my daughters. I'm consulting with Jane, who thinks this is all foolishness."
"Do you ever intend," asked Val, "to consult with me?"
"Already you are saying yes."
Val sighed. "I suppose I am," she said. "Deep down inside myself, where I am really an old man who doesn't give a damn whether this young new puppet lives or dies -- I suppose that at that level, I don't mind."
"All along you said yes. But you're afraid. You're afraid of losing what you have, not knowing what you'll be."
"You've got it," said Val. "And don't tell me again that stupid lie that you don't mind dying because your daughters have your memories. You damn well do mind dying, and if keeping Jane alive might save your life, you want to do it."
"Take the hand of my worker and go out into the light. Go out among the stars and do your work. Back here, I'll try to find a way to save your life. Jane's life. All our lives."
Jane was pouting. Miro tried to talk to her all the way back to Milagre, back to the starship, but she was as silent as Val, who would hardly look at him, let alone converse.
"So I'm the evil one," said Miro. "Neither of you was doing a damn thing about it, but because I actually take action, I'm bad and you're the victims."
Val shook her head and did not answer.
"You're dying!" he shouted over the noise of the air rushing past them, over the noise of the engines. "Jane's about to be executed! Is there some virtue in being passive about this? Can't somebody at least make an effort?"
Val said something that Miro didn't hear.
"What?"
She turned her head away.
"You said something, now let me hear it!"
The voice that answered was not Val's. It was Jane who spoke into his ear. "She said, You can't have it both ways."
"What do you mean I can't have it both ways?" Miro spoke to Val as if she had actually repeated what she said.
Val turned toward him. "If you save Jane, it's because she remembers everything about her life. It doesn't do any good if you just slip her into me as an unconscious source of will. She has to remain herself, so she can be restored when the ansible network is restored. And that would wipe me out. Or if I'm preserved, my memories and personality, then what difference does it make if it's Jane or Ender providing my will? You can't save us both."
"How do you know?" demanded Miro.
"The same way you know all these things you're saying as if they were facts when nobody can possibly know anything about it!" cried Val. "I'm reasoning it out! It seems reasonable. That's enough."
"Why isn't it just as reasonable that you'll have your memories, and hers, too?"
"Then I'd be insane, wouldn't I?" said Val. "Because I'd remember being a woman who sprang into being on a starship, whose first real memory is seeing you die and come to life. And I'd also remember three thousand years worth of life outside this body, living somehow in space and -- what kind of person can hold memories like that? Did you think of that? How can a human being possibly contain Jane and all that she is and remembers and knows and can do?"
"Jane's very strong," Miro said. "But then, she doesn't know how to use a body. She doesn't have the instinct for it. She's never had one. She'll have to use your memories. She'll have to leave you intact."
"As if you know."
"I do know," said Miro. "I don't know why or how I know it, but I know."
"And I thought men were the rational ones," she said scornfully.
"Nobody's rational," said Miro. "We all act because we're sure of what we want, and we believe that the actions we perform will get us what we want, but we never know anything for sure, and so all our rationales are invented to justify what we were going to do anyway before we thought of any reasons."
"Jane's rational," said Val. "Just one more reason why my body wouldn't work for her."
"Jane isn't rational either," said Miro. "She's just like us. Just like the Hive Queen. Because she's alive. Computers, now, those are rational. You feed them data, they reach only the conclusions that can be derived from that data -- but that means they are perpetually helpless victims of whatever information and programs we feed into them. We living sentient beings, we are