Last Shadow (9781250252135) Read online

  “Yet you still keep in touch with human scientists,” said Graff.

  “The foundations we established are paying the salaries of several hundred of them. We need to oversee our investments,” said Uncle Ender.

  “We’re really rich,” said Boss, Ender’s younger son.

  “I know,” said Graff. “I used Bean’s unused salary to set up the Delphiki investment portfolio when your grandfather left Earth. It was invested conservatively and was constantly compounded and reinvested.”

  “Thank you for looking out for our finances,” said Uncle Ender.

  “It wasn’t long before a program that was watching over Andrew and Valentine Wiggin’s funds took over managing yours. A program that Andrew called ‘Jane.’”

  “So when a version of her appears on our ship, we’ll thank her,” said Uncle Ender.

  “What I want to know,” said Graff, “is how the leguminids will go about searching for an answer to an equation with nothing but variables.”

  “Because we’re not insane,” said Little Mum, “we won’t search at all.”

  “Since when do you accept any of our father’s proclamations?” Sprout asked her.

  “I’m not accepting his proclamation,” said Little Mum. “I’m facing the cold logic of interstellar distances. And time.”

  “The laziest way to make a stupid decision,” said Sprout, “is to declare that a task cannot possibly be done.”

  “The most time-consuming way to make a stupid decision,” said Little Mum, “is to resolve to solve an insoluble problem no matter how long it takes.”

  “So this is what the leguminids are reduced to,” said Graff. “Trading aphorisms.”

  “And listening to computer simulations of people who used to be alive,” said Sprout.

  “I’m not offended by being reminded that I’m only a memory dump from a very famous man, combined with some decent algorithms simulating human speech and thinking.”

  “I never intended to offend you,” said Sprout, “because there is no you. But in spite of your nonexistence and irrelevance, I do intend to keep thinking about this insoluble problem until I come up with something that seems worth trying.”

  “You do that,” said Little Mum. “It might keep you out of trouble for a while.”

  “Not likely,” said Lanth. “Because sooner or later, he’ll start doing bizarre and useless experiments, and then he’ll end up killing somebody.”

  “True,” said Sprout. “I’ve killed so many already, of course you can predict that I’m bound to kill again.”

  “Do we have to get all personal about things?” asked Uncle Ender.

  “Lanth just made an assertion about me based on zero data whatsoever,” said Sprout, “and he chides me for making stupid decisions?”

  At this, Thulium stepped right into the middle of the room and held up her hands. To Sprout’s surprise, everybody looked at her and fell silent, as if they regarded her with respect, or expected her to say something wise.

  “If Graff doesn’t know anything useful,” said Thulium, “and we don’t know anything, why don’t we ask the Lusitanian scientists what they’ve discovered so far?”

  Sprout laughed.

  “I’m not being funny,” said Thulium, annoyed.

  “Absolutely not,” said Sprout. “Everybody else is being funny, because that wasn’t the first thing they did.”

  “The network’s been down,” said Graff.

  “It’s back up again, even if it’s not quite as quick,” said Little Mum.

  Something occurred to Sprout. “Mr. Graff, they shut down the network because of a dangerous computer program that was hiding out among the ansible connections. Could that dangerous program have been you?”

  Graff smiled. “Oh how I wish I were so important as to be worth a civilization-wide quarantine to destroy me.”

  “But you still came here because even if the quarantine wasn’t aimed at you, it was dangerous to your health,” said Sprout.

  Uncle Ender looked at Sprout with a badly-hidden smile. “Oh, well done, Sprout,” he said.

  “I thought I might end up as collateral damage,” said Graff.

  “And you haven’t gone back out into the network,” said Uncle Ender, “because you’re afraid they’re waiting to trap you as soon as you pop up.”

  “It wasn’t me they were looking for,” said Graff. “But while we’ve been talking, I’ve sent messages to several of the Lusitanian scientists and they’ve agreed to share all the information they have about the descolada and the planet it came from.”

  “Do they actually have any information?” asked Dys.

  “They think they do,” said Graff, “because they’ve received transmissions from the planet they’re calling Descoladora, and taken atmospheric samples and photographed and deep-mapped the whole surface of the planet.”

  “They’ve found it?” asked Uncle Ender.

  “Unless I’m misinterpreting the message,” said Graff.

  “So they’re sending us their data,” said Uncle Ender.

  “I would have expected that,” said Graff. “But the message I got said, ‘We’ll be right there.’”

  They all laughed.

  A man and a woman appeared in the mess hall behind Graff. Graff turned around and looked at them. “Oh, that’s what you meant,” he said. “Simulations.”

  The woman walked forward, toward the family. She passed right through Graff. “I’m not a simulation,” she said, holding out her hand to Uncle Ender. “You look so much like your father and your mother,” she said.

  Graff said, “You could not possibly have ever met them.”

  “You’d be surprised whom I’ve met in my life,” said the woman. “But I knew Petra only through holographic conversations.”

  Uncle Ender shook her hand. “She certainly feels real,” he said.

  “Maybe holograms have become convincing to other senses,” said Graff. “My software hasn’t been updated in a while.”

  “Ask your ship’s computer if we are living organisms,” said the woman.

  Nobody bothered. The difference between Graff and the newcomers was obvious. They stirred the air when they moved. Their feet made a sound when they stepped.

  “Do you have names?” asked Little Mum.

  “I know the girl,” said Graff. “Her name is Valentine. Only she couldn’t possibly be, because the real Valentine is nearing forty years of age. Real age, rather than relativistic age. By that measure she’s more than three thousand years old.”

  “I do look like Valentine,” said the woman, “and for a brief time that’s the only name anybody had for me, which greatly annoyed the original Valentine.”

  “You’ve met her,” said Graff.

  “I was just speaking to her when your message arrived,” said the woman. “But I use a different name now. May I introduce my … dear friend, Miro Ribeira.”

  The young man stepped forward a little, nodding his head in something like a bow.

  “Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation,” said Sprout. “A native of Lusitania?”

  Miro nodded.

  “The name I’m using now,” said the woman to Graff, “is one you know.”

  “I can guess,” said Graff. “I don’t know how you got yourself placed inside a human body.”

  “There are stranger things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” she said.

  “Jane,” said Graff.

  “My favorite name,” she answered. “This body was Ender’s gift to me before he died.”

  The cousins couldn’t help but look toward Uncle Ender.

  “The original Ender,” said Graff. “I was sorry to learn of his death.”

  “He’s mostly dead,” said Jane. “The body that the original version of you was acquainted with, that’s dead. His unconscious mind created me and his brother Peter on his first trip Outside.”

  “Outside of what?” asked Lanth.

  “Outside of everything,”
said Jane. “But his aiúa—think of it as his central processing unit—controlled this body, and Peter’s body, and his own. He was tired of the life he had decided to live in his own body, and so he lost interest in it, and it died. But before he left, he gave this body to me, with the help of … some others, who are more in touch with spaces and connections.”

  “There was a body in the form of Peter?” asked Graff.

  “There still is,” said Jane. “That’s the body he kept to live in himself.”

  “So Ender is still alive,” said Graff. For a hologram, he seemed to be rather emotional about it.

  “If he had known you wanted it,” said Jane, “he might have been persuaded to share.”

  “I don’t want it,” said Graff. “I’ve lived all the life I needed.”

  “Yet here you are,” said Thulium.

  Sprout found himself looking at the Lusitanian man, Miro. “Are you allowed to talk?” Sprout asked.

  Miro merely looked at him.

  It was Blue who addressed the most important thing. “If you two are real and not holograms,” said Blue, “how did you get into our mess hall?”

  “Did I mention that Ender created the new Peter and Valentine when he went Outside?” asked Jane. “I took him there, along with Miro and Miro’s sister Ela. Ela made a virus that neutralized the descolada. She had designed it but couldn’t build it, so I took them Outside where anything in her mind could be given physical reality. The cure worked, by the way, so the descolada virus on Lusitania no longer poses an interstellar threat. Therefore the planet wasn’t destroyed after all.”

  “If you think that we’re actually understanding anything you’ve said,” Uncle Ender began.

  “Let alone believing it,” said Little Mum.

  “We’re here on the Herodotus,” said Miro. “Explain that your way. Then we’ll start listening to why you don’t believe how Jane explained it to you.”

  “Instantaneous interstellar travel,” said Sprout. “Without a spaceship. Without even a spacesuit. Apparently you’re not very obedient to rules.”

  “We knew we were going to arrive at a controlled atmosphere,” said Jane.

  “And you came because this computer simulation of an old tyrant called you?” asked Uncle Ender.

  “Only fools ignore a request from Hyrum Graff,” said Jane. “You leguminids are reputed to be smart. But Hyrum Graff, even as an electronic remnant, was a far rarer thing—he was wise.”

  “It’s nice to know that artificial pseudobeings hold each other in high esteem,” said Little Mum.

  “And it’s unsurprising that people who pride themselves on being smarter than everybody else are especially susceptible to ignorant arrogance,” said Jane, rather sweetly.

  “Perhaps we all got off on the wrong foot,” said Blue.

  “Out of the mouths of babes,” said Thulium.

  “You’re younger than I am,” said Blue, annoyed.

  “The one you call Blue,” said Jane, “is wise indeed to try to stop us from sniping at each other. Because what Graff asked for was all the information we’ve gathered about the descolada virus, the planet Descoladora, and pretty much everything else.”

  “And you have all that data with you?” asked Graff.

  “I have all that data in me,” said Jane. “And Miro has most of it. But the most important thing I bring you is instantaneous interstellar travel.”

  Little Mum gave a hoot of laughter.

  In that instant, they were all sitting or standing in a field of grass, with a sun shining brightly overhead, and the raucous sound of xingadora birds and running water in the background. Those who had been sitting in chairs fell backward on the grass.

  “I just left the Herodotus in a geosynchronous orbit,” said Jane. “But I thought you’d like to stretch your legs on the surface of one of my favorite planets.”

  Sprout knelt and ran his hands through the grass. “This is Lusitania?” he asked.

  “That’s where they keep all the data about the descolada virus and the planet where it might have originated,” said Jane.

  “And no,” said Miro, “you won’t be infected. Because Ela’s countervirus worked and continues to work.”

  “Thanks for reassuring us that we’re safe from the dangers of Lusitania,” said Uncle Ender. “But this is the most perilous group of brats ever assembled, and you’re crazy to turn them loose on a planet whose safety and sanity you care about.”

  “Oh, Andrew Delphiki,” said Jane, “parents always think their kids are both the best and the worst.”

  “You were warned,” said Uncle Ender.

  Sprout said, “How did you do this? How far did you take us?”

  Jane shrugged. “I could calculate the distance, but why bother? I took you Outside, and then I brought you back Inside to a place very familiar to me, where I knew you’d be safe and comfortable.”

  “I’m going to need my shipboard computer,” said Sprout.

  “I’ve already transferred everything from the computers on the Herodotus to highly capable computers here on Lusitania,” said Jane. “You’ll have all the tools you’re familiar with, and new ones, too. I left all your security precautions intact.”

  Lanth hooted. “Now that you’ve proven that they’re useless.”

  “Can you teach us to do that instant-travel thing?” asked Dys.

  “No,” said Jane. “I’ve tried to teach the technique to smarter beings than you, and it seems to be very difficult to learn.”

  Sprout heard “smarter beings than you” and couldn’t leave it unchallenged. “Our parents have told us that nobody is smarter than we are.”

  “There are senses in which that is true,” said Jane. “But perhaps you should revise it to say, ‘No human has greater natural intellectual abilities than the leguminids.’”

  “Will you explain what you mean?” asked Sprout.

  “She means that the native sentient life-form of Lusitania—pequeninos—are apparently very smart,” said Little Mum.

  “That is not at all what I mean,” said Jane, “but of course, you’re so clever, Petra Arkanian Delphiki, that you don’t need actual data before leaping to conclusions.”

  “You have us where you want us,” said Uncle Ender. “What now?”

  “Now we’ll wait for a little while. For you to get established in your rooms and verify that all your computer data has been installed on the computers in those rooms. And for you to walk around a little in a breeze under open sky. And for you to be served a meal of surpassing freshness. And as soon as they have time, the people who are doing the actual research on the descolada virus and the planet Descoladora will come and you can talk to each other.”

  “But you already know everything they’re going to tell us,” said Sprout.

  “I do,” said Jane.

  “And you could tell it to us right now, if you wanted.”

  “Better on a full stomach,” said Jane, “and after you’ve had a chance to settle your minds and get a little exercise. Besides, they’ve earned the right to tell you themselves, since they’re the ones who did all the hard work up to now.”

  One question now loomed in Sprout’s mind. It apparently had just come to the surface of Ultima Thule’s mind, because at the same moment that he said, “Where’s Mother?” Thulium said, “Where’s my father?”

  Jane looked from Sprout to Thulium and back again. “Where do you imagine they are?”

  “Dead,” said Thulium, at exactly the moment when Sprout said, “Still on the Herodotus.”

  “Both could be true,” said Jane. “But neither happens to be. I sent them to Nokonoshima, where the simulacrum calling itself Graff informed them that they are assigned to persuade, not compel, a man named Yuuto, a woman named Mayumi, and a woman named Airi to prepare their affairs so they can join you here on Lusitania. It happens, children, that your parents were such unforgettable lovers and/or betrayers that none of your human parents has married or had additional children in the
intervening years. They are free, if they wish, to come.”

  “When did you do that?” asked Uncle Ender. “You’ve been with us all the time.”

  Miro laughed. “Get used to it. Jane is the only person in human form who is genuinely capable of multitasking.”

  “I don’t want to live as man and wife with Mayumi,” said Uncle Ender.

  “No one will require you to do so,” said Miro. “Or require them, either. But the children need both their parents. Your selfish act of kidnapping can still be at least partially undone. Some of your children will be glad. Some will be annoyed. But since that’s how human children always regard their parents, you’ll learn to live with it.”

  “We’re not human,” said Dys.

  “You are closer to being human,” said Miro, “than humans are to being chimpanzees. You are more similar to humans than ravens are to crows. You are not a separate species, because you obviously are capable of interbreeding with humans.”

  “How would you know anything about us?” asked Lanth.

  “Your wish to call yourselves nonhuman is an outgrowth from Julian Delphiki’s shame and pride at being genetically altered from the human genome,” said Miro. “Ender Wiggin—the original Ender—told us many stories about him—using the name Bean, of course. They won’t be the same stories that your leguminid lore includes, of course. But it gives us a solid perspective. It is ridiculously obvious, given the history of your parents and the Giant and yourselves on the Herodotus that rearing children in that confined space, without the benefit of the presence of your other parent, has worked out, on average, rather badly.”

  It was the most Miro had said to them.

  “How dare you judge us?” asked Uncle Ender.

  “You’ve already judged the rest of the human race,” said Miro. “I, representing that large constituency, merely return the favor—and with much better information.”

  “I liked you better when you didn’t talk,” said Sprout.

  “Now you know why I try to avoid doing it,” said Miro. “Now it’s time for Ender to join his siblings.” And before anyone could protest, not that anyone wanted to, Uncle Ender was gone.