Ender's Saga 4 - Children Of The Mind

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CHILDREN OF

THE MIND

by Orson Scott Card

v1.0 (26-Jul-1999)

Contents

CHILDREN OF THE MIND ............................................. 1

Chapter 1 -- "I'M NOT MYSELF".................................... 3

Chapter 2 -- "YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD!".................32

Chapter 3 -- "THERE ARE TOO MANY OF US" ................49

Chapter 4 -- "I AM A MAN OF PERFECT SIMPLICITY!" .....87

Chapter 5 -- "NOBODY IS RATIONAL" ........................ 145

Chapter 6 -- "LIFE IS A SUICIDE MISSION" ................ 182

Chapter 7 -- "I OFFER HER THIS POOR OLD VESSEL"... 236

Chapter 8 -- "WHAT MATTERS IS WHICH FICTION YOU

BELIEVE" ............................................................... 257

Chapter 9 -- "IT SMELLS LIKE LIFE TO ME"................. 280

Chapter 10 -- "THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN YOUR BODY".. 302

Chapter 11 -- "YOU CALLED ME BACK FROM DARKNESS"

............................................................................ 336

Chapter 12 -- "AM I BETRAYING ENDER?" .................. 363

Chapter 13 -- "TILL DEATH ENDS ALL SURPRISES"...... 387

Chapter 14 -- "HOW THEY COMMUNICATE WITH ANIMALS"

............................................................................ 418

Chapter 15 -- "WE'RE GIVING YOU A SECOND CHANCE"

............................................................................ 443

Chapter 16 -- "HOW DO YOU KNOW THEY AREN'T

QUIVERING IN TERROR?"......................................... 467

Chapter 17 -- "THE ROAD GOES ON WITHOUT HIM NOW"

............................................................................ 484

Chapter 1 -- "I'M NOT MYSELF"

"Mother. Father. Did I do it right?"

-- The last words of Han Qing-jao, from The God

Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Si Wang-mu stepped forward. The young man named

Peter took her hand and led her into the starship. The door

closed behind them.

Wang-mu sat down on one of the swiveling chairs inside

the small metal-walled room. She looked around,

expecting to see something strange and new. Except for

the metal walls, it could have been any office on the world

of Path. Clean, but not fastidiously so. Furnished, in a

utilitarian way. She had seen holos of ships in flight: the

smoothly streamlined fighters and shuttles that dipped into

and out of the atmosphere; the vast rounded structures of

the starships that accelerated as near to the speed of light

as matter could get. On the one hand, the sharp power of

a needle; on the other, the massive power of a

sledgehammer. But here in this room, no power at all. Just

a room.

Where was the pilot? There must be a pilot, for the young

man who sat across the room from her, murmuring to his

computer, could hardly be controlling a starship capable of

the feat of traveling faster than light.

And yet that must have been precisely what he was

doing, for there were no other doors that might lead to

other rooms. The starship had looked small from the

outside; this room obviously used all the space that it

contained. There in the corner were the batteries that

stored energy from the solar collectors on the top of the

ship. In that chest, which seemed to be insulated like a

refrigerator, there might be food and drink. So much for

life support. Where was the romance in starflight now, if

this was all it took? A mere room.

With nothing else to watch, she watched the young man

at the computer terminal. Peter Wiggin, he said his name

was. The name of the ancient Hegemon, the one who first

united all the human race under his control, back when

people lived on only one world, all the nations and races

and religions and philosophies crushed together elbow to

elbow, with nowhere to go but into each other's lands, for

the sky was a ceiling then, and space was a vast chasm

that could not be bridged. Peter Wiggin, the man who

ruled the human race. This was not him, of course, and he

had admitted as much. Andrew Wiggin sent him; Wang-mu

remembered, from things that Master Han had told her,

that Andrew Wiggin had somehow made him. Did this

make the great Speaker of the Dead Peter's father? Or was

he somehow Ender's brother, not just named for but

actually embodying the Hegemon who had died three

thousand years before?

Peter stopped murmuring, leaned back in his chair, and

sighed. He rubbed his eyes, then stretched and groaned. It

was a very indelicate thing to do in company. The sort of

thing one might expect from a coarse fieldworker.

He seemed to sense her disapproval. Or perhaps he had

forgotten her and now suddenly remembered that he had

company. Without straightening himself in his chair, he

turned his head and looked at her.

"Sorry," he said. "I forgot I was not alone."

Wang-mu longed to speak boldly to him, despite a

lifetime retreating from bold speech. After all, he had

spoken to her with offensive boldness, when his starship

appeared like a fresh-sprouted mushroom on the lawn by

the river and he emerged with a single vial of a disease

that would cure her home world, Path, of its genetic

illness. He had looked her in the eye not fifteen minutes

ago and said, "Come with me and you'll be part of

changing history. Making history." And despite her fear,

she had said yes.

Had said yes, and now sat in a swivel chair watching him

behave crudely, stretching like a tiger in front of her. Was

that his beast-of-the-heart, the tiger? Wang-mu had read

the Hegemon. She could believe that there was a tiger in

that great and terrible man. But this one? This boy? Older

than Wang-mu, but she was not too young to know

immaturity when she saw it. He was going to change the

course of history! Clean out the corruption in the Congress.

Stop the Lusitania Fleet. Make all colony planets equal

members of the Hundred Worlds. This boy who stretched

like a jungle cat.

"I don't have your approval," he said. He sounded

annoyed and amused, both at once. But then she might

not be good at understanding the inflections of one such as

this. Certainly it was hard to read the grimaces of such a

round-eyed man. Both his face and his voice contained

hidden languages that she could not understand.

"You must understand," he said. "I'm not myself."

Wang-mu spoke the common language well enough at

least to understand the idiom. "You are unwell today?" But

she knew even as she said it that he had not meant the

expression idiomatically at all.

"I'm not myself," he said again. "I'm not really Peter

Wiggin."

"I hope not," said Wang-mu. "I read about his funeral in

school."

"I do look like him, though, don't I?" He brought up a

hologram into the air over his computer terminal. The

hologram rotated to look at Wang-mu; Peter sat up and

assumed the same pose, facing her.

"There is a resemblance," she said.

"Of course, I'm younger," said Peter. "Because Ender

didn't see me again after he left Earth when he was--

what, five years old? A little runt, anyway. I was still a

boy. That's what he remembered, when he conjured me

out of thin air."

"Not air at all," she said. "Out of nothing."

"Not nothing, either," he said. "Conjured me, all the

same." He smiled wickedly. "I can call spirits from the

vasty deep."

These words meant something to him, but not to her. In

the world of Path she had been expected to be a servant

and so was educated very little. Later, in the house of Han

Fei-tzu, her abilities had been recognized, first by her

former mistress, Han Qing-jao, and later by the master

himself. From both she had acquired some bits of

education, in a haphazard way. What teaching there had

been was mostly technical, and the literature she learned

was of the Middle Kingdom, or of Path itself. She could

have quoted endlessly from the great poet Li Qing-jao, for

whom her one-time mistress had been named. But of the

poet he was quoting, she knew nothing.

"I can call spirits from the vasty deep," he said again.

And then, changing his voice and manner a little, he

answered himself. "Why so can I, or so can any man. But

will they come when you do call for them?"

"Shakespeare?" she guessed.

He grinned at her. She thought of the way a cat smiles at

the creature it is toying with. "That's always the best guess

when a European is doing the quoting," he said.

"The quotation is funny," she said. "A man brags that he

can summon the dead. But the other man says that the

trick is not calling, but rather getting them to come."

He laughed. "What a way you have with humor."

"This quotation means something to you, because Ender

called you forth from the dead."

He looked startled. "How did you know?"

She felt a thrill of fear. Was it possible? "I did not know, I

was making a joke."

"Well, it's not true. Not literally. He didn't raise the dead.

Though he no doubt thinks he could, if the need arose."

Peter sighed. "I'm being nasty. The words just come to my

mind. I don't mean them. They just come."

"It is possible to have words come to your mind, and still

refrain from speaking them aloud."

He rolled his eyes. "I wasn't trained for servility, the way

you were."

So this was the attitude of one who came from a world of

free people-- to sneer at one who had been a servant

through no fault of her own. "I was trained to keep

unpleasant words to myself as a matter of courtesy," she

said. "But perhaps to you, that is just another form of

servility."

"As I said, Royal Mother of the West, nastiness comes

unbidden to my mouth."

"I am not the Royal Mother," said Wang-mu. "The name

was a cruel joke--"

"And only a very nasty person would mock you for it."

Peter grinned. "But I'm named for the Hegemon. I thought

perhaps bearing ludicrously overwrought names was

something we might have in common."

She sat silently, entertaining the possibility that he might

have been trying to make friends.

"I came into existence," he said, "only a short while ago.

A matter of weeks. I thought you should know that about

me."

She didn't understand.

"You know how this starship works?" he said.

Now he was leaping from subject to subject. Testing her.

Well, she had had enough of being tested. "Appareptly one

sits within it and is examined by rude strangers," she said.

He smiled and nodded. "Give as good as you get. Ender

told me you were nobody's servant."

"I was the true and faithful servant of Qing-jao. I hope

Ender did not lie to you about that."

He brushed away her literalism. "A mind of your own."

Again his eyes sized her up; again she felt utterly

comprehended by his lingering glance, as she had felt

when he first looked at her beside the river. "Wang-mu, I

am not speaking metaphorically when I tell you I was only

just made. Made, you understand, not born. And the way I

was made has much to do with how this starship works. I

don't want to bore you by explaining things you already

understand, but you must know what-- not who-- I am in

order to understand why I need you with me. So I ask

again-- do you know how this starship works?"

She nodded. "I think so. Jane, the being who dwells in

computers, she holds in her mind as perfect a picture as

she can of the starship and all who are within it. The

people also hold their own picture of themselves and who

they are and so on. Then she moves everything from the

real world to a place of nothingness, which takes no time

at all, and then brings it back into reality in whatever place

she chooses. Which also takes no time. So instead of

starships taking years to get from world to world, it

happens in an instant."

Peter nodded. "Very good. Except what you have to

understand is that during the time that the starship is

Outside, it isn't surrounded by nothingness. Instead it's

surrounded by uncountable numbers of aiuas."

She turned away her face from him.

"You don't understand aiuas?"

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摘要：

CHILDRENOFTHEMINDbyOrsonScottCard(c)1996OrsonScottCardv1.0(26-Jul-1999)ContentsCHILDRENOFTHEMIND.............................................1Chapter1--"I'MNOTMYSELF"....................................3Chapter2--"YOUDON'TBELIEVEINGOD!".................32Chapter3--"THEREARETOOMANYOFUS".................

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