Free Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga) by Orson Scott Card Page A

particles of the atom, and then the yarns of the atom twine into the rope of the molecule. This has nothing to do with nuclear forces or gravity, nothing to do with chemical bonds. As far as we can tell, the philotic connections don't do anything. They're just there."
    "But the individual rays are always there, present in the twines," said Valentine.
    "Yes, each ray goes on forever," answered the screen.
    It surprised her-- and Jakt, too, judging from the way his eyes widened-- that the computer was able to respond immediately to what Valentine said. It wasn't just a preset lecture. This had to be a sophisticated program anyway, to simulate Miro's face and voice so well; but now to have it responding as if it were simulating Miro's personality ...
    Or had Miro given some cue to the program? Had he subvocalized the response? Valentine didn't know-- she had been watching the screen. She would stop doing that now-- she would watch Miro himself.
    "We don't know if the ray is infinite," said Valentine. "We only know that we haven't found where the ray ends."
    "They twine together, a whole planetful, and each planet's philotic twine reaches to its star, and each star to the center of the galaxy--"
    "And where does the galactic twine go?" said Jakt. It was an old question-- schoolchildren asked it when they first got into philotics in high school. Like the old speculation that maybe galaxies were really neutrons or mesons inside a far vaster universe, or the old question, If the universe isn't infinite, what is beyond the edge?
    "Yes, yes," said Miro. This time, though, he spoke from his own mouth. "But that's not where I'm going. I want to talk about life."
    The computerized voice-- the voice of the brilliant young man-- took over. "The philotic twines from substances like rock or sand all connect directly from each molecule to the center of the planet. But when a molecule is incorporated into a living organism, its ray shifts. Instead of reaching to the planet, it gets twined in with the individual cell, and the rays from the cells are all twined together so that each organism sends a single fiber of philotic connections to twine up with the central philotic rope of the planet."
    "Which shows that individual lives have some meaning at the level of physics," said Valentine. She had written an essay about it once, trying to dispel some of the mysticism that had grown up about philotics while at the same time using it to suggest a view of community formation. "But there's no practical effect from it, Miro. Nothing you can do with it. The philotic twining of living organisms simply is . Every philote is connected to something, and through that to something else, and through that to something else-- living cells and organisms are simply two of the levels where those connections can be made."
    "Yes," said Miro. "That which lives, twines."
    Valentine shrugged, nodded. It probably couldn't be proven, but if Miro wanted that as a premise in his speculations, that was fine.
    The computer-Miro took over again. "What I've been thinking about is the endurance of the twining. When a twined structure is broken-- as when a molecule breaks apart-- the old philotic twining remains for a time. Fragments that are no longer physically joined remain philotically connected for a while. And the smaller the particle, the longer that connection lasts after the breakup of the original structure, and the more slowly the fragments shift to new twinings."
    Jakt: frowned. "I thought the smaller things were, the faster things happened."
    "It is counterintuitive," said Valentine.
    "After nuclear fission it takes hours for the philotic rays to sort themselves back out again," said the computer-Miro. "Split a smaller particle than an atom, and the philotic connection between the fragments will last much longer than that."
    "Which is how the ansible works," said Miro.
    Valentine looked at him closely. Why was he talking sometimes in his own voice, sometimes through