Xenocide Part 42

"So you have to teach her."

What good would teaching do? The thinker isn't there. The found thing. The binder-together.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Stop trying to look look and and think think, then. This isn't done with eyes.

"Then stop showing me anything, if it depends on another sense. Eyes are too important to humans; if I see anything anything it'll mask out anything but clear speech and I don't think there's much of it'll mask out anything but clear speech and I don't think there's much of that that at a queen-making." at a queen-making."

How's this?

"I'm still seeing something."

Your brain is turning it into seeing.

"Then explain it. Help me make sense of it."

It's the way we feel each other. We're finding the reaching-out place in the queen-body. The workers all have it, too, but all it reaches for is the queen and when it finds her all the reaching is over. The queen never stops reaching. Calling.

"So then you find her?"

We know know where where she she is. The queen-body. The worker-caller. The memory-holder. is. The queen-body. The worker-caller. The memory-holder.

"Then what are you searching for?"

The us-thing. The binder. The meaning-maker.

"You mean there's something else? Something besides besides the queen's body?" the queen's body?"

Yes, of course. The queen is just a body, like the workers. Didn't you know this?

"No, I never saw it."

Can't see see it. Not with eyes. it. Not with eyes.

"I didn't know to look for anything else. I saw the making of the queen when you first showed it to me years ago. I thought I understood then."

We thought you did too.

"So if the queen's just a body, who are you you?"

We're the Hive Queen. And all the workers. We come and make one person out of all. The queen-body, she obeys us like the worker-bodies. We hold them all together, protect them, let them work perfectly as each is needed. We're the center. Each of us.

"But you've always talked talked as if you as if you were were the Hive Queen." the Hive Queen."

We are are. Also all the workers. We're all together.

"But this center-thing, this binder-together--"

We call it to come and take the queen-body, so she can be wise, our sister.

"You call call it. What is it?" it. What is it?"

The thing we call.

"Yes, what is is it?" it?"

What are you asking? It's the called-thing. We call it.

It was almost unbearably frustrating. So much of what the Hive Queen did was instinctive. She had no language and so she had never had a need to develop clear explanations of that which had never needed explaining till now. So he had to help her find a way to clarify what he couldn't perceive directly.

"Where do you find it?"

It hears us calling and cornes.

"But how do you call?"

As you called us. We imagine the thing which it must become. The pattern of the hive. The queen and the workers and the binding together. Then one comes who understands the pattern and can hold it. We give the queen-body to it.

"So you're calling some other creature to come and take possession of the queen."

To become become the queen and the hive and all. To hold the pattern we imagined. the queen and the hive and all. To hold the pattern we imagined.

"So where does it come from?"

Wherever it was when it felt us calling.

"But where is that?"

Not here.

"Fine, I believe you. But where does it come from?"

Can't think of the place.

"You forget?"

We mean that the place where it is can't be thought of. If we could think of the place then they would already have thought of themselves and none of them would need to take the pattern we show.

"What kind of thing is is this binder-together?" this binder-together?"

Can't see it. Can't know it until it finds the pattern and then when it's there it's like us us.

Ender couldn't help shuddering. All this time he had thought that he was speaking to the Hive Queen herself. Now he realized that the thing that talked to him in his mind was only using that body the way it used the b.u.g.g.e.rs. Symbiosis. A controlling parasite, possessing the whole Hive Queen system, using it.

No. This is ugly, the terrible thing you're thinking. We aren't another thing. We're this this thing. We thing. We are are the Hive Queen, just the way you're the body. You say, My body, and yet you are your body, but you're also possessor of the body. The Hive Queen is ourself, this body is me, not something else inside. I. I wasn't anything until I found the imagining. the Hive Queen, just the way you're the body. You say, My body, and yet you are your body, but you're also possessor of the body. The Hive Queen is ourself, this body is me, not something else inside. I. I wasn't anything until I found the imagining.

"I don't understand. What was it like?"

How can I remember? I never had memory until I followed the imagining and came to this place and became the Hive Queen.

"Then how did you know that you aren't just the Hive Queen?"

Because after I came, they gave me the memories. I saw the queen-body before I came, and then I saw the queen-body after I was in it. I was strong enough to hold the pattern in my mind, and so I could possess it. Become it. It took many days but then we were whole and they could give us the memories because I had the whole memory.

The vision the Hive Queen had been giving him faded. It wasn't helping anyway, or at least not in any way he could grasp. Nevertheless, a mental image was was coming clear for Ender now, one that came from his own mind to explain all the things she was saying. The other Hive Queens-- not physically present, most of them, but linked philotically to the one queen who coming clear for Ender now, one that came from his own mind to explain all the things she was saying. The other Hive Queens-- not physically present, most of them, but linked philotically to the one queen who had had to be there-- they held the pattern of the relations.h.i.+p between Hive Queen and workers in their minds, until one of these mysterious memoryless creatures was able to contain the pattern in its mind and therefore take possession of it. to be there-- they held the pattern of the relations.h.i.+p between Hive Queen and workers in their minds, until one of these mysterious memoryless creatures was able to contain the pattern in its mind and therefore take possession of it.

Yes.

"But where do these things come from? Where do you have to go to get them?"

We don't go anywhere. We call, and there they are.

"So they're everywhere everywhere?"

They aren't here here at all. Nowhere here. Another place. at all. Nowhere here. Another place.

"But you said you don't have to go anywhere to get them."

Doorways. We don't know where they are, but everywhere there's a door.

"What are the doorways like?"

Your brain made the word you say. Doorway. Doorway.

Now he realized that doorway doorway was the word his brain called forth to label the concept they were putting in his mind. And suddenly he was able to grasp an explanation that made sense. was the word his brain called forth to label the concept they were putting in his mind. And suddenly he was able to grasp an explanation that made sense.

"They're not in the same s.p.a.ce-time continuum as ours. But they can enter ours at any point."

To them all points are the same point. All wheres are the same where. They only find one where-ness in the pattern.

"But this is incredible. You're calling forth some being from another place, and--"

The calling forth is nothing. All things do it. All new makings. You do it. Every human baby has this thing. The pequeninos are these things also. Gra.s.s and sunlight. All making calls them, and they come to the pattern. if there are already some who understand the pattern, then they come and possess it. Small patterns are very easy. Our pattern is very hard. Only a very wise one can possess it.

"Philotes," said Ender. "The things out of which all other things are made."

The word you say doesn't make a meaning like what we mean.

"Because I'm only just making the connection. We never meant what you've described, but the thing we did did mean, that might mean, that might be be the thing you described." the thing you described."

Very unclear.

"Join the club."

Very welcome laughing happy.

"So when you make a Hive Queen, you already have the biological body, and this new thing-- this philote that you call out of the non-place where philotes are-- it has to be one that's able to comprehend the complex pattern that you have in your minds of what a Hive Queen is is, and when one comes that can do it, it takes on that ident.i.ty and possesses the body and becomes becomes the self of that body--" the self of that body--"

Of all the bodies.

"But there are no workers yet, when the Hive Queen is first made."

It becomes the self of the workers-to-come.

"We're talking about a pa.s.sage from another kind of s.p.a.ce. A place where philotes already are."

All in the same non-place. No place-ness in that place. No where-being. All hungry for whereness. All thirsty for pattern. All lonely for selfness.

"And you say that we're we're made of the same things?" made of the same things?"

How could we have found you if you weren't?

"But you said that finding me was like making a Hive Queen."

We couldn't find the pattern in you you. We were trying to make a pattern between you and the other humans, only you kept s.h.i.+fting and changing, we couldn't make sense of it. And you couldn't make sense of us us, either, so that reaching of yours couldn't make a pattern, either. So we took the third pattern. You reaching into the machine. You yearning so much for it. Like the life-yearning of the new queen-body. You were binding yourself to the program in the computer. It showed you images. We could find the images in the computer and we could find them in your mind. We could match them while you watched. The computer was very complicated and you were even more complicated but it was a pattern that held still. You were moving together and while you were together you possessed each other, you had the same vision. And when you imagined something and did it, the computer made something out of your imagining and imagined something back. Very primitive imagining from the computer. It wasn't a self. But you were making it a self by the life-yearning. The reaching-out you were doing.

"The Fantasy Game," said Ender. "You made a pattern out of the Fantasy Game."

We imagined the same thing you were imagining. All of us together. Calling. It was very complicated and strange, but much simpler than anything else we found in you. Since then we know-- very few humans are capable of concentrating the way you concentrated on that game. And we've seen no other computer program that responded to a human the way that game responded to you. It was yearning, too. Cycling over and over, trying to find something to make for you.

"And when you called ..."

It came. The bridge we needed. The together-binder for you and the computer program. It held the pattern so that it was alive even when you weren't paying attention to it. It was linked to you, you were part of it, and yet we could also understand it. It was the bridge.

"But when a philote takes possession of a new Hive Queen, it controls it, queen-body and worker-bodies. Why didn't this bridge you made take control of me?"

Do you think we didn't try?

"Why didn't it work?"

You weren't capable of letting a pattern like that control you. You could willingly become part of a pattern that was real and alive, but you couldn't be controlled by it. You couldn't even be destroyed by it. And there was so much of you in the pattern that we couldn't even control it ourselves. Too strange for us.

"But you could still use it to read my mind."

We could use it to stay connected with you in spite of all the strangeness. We studied you, especially when you played the game. And as we understood you, we began to grasp the idea of your whole species. That each individual of you was alive, with no Hive Queen at all.

"More complicated than you expected?"

And less. Your individual minds were simpler in the ways that we expected to be complicated, and complicated in ways that we expected them to be simple. We realized that you were truly alive and beautiful in your perverse and tragic lonely way and we decided not to send another colony s.h.i.+p to your worlds.

"But we didn't know that. How could we know?"

We also realized that you were dangerous and terrible. You in particular, dangerous because you found all our patterns and we couldn't think of anything complicated enough to confuse you. So you destroyed all but me. Now I understand you better. I've had all these years to study you. You are not as terrifyingly brilliant as we thought.

"Too bad. Terrifying brilliance would be useful right now."

We prefer a comforting glow of intelligence.