Children of the Mind

Plot summary

At the start of the novel, Jane, the evolved computer intelligence, uses her newly discovered abilities to move the races of buggers, humans, and pequeninos outside the universe and back instantaneously, transporting them to distant habitable planets for colonization. She is losing her memory and concentration as the vast computer network connected to the ansible is shut down; to survive, she must transfer her aiúa, or soul, to a human body. Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-Mu travel to the worlds of Divine Wind and Pacifica to persuade the Japanese-led swing group of the Starways Congress to revoke their order to destroy Lusitania.

By tracing the decision-making trail backward, they show a philosopher his influence on the Congress, and after complications the philosopher persuades the Tsutsumi clan to exert influence with the Necessarian faction to stop the Lusitania fleet. The admiral at the head of the fleet disobeys the Congress's order and fires a missile containing the Molecular Disruption Device. Upon Ender Wiggin's death, Jane guides his aiúa to Peter's body while she is granted possession of Young Val's body, thus surviving the ansible shutdown.

She then transports starships by borrowing the mental capacity of the pequenino mother-trees, moving a ship with Peter and Wang-Mu around the missile and then transporting the missile and them inside the Lusitania fleet, where it is disarmed. The destruction of Lusitania is averted. Jane falls in love with Miro, and Peter with Wang-Mu; both couples are married under a mother-tree on the same day as Ender's funeral.