It was the clearest expression of the Path. It was the reason this world was settled in the first place. She had forgotten: if she was too busy to perform righteous labor, she was not on the Path.

  She would never forget again. And, in time, she learned to love the sun beating down on her back, the water cool and murky around her legs and hands, the stalks of the rice plants like fingers reaching up from the mud to intertwine with her fingers. Covered with muck in the rice paddies, she never felt unclean, because she knew that she was filthy in the service of the gods.

  Finally, at the age of sixteen, her schooling was finished. She had only to prove herself in a grown woman’s task—one that was difficult and important enough that it could only be entrusted to one who was godspoken.

  When she came before her father to receive her first task as a woman, it was no local problem he laid before her, no abstract scientific question, no historical debate to resolve, no musical composition of extraordinary difficulty. After all, Han Fei-tzu was a great diplomat, deeply involved in the most pressing problems facing not only Path but all of humankind. So the task he laid before her was one of the most pressing questions facing Starways Congress, one that no one had been able to resolve: the utter disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet.

  Of course she knew about the Lusitania Fleet. From the start it had been one of the most controversial actions ever taken by the government. Even before the fleet was well on its way, essays and diatribes, all signed with the pseudonym “Demosthenes,” began to crop up everywhere, on every world, stirring up trouble in every imaginable way. To other new colonies, Demosthenes gave warning that if they didn’t stop the Lusitania Fleet, it was only a matter of time before Starways Congress got annoyed with them for being too uppity and sent a fleet against them. To Catholic worlds, Demosthenes warned that Starways Congress was attacking because the bishop of Lusitania had dared to send missionaries among the piggies—it was a religious matter that Congress was trying to settle with guns. To scientists, Demosthenes sent warning that the principle of independent research was at stake—a whole world was under military attack because it dared to prefer the judgment of the scientists on the scene to the judgment of bureaucrats many hundreds of light-years away.

  Above all, though, Demosthenes warned that the Lusitania Fleet carried the Molecular Detachment Device—the MD Device, universally referred to as “Dr. Device”—the terrible world-destroying weapon that had been used by Ender the Xenocide three thousand years before, to obliterate the buggers, the first alien species that humankind had encountered. “What Starways Congress intends is nothing less than to duplicate the crime of Ender the Xenocide and utterly destroy the sentient species known as piggies, not because they pose any threat to humanity, but because the people who know them best dared to regard the piggies as being more worthy of consideration than the clumsy edicts of an ignorant, unthinking Congress.”

  It was treasonous language this Demosthenes used, but his questions would not go away. Congress tried to ignore Demosthenes at first—”a rabble-rouser”—and then tried to deny that the Lusitania Fleet even carried Dr. Device. But somehow the rebels got hold of some of the most secret and sensitive documents from congressional files, and when they were published under the name of Demosthenes, they made any further lies impossible. Soon the debate raged openly, and continued to rage as the fleet got ever nearer to Lusitania. Now, Qing-jao knew, the fleet was only five years away from landfall.

  She also knew that one of her father’s greatest achievements as a diplomat was to ease the fears of the colonies and negotiate a multi-party treaty that confirmed the rights of colonies to non-interference by Congress. The result was peace—and the emasculation of the fledgling United Colonies organization that had threatened open civil war with Congress. Partly because of Han Fei-tzu’s work, the Lusitania Fleet was going to arrive at its destination and complete its work.

  Now Father told her that five months ago the fleet had disappeared. No sign of struggle, no warning of danger—all communication simply ceased.

  So far the disappearance of the fleet had been kept secret from the public at large, but it was only a matter of time before the knowledge became general. The military had conducted the investigation under the tightest security up to now, but rumors were already beginning to seep out. The people they had questioned made intelligent guesses; the spouses and children of talkative clerks began to make broad hints. No secret known to so many could be contained for very long. And once it was known that a large fleet could be wiped out or cut off, Starways Congress would cease to seem an irresistible force. Other worlds would feel safe in rebellion. The strong fabric that had kept the peace for three thousand years would begin to fray.

  That was the problem that Han Fei-tzu laid before his daughter, Han Qing-jao. “You must discover every possible explanation for the disappearance of the fleet,” he said, “and calculate the likelihood of each one. Starways Congress must be able to tell how this happened and how to make sure it will never happen again.”

  “But Father,” said Qing-jao, “I’m only sixteen. Aren’t there many others who are wiser than I am?”

  “Perhaps they’re all too wise to attempt the task,” he said. “But you are young enough not to fancy yourself wise. You’re young enough to think of impossible things and discover why they might be possible. Above all, the gods speak to you with extraordinary clarity, my brilliant child, my Gloriously Bright.”

  “Starways Congress has promised not to use the MD Device unless it proves absolutely unavoidable,” said Father. “As my ancestor-of-the-heart said, ‘Though the wise man’s punishments may be light, this is not due to his compassion; though his penalties may be severe, this is not because he is cruel; he simply follows the custom appropriate to the time. Circumstances change according to the age, and ways of dealing with them change with the circumstances.’ You may be sure that Starways Congress will deal with Lusitania, not according to kindness or cruelty, but according to what is necessary for the good of all humanity. That is why we serve the rulers: because they serve the people, who serve the ancestors, who serve the gods.”

  “Father, I was unworthy even to think otherwise,” said Qing-jao.

  Yet in her heart she remembered what she had read out of the writings of Demosthenes, and she couldn’t help but fear that in serving Congress, she might be helping destroy the piggies, who were surely ramen—strangers who were not of our species, but still able to live in peace and understanding with us. There was a terrible contradiction here, one that had always seemed distant to her before, but that now she must face directly.

  If she failed, then her father would lose honor before Congress and therefore before all the world of Path. It would prove to many that Han Fei-tzu was not worthy to be chosen god of Path when he died.

  Yet if she succeeded, the terrible crime of Ender the Xenocide might be duplicated, only this time knowingly, as Congress wiped out the pequeninos because they were in rebellion against Congress’ authority.

  Then Father spoke to her as if the gods had shown him her heart. “Yes, you were unworthy,” he said, “and you continue to be unworthy in your thoughts even now.”

  Qing-jao blushed and bowed her head, ashamed, not that her thoughts had been so plainly visible to her father, but that she had had such disobedient thoughts at all.

  Father touched her shoulder gently with his hand. “But I believe the gods will make you worthy,” said Father. “Starways Congress has the mandate of heaven, but you are also chosen to walk your own path. You will succeed in this great work. Will you try?”

  “I will try.” I will also fail, but that will surprise no one, least of all the gods, who know my unworthiness.

  “All the pertinent archives have been opened up to your searching. If you need help, let me know.”

  As soon as Father was gone, Qing-jao threw herself to her knees and crept along the floor, tracing wood-grain lines until she could hardly see. Her unworthiness for having had disloyal thoughts about Starways Congress was so great that even then she didn’t quite feel clean; she went to the lavatory and scrubbed her hands until she knew the gods were satisfied. Twice the servants tried to interrupt her with meals or messages—she cared little which—but when they saw that she was communing with the gods they bowed and quietly slipped away.

  It was not the washing of her hands, though, that finally made her clean. It was the moment when she drove the last vestige of uncertainty from her heart. Starways Congress had the mandate of heaven. She must purge herself of all doubt. Whatever they meant to do with the Lusitania Fleet, it was surely the will of the gods that it be accomplished. Therefore it was her duty to help them accomplish it. And if she was in fact doing the will of the gods, then they would open a way for her to solve the problem that had been set before her.

  By the time her mind was calm, her palms were raw and dotted with blood seeping up from the layers of living skin that were now so close to the surface. This is how my understanding of the truth arises, she told herself. If I wash away enough of my mortality, then the truth of the gods will seep upward into the light.

  She was clean at last. The hour was late and her eyes were tired. Nevertheless, she sat down before her terminal and began the work. “Show me summaries of all the research that has been conducted so far on the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet,” she said, “starting with the most recent.” Almost at once words started appearing in the air above her terminal, page upon page lined up like soldiers marching to the front. She would read one, then scroll it out of the way, only to have the page behind it move to the front for her to read it. Seven hours she read, until she could read no more, then she fell asleep before the terminal.

  Jane watches everything. She can do a million jobs and pay attention to a thousand things at once. Neither of these capacities is infinite, but they’re so much greater than our pathetic ability to think about one thing while doing another that they might as well be. She does have a sensory limitation that we don’t have, however, or, rather, we are her greatest limitation. She can’t see or know anything that hasn’t been entered as data in a computer that is tied to the great interworld network.

  That’s less of a limitation than you might think. She has almost immediate access to the raw inputs of every starship, every satellite, every traffic control system, and almost every electronically-monitored spy device in the human universe. But it does mean that she almost never witnesses lovers’ quarrels, bedtime stories, classroom arguments, supper-table gossip, or bitter tears privately shed. She only knows that aspect of our lives that we represent as digital information.

  If you asked her the exact number of human beings in the settled worlds, she would quickly give you a number based on census figures combined with birth- and-death probabilities in all our population groups. In most cases, she could match numbers with names, though no human could live long enough to read the list. But if you took a name—Han Qing-jao, for instance, a name you just happened to think of—and you asked Jane, “Who is this person?” she would have no good answer. Oh, there’d be the vital statistics—birth date, citizenship, parentage, height and weight at last medical checkup, grades in school. But that is all gratuitous information, background noise to her, she knows it’s there, but it means nothing. To ask her about Han Qing-jao would be something like asking her a question about a certain molecule of water vapor in a distant cloud. The molecule is certainly there, but there’s nothing special to differentiate it from the million others in its immediate vicinity.

  Until the moment that Han Qing-jao began to use her computer to access all the reports dealing with the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet. Then Han Qing-jao’s name moved many levels upward in Jane’s attention. She began to keep a log of everything that Qing-jao did with her computer. And it quickly became clear that Han Qing-jao, though she was only sixteen, meant to make serious trouble for Jane. Because Han Qing-jao, unconnected as she was to any particular bureaucracy, having no ideological axe to grind or vested interest to protect, was taking a broader and therefore more dangerous look at all the information that had been collected by every human agency.

  Why was it dangerous? Had Jane left clues behind that Qing-jao would find?

  No, of course not. Jane left no clues. She had thought of leaving some, of trying to make the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet look like sabotage or mechanical failure or some natural disaster. She had to give up on that idea, because she couldn’t work up any physical clues. All she could do was leave misleading data in computer memories. None of it would ever have any physical analogue in the real world, and therefore any halfway intelligent researcher would quickly realize that the clues were all faked-up data and that therefore the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet had to have been caused by some agency that had unimaginably detailed access to as many computer systems as had the faked-up data. Surely that would lead people to discover her far more quickly than if she left no evidence at all.

  Leaving no evidence was the best course, definitely; and until Han Qing-jao began her investigation, it had worked very well. Each investigating agency looked only in the places they usually looked. The police on many planets checked out all the known dissident groups (and, in some places, tortured various dissidents until they made useless confessions, at which point the interrogators filed final reports and pronounced the issue closed). The military looked for evidence of military opposition—especially alien starships, since the military had keen memories of the invasion of the buggers three thousand years before. Scientists looked for evidence of some unexpected invisible astronomical phenomenon that could account for either the destruction of the fleet or the selective breakdown of ansible communication. The politicians looked for somebody else to blame. Nobody imagined Jane, and therefore nobody found her.

  But Han Qing-jao was putting everything together, carefully, systematically, running precise searches on the data that would inevitably turn up the evidence that could eventually prove—and end—Jane’s existence. That evidence was, simply put, the lack of evidence. Nobody else could see it, because nobody had ever brought an unbiased methodical mind to the investigation.

  What Jane couldn’t know was that Qing-jao’s seemingly inhuman patience, her meticulous attention to detail, her constant rephrasing and reprogramming of computer searches—that all of these were the result of endless hours kneeling hunched over on a wooden floor, carefully following a grain in the wood from one end of a board to the other, from one side of a room to the other. Jane couldn’t begin to guess that it was the great lesson taught her by the gods that made Qing-jao her most formidable opponent. All Jane knew was that at some point, this searcher named Qing-jao would realize what no one else really understood: that every conceivable explanation for the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet had already been completely eliminated.

  At that point only one conclusion would remain: That some force not yet encountered anywhere in the history of humankind had the power either to make a widely-scattered fleet of starships disappear simultaneously, or—just as unlikely—to make that fleet’s ansibles all stop functioning at once. And if that same methodical mind then started listing possible forces that might have such power, eventually it was bound to name the one that was true: an independent entity that dwelt among—no, that was composed of—the philotic rays connecting all ansibles together. Because this idea was true, no amount of logical scrutiny or research would eliminate it. Eventually this idea would be left standing alone. And at that point, somebody would surely act on Qing-jao’s discovery and set out to destroy Jane.

  Now Jane watched Qing-jao’s research with more and more fascination. This sixteen-year-old daughter of Han Fei-tzu, who weighed 39 kilograms and stood 170 centimeters tall and was in the uppermost social and intellectual class on the Taoist Chinese world of Path, was the first human being Jane had ever found who approached the. thoroughness and precision of a computer and, therefore, of Jane herself. And though Jane could conduct in an hour the search that was taking Qing-jao weeks and months to complete, the dangerous truth was that Qing-jao was performing almost exactly the search Jane herself would have conducted; and therefore there was no reason for Jane to suppose that Qing-jao would not reach the conclusion that Jane herself would reach.

  Qing-jao was therefore Jane’s most dangerous enemy, and Jane was helpless to stop her—at least physically. Trying to block Qing-jao’s access to information would only mean leading her more quickly to the knowledge of Jane’s existence. So instead of open opposition, Jane searched for another way to stop her enemy; and knowing what she knew of human nature, she knew that to stop a human being one must find a way to make the human cease wanting the thing you want him not to have.

  Sweat ran down Qing-jao’s face. Bent over as she was, the drops trickled along her cheeks, under her eyes, and down to the tip of her nose. From there her sweat dropped into the muddy water of the rice paddy, or onto the new rice plants that rose only slightly above the water’s surface.

  “Why don’t you wipe your face, holy one?”

  Qing-jao looked up to see who was near enough to speak to her. Usually the others on her righteous labor crew did not work close by—it made them too nervous, being with one of the godspoken.

  It was a girl, younger than Qing-Jao, perhaps fourteen; boyish in the body, with her hair cropped very short. She was looking at Qing-jao with frank curiosity. There was an openness about her, an utter lack of shyness, that Qing-jao found strange and a little displeasing. Her first thought was to ignore the girl.

  But to ignore her would be arrogant; it would be the same as saying, Because I am godspoken, I do not need to answer when I am spoken to. No one would ever suppose that the reason she didn’t answer was because she was too preoccupied with the impossible task she had been given by the great Han Fei-tzu that it was almost painful to think of anything else.