Sum
@Summmluv
She smiles. She says his name.
Ender Wiggin, my precious.
‘If you do this, Jane will die. They’ll shut down the ansibles and kill her.’
‘What doesn’t live cannot die,’ said Qing-jao.
‘The only reason you have the power to kill her is because of her compassion.’
‘If she seems to have compassion it’s an illusion – she was programmed to simulate compassion, that’s all.’
‘Mistress, if you kill every manifestation of this program, so that no part of her remains alive, how are you different from Ender the Xenocide, who killed all the Buggers three thousand years ago?’
Reklam
‘Do it,’ said Ender. ‘Do what it takes.’
‘I can’t,’ said Jane. ‘Because it would only hurt her, and wouldn’t save us in the end.’
‘If you were a slightly lower animal,’ said Ender, ‘you’d have a much better chance of coming out of this thing alive.’
‘As low as you were, Ender the Xenocide?’
‘As low as that,’ said Ender. ‘Then you could live.’
‘Or perhaps if I were as wise as you were then.’
‘I have my brother Peter inside me, as well as my sister Valentine,’ said Ender. ‘The beast as well as the angel. That’s what you taught me, back when you were nothing but the program we called the fantasy game.’
‘I am not human,’ said Jane, ‘even when I choose to wear a human face. How do you know, Wang-mu, what I will and will not do? Buggers and Piggies both have killed human beings without a second thought.’
‘Because they didn’t understand what death meant to us. You understand. You said it yourself – you don’t want to die.’
‘Do you think you know me, Si Wang-mu?’
‘I think I know you,’ said Wang-mu, ‘because you wouldn’t have any of these troubles if you had been content to let the fleet destroy Lusitania.’
The Bugger in the display was joined by the Piggy, and then by the face that represented Jane herself. In silence they looked at Wang-mu, at Qing-jao, and said nothing.
‘Remember the story of I Ya, the great cook,’ said Jane. ‘His master said one day, “I have the greatest cook in all the world. Because of him, I have tasted every flavor known to man except the taste of human flesh.” Hearing this, I Ya went home and butchered his own son, cooked his flesh and served it to his master, so that his master would lack nothing that I Ya could give him.’
This was a terrible story. Qing-jao had heard it as a child, and it made her weep for hours. What about the son of I Ya? she had cried. And her father had said, A true servant has sons and daughters only to serve his master. For five nights she had woken up screaming from dreams in which her father roasted her alive or carved slices from her onto a plate, until at last Han Fei-tzu came to her and embraced her and said, ‘Don’t believe it, my Gloriously Bright daughter. I am not a perfect servant. I love you too much to be truly righteous. I love you more than I love my duty. I am not I Ya. You have nothing to fear at my hands.’ Only after Father said that to her could she sleep.
‘I have imagined something for you,’ said Qing-jao. ‘Now imagine something for me. I and the other godspoken arrange to broadcast nothing but my report from every ansible on Path. You make all those ansibles fall silent at once. What does the rest of humanity see? That we have disappeared just like the Lusitania Fleet. They’ll soon realize that you, or something like you, exists. The more you use your power, the more you reveal yourself to even the dimmest minds. Your threat is empty. You might as well step aside and let me send the message simply and easily now; stopping me is just another way of sending the very same message.’
‘You’re wrong,’ said Jane. ‘If Path suddenly disappears from all ansibles at once, they might just as easily conclude that this world is in rebellion just like Lusitania – after all, they shut down their ansible, too. And what did Starways Congress do? They sent a fleet with the M.D. Device on it.’
Reklam