Last Shadow (9781250252135) Read online

  “Nobody’s bringing us back.”

  “I believe we can design a pattern of exploration that will prevent such a trivial death,” said Wang-Mu. “What if our first visit to the surface lasts exactly fifteen minutes. Then we come back, go into quarantine, and allow the experts to examine our cells and genomes and such, until they find out if we caught anything. Next time, we walk around for a day.”

  “While the natives point spears at us and put us in a big cooking pot.”

  “At any point, we leave the planet’s surface, and again go into quarantine.”

  “You’ve thought this all out,” said Peter, annoyed and awed.

  “I’m winging it,” said Wang-Mu.

  “I doubt it,” said Peter.

  “I’m not responsible for your doubts,” said Wang-Mu. “But I never lie to you, and you know it.”

  “We take pictures of them,” said Peter, “so the xenologers of Lusitania can study them. We collect tissue samples, if we can.”

  “You see? Now you’re winging it, too,” said Wang-Mu.

  “And all the while, Jane watches over us so closely that she can pull us off at a moment’s notice,” said Peter. He tapped the jewel in his ear. Jane rarely spoke to him that way anymore, or he to her, but he believed she still monitored his life through the jewel.

  “That seems like quite an imposition on her time,” said Wang-Mu. “After all, she’s fully invested in her new body and her marriage, which is exactly as new as ours is. Why should we divert her attention from Miro for so long?”

  Peter laughed. “Is there someone else who can engineer instantaneous travel?”

  Wang-Mu smiled. “Ask Jane. I’m thinking, why not you?”

  “If only Ender had dreamed me up with wings,” said Peter. “Or some fabulous space-traveling organ, or an inborn ansible of my own.”

  “As I said,” Wang-Mu repeated, “ask Jane.”

  7

  PW—We’re doing this in writing?

  J—I want a permanent record.

  PW—Because you think you know what I’m going to ask.

  J—I know what you were planning to ask. If you want to be a big baby, you’ll change it up so that you can show me I’m not as smart as I think I am.

  PW—I want very much for you to be as smart as I think you are.

  J—I’m busy, ask your question, please.

  PW—Can you teach me to make the instantaneous jump Outside and back In without your help?

  J—I’m perfectly capable of jumping you wherever you want. It doesn’t even amount to a blip in my bandwidth anymore.

  PW—And that will work until we’re out of communication.

  J—Where are you planning to go where I can’t hear?

  PW—Descoladora. Wang-Mu thinks that’s a bad name for the planet, now. So we’re going to go find out.

  J—Ah, so you’re afraid that when you’re killed, I won’t be able to find you and bring back the bodies.

  PW—Everything on that planet’s surface will be as slow as lightspeed. Where’s the ansible that will connect us?

  J—The answer is, yes. I can teach you.

  PW—Spoken without equivocation.

  J—I’ve already taught Miro. He and you were both on the first voyage Outside. He had the inner cohesion not only to hold his body together, but to make an undamaged duplicate, genetically identical with the first.

  PW—And the strength of will to murder his old self.

  J—He transferred himself into the new body. He felt no need for a crippled twin. He has no interplanetary ambitions, however. He uses his new skill to hop from one place to another here on Lusitania, and to periodically visit the starship—or Box, if you prefer the term its inhabitants are using now—hovering in various places over Descoladora.

  PW—And since you think of me as Andrew Wiggin you believe I have even more sense of inner cohesion.

  J—Your duplicate of young Valentine was so perfect they have identical DNA. We have no way of testing whether your current DNA matches the original Peter’s.

  PW—Don’t fib, Jane, I know you too well. There would have been a permanent digital record of the Hegemon’s DNA to protect against imposture. Nobody would have erased that from YOUR memory.

  J—Your current genome is identical to the original, too.

  PW—So you can teach me to hop.

  J—It requires concentration.

  PW—I can get Outside.

  J—Getting Outside is easy. Almost a reflex. What you concentrate on is where you want to arrive when you come back In. It all happens so fast that you never experience Outside at all.

  PW—Well, I feel half-trained already.

  J—But you have the fantastical idea of taking your beloved wife with you.

  PW—That was the plan.

  J—And that, too, is possible. But to carry people with you, you have to know them.

  PW—I know her.

  J—Barely, and most of what you think you know is wrong.

  PW—That’s unencouraging.

  J—I should not have said “know” them. I should have said “love” them.

  J—You doubt your love for Si Wang-Mu?

  J—Speak up, Peter Wiggin.

  PW—I doubt that you have any concept of “love.” And I doubt that your ability to carry other people Outside and back In is dependent upon an emotion that you were incapable of feeling until AFTER Ender created the body you’re using now. During the first trip.

  J—A rational suspicion. But here is what I know that you do not. I can perceive all philotic connections between me and human beings. I feel them the way you feel the presence and position of your limbs and fingers.

  PW—So by “love” you mean philotic connection.

  J—I do.

  PW—So am I philotically connected to Wang-Mu or not?

  J—It exists, but I cannot vouch for how strong it might be.

  PW—What if we trust to luck and leap for it?

  J—Si Wang-Mu is too valuable to risk on such a mad chance.

  PW—If you didn’t have a plan to overcome this problem, you would simply have told me from the start that I couldn’t take her with me.

  J—I know someone who CAN measure philotic connections between other people.

  PW—A mothertree? The fathertrees?

  J—They feel every tree and pequenino in the world, and on the new worlds as well. But you and Si Wang-Mu are not pequeninos.

  PW—The Hive Queen, then.

  J—She wants to meet you anyway.

  PW—I’ll bet she already knows the answer.

  J—I’ll bet the answer is constantly shifting, and her understanding will be much clearer when the two of you stand before her.

  PW—In the darkness. In her cave. Surrounded by Formic warriors.

  J—Do you insist she come out and speak to you in the light?

  PW—I don’t insist on anything. I’ll do whatever it takes. Even though you must understand that I have terrible nightmares with her in a starring role.

  J—Ender always did. When he was your age.

  PW—If I knew what my age is, or what that term might even mean with regard to myself, I could evaluate the meaning of your statement.

  J—Your body is exactly as old as mine.

  PW—But my memories are not.

  J—Should I bring the two of you back to Lusitania now?

  PW—Neither of us is dressed for company, and we need a good night’s sleep.

  J—You do have beds on Lusitania, too, you know.

  PW—We don’t want to have to talk to anybody. After we’re up in the morning, and washed, and dressed, and after we’ve eaten and said good-bye to a few friends—

  J—No good-byes. Since there will be no starship launch from the vicinity of Unity that has you on the passenger manifest, you don’t want anyone looking for you for a few days. By then I can create a couple of false identities for passengers on a flight that you weren’t on, but which anyone looking for you will
conclude were really you.

  PW—Still keeping faster-than-light flight to ourselves?

  J—My bandwidth can handle all the people I currently transport. But not the billions who would want access to this manner of travel.

  PW—I’m not sure. Is this the first time you have ever admitted to a personal limitation?

  J—No. But it’s the first time I’ve admitted one to you.

  —Transcript conversation: “Jane” and Peter Wiggin II, Peter Wiggin II Biographical Archive

  Jane was right about the ease of learning how to transport himself. After three trips with her, he realized that he really had been Outside between disappearing in one spot and reappearing in another, right there in a meadow on Lusitania. Then she told him that she would help him; he only had to concentrate on the spot where he wanted to go, not telling her where, and she would make sure he didn’t get stuck Outside. After the third time of this method, she informed him that she had done nothing at all—he was moving himself.

  “From the north side of the meadow to the southwest corner isn’t the same as traveling to a starship orbiting another planet,” Peter told her.

  “Yes it is,” she said. “Exactly the same.”

  “I could see where I was going here in the grass.”

  “What you saw was irrelevant. Your visual functions are not involved. You knew where you were going.”

  “Because I had seen it,” said Peter.

  “Where do you want to go? The Box?

  “Eventually, perhaps,” said Peter. “But I don’t have anything to say to the people there.”

  “Pick a place,” said Jane, “and then go. Don’t tell me where. I’ll follow if you get in trouble.”

  Peter picked the place near the river by the house of Han Fei-Tzu on Path, where he had first met Si Wang-Mu.

  And there he was.

  It was as effortless as moving across the meadow.

  “See?” said Jane, who now stood beside him.

  Without looking at her, Peter said, “I’m not in trouble yet. Why did you follow me?” Then Peter turned, and there was Si Wang-Mu as well.

  “I brought her along,” said Jane, “once I knew where you had chosen to go.”

  Si Wang-Mu had tears running down her cheeks.

  Peter was at a loss. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I was so happy in this house,” said Wang-Mu. “This is where I learned that I had a mind.”

  Jane rolled her eyes. “What she’s not saying is that it moved her deeply that of all places in the universe, this is where you chose to go.”

  “I did not say it,” said Wang-Mu, “because I did not think it.”

  “Just because a thought doesn’t rise to consciousness and become language doesn’t mean that you didn’t think it,” said Jane. “But now that we’ve had this gnomic moment, shall we go back to Lusitania?”

  “You’ll bring Wang-Mu, yes?” Peter asked Jane.

  “We’re not trusting you to bring her yet,” said Jane. “Not until we know if you are tied to her well enough to carry her.”

  Peter thought of a problem with this. “You carried hundreds of people and Formics and pequeninos from Lusitania to many different colony worlds. You still transport supplies there. Do you really know all those people and aliens?”

  “‘People’ will do for all,” said Jane.

  “Do you have some kind of bond with them?”

  “By the time I take them I do,” said Jane. “But I have tools and talents that you will never have.”

  “And a heart filled with love,” said Peter, sarcastically.

  “And a heart filled with love,” echoed Wang-Mu, without the sarcasm.

  “You both understand me so well,” said Jane.

  They were back on Lusitania, inside the fence again.

  “Did I really transport myself?” Peter asked Jane. “Or are you just babying me along, letting me think I’m doing it?”

  “Since it makes no practical difference, I feel no interest in proving it to you. You’ll learn to trust your own abilities.”

  “So am I ready to meet the Hive Queen?” asked Peter.

  “I don’t know,” said Jane.

  “I am,” piped up a child a few meters away, coming up the path behind them.

  Peter tried to remember which leguminid this was. “The one they call ‘Little Mum’?” he asked.

  “Thulium,” said Wang-Mu. “The one who went over the fence and found the Hive Queen on her own.”

  “She invited me to come back,” said Thulium. “I’ll lead you.”

  “So you’ve already met her,” said Wang-Mu. “Is she very fearsome?”

  “I talked to her through one of her workers,” said Thulium. “It makes no difference. She spoke to me through the worker’s mouth.”

  Peter looked at Jane. “Is this all right?”

  Jane just looked at him, puzzled.

  “She’s a child,” said Peter. “Do we have permission to take her with us?”

  “I believe,” said Jane, “that she has already proven that these fences can’t keep her in. So in this case, she is taking us with her.”

  Wang-Mu held out a hand to Thulium. “I’m Si Wang-Mu,” she said.

  “Royal Mother of the West,” said Thulium. “I’m honored to meet you.”

  “I accept your courtesy in the name of my ancestor-of-the-heart,” said Wang-Mu. “Please call me ‘Wang-Mu.’”

  So their procession through the nearby pequenino forest consisted of four people—a young man and woman with Polish and American ancestry, a young Chinese woman of Path, and a girl of no more than eight years of age, whose ancestry included Japanese, Greek, Armenian, and such a mix of other genes as to defy classification. If any of the pequeninos they passed thought it odd that the adults were following the child, no one said anything. Peter wondered if Jane had communicated with the fathertrees and therefore all the pequeninos knew their errand and had no questions.

  Peter had questions, though—mostly for Thulium. “You’re the one that is sometimes called Ultima Thule,” he said.

  “Not by anyone who matters,” said Thulium. Her reply was cheerful but instantaneous.

  “How did you know to follow us?”

  “I saw you practicing the hop in the meadow, and then I assumed the three of you went somewhere else together and then came back. Another planet?”

  “It seemed a good idea at the time,” said Wang-Mu.

  Peter felt her words as a reminder to him that his conversation with the little girl was not private and did not concern only his interests. As if Thulium herself weren’t making that clear without any help.

  “So when you came back, what was next?” said Thulium. “The Hive Queen, obviously.”

  “There are trillions of human beings to whom that would not be obvious,” said Peter.

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “Do you read minds?” asked Peter.

  “I have some skill at what psychologists call mind-reading, but none at all in the way you meant the term,” said Thulium. “But I assume that you weren’t the one carrying Wang-Mu along on your junket, and since she’s your wife, you need to be able to carry her or you won’t have the freedom of movement you’re hoping for.”

  Peter thought: I can have complete freedom if I simply decide not to take Wang-Mu on a particular trip.

  Then Peter thought: She’s my wife, and to imagine leaving her behind would be a betrayal, in her mind and in mine as well.

  If Thulium was reading his mind right now, she gave no sign of it. A born diplomat, perhaps? It hardly seemed likely, with her being a child of Sergeant, the least diplomatic of the leguminids.

  “Why would this information lead you to know we were going to see the Hive Queen right now?” asked Peter.

  “The trees can’t see philotic connections to anyone but themselves, and you don’t have any with them,” said Thulium. “But the Hive Queen has known you for thousands of years. Inside out. You’ll have n
o secrets from her.”

  Peter turned to Jane. “She hasn’t known me,” he said softly.

  “Your deep self,” said Wang-Mu. “Ender Wiggin transported the Hive Queen’s cocoon from world to world for three millennia. They communicated mind to mind whenever they chose. Just because you don’t remember it doesn’t mean that she’s forgotten.”

  “But this child, how can she—”

  “She’s a leguminid,” said Jane. “She was told the story of Ender and the cocoon weeks ago. And being Bean’s grandchild, she didn’t forget, she extrapolated from what she was told and realized that of all the beings on Lusitania, only I have known the Hive Queen longer than you, because her sisters plucked me from Outside and brought me In so I could help them communicate with you. Then the Queens used me to infiltrate the programs on the Battle School computer system to give you visual messages. This Hive Queen remembers these actions as if she did them all herself.”

  “That was Ender, not me,” said Peter.

  “You,” said Jane. “Stop being truculent about it. She’s going to know you when you get there, and it would be childish of you to insist that she pretend not to know who you are.”

  “If she thinks I’m still Andrew Wiggin, then she doesn’t know who I am.”

  “Enough of that nonsense,” said Thulium. “It’s a stiff walk and we don’t want to lollygag.”

  Enough of that nonsense? thought Peter. An eight-year-old talks to adults that way?

  No, he realized. That’s not what I was thinking. That’s what I allowed myself to think that I was thinking, but at the deepest level, far below language, what I really thought was, This child dares to speak so disrespectfully to me?

  Who do I think I am? I refuse to be Ender, for good reason; but I am not owed any scrap of the great respect earned by my namesake the Hegemon. “Wang-Mu,” said Peter. “Is the original Peter Wiggin my ancestor-of-the-heart?”

  “More truly than the Royal Mother is mine,” Wang-Mu answered. “You share his DNA, you look like him. But all that ancestor-of-the-heart business is, of course, sentimental nonsense. It’s designed to give a child noble aspirations, to bear the name of a worthy person and consider him or her to be an ancestor. But you know that your heart needs no ancestor, because your most important ancestor is you. You are literally a continuation of his life. Your avoidance of this is harming you, more and more every day.”