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Father listened as Qing-jao told him all about Valentine Wiggin, and how she had been writing secretly as Demosthenes all these years. "She is clearly able to send secret ansible messages, or her writings couldn't be distributed from a ship in flight to all the different worlds. Only the military is supposed to be able to communicate with ships that are traveling near the speed of light--she must have either penetrated the military's computers or duplicated their power. And if she can do all that, if the program exists to allow her to do it, then that same program would clearly have the power to intercept the ansible messages from the fleet."
"If A, then B, yes--but how could this woman have planted a program in every ansible computer in the first place?"
"Because she did it at the first! That's how old she is. In fact, if Hegemon Locke was her brother, perhaps--no, of course--he did it! When the first colonization fleets went out, with their philotic double-triads aboard to be the heart of each colony's first ansible, he could have sent that program with them."
Father understood at once; of course he did. "As Hegemon he had the power, and the reason as well--a secret program under his control, so that if there were a rebellion or a coup, he would still hold in his hands the threads that bind the worlds together."
"And when he died, Demosthenes--his sister--she was the only one who knew the secret! Isn't it wonderful? We've found it. All we have to do is wipe all those programs out of memory!"
"Only to have the programs instantly restored through the ansible by other copies of the program on other worlds," said Father. "It must have happened a thousand times before over the centuries, a computer breaking down and the secret program restoring itself on the new one."
"
Then we have to cut off all the ansibles at the same time," said Qing-jao. "On every world, have a new computer ready that has never been contaminated by any contact with the secret program. Shut the ansibles down all at once, cut off the old computers, bring the new computers online, and wake up the ansibles. The secret program can't restore itself because it isn't on any of the computers. Then the power of Congress will have no rival to interfere!"
"You can't do it," said Wang-mu.
Qing-jao looked at her secret maid in shock. How could the girl be so ill-bred as to interrupt a conversation between two of the godspoken in order to contradict them?
But Father was gracious--he was always gracious, even to people who had overstepped all the bounds of respect and decency. I must learn to be more like him, thought Qing-jao. I must allow servants to keep their dignity even when their actions have forfeited any such consideration.
"Si Wang-mu," said Father, "why can't we do it?"
"Because to have all the ansibles shut off at the same time, you would have to send messages by ansible," said Wang-mu. "Why would the program allow you to send messages that would lead to its own destruction?"
Qing-jao followed her father's example by speaking patiently to Wang-mu. "It's only a program--it doesn't know the content of messages. Whoever rules the program told it to hide all the communications from the fleet, and to conceal the tracks of all the messages from Demosthenes. It certainly doesn't read the messages and decide from their contents whether to send them."
"How do you know?" asked Wang-mu.
"Because such a program would have to be--intelligent!"
"But it would have to be intelligent anyway," said Wang-mu. "It has to be able to hide from any other program that would find it. It has to be able to move itself around in memory to conceal itself. How would it be able to tell which programs it had to hide from, unless it could read them and interpret them? It might even be intelligent enough to rewrite other programs so they wouldn't look in the places where this program was hiding."
Qing-jao immediately thought of several reasons why a program could be smart enough to read other programs but not intelligent enough to understand human languages. But because Father was there, it was his place to answer Wang-mu. Qing-jao waited.
"If there is such a program," said Father, "it might be very intelligent indeed."
Qing-jao was shocked. Father was taking Wang-mu seriously. As if Wang-mu's ideas were not those of a naive child.
"It might be so intelligent that it not only intercepts messages, but also sends them." Then Father shook his head. "No, the message came from a friend. A true friend, and she spoke of things that no one else could know. It was a real message."
"What message did you receive, Father?"
"It was from Keikoa Amaauka; I knew her face to face when we were young. She was the daughter of a scientist from Otaheiti who was here to study genetic drift of Earthborn species in their first two centuries on Path. They left--they were sent away quite abruptly . . ." He paused, as if considering whether to say something. Then he decided, and said it: "If she had stayed she might have become your mother."
Qing-jao was both thrilled and frightened to have Father speak of such a thing to her. He never spoke of his past. And now to say that he once loved another woman besides his wife who gave birth to Qing-jao, this was so unexpected that Qing-jao didn't know what to say.
"She was sent somewhere very far away. It's been thirty-five years. Most of my life has passed since she left. But she only just arrived, a year ago. And now she has sent me a message telling me why her father was sent away. To her, our parting was only a year ago. To her, I'm still--"
"Her lover," said Wang-mu.
The impertinence! thought Qing-jao. But Father only nodded. Then he turned to his terminal and paged through the display. "Her father had stumbled onto a genetic difference in the most important Earthborn species on Path."
"Rice?" asked Wang-mu.
Qing-jao laughed. "No, Wang-mu. We are the most important Earthborn species on this world."
Wang-mu looked abashed. Qing-jao patted her shoulder. This was as it should be--Father had encouraged Wang-mu too much, had led her to think she understood things that were still far beyond her education. Wang-mu needed these gentle reminders now and then, so she did not get her hopes too high. The girl must not allow herself to dream of being the intellectual equal of one of the godspoken, or her life would be filled with disappointment instead of contentment.
