Sum
@Summmluv
She smiles. She says his name.
Ender Wiggin, my precious.
‘This is a lie,’ she said. ‘This is to make us doubt the gods.’
‘Qing-jao, I know how you feel. When I first realized what Keikoa was telling us, I cried out from my heart. I thought I was crying out in despair. But then I realized that my cry was also a cry of liberation.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ she said, terrified.
‘Yes you do,’ said Father, ‘or you wouldn’t be afraid. Qing-jao, these people were sent away because someone didn’t want them discovering what they were about to discover. Therefore whoever sent them away must already have known what they would find out. Only Congress – someone with Congress, anyway – had the power to exile these scientists, and their families. What was it that had to stay hidden? That we, the godspoken, are not hearing gods at all. We have been altered genetically. We have been created as a separate kind of human being, and yet that truth is being kept from us. Qing-jao, Congress knows the gods speak to us – that is no secret from them, even though they pretend not to know. Someone in Congress knows about it, and allows us to continue doing these terrible, humiliating things – and the only reason I can think of is that it keeps us under control, keeps us weak...'
Reklam
Qing-jao tried to remember what she knew about OCD. That it caused people to act inadvertently like the godspoken. She remembered that between the first discovery of her handwashing and her testing, she had been given those drugs to see if the handwashing went away. ‘They were studying the godspoken,’ she said. ‘Trying to find a biological cause for our rites of purification.’ The idea was so offensive she could hardly say the words.
‘Yes,’ said Father. ‘And they were sent away.’
‘Didn’t she tell you this before she left?’ asked Qing-jao.
‘Keikoa? She didn’t know. She was very young, of an age when most parents don’t burden their children with adult affairs. Your age.’
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.
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Dusunsene goreve gidiyorsun. Giderken sevgilin le ayni yastasiniz. 16. Sonra gorevinden donuyorsun. 17 yasinda. Sevgilinin yanina gidiyorsun. 16 yasinda bir kizi. Sevgilin ise... 50 lerine gelmis...
‘What message did you receive, Father?’
‘It was from Keikoa Amaauka; I knew her face to face when we were young. She was the daughter of a scientist from Otaheiti who was here to study genetic drift of Earthborn species in their first two centuries on Path. They left – they were sent away quite abruptly …’
He paused, as if considering whether to say something. Then he decided, and said it: ‘If she had stayed she might have become your mother.’
Qing-jao was both thrilled and frightened to have Father speak of such a thing to her. He never spoke of his past. And now to say that he once loved another woman besides his wife who gave birth to Qing-jao, this was so unexpected that Qing-jao didn’t know what to say.
‘She was sent somewhere very far away. It’s been thirty-five years. Most of my life has passed since she left. But she only just arrived, a year ago. And now she has sent me a message telling me why her father was sent away. To her, our parting was only a year ago. To her, I’m still—’
‘Her lover,’ said Wang-mu.
‘Then we have to cut off all the ansibles at the same time,’ said Qing-jao. ‘On every world, have a new computer ready that has never been contaminated by any contact with the secret program. Shut the ansibles down all at once, cut off the old computers, bring the new computers online, and wake up the ansibles. The secret program can’t restore itself because it isn’t on any of the computers. Then the power of Congress will have no rival to interfere!’
‘You can’t do it,’ said Wang-mu.
Qing-jao looked at her secret maid in shock. How could the girl be so ill-bred as to interrupt a conversation between two of the godspoken in order to contradict them?
But Father was gracious – he was always gracious, even to people who had overstepped all the bounds of respect and decency. I must learn to be more like him, thought Qing-jao. I must allow servants to keep their dignity even when their actions have forfeited any such consideration.
‘Si Wang-mu,’ said Father, ‘why can’t we do it?’
‘Because to have all the ansibles shut off at the same time, you would have to send messages by ansible,’ said Wang-mu. ‘Why would the program allow you to send messages that would lead to its own destruction?’
Qing-jao followed her father’s example by speaking patiently to Wang-mu. ‘It’s only a program – it doesn’t know the content of messages. Whoever rules the program told it to hide all the communications from the fleet, and to conceal the tracks of all the messages from Demosthenes. It certainly doesn’t read the messages and decide from their contents whether to send them.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Wang-mu.
‘Because such a program would have to be – intelligent!’
‘But it would have to be intelligent anyway,’ said Wang-mu. ‘It has to be able to hide from any other program that would
Reklam