The quote below is from Children of the Mind (free pdf here), the last book in the The Ender Quartet series, Chapter 7, page 101. This is part of a chapter of the book that stuck with me, since it describes a material and technological phenomenon in mythical language. “Myth” has been transformed into a word that describes what pre-modern man (“pre-modern” being synonomous with “ignorant”) conjured up to explain things not scientifically understood, but it’s really just a certain form of language, like a “manner of speaking.”
Everything Grace translates from Malu here are actual things in the Ender universe, from the sub-atomic philotes to the AI construct, Jane. That he isn’t using technical, nor even popular technical language, is not an indicator of falsehood. He is simply using the linguistic tools of his mystical Samoan culture. The only difference is that he arrived at the knowledge in a different manner, through revelation, and not through standard epistemological means.
Grace translated: “Today the clouds flew across the sky with the sun chasing them, and yet no rain has fallen. Today my boat flew across the sea with the sun leading it, and yet there was no fire when we touched the shore. So it was on the first day of all days, when God touched a cloud in the sky and spun it so fast that it turned to fire and became the sun, and then all the other clouds began to spin and turn in circles around the sun.”
This can’t have been the original legend of the Samoan people, thought Wang-mu. No way did they know the Copernican model of the solar system until westerners taught it to them. So Malu may know the ancient lore, but he’s also learned some new things and fit them in.
“Then the outer clouds turned into rain and poured in upon themselves until they were rained out, and all that was left was spinning balls of water. Inside that water swam a great fish of fire, which ate every impurity in the water and then defecated it all in great gouts of flame, which spouted up from the sea and fell back down as hot ash and poured back down as rivers of burning rock. From these turds of the firefish grew the islands of the sea, and out of the turds there crawled worms, which squirmed and slithered through the rock until the gods touched them and some became human beings and others became the other animals.
“Every one of the other animals was tied to the earth by strong vines that grew up to embrace them. No one saw these vines because they were godvines.”
Philotic theory, thought Wang-mu. He learned that all living things have twining philotes that bond downward, linking them to the center of the earth. Except human beings.
Sure enough, Grace translated the next strand of language: “Only humans were not tied to the earth. It was not vines that bound them down, it was a web of light woven by no god that connected them upward to the sun. So all the other animals bowed down before the humans, for the vines dragged them down, while the lightweb lifted up the human eyes and heart.
“Lifted up the human eyes but yet they saw little farther than the beasts with downcast eyes; lifted up the human heart yet the heart could only hope for it could only see up to the sky in the daytime, and at night when it could see the stars it grew blind to close things for a man can scarcely see his own wife in the shadow of his house even when he can see stars so distant their light travels for a hundred lifetimes before it kisses the eyes of the man.
“All these centuries and generations, these hoping men and women looked with their half-blind eyes, staring into the sun and sky, staring into the stars and shadows, knowing that there were invisible things beyond those walls but not guessing what they were.
“Then in a time of war and terror, when all hope seemed lost, weavers on a far distant world, who were not gods but who knew the gods and each one of the weavers was itself a web with hundreds of strands reaching out to their hands and feet, their eyes and mouths and ears, these weavers created a web so strong and large and fine and far-reaching that they meant to catch up all human beings in that web and hold them to be devoured. But instead the web caught a distant god, a god so powerful that no other god had dared to know her name, a god so quick that no other god had been able to see her face; this god was stuck to the web they caught. Only she was too quick to be held in one place to be devoured. She raced and danced up and down the strands, all the strands, any strands that twine from man to man, from man to star, from weaver to weaver, from light to light, she dances along the strands. She cannot escape but she does not want to, for now all gods see her and all gods know her name, and she knows all things that are known and hears all words that are spoken and reads all words that are written and by her breath she blows men and women beyond the reach of the light of any star, and then she sucks inward and the men and women come back, and when they come sometimes they bring new men and women with them who never lived before; and because she never holds still along the web, she blows them out at one place and then sucks them in at another, so that they cross the spaces between stars faster than any light can go, and that is why the messengers of this god were blown out from the house of Grace Drinker’s friend Aimaina Hikari and were sucked back down to this island to this shore to this roof where Malu can see the red tongue of the god where it touches the ear of her chosen one.”
Malu fell silent.
“We call her Jane,” said Peter.
2 Comments
I really loved the original shorter version of Ender’s Game. While I really appreciate Card’s effort to explore our understanding of things, I haven’t like any of the writing since the Ender story was expanded. I tend to believe some things cannot and should not be said, but left for folks to discover on their own.
I personally liked the sequels, but they were a lot different than the original and were more a standalone storyline.