page 363
          "Tell Master Han that he is kind and good, but my
     mistress has dismissed me."
          "Master Han says that Mistress Qing-jao has the au-
     thority to dismiss you as her secret maid, but not to
     dismiss you from his house. Your contract is with him,
     not with her."
          This was true. Wang-mu hadn’t thought of that.
          "He begs you to return," said Mu-pao. "He told me
     to say it that was so that you might come out of kind-
     ness, if you would not come out of obedience."
          "Tell him I will obey. He should not beg such a low
     person as myself."
          "He will be glad," said Mu-pao
          Wang-mu walked beside Mu-pao’s donkey. They
     went very slowly, which was more comfortable for Mu-
     pao and the donkey as well.
         "I have never seen him so upset," said Mu-pao.
         "Probably I shouldn’t tell you that. But when I said that
     you were gone, he was almost frantic."
          "Were the gods speaking to him?" It was a bitter
     thing if Master Han called her back only because for
     some reason the slave driver within him had demanded
     it.
          "No," said Mu-pao. "It wasn’t like that at all.
          Though of course I’ve never actually seen what it looks
     like when the gods speak to him.”
          “Of course.”
          "He simply didn’t want you to go," said Mu-pao.
          "I will probably end up going anyway," said Wang-
     mu. "But I’ll gladly explain to him why I am now use-
     less in the House of Han.
          "Oh, of course," said Mu-pao. "You have always
     been useless. But that doesn't mean that you aren't nec-
     essary."
          "What do you mean?"
          "Happiness can depend as easily on useless things as
     on useful ones."
          "Is that a saying of an old master?"
          "It's a saying of an old fat woman on a donkey," said
     Mu-pao. "And don't you forget it."
          When Wang-mu was alone with Master Han in his
     private chamber, he showed no sign of the agitation
     Mu-pao had spoken of.
          "I have spoken with Jane," he said. "She thinks that
     since you know of her existence and believe her
     not to be the enemy of the gods, it will be better if you
     stay."
          "So I will serve Jane now?" asked Wang-mu. "Am I
     to be her secret maid?"
          Wang-mu did not mean her words to sound ironic;
     the idea of being servant to a nonhuman entity in-
     trigued her. But Master Han reacted as if her were try-
     ing to smooth over an offense.
          "No," he said. "You shouldn’t be anyone’s servant.
     You have acted bravely and worthily."
          "And yes you called me back to fulfill my contract
     with you."
          Master Han bowed his head. "I called you back be-
     cause you are the only one who knows the truth. If you
     go, then I’m alone in this house."
          Wang-mu almost said: How can you be alone, when
     your daughter is here? And until the last few days, it
     wouldn’t have been a cruel thing to say, because Master
     Han and Mistress Qing-jao were friends as close as a
     father and daughter could ever be. But now, the barrier
     between them was insuperable. Qing-jao lived in a
     world where she was a triumphant servant of the gods,
     trying to be patient with the temporary madness of her
     father. Master Han lived in a world where his daughter
     and all of his society were slaves to an oppressive Con-
     gress, and only he knew the truth. How could they even
     speak to each other across a gulf so wide and deep?
          "I’ll stay," said Wang-mu. "However I can serve you,
     I will."

 

 

page 383
     tece to key in by hand, in a year, the amount of infor-
     mation computers have to send to each other by ansible
     every hour."
          "So she just hides? Waits? Sneaks in and restores
     herself when she sees a chance five or ten years from
     now?"
         "If that's all she is--a collection of programs."
         "There had to be more to her than that," said Miro.
         "Why?"
         "Because if she's nothing more than a collection of
     programs, even self-writing and self-revising programs,
     ultimately she was created be some programmer or
     group of programmers somewhere. In which case she's
     just acting out the program that was forced on her from
     the beginning. So she has no free will. She's a puppet. Not
     a person."
          "Well, when it comes to that, maybe you're defining
     free will too narrowly," said Ender. "Aren't human be-
     ings the same way, programmed by our genes and our
     environment?"
          "No," said Miro.
          "What else, then?"
          "Our philotic connections say that we aren't. Because
     we're capable of connecting with each other by act of
     will, which no other form of life on Earth can do.
     There's something we have, something we are, that
     wasn't caused by anything else."
          "What, our soul?"
          "Not even that," said Miro. Because the priests say
     that God created our soul, and that just puts us under
     the control of another puppeteer. If God created our
     will, then he's responsible for every choice we make.
     God, our Genes, our environment, of some stupid pro-
     grammer keying in code at an ancient terminal--there's
     no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are
     the result of some external cause."
          "So-- as I recall, the official philosophical answer is
     that free will doesn't exist. Only the illusion of free will,
     because the causes of our behavior are so complex that
     we can't trace them back. If you've got one line of dom-
     inoes knocking each other down only one by one, then you
     can always say, Look this domino fell because that one
     pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of
     dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number
     of directions, you can never find where the casual chain
     begins. So you think, That domino fell because it
     wanted to."
         "Bobagem," said Miro.
         "Well I'll admit that it's a philosophy with no practical
     value," said Ender. "Valentine once explained it to me
     this way. Even if there is no such thing as free will, we
     have to treat each other as if there were free will in
     order to live together in society. Because otherwise, ev-
     ery time somebody does something terrible, you can't
     punish him, because he can't help it, because his genes
     or his environment or God made him do it, and every
     time somebody does something good, you can't honor
     him, because he was a puppet, too. If you think that
     everybody around you is a puppet, why bother talking
     to them at all? Why even try to plan anything or create
     anything, since everything you plan or create or desire
     or dream of is just acting out the script your puppeteer
     built into you."
         "Despair," said Miro.
         "So we conceive of ourselves and everyone around
     us as volitional beings. We treat everyone as if they did
     things with a purpose in mind, instead of because
     they're being pushed from behind. We punish criminals.
     We reward altruists. We plan things and build things
     together. We make promises and expect each other to
     keep them. It's all a made-up story, but when every-
     body believes that everybody's actions are the result of
     free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accord-
     ingly, the result is civilization."
         "Just a story."
         "That's how Valentine explained it. That is, if there's
     no free will. I'm not sure that she actually believes her-
     self. My guess is that she'd say that she is civilized, and
     therefore she must believe the story herself, in which
     case she absolutely believes in free will and thinks this
     whole idea of a made-up story is nonsense- but that's
     what she'd believe even if it were true, and so who can
     be sure of anything."
         Then Ender laughed, because Valentine had laughed
     when she first told him all this many years ago. When
     they were still only a little past bit childhood, and he
     was working on writing the Hegemon, and was trying
     to understand why his brother Peter had done all the
     great and terrible things he did.
         "It isn't funny," said Miro.
         "I thought it was," said Ender.
         "Either we're free or we're not," said Miro. "Either
     the story's true or it isn't."
         "The point is that we have to believe that it's true in
     order to live as civilized human beings," said Ender.
         "No, that's not the point at all," said Miro. "Because
     if it's a lie, why should we bother to live as civilized
     human beings?"
         "Because the species has a better chance to survive
     if we do," said Ender. "Because our genes require us
     to believe the story in order to enhance our ability to
     pass those genes on for many generations in the future.
     Because anybody who doesn't believe the story begins
     to act in unproductive, uncooperative ways, and eventu-
     ally all the community, the herd, will reject him and his
     opportunities for reproduction will be diminished-- for
     instance, he'll be put in jail- and the genes leading to
     his unbelieving behavior will eventually be extin-
     guished."
         "So the puppeteer requires that we believe that we're
     not puppets. We're forced to believe in free will."

 

 

page 393
"You are inferior." said Jane.
"I'm hungry," said Ender. "And thirsty."
"Lunch," said Miro.

 

 

page 396
"When you have wisdom that another person knows that he or she needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom, you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man.

    

 

page 412
          "Always gods," said Ela.
          "What do you mean?" said Wang-mu. "Qing-jao
     doesn't say that she's a god, and neither do I"
          "Yes you do," said Ela."'Qing-jao is wise and good.'
     you said."
          "'Brilliant and good.'" Wiggin corrected her.
          "And I can never be like her,'" Ela went on.
          "Let me tell you about gods," said Wiggin. "No mat-
     ter how smart or strong you are, there's always some-
     body smarter or stronger, and when you run into
     somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody,
     you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can
     promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else
     who'll make your god look like a maggot by compari-
     son. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in
     some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods.
     I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry
     that he tries to keep the other people down. For Congress
     to genetically alter people to make them smarter and
     more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous
     gift. But they were scared, so they hobbles the people
     of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god
     doesn't care about control. A real god already has con-
     trol of everything that needs controlling. Real gods
     would want to teach you how to be just like them."
          "Qing-jao wanted to teach me," said Wang-mu.
          "But only as long as you obeyed and did what she
     wanted," said Jane.
          "I'm not worthy," said Wang-mu. "I'm too stupid to
     ever learn to be as wise as her."
          "And yet you knew I spoke the truth," said Jane,
     "when all Qing-jao could see were lies."
          "Are you a god? asked Wang-mu.
          "What the godspoken and the pequeninos are only
     just about to learn about themselves, I've known all
     along. I was made."
          "Nonsense," said Wiggin. "Jane, you've always be-