Bova, Ben Children of the Mind

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"You don't have to apologize to the worker," said Quara. "It's really just the
Hive Queen anyway."
Jane looked over at Miro and winked. Miro did not wink back, but the look of
sadness in his eyes was answer enough. He knew that the workers were not quite
what everyone thought. The hive queens sometimes had to tame them, because not
all of them were utterly subjected to their mother's will. But the
was-it-or-wasn't-it-slavery of the workers was a matter for another generation
to work out.
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"Languages," said Jane. "Carried by genetic molecules. What kind of grammar must
they have? Are they linked to sounds, smells, sights? Let's see how smart we all
are without me inside the computers helping." That struck her as so amazingly
funny that she laughed aloud. Ah, how marvelous it was to have her own laughter
sounding in her ears, bubbling upward from her lungs, spasming her diaphragm,
bringing tears to her eyes!
Only when her laughter ended did she realize how leaden the sound of it must
have been to Miro, to the others. "I'm sorry," she said, abashed, and felt a
blush rising up her neck into her cheeks. Who could have believed it could burn
so hot! It almost made her laugh again. "I'm not used to being alive like this.
I know I'm rejoicing when the rest of you are grim, but don't you see? Even if
we all die when the air runs out in a few weeks, I can't help but marvel at how
it feels to me!"
"We understand," said Firequencher. "You have passed into your Second Life. It's
a joyful time for us, as well."
"I spent time among your trees, you know," said Jane. "Your mothertrees made
space for me. Took me in and nurtured me. Does that make us brother and sister
now?"
"I hardly know what it would mean, to have a sister," said Firequencher. "But if
you remember the life in the dark of the mothertree, then you remember more than
I do. We have dreams sometimes, but no real memories of the First Life in
darkness. Still, that makes this your Third Life after all."
"Then I'm an adult?" asked Jane, and she laughed again.
And again felt how her laugh stilled the others, hurt them.
But something odd happened as she turned, ready to apologize again. Her glance
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fell upon Miro, and instead of saying the words she had planned -- the
Jane-words that would have come out of the jewel in his ear only the day before
-- other words came to her lips, along with a memory. "If my memories live,
Miro, then I'm alive. Isn't that what you told me?"
Miro shook his head. "Are you speaking from Val's memory, or from Jane's memory
when she -- when you -- overheard us speaking in the Hive Queen's cave? Don't
comfort me by pretending to be her."
Jane, by habit -- Val's habit? or her own? -- snapped, "When I comfort you,
you'll know it."
"And how will I know?" Miro snapped back.
"Because you'll be comfortable, of course," said Val-Jane. "In the meantime,
please keep in mind that I'm not listening through the jewel in your ear now. I
see only with these eyes and hear only with these ears."
This was not strictly true, of course. For many times a second, she felt the
flowing sap, the unstinting welcome of the mothertrees as her ai�a satisfied its
hunger for largeness by touring the vast network of the pequenino philotes. And
now and then, outside the mothertrees, she caught a glimmer of a thought, of a
word, a phrase, spoken in the language of the fathertrees. Or was it their
language? Rather it was the language behind the language, the underlying speech
of the speechless. And whose was that other voice? I know you -- you are of the
kind that made me. I know your voice.
said the Hive Queen in her mind.
without us.>
Jane was not prepared for the swelling of pride that glowed through her entire
Val-body; she felt the physical effect of the emotion as Val, but her pride came
from the praise of a hive-mother. I am a daughter of hive queens, she realized,
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and so it matters when she speaks to me, and tells me I have done well.
And if I'm the hive queens' daughter, I am Ender's daughter, too, his daughter
twice over, for they made my lifestuff partly from his mind, so I could be a
bridge between them; and now I dwell in a body that also came from him, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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