And she liked the idea well enough to wish it were true. Of the trillion lovers who had whispered to each other, We are one, could it be that some of them really were? Of the billions of families who had bonded together so closely they felt like a single soul, wouldn't it be lovely to think that at the most basic level of reality it was so?

Jakt, however, was not so caught up in the idea. “I thought we weren't supposed to talk about the existence of the hive queen,” he said. “I thought that was Ender's secret.”

“It's all right,” said Valentine. “Everyone in this room knows.”

Jakt gave her his impatient look. “I thought we were coming to Lusitania to help in the struggle against Starways Congress. What does any of this have to do with the real world?”

“Maybe nothing,” said Valentine. “Maybe everything.”

Jakt buried his face in his hands for a moment, then looked back up at her with a smile that wasn't really a smile. “I haven't heard you say anything so transcendental since your brother left Trondheim.”

That stung her, particularly because she knew it was meant to. After all these years, was Jakt still jealous of her connection with Ender? Did he still resent the fact that she could care about things that meant nothing to him? “When he went,” said Valentine, “I stayed.” She was really saying, I passed the only test that mattered. Why should you doubt me now?

Jakt was abashed. It was one of the best things about him, that when he realized he was wrong he backed down at once. “And when you went,” said Jakt, “I came with you.” Which she took to mean, I'm with you, I'm really not jealous of Ender anymore, and I'm sorry for sniping at you. Later, when they were alone, they'd say these things again openly. It wouldn't do to reach Lusitania with suspicions and jealousy on either's part.

Miro, of course, was oblivious to the fact that Jakt and Valentine had already declared a truce. He was only aware of the tension between them, and thought he was the cause of it. “I'm sorry,” said Miro. “I didn't mean to…”

“It's all right,” said Jakt. “I was out of line.”

“There is no line,” said Valentine, with a smile at her husband. Jakt smiled back.

That was what Miro needed to see; he visibly relaxed.

“Go on,” said Valentine.

“Take all that as a given,” said the Miro-image.

Valentine couldn't help it– she laughed out loud. Partly she laughed because this mystical Gangean philote-as-soul business was such an absurdly large premise to swallow. Partly she laughed to release the tension between her and Jakt. “I'm sorry,” she said. “That's an awfully big 'given.' If that's the preamble, I can't wait to hear the conclusion.”

Miro, understanding her laughter now, smiled back. “I've had a lot of time to think,” he said. “That really was my speculation on what life is. That everything in the universe is behavior. But there's something else we want to tell you about. And ask you about, too, I guess.” He turned to Jakt. “And it has a lot to do with stopping the Lusitania Fleet.”

Jakt smiled and nodded. “I appreciate being tossed a bone now and then.”

Valentine smiled her most charming smile. “So– later you'll be glad when I break a few bones.”

Jakt laughed again.

“Go on, Miro,” said Valentine.

It was the image-Miro that responded. “If all of reality is the behavior of philotes, then obviously most philotes are only smart enough or strong enough to act as a meson or hold together a neutron. A very few of them have the strength of will to be alive– to govern an organism. And a tiny, tiny fraction of them are powerful enough to control– no, to be– a sentient organism. But still, the most complex and intelligent being– the hive queen, for instance– is, at core, just a philote, like all the others. It gains its identity and life from the particular role it happens to fulfill, but what it is is a philote.”

“My self– my will– is a subatomic particle?” asked Valentine.

Jakt smiled, nodded. “A fun idea,” he said. “My shoe and I are brothers.”

Miro smiled wanly. The Miro-image, however, answered. “If a star and a hydrogen atom are brothers, then yes, there is a kinship between you and the philotes that make up common objects like your shoe.”

Valentine noticed that Miro had not subvocalized anything just before the Miro-image answered. How had the software producing the Miro-image come up with the analogy with stars and hydrogen atoms, if Miro didn't provide it on the spot? Valentine had never heard of a computer program capable of producing such involved yet appropriate conversation on its own.

“And maybe there are other kinships in the universe that you know nothing of till now,” said the Miro-image. “Maybe there's a kind of life you haven't met.”

Valentine, watching Miro, saw that he seemed worried. Agitated. As if he didn't like what the Miro-image was doing now.

“What kind of life are you talking about?” asked Jakt.

“There's a physical phenomenon in the universe, a very common one, that is completely unexplained, and yet everyone takes it for granted and no one has seriously investigated why and how it happens. This is it: None of the ansible connections has ever broken.”

“Nonsense,” said Jakt. “One of the ansibles on Trondheim was out of service for six months last year– it doesn't happen often, but it happens.”

Again Miro's lips and jaw were motionless; again the image answered immediately. Clearly he was not controlling it now. “I didn't say that the ansibles never break down. I said that the connections– the philotic twining between the parts of a split meson– have never broken. The machinery of the ansible can break down, the software can get corrupted, but never has a meson fragment within an ansible made the shift to allow its philotic ray to entwine with another local meson or even with the nearby planet.”

“The magnetic field suspends the fragment, of course,” said Jakt.

“Split mesons don't endure long enough in nature for us to know how they naturally act,” said Valentine.

“I know all the standard answers,” said the image. “All nonsense. All the kind of answers parents give their children when they don't know the truth and don't want to bother finding out. People still treat the ansibles like magic. Everybody's glad enough that the ansibles keep on working; if they tried to figure out why, the magic might go out of it and then the ansibles would stop.”

“Nobody feels that way,” said Valentine.

“They all do,” said the image. “Even if it took hundreds of years, or a thousand years, or three thousand years, one of those connections should have broken by now. One of those meson fragments should have shifted its philotic ray– but they never have.”

“Why?” asked Miro.

Valentine assumed at first that Miro was asking a rhetorical question. But no– he was looking at the image just like the rest of them, asking it to tell him why.

“I thought this program was reporting your speculations,” said Valentine.

“It was,” said Miro. “But not now.”

“What if there's a being who lives among the philotic connections between ansibles?” asked the image.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Miro. Again he was speaking to the image on the screen.

And the image on the screen changed, to the face of a young woman, one that Valentine had never seen before.

“What if there's a being who dwells in the web of philotic rays connecting the ansibles on every world and every starship in the human universe? What if she is composed of those philotic connections? What if her thoughts take place in the spin and vibration of the split pairs? What if her memories are stored in the computers of every world and every ship?”

“Who are you?” asked Valentine, speaking directly to the image.

“Maybe I'm the one who keeps all those philotic connections alive, ansible to ansible. Maybe I'm a new kind of organism, one that doesn't twine rays together, but instead keeps them twined to each other so that they never break apart. And if that's true, then if those connections ever broke, if the ansibles ever stopped moving– if the ansibles ever fell silent, then I would die.”