Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

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