Ben Bova - Children of the Mind.pdf

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CHILDREN OF THE MIND
Ben Bova
To Barbara Bova,
whose toughness, wisdom, and empathy
make her a great agent
and an even better friend
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
1. “I’m Not Myself”
2. “You Don’t Believe in God”
3. “There Are Too Many of Us”
4. “I Am a Man of Perfect Simplicity”
5. “Nobody Is Rational”
6. “Life Is a SuicideMission ”
7. “I Offer Her This Poor Old Vessel”
8. “What Matters Is Which Fiction You Believe”
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9. “It Smells Like Life to Me”
10. “This Has Always Been Your Body”
11. “You Called Me Back from Darkness”
12. “Am I Betraying Ender?”
13. “Till Death Ends All Surprises”
14. “How They Communicate with Animals”
15. “We’re Giving You a Second Chance”
16. “How Do You Know They Aren’t Quivering in Terror”
17. “The Road Goes On without Him Now”
Afterword
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My heartfelt thanks to:
Glenn Makitka, for the title, which seems so obvious now, but which never
crossed my mind until he suggested it in a discussion in Hatrack River on
America Online;
Van Gessel, for introducing me to Hikari and Kenzaburo Oe, and for his masterful
translation of Shusaku Endo's Deep River;
Helpful readers in Hatrack River, like Stephen Boulet and Sandi Golden, who
caught typographical errors and inconsistencies in the manuscript;
Tom Doherty and Beth Meacham at Tor, who allowed me to split Xenocide in half in
order to have a chance to develop and write the second half of the story
properly;
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My friend and fellow weeder in the vineyards of literature, Kathryn H. Kidd, for
her chapter-by-chapter encouragement;
Kathleen Bellamy and Scott J. Alien for Sisyphean service;
Kristine and Geoff for careful reading that helped me resolve contradictions and
unclarities; and
My wife, Kristine, and my children, Geoffrey, Emily, Charlie Ben, and Zina, for
patience with my strange schedule and self-absorption during the writing
process, and for teaching me all that is worth telling stories about.
This novel was begun at home in Greensboro, North Carolina, and finished on the
road at Xanadu II in Myrtle Beach, in the Hotel Panama in San Rafael, and in Los
Angeles in the home of my dear cousins Mark and Margaret Park, whom I thank for
their friendship and their hospitality. Chapters were uploaded in manuscript
form into the Hatrack River Town Meeting on America Online, where several dozen
fellow citizens of that virtual community downloaded it, read it, and commented
on it to the book's and my great benefit.
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
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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
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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
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