooding, trying to make sense of a universe that would put all the nonhuman species ever known to man at risk of extinction, all at once. The hive queen, the pequeninos, and now Jane, the only one of her kind, perhaps the only one that ever could exist. A veritable profusion of intelligent life, and yet known only to a few. And all of them in line to be snuffed out.

At least Ender will realize at last that this is the natural order of things, that he might not be as responsible for the destruction of the buggers three thousand years ago as he had always thought. Xenocide must be built into the universe. No mercy, not even for the greatest players in the game.

How could she have ever thought otherwise? Why should intelligent species be immune to the threat of extinction that looms over every species that ever came to be?

It must have been an hour after Jakt left the bridge before Valentine finally turned off her terminal and stood up to go to bed. On a whim, though, she paused before leaving and spoke into the air. “Jane?” she said. “Jane?”

No answer.

There was no reason for her to expect one. It was Miro who wore the jewel in his ear. Miro and Ender both. How many people did she think Jane could monitor at one time? Maybe two was the most she could handle.

Or maybe two thousand. Or two million. What did Valentine know of the limitations of a being who existed as a phantom in the philotic web? Even if Jane heard her, Valentine had no right to expect that she would answer her call.

Valentine stopped in the corridor, directly between Miro's door and the door to the room she shared with Jakt. The doors were not soundproof. She could hear Jakt's soft snoring inside their compartment. She also heard another sound. Miro's breath. He wasn't sleeping. He might be crying. She hadn't raised three children without being able to recognize that ragged, heavy breathing.