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Tor Books by Orson Scott Card

Note: Within series, books are best read in listed order.

—–

ENDER UNIVERSE

Ender Series

Ender Wiggin: The finest general the world could hope to find or breed.

Ender’s Game

Ender in Exile

Speaker for the Dead

Xenocide

Children of the Mind

Ender’s Shadow Series

Parallel storylines to Ender’s Game from Bean: Ender’s right hand, his strategist, and his friend.

Ender’s Shadow

Shadow of the Hegemon

Shadow Puppets

Shadow of the Giant

Shadows in Flight

The First Formic War Series

One hundred years before Ender’s Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. These are the stories of the First Formic War.

Earth Unaware

Earth Afire

Ender novellas

A War of Gifts

First Meetings

The Authorized Ender Companion by Jake Black

A complete and in-depth encyclopedia of all the persons, places, things, and events in Orson Scott Card’s Ender Universe.

THE MITHER MAGES SERIES

Danny North is different from his magical family. And when he discovers his gift, it is greater than he ever imagined—which could earn him a death sentence.

The Lost Gate

The Gate Thief

THE TALES OF ALVIN MAKER SERIES

Visit the magical America that might have been, marvel as the tale of Alvin Maker unfolds.

Seventh Son

Red Prophet

Prentice Alvin

Alvin Journeyman

Heartfire

The Crystal City

HOMECOMING SERIES

Earth has been rendered uninhabitable. But it is still vital.

The Memory of Earth

The Call of Earth

The Ships of Earth

Earthfall

Earthborn

WOMEN OF GENESIS SERIES

Fiction exploring the human side of Biblical women.

Sarah

Rebekah

Rachel & Leah

THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF ORSON SCOTT CARD

Experience Card’s full versatility, from science fiction to fantasy, from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction.

Keeper of Dreams

The Changed Man

Cruel Miracles

Flux

Monkey Sonatas

STAND-ALONE FICTION

Hart’s Hope: dark and powerful fantasy.

Lovelock (with Kathryn Kidd): a startling look at the ethics of bioengineering.

Pastwatch: In this novel of time travel, can the past be changed?

Saints: a novel of the early days of the Mormon Church.

Songmaster: an SF classic and a haunting story of power and love.

The Worthing Saga: the tale of a seed ship sent out to save the human race.

Wyrms: the story of a young woman’s journey to confront her destiny, and her world’s.

The Folk of the Fringe: when America is destroyed, it’s up to those on the fringes to rebuild.

—–

www.tor-forge.com

ENDER’S GAME

ORSON SCOTT CARD

“Card understands the human condition and has things of real value to say about it. He tells the truth well—ultimately the only criterion of greatness. Ender’s Game will still be finding new readers when ninety-nine percent of the books published this year are completely forgotten.”

—Gene Wolf

“A gripping tale of adventure in space and a scathing indictment of the military mind. Recommended.”

—Library Journal

“The games are fierce and consistently exciting. The cast… offers memorable characters…. And the aliens leave an intriguing heritage to mankind.”

—Locus

ENDER’S GAME

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

ENDER’S GAME

Copyright © 1977, 1985, 1991 by Orson Scott Card

Introduction copyright © 1991 by Orson Scott Card. First published in Phoenix Rising.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
49 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Card, Orson Scott.

  Ender’s Game / Orson Scott Card.

      p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN 978-1-4299-6393-0

  ISBN 0-312-93208-1 (hc)

  I. Title.

[PS3553.A655E5    1991]

91-9908

813' .54—dc20

CIP

For Geoffrey,
who makes me remember
how young and how old
children can be

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Portions of this book were recounted in my first published science fiction story, “Ender’s Game,” in the August 1977 Analog, edited by Ben Bova; his faith in me and this story are the foundation of my career.

Harriet McDougal of Tor is that rarest of editors—one who understands a story and can help the author make it exactly what he meant it to be. They don’t pay her enough. Harriet’s task was made more than a little easier, however, because of the excellent work of my resident editor, Kristine Card. I don’t pay her enough, either.

I am grateful also to Barbara Bova, who has been my friend and agent through thin and, sometimes, thick; and to Tom Doherty, my publisher, who let me talk him into doing this book at the ABA in Dallas, which shows either his superb judgment or how weary one can get at a convention.

INTRODUCTION

It makes me a little uncomfortable, writing an introduction to Ender’s Game. After all, the book has been in print for six years now, and in all that time, nobody has ever written to me to say, “You know, Ender’s Game was a pretty good book, but you know what it really needs? An introduction!” And yet when a novel goes back to print for a new hardcover edition, there ought to be something new in it to mark the occasion (something besides the minor changes as I fix the errors and internal contradictions and stylistic excesses that have bothered me ever since the novel first appeared). So be assured—the novel stands on its own, and if you skip this intro and go straight to the story, I not only won’t stand in your way, I’ll even agree with you!

The novelet “Ender’s Game” was my first published science fiction. It was based on an idea—the Battle Room—that came to me when I was sixteen years old. I had just read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, which was (more or less) an extrapolation of the ideas in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, applied to a galaxy-wide empire in some far future time.

The novel set me, not to dreaming, but to thinking, which is Asimov’s most extraordinary ability as a fiction writer. What would the future be like? How would things change? What would remain the same? The premise of Foundation seemed to be that even though you might change the props and the actors, the play of human history is always the same. And yet that fundamentally pessimistic premise (you mean we’ll never change?) was tempered by Asimov’s idea of a group of human beings who, not through genetic change, but through learned skills, are able to understand and heal the minds of other people.

It was an idea that rang true with me, perhaps in part because of my Mormon upbringing and beliefs: Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.

Those were some of the ideas that played through my mind as I read Foundation, curled on my bed—a thin mattress on a slab of plywood, a bed my father had made for me—in my basement bedroom in our little rambler on 650 East in Orem, Utah. And then, as so many science fiction readers have done over the years, I felt a strong desire to write stories that would do for others what Asimov’s story had done for me.

In other genres, that desire is usually expressed by producing thinly veiled rewrites of the great work: Tolkien’s disciples far too often simply rewrite Tolkien, for example. In science fiction, however, the whole point is that the ideas are fresh and startling and intriguing; you imitate the great ones, not by rewriting their stories, but rather by creating stories that are just as startling and new.

But new in what way? Asimov was a scientist, and approached every field of human knowledge in a scientific manner—assimilating data, combining it in new and startling ways, thinking through the implications of each new idea. I was no scientist, and unlikely ever to be one, at least not a real scientist—not a physicist, not a chemist, not a biologist, not even an engineer. I had no gift for mathematics and no great love for it, either. Though I relished the study of logic and languages, and virtually inhaled histories and biographies, it never occurred to me at the time that these were just as valid sources of science fiction stories as astronomy or quantum mechanics.

How, then, could I possibly come up with a science fiction idea? What did I actually know about anything?

At that time my older brother Bill was in the army, stationed at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City; he was nursing a hip-to-heel cast from a bike-riding accident, however, and came home on weekends. It was then that he had met his future wife, Laura Dene Low, while attending a church meeting on the BYU campus; and it was Laura who gave me Foundation to read. Perhaps, then, it was natural for my thoughts to turn to things military.

To me, though, the military didn’t mean the Vietnam War, which was then nearing its peak of American involvement. I had no experience of that, except for Bill’s stories of the miserable life in basic training, the humiliation of officer’s candidate school, and his lonely but in many ways successful life as a noncom in Korea. Far more deeply rooted in my mind was my experience, five or six years earlier, of reading Bruce Catton’s three-volume Army of the Potomac. I remembered so well the stories of the commanders in that war—the struggle to find a Union general capable of using McClellan’s magnificent army to defeat Lee and Jackson and Stuart, and then, finally, Grant, who brought death to far too many of his soldiers, but also made their deaths mean something, by grinding away at Lee, keeping him from dancing and maneuvering out of reach. It was because of Catton’s history that I had stopped enjoying chess, and had to revise the rules of Risk in order to play it—I had come to understand something of war, and not just because of the conclusions Catton himself had reached. I found meanings of my own in that history.

I learned that history is shaped by the use of power, and that different people, leading the same army, with, therefore, approximately the same power, applied it so differently that the army seemed to change from a pack of noble fools at Fredericksburg to panicked cowards melting away at Chancellorsville, then to the grimly determined, stubborn soldiers who held the ridges at Gettysburg, and then, finally, to the disciplined, professional army that ground Lee to dust in Grant’s long campaign. It wasn’t the soldiers who changed. It was the leader. And even though I could not then have articulated what I understood of military leadership, I knew that I did understand it. I understood, at levels deeper than speech, how a great military leader imposes his will on his enemy, and makes his own army a willing extension of himself.

So one morning, as my Dad drove me to Brigham Young High School along Carterville Road in the heavily wooded bottoms of the Provo River, I wondered: How would you train soldiers for combat in the future? I didn’t bother thinking of new land-based weapons systems—what was on my mind, after Foundation, was space. Soldiers and commanders would have to think very differently in space, because the old ideas of up and down simply wouldn’t apply anymore. I had read in Nordhoff’s and Hall’s history of World War I flying that it was very hard at first for new pilots to learn to look above and below them rather than merely to the right and left, to find the enemy approaching them in the air. How much worse, then, would it be to learn to think with no up and down at all?

The essence of training is to allow error without consequence. Three-dimensional warfare would need to be practiced in an enclosed space, so mistakes wouldn’t send trainees flying off to Jupiter. It would need to offer a way to practice shooting without risk of injury; and yet trainees who were “hit” would need to be disabled, at least temporarily. The environment would need to be changeable, to simulate the different conditions of warfare—near a ship, in the midst of debris, near tiny asteroids. And it would need to have some of the confusion of real battle, so that the play-combat didn’t evolve into something as rigid and formal as the meaningless marching and maneuvers that still waste an astonishing amount of a trainee’s precious hours in basic training in our modern military.

The result of my speculations that morning was the Battle Room, exactly as you will see it (or have already seen it) in this book. It was a good idea, and something like it will certainly be used for training if ever there is a manned military in space. (Something very much like it has already been used in various amusement halls throughout America.)

But, having thought of the Battle Room, I hadn’t the faintest idea of how to go about turning the idea into a story. It occurred to me then for the first time that the idea of the story is nothing compared to the importance of knowing how to find a character and a story to tell around that idea. Asimov, having had the idea of paralleling The Decline and Fall, still had no story; his genius—and the soul of the story—came when he personalized his history, making the psychohistorian Hari Seldon the god-figure, the plan-maker, the apocalyptic prophet of the story. I had no such character, and no idea of how to make one.

Years passed. I graduated from high school as a junior (just in time—Brigham Young High School was discontinued with the class of 1968) and went on to Brigham Young University. I started there as an archaeology major, but quickly discovered that doing archaeology is unspeakably boring compared to reading the books by Thor Heyerdahl (Aku-Aku, Kon-Tiki), Yigael Yadin (Masada), and James Michener (The Source) that had set me dreaming. Potsherds! Better to be a dentist than to spend your life trying to put together fragments of old pottery in endless desert landscapes in the Middle East.

By the time I realized that not even the semi-science of archaeology was for someone as impatient as me, I was already immersed in my real career. At the time, of course, I misunderstood myself: I thought I was in theatre because I loved performing. And I do love performing, don’t get me wrong. Give me an audience and I’ll hold onto them as long as I can, on any subject. But I’m not a good actor, and theatre was not to be my career. At the time, though, all I cared about was doing plays. Directing them. Building sets and making costumes and putting on makeup for them.

And, above all, rewriting those lousy scripts. I kept thinking, Why couldn’t the playwright hear how dull that speech was? This scene could so easily be punched up and made far more effective.

Then I tried my hand at writing adaptations of novels for a reader’s theatre class, and my fate was sealed. I was a playwright.

People came to my plays and clapped at the end. I learned—from actors and from audiences—how to shape a scene, how to build tension, and—above all—the necessity of being harsh with your own material, excising or rewriting anything that doesn’t work. I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn—that there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you’re a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale.

My love of theatre lasted through my mission for the LDS Church. Even while I was in São Paulo, Brazil, as a missionary, I wrote a play called Stone Tables about the relationship between Moses and Aaron in the book of Exodus, which had standing-room-only audiences at its premiere (which I didn’t attend, since I was still in Brazil!).

At the same time, though, that original impetus to write science fiction persisted.

I had taken fiction writing courses at college, for which I don’t think I ever wrote science fiction. But on the side, I had started a series of stories about people with psionic powers (I had no idea this was a sci-fi cliché at the time) that eventually grew into The Worthing Saga. I had even sent one of the stories off to Analog magazine before my mission, and on my mission I wrote several long stories in the same series (as well as a couple of stabs at mainstream stories).

In all that time, the Battle Room remained an idea in the back of my mind. It wasn’t until 1975, though, that I dusted it off and tried to write it. By then I had started a theatre company that managed to do reasonably well during the first summer and then collapsed under the weight of bad luck and bad management (myself) during the fall and winter. I was deeply in debt on the pathetic salary of an editor at BYU Press. Writing was the only thing I knew how to do besides proofreading and editing. It was time to get serious about writing something that might actually earn some money—and, plainly, playwriting wasn’t going to be it.

I first rewrote and sent out “Tinker,” the first Worthing story I wrote and the one that was still most effective. I got a rejection letter from Ben Bova at Analog, pointing out that “Tinker” simply didn’t feel like science fiction—it felt like fantasy. So the Worthing stories were out for the time being.

What was left? That old Battle Room idea. It happened one spring day that a friend of mine, Tammy Mikkelson, was taking her boss’s children to the circus in Salt Lake City; would I like to come along? I would. And since there was no ticket for me (and I’ve always detested the circus anyway—the clowns drive me up a wall), I spent the hours of the performance out on the lawn of the Salt Palace with a notebook on my lap, writing “Ender’s Game” as I had written all my plays, in longhand on narrow-ruled paper. “Remember,” said Ender. “The enemy’s gate is down.”

Maybe it was because of the children in the car on the way up that I decided that the trainees in the Battle Room were so young. Maybe it was because I, barely an adolescent myself, understood only childhood well enough to write about it. Or maybe it was because of something that impressed me in Catton’s Army of the Potomac: that the soldiers were all so young and innocent. That they shot and bayoneted the enemy, and then slipped across the neutral ground between armies to trade tobacco, jokes, liquor, and food. Even though it was a deadly game, and the suffering and fear were terrible and real, it was still a game played by children, not all that different from the wargames my brothers and I had played, firing water-filled squirt bottles at each other.

“Ender’s Game” was written and sold. I knew it was a strong story because I cared about it and believed in it. I had no idea that it would have the effect it had on the science fiction audience. While most people ignored it, of course, and continue to live full and happy lives without reading it or anything else by me, there was still a surprisingly large group who responded to the story with some fervency.

Ignored on the Nebula ballot, “Ender’s Game” got onto the Hugo ballot and came in second. More to the point, I was awarded the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer. Without doubt, “Ender’s Game” wasn’t just my first sale—it was the launching pad of my career.

The same story did it again in 1985, when I rewrote it at novel length—the book, now slightly revised, that you are holding in your hands. At that point I thought of Ender’s Game, the novel, existing only to set up the much more powerful (I thought) story of Speaker for the Dead. But when I finished the novel, I knew that the story had new strength. I had learned a great deal, both about life and about writing, in the decade since I wrote the novelet, and it came together for the first time in this book. Again the audience was kind to me: the Nebula and Hugo awards, foreign translations, and strong, steady sales that, for the first time in my career, actually earned out my advance and allowed me to receive royalties.

But it wasn’t just a matter of having a quiet little cult novel that brought in a steady income. There was something more to the way that people responded to Ender’s Game.

For one thing, the people that hated it really hated it. The attacks on the novel—and on me—were astonishing. Some of it I expected—I have a master’s degree in literature, and in writing Ender’s Game I deliberately avoided all the little literary games and gimmicks that make “fine” writing so impenetrable to the general audience. All the layers of meaning are there to be decoded, if you like to play the game of literary criticism—but if you don’t care to play that game, that’s fine with me. I designed Ender’s Game to be as clear and accessible as any story of mine could possibly be. My goal was that the reader wouldn’t have to be trained in literature or even in science fiction to receive the tale in its simplest, purest form. And, since a great many writers and critics have based their entire careers on the premise that anything that the general public can understand without mediation is worthless drivel, it is not surprising that they found my little novel to be despicable. If everybody came to agree that stories should be told this clearly, the professors of literature would be out of a job, and the writers of obscure, encoded fiction would be, not honored, but pitied for their impenetrability.

For some people, however, the loathing for Ender’s Game transcended mere artistic argument. I recall a letter to the editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, in which a woman who worked as a guidance counselor for gifted children reported that she had only picked up Ender’s Game to read it because her son had kept telling her it was a wonderful book. She read it and loathed it. Of course, I wondered what kind of guidance counselor would hold her son’s tastes up to public ridicule, but the criticism that left me most flabbergasted was her assertion that my depiction of gifted children was hopelessly unrealistic. They just don’t talk like that, she said. They don’t think like that.

And it wasn’t just her. There have been others with that criticism. Thus I began to realize that, as it is, Ender’s Game disturbs some people because it challenges their assumptions about reality. In fact, the novel’s very clarity may make it more challenging, simply because the story’s vision of the world is so relentlessly plain. It was important to her, and to others, to believe that children don’t actually think or speak the way the children in Ender’s Game think and speak.

Yet I knew—I knew—that this was one of the truest things about Ender’s Game. In fact, I realized in retrospect that this may indeed be part of the reason why it was so important to me, there on the lawn in front of the Salt Palace, to write a story in which gifted children are trained to fight in adult wars. Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along—the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing Ender’s Game, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective—the perspective in which their feelings and decisions are just as real and important as any adult’s.

The nasty side of myself wanted to answer that guidance counselor by saying, The only reason you don’t think gifted children talk this way is because they know better than to talk this way in front of you. But the truer answer is that Ender’s Game asserts the personhood of children, and those who are used to thinking of children in another way—especially those whose whole career is based on that—are going to find Ender’s Game a very unpleasant place to live. Children are a perpetual, self-renewing underclass, helpless to escape from the decisions of adults until they become adults themselves. And Ender’s Game, seen in that context, might even be a sort of revolutionary tract.

Because the book does ring true with the children who read it. The highest praise I ever received for a book of mine was when the school librarian at Farrer Junior High in Provo, Utah, told me, “You know, Ender’s Game is our most-lost book.”

And then there are the letters. This one, for instance, which I received in March of 1991:

Dear Mr. Card,

I am writing to you on behalf of myself and my twelve friends and fellow students who joined me at a two-week residential program for gifted and talented students at Purdue University this summer. We attended the class, “Philosophy and Science Fiction,” instructed by Peter Robinson, and we range in age from thirteen through fifteen.

We are all in about the same position; we are very intellectually oriented and have found few people at home who share this trait. Hence, most of us are very lonely, and have been since kindergarten. When teachers continually compliment you, your chances of “fitting in” are about nil.

All our lives we’ve unconsciously been living by the philosophy, “The only way to gain respect is doing so well you can’t be ignored.” And, for me and Mike, at least, “beating the system” at school is how we’ve chosen to do this. Both Mike and I plan to be in calculus our second year of high school, schedules permitting. (Both of us are interested in science/math related careers.) Not to get me wrong; we’re all bright and at the top of our class. However, in choosing these paths, most of us have wound up satisfied in ourselves, but very lonely.

This is why Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead really hit home for us. These books were our “texts” for the class. We would read one hundred to two hundred pages per night and then discuss them (and other short stories and essays) during the day. At Purdue, it wasn’t a “classroom” discussion, however. It was a group of friends talking about how their feelings and philosophies corresponded to or differed from the books’.

You couldn’t imagine the impact your books had on us; we are the Enders of today. Almost everything written in Ender’s Game and Speaker applied to each one of us on a very, very personal level. No, the situation isn’t as drastic today, but all the feelings are there. Both your books, along with the excellent work of Peter Robinson, unified us into a tight web of people.

Ingrid’s letter goes on, talking of the Phoenix Rising, the magazine that these students publish together in order to maintain their sense of community. (In response I have given them this introduction to publish in their magazine before its appearance in book form.)

Of course, I’m always glad when people like a story of mine; but something much more important is going on here. These readers found that Ender’s Game was not merely a “mythic” story, dealing with general truths, but something much more personal: To them, Ender’s Game was an epic tale, a story that expressed who they are as a community, a story that distinguished them from the other people around them. They didn’t love Ender, or pity Ender (a frequent adult response); they were Ender, all of them. Ender’s experience was not foreign or strange to them; in their minds, Ender’s life echoed their own lives. The truth of the story was not truth in general, but their truth.

Stories can be read so differently—even clear stories, even stories that deliberately avoid surface ambiguities. For instance, here’s another letter, likewise one that I received in mid-March of 1991. It was written on 16 February and postmarked the 18th. Those dates are important.

Mr. Card,

I’m an army aviator waiting out a sandstorm in Saudi Arabia. I’ve always wanted to write you and since my future is in doubt—I know when the ground war will begin—I decided today would be the day I’d write.

I read Ender’s Game during flight school four years ago. I’m a warrant officer, and our school, at least the first six weeks, is very different from the commissioned officers’. I was eighteen years old when I arrived at Ft. Rucker to start flight training, and the first six weeks almost beat me. Ender gave me courage then and many times after that. I’ve experienced the tiredness Ender felt, the kind that goes deep to your soul. It would be interesting to know what caused you to feel the same way. No one could describe it unless they experienced it, but I understand how personal that can be. There is one other novel that describes that frame of soul and mind that I cherish as much as Ender’s Game. It’s called Armour and its author is John Steakley. Ender and Felix [the protagonist of Armour] are always close by in my mind. Sadly, there is no sequel to Armour as there is to Ender’s Game.

We are the bastards of military aviation. Our helicopters may be the best in the world, but the equipment we wear and the systems in our helicopter, such as the navigation instruments, are at least twenty years behind the Navy and Air Force. I am very happy with the Air Force’s ability to bomb with precision, but if they miss, the bombs still land on the enemy’s territory. If we screw up, the guys we haul to the battle, the “grunts,” die. We don’t even have the armour plate for our chests—“chicken plate”—that the helicopter pilots did in Vietnam. Last year in El Salvador, army aviators flew a couple of civilian VIPs and twenty reporters over guerrilla-controlled territory and there were no flares in their launchers to counteract the heat-seeking missiles we knew the rebels had. One of our pilots and a crew member were killed last year on a training flight because they flew the sling load they were carrying into the trees at 70 miles an hour. It could have been prevented if our night vision goggles had a heads-up display like the Air Force has had for forty years. I’m sure you heard about Colonel Pickett being shot down in a Huey in El Salvador just a few months ago. That type of aircraft is at least thirty years old and there are no survivability measures installed. He was a good man, I knew him.

The reason I told you about these things is because I wanted to paint a picture for you. I love my job but we aren’t like the “zoomies” that everyone makes movies about. We do our job with less technology, less political support, less recognition, and more risk than the rest, while the threat to us continues to modernize at an unbelievable rate. I’m not asking for sympathy but I was wondering if you and Mr. Steakley could write a novel about helicopters and the men that fly them for the Army twenty years in the future. There are many of us that read science fiction and after I read Ender’s Game and Armour three times each I started letting my comrades read them. My wife cried when she read Ender’s Game. There is a following here for a book like the one I requested. We have no speaker for us, the ones that will soon die, or the ones that survive. . .

As with those gifted young students who read this book as “their” story, this soldier—who, like most but not all of the Army aviators in the Gulf War, survived—did not read Ender’s Game as a “work of literature.” He read it as epic, as a story that helped define his community. It was not his only epic, of course—Armour, John Steakley’s fine novel, was an equal candidate to be part of his self-story. What matters most, though, was his clear sense that, no matter how much these stories spoke to him, they were still not exactly his community’s epic. He still felt the need for a “speaker for the dead” and for the living. He still felt a hunger, especially at a time when death might well be near, to have his own story, his friends’ stories, told.

Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody’s dazzling language—or at least I hope that’s not our reason. I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not “true” because we’re hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about ourself.

Ender’s Game is a story about gifted children. It is also a story about soldiers. Captain John F. Schmitt, the author of the Marine Corps’s Warfighting, the most brilliant and concise book of military strategy ever written by an American (and a proponent of the kind of thinking that was at the heart of the allied victory in the Gulf War), found Ender’s Game to be a useful enough story about the nature of leadership to use it in courses he taught at the Marine University at Quantico. Watauga College, the interdisciplinary studies program at Appalachian State University—as unmilitary a community as you could ever hope to find!—uses Ender’s Game for completely different purposes—to talk about problem-solving and the self-creation of the individual. A graduate student in Toronto explored the political ideas in Ender’s Game. A writer and critic at Pepperdine has seen Ender’s Game as, in some ways, religious fiction.

All these uses are valid; all these readings of the book are “correct.” For all these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world of Ender’s Game, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

This is the essence of the transaction between storyteller and audience. The “true” story is not the one that exists in my mind; it is certainly not the written words on the bound paper that you hold in your hands. The story in my mind is nothing but a hope; the text of the story is the tool I created in order to try to make that hope a reality. The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

The story of Ender’s Game is not this book, though it has that title emblazoned on it. The story is the one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.

Orson Scott Card
Greensboro, North Carolina
March 1991

ENDER’S GAME

1

THIRD

“I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one. Or at least as close as we’re going to get.”

“That’s what you said about the brother.”

“The brother tested out impossible. For other reasons. Nothing to do with his ability.”

“Same with the sister. And there are doubts about him. He’s too malleable. Too willing to submerge himself in someone else’s will.”

“Not if the other person is his enemy.”

“So what do we do? Surround him with enemies all the time?”

“If we have to.”

“I thought you said you liked this kid.”

“If the buggers get him, they’ll make me look like his favorite uncle.”

“All right. We’re saving the world, after all. Take him.”

The monitor lady smiled very nicely and tousled his hair and said, “Andrew, I suppose by now you’re just absolutely sick of having that horrid monitor. Well, I have good news for you. That monitor is going to come out today. We’re going to take it right out, and it won’t hurt a bit.”

Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

“So if you’ll just come over here, Andrew, just sit right up here on the examining table. The doctor will be in to see you in a moment.”

The monitor gone. Ender tried to imagine the little device missing from the back of his neck. I’ll roll over on my back in bed and it won’t be pressing there. I won’t feel it tingling and taking up the heat when I shower.

And Peter won’t hate me anymore. I’ll come home and show him that the monitor’s gone, and he’ll see that I didn’t make it, either. That I’ll just be a normal kid now, like him. That won’t be so bad then. He’ll forgive me that I had my monitor a whole year longer than he had his. We’ll be—

Not friends, probably. No, Peter was too dangerous. Peter got so angry. Brothers, though. Not enemies, not friends, but brothers—able to live in the same house. He won’t hate me, he’ll just leave me alone. And when he wants to play buggers and astronauts, maybe I won’t have to play, maybe I can just go read a book.

But Ender knew, even as he thought it, that Peter wouldn’t leave him alone. There was something in Peter’s eyes, when he was in his mad mood, and whenever Ender saw that look, that glint, he knew that the one thing Peter would not do was leave him alone. I’m practicing piano, Ender. Come turn the pages for me. Oh, is the monitor boy too busy to help his brother? Is he too smart? Got to go kill some buggers, astronaut? No, no, I don’t want your help. I can do it on my own, you little bastard, you little Third.

“This won’t take long, Andrew,” said the doctor.

Ender nodded.

“It’s designed to be removed. Without infection, without damage. But there’ll be some tickling, and some people say they have a feeling of something missing. You’ll keep looking around for something, something you were looking for, but you can’t find it, and you can’t remember what it was. So I’ll tell you. It’s the monitor you’re looking for, and it isn’t there. In a few days that feeling will pass.”

The doctor was twisting something at the back of Ender’s head. Suddenly a pain stabbed through him like a needle from his neck to his groin. Ender felt his back spasm, and his body arched violently backward; his head struck the bed. He could feel his legs thrashing, and his hands were clenching each other, wringing each other so tightly that they arched.

“Deedee!” shouted the doctor. “I need you!” The nurse ran in, gasped. “Got to relax these muscles. Get it to me, now! What are you waiting for!”

Something changed hands; Ender could not see. He lurched to one side and fell off the examining table. “Catch him!” cried the nurse.

“Just hold him steady—”

“You hold him, doctor, he’s too strong for me—”

“Not the whole thing! You’ll stop his heart—”

Ender felt a needle enter his back just above the neck of his shirt. It burned, but wherever in him the fire spread, his muscles gradually unclenched. Now he could cry for the fear and pain of it.

“Are you all right, Andrew?” the nurse asked.

Andrew could not remember how to speak. They lifted him onto the table. They checked his pulse, did other things; he did not understand it all.

The doctor was trembling; his voice shook as he spoke. “They leave these things in the kids for three years, what do they expect? We could have switched him off, do you realize that? We could have unplugged his brain for all time.”

“When does the drug wear off?” asked the nurse.

“Keep him here for at least an hour. Watch him. If he doesn’t start talking in fifteen minutes, call me. Could have unplugged him forever. I don’t have the brains of a bugger.”

He got back to Miss Pumphrey’s class only fifteen minutes before the closing bell. He was still a little unsteady on his feet.

“Are you all right, Andrew?” asked Miss Pumphrey.

He nodded.

“Were you ill?”

He shook his head.

“You don’t look well.”

“I’m OK.”

“You’d better sit down, Andrew.”

He started toward his seat, but stopped. Now what was I looking for? I can’t think what I was looking for.

“Your seat is over there,” said Miss Pumphrey.

He sat down, but it was something else he needed, something he had lost. I’ll find it later.

“Your monitor,” whispered the girl behind him.

Andrew shrugged.

“His monitor,” she whispered to the others.

Andrew reached up and felt his neck. There was a bandaid. It was gone. He was just like everybody else now.

“Washed out, Andy?” asked a boy who sat across the aisle and behind him. Couldn’t think of his name. Peter. No, that was someone else.

“Quiet, Mr. Stilson,” said Miss Pumphrey. Stilson smirked.

Miss Pumphrey talked about multiplication. Ender doodled on his desk, drawing contour maps of mountainous islands and then telling his desk to display them in three dimensions from every angle. The teacher would know, of course, that he wasn’t paying attention, but she wouldn’t bother him. He always knew the answer, even when she thought he wasn’t paying attention.

In the corner of his desk a word appeared and began marching around the perimeter of the desk. It was upside down and backward at first, but Ender knew what it said long before it reached the bottom of the desk and turned right side up.

THIRD

Ender smiled. He was the one who had figured out how to send messages and make them march—even as his secret enemy called him names, the method of delivery praised him. It was not his fault he was a Third. It was the government’s idea, they were the ones who authorized it—how else could a Third like Ender have got into school? And now the monitor was gone. The experiment entitled Andrew Wiggin hadn’t worked out after all. If they could, he was sure they would like to rescind the waivers that had allowed him to be born at all. Didn’t work, so erase the experiment.

The bell rang. Everyone signed off their desks or hurriedly typed in reminders to themselves. Some were dumping lessons or data into their computers at home. A few gathered at the printers while something they wanted to show was printed out. Ender spread his hands over the child-size keyboard near the edge of the desk and wondered what it would feel like to have hands as large as a grown-up’s. They must feel so big and awkward, thick stubby fingers and beefy palms. Of course, they had bigger keyboards—but how could their thick fingers draw a fine line, the way Ender could, a thin line so precise that he could make it spiral seventy-nine times from the center to the edge of the desk without the lines ever touching or overlapping. It gave him something to do while the teacher droned on about arithmetic. Arithmetic! Valentine had taught him arithmetic when he was three.

“Are you all right, Andrew?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’ll miss the bus.”

Ender nodded and got up. The other kids were gone. They would be waiting, though, the bad ones. His monitor wasn’t perched on his neck, hearing what he heard and seeing what he saw. They could say what they liked. They might even hit him now—no one could see them anymore, and so no one would come to Ender’s rescue. There were advantages to the monitor, and he would miss them.

It was Stilson, of course. He wasn’t bigger than most other kids, but he was bigger than Ender. And he had some others with him. He always did.

“Hey Third.”

Don’t answer. Nothing to say.

“Hey, Third, we’re talkin to you, Third, hey bugger-lover, we’re talkin to you.”

Can’t think of anything to answer. Anything I say will make it worse. So will saying nothing.

“Hey, Third, hey, turd, you flunked out, huh? Thought you were better than us, but you lost your little birdie, Thirdie, got a bandaid on your neck.”

“Are you going to let me through?” Ender asked.

“Are we going to let him through? Should we let him through?” They all laughed. “Sure we’ll let you through. First we’ll let your arm through, then your butt through, then maybe a piece of your knee.”

The others chimed in now. “Lost your birdie, Thirdie. Lost your birdie, Thirdie.”

Stilson began pushing him with one hand; someone behind him then pushed him toward Stilson.

“See-saw, marjorie daw,” somebody said.

“Tennis!”

“Ping-pong!”

This would not have a happy ending. So Ender decided that he’d rather not be the unhappiest at the end. The next time Stilson’s arm came out to push him, Ender grabbed at it. He missed.

“Oh, gonna fight me, huh? Gonna fight me, Thirdie?”

The people behind Ender grabbed at him, to hold him.

Ender did not feel like laughing, but he laughed. “You mean it takes this many of you to fight one Third?”

“We’re people, not Thirds, turd face. You’re about as strong as a fart!”

But they let go of him. And as soon as they did, Ender kicked out high and hard, catching Stilson square in the breastbone. He dropped. It took Ender by surprise—he hadn’t thought to put Stilson on the ground with one kick. It didn’t occur to him that Stilson didn’t take a fight like this seriously, that he wasn’t prepared for a truly desperate blow.

For a moment, the others backed away and Stilson lay motionless. They were all wondering if he was dead. Ender, however, was trying to figure out a way to forestall vengeance. To keep them from taking him in a pack tomorrow. I have to win this now, and for all time, or I’ll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse.

Ender knew the unspoken rules of manly warfare, even though he was only six. It was forbidden to strike the opponent who lay helpless on the ground; only an animal would do that.

So Ender walked to Stilson’s supine body and kicked him again, viciously, in the ribs. Stilson groaned and rolled away from him. Ender walked around him and kicked him again, in the crotch. Stilson could not make a sound; he only doubled up and tears streamed out of his eyes.

Then Ender looked at the others coldly. “You might be having some idea of ganging up on me. You could probably beat me up pretty bad. But just remember what I do to people who try to hurt me. From then on you’d be wondering when I’d get you, and how bad it would be.” He kicked Stilson in the face. Blood from his nose spattered the ground nearby. “It wouldn’t be this bad,” Ender said. “It would be worse.”

He turned and walked away. Nobody followed him. He turned a corner into the corridor leading to the bus stop. He could hear the boys behind him saying, “Geez. Look at him. He’s wasted.” Ender leaned his head against the wall of the corridor and cried until the bus came. I am just like Peter. Take my monitor away, and I am just like Peter.

2

PETER

“All right, it’s off. How’s he doing.”

“You live inside somebody’s body for a few years, you get used to it. I look at his face now, I can’t tell what’s going on. I’m not used to seeing his facial expressions. I’m used to feeling them.”

“Come on, we’re not talking about psychoanalysis here. We’re soldiers, not witch doctors. You just saw him beat the guts out of the leader of a gang.”

“He was thorough. He didn’t just beat him, he beat him deep. Like Mazer Rackham at the—”

“Spare me. So in the judgment of the committee, he passes.”

“Mostly. Let’s see what he does with his brother, now that the monitor’s off.”

“His brother. Aren’t you afraid of what his brother will do to him?”

“You were the one who told me that this wasn’t a no-risk business.”

“I went back through some of the tapes. I can’t help it. I like the kid. I think we’re going to screw him up.”

“Of course we are. It’s our job. We’re the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, but we eat the little bastards alive.”

“I’m sorry, Ender,” Valentine whispered. She was looking at the bandaid on his neck.

Ender touched the wall and the door closed behind him. “I don’t care. I’m glad it’s gone.”

“What’s gone?” Peter walked into the parlor, chewing on a mouthful of bread and peanut butter.

Ender did not see Peter as the beautiful ten-year-old boy that grown-ups saw, with dark, thick, tousled hair and a face that could have belonged to Alexander the Great. Ender looked at Peter only to detect anger or boredom, the dangerous moods that almost always led to pain. Now as Peter’s eyes discovered the bandaid on his neck, the telltale flicker of anger appeared.

Valentine saw it too. “Now he’s like us,” she said, trying to soothe him before he had time to strike.

But Peter would not be soothed. “Like us? He keeps the little sucker till he’s six years old. When did you lose yours? You were three. I lost mine before I was five. He almost made it, little bastard, little bugger.”

This is all right, Ender thought. Talk and talk, Peter. Talk is fine.

“Well, now your guardian angels aren’t watching over you,” Peter said. “Now they aren’t checking to see if you feel pain, listening to hear what I’m saying, seeing what I’m doing to you. How about that? How about it?”

Ender shrugged.

Suddenly Peter smiled and clapped his hands together in a mockery of good cheer. “Let’s play buggers and astronauts,” he said.

“Where’s Mom?” asked Valentine.

“Out,” said Peter. “I’m in charge.”

“I think I’ll call Daddy.”

“Call away,” said Peter. “You know he’s never in.”

“I’ll play,” Ender said.

“You be the bugger,” said Peter.

“Let him be the astronaut for once,” Valentine said.

“Keep your fat face out of it, fart mouth,” said Peter. “Come on upstairs and choose your weapons.”

It would not be a good game, Ender knew. It was not a question of winning. When kids played in the corridors, whole troops of them, the buggers never won, and sometimes the games got mean. But here in their flat, the game would start mean, and the bugger couldn’t just go empty and quit the way buggers did in the real wars. The bugger was in it until the astronaut decided it was over.

Peter opened his bottom drawer and took out the bugger mask. Mother had got upset at him when Peter bought it, but Dad pointed out that the war wouldn’t go away just because you hid bugger masks and wouldn’t let your kids play with make-believe laser guns. Better to play the war games, and have a better chance of surviving when the buggers came again.

If I survive the games, thought Ender. He put on the mask. It closed him in like a hand pressed tight against his face. But this isn’t how it feels to be a bugger, thought Ender. They don’t wear this face like a mask, it is their face. On their home worlds, do the buggers put on human masks, and play? And what do they call us? Slimies, because we’re so soft and oily compared to them?

“Watch out, Slimy,” Ender said.

He could barely see Peter through the eyeholes. Peter smiled at him. “Slimy, huh? Well, bugger-wugger, let’s see how to break that face of yours.”

Ender couldn’t see it coming, except a slight shift of Peter’s weight; the mask cut out his peripheral vision. Suddenly there was the pain and pressure of a blow to the side of his head; he lost balance, fell that way.

“Don’t see too well, do you, bugger?” said Peter.

Ender began to take off the mask. Peter put his toe against Ender’s groin. “Don’t take off the mask,” Peter said.

Ender pulled the mask down into place, took his hands away.

Peter pressed with his foot. Pain shot through Ender; he doubled up.

“Lie flat, bugger. We’re gonna vivisect you, bugger. At long last we’ve got one of you alive, and we’re going to see how you work.”

“Peter, stop it,” Ender said.

“Peter, stop it. Very good. So you buggers can guess our names. You can make yourselves sound like pathetic, cute little children so we’ll love you and be nice to you. But it doesn’t work. I can see you for what you really are. They meant you to be human, little Third, but you’re really a bugger, and now it shows.”

He lifted his foot, took a step, and then knelt on Ender, his knee pressing into Ender’s belly just below the breastbone. He put more and more of his weight on Ender. It became hard to breathe.

“I could kill you like this,” Peter whispered. “Just press and press until you’re dead. And I could say that I didn’t know it would hurt you, that we were just playing, and they’d believe me, and everything would be fine. And you’d be dead. Everything would be fine.”

Ender could not speak; the breath was being forced from his lungs. Peter might mean it. Probably didn’t mean it, but then he might.

“I do mean it,” Peter said. “Whatever you think, I mean it. They only authorized you because I was so promising. But I didn’t pan out. You did better. They think you’re better. But I don’t want a better little brother, Ender. I don’t want a Third.”

“I’ll tell,” Valentine said from the doorway.

“No one would believe you.”

“They’d believe me.”

“Then you’re dead, too, sweet little sister.”

“Oh, yes,” said Valentine. “They’ll believe that. ‘I didn’t know it would kill Andrew. And when he was dead, I didn’t know it would kill Valentine too.’ ”

The pressure let up a little.

“So. Not today. But someday you two won’t be together. And there’ll be an accident.”

“You’re all talk,” Valentine said. “You don’t mean any of it.”

“I don’t?”

“And do you know why you don’t mean it?” Valentine asked. “Because you want to be in government someday. You want to be elected. And they won’t elect you if your opponents can dig up the fact that your brother and sister both died in suspicious accidents when they were little. Especially because of the letter I’ve put in my secret file in the city library, which will be opened in the event of my death.”

“Don’t give me that kind of crap,” Peter said.

“It says, I didn’t die a natural death. Peter killed me, and if he hasn’t already killed Andrew, he will soon. Not enough to convict you, but enough to keep you from ever getting elected.”

“You’re his monitor now,” said Peter. “You better watch him, day and night. You better be there.”

“Ender and I aren’t stupid. We scored as well as you did on everything. Better on some things. We’re all such wonderfully bright children. You’re not the smartest, Peter, just the biggest.”

“Oh, I know. But there’ll come a day when you aren’t there with him, when you forget. And suddenly you’ll remember, and you’ll rush to him, and there he’ll be, perfectly all right. And the next time you won’t worry so much, and you won’t come so fast. And every time, he’ll be all right. And you’ll think that I forgot. Even though you’ll remember that I said this, you’ll think that I forgot. And years will pass. And then there’ll be a terrible accident, and I’ll find his body, and I’ll cry and cry over him, and you’ll remember this conversation, Vally, but you’ll be ashamed of yourself for remembering, because you’ll know that I changed, that it really was an accident, that it’s cruel of you even to remember what I said in a childhood quarrel. Except that it’ll be true. I’m gonna save this up, and he’s gonna die, and you won’t do a thing, not a thing. But you go on believing that I’m just the biggest.”

“The biggest asshole,” Valentine said.

Peter leaped to his feet and started for her. She shied away. Ender pried off his mask. Peter flopped back on his bed and started to laugh. Loud, but with real mirth, tears coming to his eyes. “Oh, you guys are just super, just the biggest suckers on the planet earth.”

“Now he’s going to tell us it was all a joke,” Valentine said.

“Not a joke, a game. I can make you guys believe anything. I can make you dance around like puppets.” In a phony monster voice he said, “I’m going to kill you and chop you into little pieces and put you into the garbage hole.” He laughed again. “Biggest suckers in the solar system.”

Ender stood there watching him laugh and thought of Stilson, thought of how it felt to crunch into his body. This is who needed it. This is who should have got it.

As if she could read his mind, Valentine whispered, “No, Ender.”

Peter suddenly rolled to the side, flipped off the bed, and got in position for a fight. “Oh, yes, Ender,” he said. “Any time, Ender.”

Ender lifted his right leg and took off his shoe. He held it up. “See there, on the toe? That’s blood, Peter. It’s not mine.”

“Ooh. Ooh, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die. Ender squished a capper-tiller and now he’s gonna squish me.”

There was no getting to him. Peter was a murderer at heart, and nobody knew it but Valentine and Ender.

Mother came home and commiserated with Ender about the monitor. Father came home and kept saying it was such a wonderful surprise, they had such fantastic children that the government told them to have three, and now the government didn’t want to take any of them after all, so here they were with three, they still had a Third . . . until Ender wanted to scream at him, I know I’m a Third, I know it, if you want I’ll go away so you don’t have to be embarrassed in front of everybody, I’m sorry I lost the monitor and now you have three kids and no obvious explanation, so inconvenient for you, I’m sorry sorry sorry.

He lay in bed staring upward into the darkness. On the bunk above him, he could hear Peter turning and tossing restlessly. Then Peter slid off the bunk and walked out of the room. Ender heard the hushing sound of the toilet clearing; then Peter stood silhouetted in the doorway.

He thinks I’m asleep. He’s going to kill me.

Peter walked to the bed, and sure enough, he did not lift himself up to his bed. Instead he came and stood by Ender’s head.

But he did not reach for a pillow to smother Ender. He did not have a weapon.

He whispered, “Ender, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know how it feels, I’m sorry, I’m your brother, I love you.”

A long time later, Peter’s even breathing said that he was asleep. Ender peeled the bandaid from his neck. And for the second time that day he cried.

3

GRAFF

“The sister is our weak link. He really loves her.”

“I know. She can undo it all, from the start. He won’t want to leave her.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“Persuade him that he wants to come with us more than he wants to stay with her.”

“How will you do that?”

“I’ll lie to him.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then I’ll tell the truth. We’re allowed to do that in emergencies. We can’t plan for everything, you know.”

Ender wasn’t very hungry during breakfast. He kept wondering what it would be like at school. Facing Stilson after yesterday’s fight. What Stilson’s friends would do. Probably nothing, but he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t want to go.

“You’re not eating, Andrew,” his mother said.

Peter came into the room. “Morning, Ender. Thanks for leaving your slimy washcloth in the middle of the shower.”

“Just for you,” Ender murmured.

“Andrew, you have to eat.”

Ender held out his wrists, a gesture that said, So feed it to me through a needle.

“Very funny,” Mother said. “I try to be concerned, but it makes no difference to my genius children.”

“It was all your genes that made us geniuses, Mom,” said Peter. “We sure didn’t get any from Dad.”

“I heard that,” Father said, not looking up from the news that was being displayed on the table while he ate.

“It would’ve been wasted if you hadn’t.”

The table beeped. Someone was at the door.

“Who is it?” Mother asked.

Father thumbed a key and a man appeared on his video. He was wearing the only military uniform that meant anything anymore, the I.F., the International Fleet.

“I thought it was over,” said Father.

Peter said nothing, just poured milk over his cereal.

And Ender thought, Maybe I won’t have to go to school today after all.

Father coded the door open and got up from the table. “I’ll see to it,” he said. “Stay and eat.”

They stayed, but they didn’t eat. A few moments later, Father came back into the room and beckoned to Mother.

“You’re in deep poo,” said Peter. “They found out what you did to that kid at school, and now they’re gonna make you do time out in the Belt.”

“I’m only six, moron, I’m a juvenile.”

“You’re a Third, turd. You’ve got no rights.”

Valentine came in, her hair in a sleepy halo around her face. “Where’s Mom and Dad? I’m too sick to go to school.”

“Another oral exam, huh?” Peter said.

“Shut up, Peter,” said Valentine.

“You should relax and enjoy it,” said Peter. “It could be worse.”

“I don’t know how.”

“It could be an anal exam.”

“Hyuk hyuk,” Valentine said. “Where are Mother and Father?”

“Talking to a guy from IF.”

Instinctively she looked at Ender. After all, for years they had expected someone to come and tell them that Ender had passed, that Ender was needed.

“That’s right, look at him,” Peter said. “But it might be me, you know. They might have realized I was the best of the lot after all.” Peter’s feelings were hurt, and so he was being a snot, as usual.

The door opened. “Ender,” said Father, “you better come in here.”

“Sorry, Peter,” Valentine taunted.

Father glowered. “Children, this is no laughing matter.”

Ender followed Father into the parlor. The I.F. officer rose to his feet when they entered, but he did not extend a hand to Ender.

Mother was twisting her wedding band on her finger. “Andrew,” she said, “I never thought you were the kind to get in a fight.”

“The Stilson boy is in the hospital,” Father said. “You really did a number on him. With your shoe, Ender. That wasn’t exactly fair.”

Ender shook his head. He had expected someone from the school to come about Stilson, not an officer of the fleet. This was more serious than he had thought. And yet he couldn’t think what else he could have done.

“Do you have any explanation for your behavior, young man?” asked the officer.

Ender shook his head again. He didn’t know what to say, and he was afraid to reveal himself to be any more monstrous than his actions had made him out to be. I’ll take it, whatever the punishment is, he thought. Let’s get it over with.

“We’re willing to consider extenuating circumstances,” the officer said. “But I must tell you it doesn’t look good. Kicking him in the groin, kicking him repeatedly in the face and body when he was down—it sounds like you really enjoyed it.”

“I didn’t,” Ender whispered.

“Then why did you do it?”

“He had his gang there,” Ender said.

“So? This excuses anything?”

“No.”

“Tell me why you kept on kicking him. You had already won.”

“Knocking him down won the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too. So they’d leave me alone.” Ender couldn’t help it, he was too afraid, too ashamed of his own acts; though he tried not to, he cried again. Ender did not like to cry and rarely did; now, in less than a day, he had done it three times. And each time was worse. To cry in front of his mother and father and this military man, that was shameful. “You took away the monitor,” Ender said. “I had to take care of myself, didn’t I?”

“Ender, you should have asked a grown-up for help,” Father began.

But the officer stood up and stepped across the room to Ender. He held out his hand. “My name is Graff, Ender. Colonel Hyrum Graff. I’m director of primary training at Battle School in the Belt. I’ve come to invite you to enter the school.”

After all. “But the monitor—”

“The final step in your testing was to see what would happen when the monitor came off. We don’t always do it that way, but in your case—”

“And he passed?” Mother was incredulous. “Putting the Stilson boy in the hospital? What would you have done if Andrew had killed him, given him a medal?”

“It isn’t what he did, Mrs. Wiggin. It’s why.” Colonel Graff handed her a folder full of papers. “Here are the requisitions. Your son has been cleared by the I.F. Selective Service. Of course we already have your consent, granted in writing at the time conception was confirmed, or he could not have been born. He has been ours from then, if he qualified.”

Father’s voice was trembling as he spoke. “It’s not very kind of you, to let us think you didn’t want him, and then to take him after all.”

“And this charade about the Stilson boy,” Mother said.

“It wasn’t a charade, Mrs. Wiggin. Until we knew what Ender’s motivation was, we couldn’t be sure he wasn’t another—we had to know what the action meant. Or at least what Ender believed that it meant.”

“Must you call him that stupid nickname?” Mother began to cry.

“That’s the name he calls himself.”

“What are you going to do, Colonel Graff?” Father asked. “Walk out the door with him now?”

“That depends,” said Graff.

“On what?”

“On whether Ender wants to come.”

Mother’s weeping turned to bitter laughter. “Oh, so it’s voluntary after all, how sweet!”

“For the two of you, the choice was made when Ender was conceived. But for Ender, the choice has not been made at all. Conscripts make good cannon fodder, but for officers we need volunteers.”

“Officers?” Ender asked. At the sound of his voice, the others fell silent.

“Yes,” said Graff. “Battle School is for training future starship captains and commodores of flotillas and admirals of the fleet.”

“Let’s not have any deception here!” Father said angrily. “How many of the boys at the Battle School actually end up in command of ships!”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Wiggin, that is classified information. But I can say that none of our boys who makes it through the first year has ever failed to receive a commission as an officer. And none has retired from a position of lower rank than chief executive officer of an interplanetary vessel. Even in the domestic defense forces within our own solar system, there’s honor to be had.”

“How many make it through the first year?” asked Ender.

“All who want to,” said Graff.

Ender almost said, I want to. But he held his tongue. This would keep him out of school, but that was stupid, that was just a problem for a few days. It would keep him away from Peter—that was more important, that might be a matter of life itself. But to leave Mother and Father, and above all, to leave Valentine. And become a soldier. Ender didn’t like fighting. He didn’t like Peter’s kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn’t like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.

“I think,” Graff said, “that Ender and I should have a private conversation.”

“No,” Father said.

“I won’t take him without letting you speak to him again,” Graff said. “And you really can’t stop me.”

Father glared at Graff a moment longer, then got up and left the room. Mother paused to squeeze Ender’s hand. She closed the door behind her when she left.

“Ender,” Graff said, “if you come with me, you won’t be back here for a long time. There aren’t any vacations from Battle School. No visitors, either. A full course of training lasts until you’re sixteen years old—you get your first leave, under certain circumstances, when you’re twelve. Believe me, Ender, people change in six years, in ten years. Your sister Valentine will be a woman when you see her again, if you come with me. You’ll be strangers. You’ll still love her, Ender, but you won’t know her. You see I’m not pretending it’s easy.”

“Mom and Daddy?”

“I know you, Ender. I’ve been watching the monitor disks for some time. You won’t miss your mother and father, not much, not for long. And they won’t miss you long, either.”

Tears came to Ender’s eyes, in spite of himself. He turned his face away, but would not reach up to wipe them.

“They do love you, Ender. But you have to understand what your life has cost them. They were born religious, you know. Your father was baptized with the name John Paul Wieczorek. Catholic. The seventh of nine children.”

Nine children. That was unthinkable. Criminal.

“Yes, well, people do strange things for religion. You know the sanctions, Ender—they were not as harsh then, but still not easy. Only the first two children had a free education. Taxes steadily rose with each new child. Your father turned sixteen and invoked the Noncomplying Families Act to separate himself from his family. He changed his name, renounced his religion, and vowed never to have more than the allotted two children. He meant it. All the shame and persecution he went through as a child—he vowed no child of his would go through it. Do you understand?”

“He didn’t want me.”

“Well, no one wants a Third anymore. You can’t expect them to be glad. But your father and mother are a special case. They both renounced their religions—your mother was a Mormon—but in fact their feelings are still ambiguous. Do you know what ambiguous means?”

“They feel both ways.”

“They’re ashamed of having come from noncompliant families. They conceal it. To the degree that your mother refuses to admit to anyone that she was born in Utah, lest they suspect. Your father denies his Polish ancestry, since Poland is still a noncompliant nation, and under international sanction because of it. So, you see, having a Third, even under the government’s direct instructions, undoes everything they’ve been trying to do.”

“I know that.”

“But it’s more complicated than that. Your father still named you with legitimate saints’ names. In fact, he baptized all three of you himself as soon as he got you home after you were born. And your mother objected. They quarreled over it each time, not because she didn’t want you baptized, but because she didn’t want you baptized Catholic. They haven’t really given up their religion. They look at you and see you as a badge of pride, because they were able to circumvent the law and have a Third. But you’re also a badge of cowardice, because they dare not go further and practice the noncompliance they still feel is right. And you’re a badge of public shame, because at every step you interfere with their efforts at assimilation into normal complying society.”

“How can you know all this?”

“We monitored your brother and sister, Ender. You’d be amazed at how sensitive the instruments are. We were connected directly to your brain. We heard all that you heard, whether you were listening carefully or not. Whether you understood or not. We understand.”

“So my parents love me and don’t love me?”

“They love you. The question is whether they want you here. Your presence in this house is a constant disruption. A source of tension. Do you understand?”

“I’m not the one who causes tension.”

“Not anything you do, Ender. Your life itself. Your brother hates you because you are living proof that he wasn’t good enough. Your parents resent you because of all the past they are trying to evade.”

“Valentine loves me.”

“With all her heart. Completely, unstintingly, she’s devoted to you, and you adore her. I told you it wouldn’t be easy.”

“What is it like, there?”

“Hard work. Studies, just like school here, except we put you into mathematics and computers much more heavily. Military history. Strategy and tactics. And above all, the Battle Room.”

“What’s that?”

“War games. All the boys are organized into armies. Day after day, in zero gravity, there are mock battles. Nobody gets hurt, but winning and losing matter. Everybody starts as a common soldier, taking orders. Older boys are your officers, and it’s their duty to train you and command you in battle. More than that I can’t tell you. It’s like playing buggers and astronauts—except that you have weapons that work, and fellow soldiers fighting beside you, and your whole future and the future of the human race depends on how well you learn, how well you fight. It’s a hard life, and you won’t have a normal childhood. Of course, with your mind, and as a Third to boot, you wouldn’t have a particularly normal childhood anyway.”

“All boys?”

“A few girls. They don’t often pass the tests to get in. Too many centuries of evolution are working against them. None of them will be like Valentine, anyway. But there’ll be brothers there, Ender.”

“Like Peter?”

“Peter wasn’t accepted, Ender, for the very reasons that you hate him.”

“I don’t hate him. I’m just—”

“Afraid of him. Well, Peter isn’t all bad, you know. He was the best we’d seen in a long time. We asked your parents to choose a daughter next—they would have anyway—hoping that Valentine would be Peter, but milder. She was too mild. And so we requisitioned you.”

“To be half Peter and half Valentine.”

“If things worked out right.”

“Am I?”

“As far as we can tell. Our tests are very good, Ender. But they don’t tell us everything. In fact, when it comes down to it, they hardly tell us anything. But they’re better than nothing.” Graff leaned over and took Ender’s hands in his. “Ender Wiggin, if it were just a matter of choosing the best and happiest future for you, I’d tell you to stay home. Stay here, grow up, be happy. There are worse things than being a Third, worse things than a big brother who can’t make up his mind whether to be a human being or a jackal. Battle School is one of those worse things. But we need you. The buggers may seem like a game to you now, Ender, but they damn near wiped us out last time. They had us cold, outnumbered and outweaponed. The only thing that saved us was that we had the most brilliant military commander we ever found. Call it fate, call it God, call it damnfool luck, we had Mazer Rackham.

“But we don’t have him now, Ender. We’ve scraped together everything mankind could produce, a fleet that makes the one they sent against us last time seem like a bunch of kids playing in a swimming pool. We have some new weapons, too. But it might not be enough, even so. Because in the eighty years since the last war, they’ve had as much time to prepare as we have. We need the best we can get, and we need them fast. Maybe you’re not going to work out for us, and maybe you are. Maybe you’ll break down under the pressure, maybe it’ll ruin your life, maybe you’ll hate me for coming here to your house today. But if there’s a chance that because you’re with the fleet, mankind might survive and the buggers might leave us alone forever—then I’m going to ask you to do it. To come with me.”

Ender had trouble focusing on Colonel Graff. The man looked far away and very small, as if Ender could pick him up with tweezers and drop him in a pocket. To leave everything here, and go to a place that was very hard, with no Valentine, no Mom and Dad.

And then he thought of the films of the buggers that everyone had to see at least once a year. The Scathing of China. The Battle of the Belt. Death and suffering and terror. And Mazer Rackham and his brilliant maneuvers, destroying an enemy fleet twice his size and twice his firepower, using the little human ships that seemed so frail and weak. Like children fighting with grown-ups. And we won.

“I’m afraid,” said Ender quietly. “But I’ll go with you.”

“Tell me again,” said Graff.

“It’s what I was born for, isn’t it? If I don’t go, why am I alive?”

“Not good enough,” said Graff.

“I don’t want to go,” said Ender, “but I will.”

Graff nodded. “You can change your mind. Up until the time you get in my car with me, you can change your mind. After that, you stay at the pleasure of the International Fleet. Do you understand that?”

Ender nodded.

“All right. Let’s tell them.”

Mother cried. Father held Ender tight. Peter shook his hand and said, “You lucky little pinheaded fart-eater.” Valentine kissed him and left her tears on his cheek.

There was nothing to pack. No belongings to take. “The school provides everything you need, from uniforms to school supplies. And as for toys—there’s only one game.”

“Good-bye,” Ender said to his family. He reached up and took Colonel Graff’s hand and walked out the door with him.

“Kill some buggers for me!” Peter shouted.

“I love you, Andrew!” Mother called.

“We’ll write to you!” Father said.

And as he got into the car that waited silently in the corridor, he heard Valentine’s anguished cry. “Come back to me! I love you forever!”

4

LAUNCH

“With Ender, we have to strike a delicate balance. Isolate him enough that he remains creative—otherwise he’ll adopt the system here and we’ll lose him. At the same time, we need to make sure he keeps a strong ability to lead.”

“If he earns rank, he’ll lead.”

“It isn’t that simple. Mazer Rackham could handle his little fleet and win. By the time this war happens, there’ll be too much, even for a genius. Too many little boats. He has to work smoothly with his subordinates.”

“Oh, good. He has to be a genius and nice, too.”

“Not nice. Nice will let the buggers have us all.”

“So you’re going to isolate him.”

“I’ll have him completely separated from the rest of the boys by the time we get to the School.”

“I have no doubt of it. I’ll be waiting for you to get here. I watched the vids of what he did to the Stilson boy. This is not a sweet little kid you’re bringing up here.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken. He’s even sweeter than he looks. But don’t worry. We’ll purge that in a hurry.”

“Sometimes I think you enjoy breaking these little geniuses.”

“There is an art to it, and I’m very, very good at it. But enjoy? Well, maybe. When they put back the pieces afterward, and it makes them better.”

“You’re a monster.”

“Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise?”

“Just a medal. The budget isn’t inexhaustible.”

They say that weightlessness can cause disorientation, especially in children, whose sense of direction isn’t yet secure. But Ender was disoriented before he left Earth’s gravity. Before the shuttle launch even began.

There were nineteen other boys in his launch. They filed out of the bus and into the elevator. They talked and joked and bragged and laughed. Ender kept his silence. He noticed how Graff and the other officers were watching them. Analyzing. Everything we do means something, Ender realized. Them laughing. Me not laughing.

He toyed with the idea of trying to be like the other boys. But he couldn’t think of any jokes, and none of theirs seemed funny. Wherever their laughter came from, Ender couldn’t find such a place in himself. He was afraid, and fear made him serious.

They had dressed him in a uniform, all in a single piece; it felt funny not to have a belt cinched around his waist. He felt baggy and naked, dressed like that. There were TV cameras going, perched like animals on the shoulders of crouching, prowling men. The men moved slowly, catlike, so the camera motion would be smooth. Ender caught himself moving smoothly, too.

He imagined himself being on TV, in an interview. The announcer asking him, How do you feel, Mr. Wiggin? Actually quite well, except hungry. Hungry? Oh, yes, they don’t let you eat for twenty hours before the launch. How interesting, I never knew that. All of us are quite hungry, actually. And all the while, during the interview, Ender and the TV guy would slink along smoothly in front of the cameraman, taking long, lithe strides. The TV guy was letting him be the spokesman for all the boys, though Ender was barely competent to speak for himself. For the first time, Ender felt like laughing. He smiled. The other boys near him were laughing at the moment, too, for another reason. They think I’m smiling at their joke, thought Ender. But I’m smiling at something much funnier.

“Go up the ladder one at a time,” said an officer. “When you come to an aisle with empty seats, take one. There aren’t any window seats.”

It was a joke. The other boys laughed.

Ender was near the last, but not the very last. The TV cameras did not give up, though. Will Valentine see me disappear into the shuttle? He thought of waving at her, of running to the cameraman and saying, “Can I tell Valentine good-bye?” He didn’t know that it would be censored out of the tape if he did, for the boys soaring out to Battle School were all supposed to be heroes. They weren’t supposed to miss anybody. Ender didn’t know about the censorship, but he did know that running to the cameras would be wrong.

He walked the short bridge to the door in the shuttle. He noticed that the wall to his right was carpeted like a floor. That was where the disorientation began. The moment he thought of the wall as a floor, he began to feel like he was walking on a wall. He got to the ladder, and noticed that the vertical surface behind it was also carpeted. I am climbing up the floor. Hand over hand, step by step.

And then, for fun, he pretended that he was climbing down the wall. He did it almost instantly in his mind, convinced himself against the best evidence of gravity until he reached an empty seat. He found himself gripping the seat tightly, even though gravity pulled him firmly against it.

The other boys were bouncing on their seats a little, poking and pushing, shouting. Ender carefully found the straps, figured out how they fit together to hold him at crotch, waist, and shoulders. He imagined the ship dangling upside down on the undersurface of the Earth, the giant fingers of gravity holding them firmly in place. But we will slip away, he thought. We are going to fall off this planet.

He did not know its significance at the time. Later, though, he would remember that it was even before he left Earth that he first thought of it as a planet, like any other, not particularly his own.

“Oh, already figured it out,” said Graff. He was standing on the ladder.

“Coming with us?” Ender asked.

“I don’t usually come down for recruiting,” Graff said. “I’m kind of in charge there. Administrator of the School. Like a principal. They told me I had to come back or I’d lose my job.” He smiled.

Ender smiled back. He felt comfortable with Graff. Graff was good. And he was principal of the Battle School. Ender relaxed a little. He would have a friend there.

Adults helped the other boys belt themselves in place, those who hadn’t done as Ender did. Then they waited for an hour while a TV at the front of the shuttle introduced them to shuttle flight, the history of space flight, and their possible future with the great starships of the I.F. Very boring stuff. Ender had seen such films before.

Except that he had not been belted into a seat inside the shuttle. Hanging upside down from the belly of Earth.

The launch wasn’t bad. A little scary. Some jolting, a few moments of panic that this might be the first failed launch since the early days of the shuttle. The movies hadn’t made it plain how much violence you could experience, lying on your back in a soft chair.

Then it was over, and he really was hanging by the straps, no gravity anywhere.

But because he had already reoriented himself, he was not surprised when Graff came up the ladder backward, as if he were climbing down to the front of the shuttle. Nor did it bother him when Graff hooked his feet under a rung and pushed off with his hands, so that suddenly he swung upright, as if this were an ordinary airplane.

The reorientations were too much for some. One boy gagged; Ender understood then why they had been forbidden to eat anything for twenty hours before the launch. Vomiting in null gravity wouldn’t be fun.

But for Ender, Graff’s gravity game was fun. And he carried it further, imagining that Graff was actually hanging upside down from the center aisle, and then picturing him sticking straight out from a side wall. Gravity could go any which way. However I want it to go. I can make Graff stand on his head and he doesn’t even know it.

“What do you think is so funny, Wiggin?”

Graff’s voice was sharp and angry. What did I do wrong, thought Ender. Did I laugh out loud?

“I asked you a question, soldier!” barked Graff.

Oh yes. This is the beginning of the training routine. Ender had seen some military shows on TV, and they always shouted a lot at the beginning of training before the soldiers and the officer became good friends.

“Yes sir,” Ender said.

“Well answer it, then!”

“I thought of you hanging upside down by your feet. I thought it was funny.”

It sounded stupid, now, with Graff looking at him coldly. “To you I suppose it is funny. Is it funny to anybody else here?”

Murmurs of no.

“Well why isn’t it?” Graff looked at them all with contempt. “Scumbrains, that’s what we’ve got in this launch. Pinheaded little morons. Only one of you had the brains to realize that in null gravity directions are whatever you conceive them to be. Do you understand that, Shafts?”

The boy nodded.

“No you didn’t. Of course you didn’t. Not only stupid, but a liar too. There’s only one boy on this launch with any brains at all, and that’s Ender Wiggin. Take a good look at him, little boys. He’s going to be a commander when you’re still in diapers up there. Because he knows how to think in null gravity, and you just want to throw up.”

This wasn’t the way the show was supposed to go. Graff was supposed to pick on him, not set him up as the best. They were supposed to be against each other at first, so they could become friends later.

“Most of you are going to ice out. Get used to that, little boys. Most of you are going to end up in Combat School, because you don’t have the brains to handle deep-space piloting. Most of you aren’t worth the price of bringing you up here to Battle School because you don’t have what it takes. Some of you might make it. Some of you might be worth something to humanity. But don’t bet on it. I’m betting on only one.”

Suddenly Graff did a backflip and caught the ladder with his hands, then swung his feet away from the ladder. Doing a handstand, if the floor was down. Dangling by his hands, if the floor was up. Hand over hand he swung himself back along the aisle to his seat.

“Looks like you’ve got it made here,” whispered the boy next to him.

Ender shook his head.

“Oh, won’t even talk to me?” the boy said.

“I didn’t ask him to say that stuff,” Ender whispered.

He felt a sharp pain on the top of his head. Then again. Some giggles from behind him. The boy in the next seat back must have unfastened his straps. Again a blow to the head. Go away, Ender thought. I didn’t do anything to you.

Again a blow to the head. Laughter from the boys. Didn’t Graff see this? Wasn’t he going to stop it? Another blow. Harder. It really hurt. Where was Graff?

Then it became clear. Graff had deliberately caused it. It was worse than the abuse in the shows. When the sergeant picked on you, the others liked you better. But when the officer prefers you, the others hate you.

“Hey, fart-eater,” came the whisper from behind him. He was hit on the head again. “Do you like this? Hey, super-brain, is this fun?” Another blow, this one so hard that Ender cried out softly with the pain.

If Graff was setting him up, there’d be no help unless he helped himself. He waited until he thought another blow was about to come. Now, he thought. And yes, the blow was there. It hurt, but Ender was already trying to sense the coming of the next blow. Now. And yes, right on time. I’ve got you, Ender thought.

Just as the next blow was coming, Ender reached up with both hands, snatched the boy by the wrist, and then pulled down on the arm, hard.

In gravity, the boy would have been jammed against Ender’s seat back, hurting his chest. In null gravity, however, he flipped over the seat completely, up toward the ceiling. Ender wasn’t expecting it. He hadn’t realized how null gravity magnified the effects of even a child’s movements. The boy sailed through the air, bouncing against the ceiling, then down against another boy in his seat, then out into the aisle, his arms flailing until he screamed as his body slammed into the bulkhead at the front of the compartment, his left arm twisted under him.

It took only seconds. Graff was already there, snatching the boy out of the air. Deftly he propelled him down the aisle toward the other man. “Left arm. Broken, I think,” he said. In moments the boy had been given a drug and lay quietly in the air as the officer ballooned a splint around his arm.

Ender felt sick. He had only meant to catch the boy’s arm. No. No, he had meant to hurt him, and had pulled with all his strength. He hadn’t meant it to be so public, but the boy was feeling exactly the pain Ender had meant him to feel. Null gravity had betrayed him, that was all. I am Peter. I’m just like him. And Ender hated himself.

Graff stayed at the front of the cabin. “What are you, slow learners? In your feeble little minds, haven’t you picked up one little fact? You were brought here to be soldiers. In your old schools, in your old families, maybe you were the big shot, maybe you were tough, maybe you were smart. But we chose the best of the best, and that’s the only kind of kid you’re going to meet now. And when I tell you Ender Wiggin is the best in this launch, take the hint, my little dorklings. Don’t mess with him. Little boys have died in Battle School before. Do I make myself clear?”

There was silence the rest of the launch. The boy sitting next to Ender was scrupulously careful not to touch him.

I am not a killer, Ender said to himself over and over. I am not Peter. No matter what Graff says, I’m not. I was defending myself. I bore it a long time. I was patient. I’m not what he said.

A voice over the speaker told them they were approaching the school; it took twenty minutes to decelerate and dock. Ender lagged behind the others. They were not unwilling to let him be the last to leave the shuttle, climbing upward in the direction that had been down when they embarked. Graff was waiting at the end of the narrow tube that led from the shuttle into the heart of the Battle School.

“Was it a good flight, Ender?” Graff asked cheerfully.

“I thought you were my friend.” Despite himself, Ender’s voice trembled.

Graff looked puzzled. “Whatever gave you that idea, Ender?”

“Because you—” Because you spoke nicely to me, and honestly. “You didn’t lie.”

“I won’t lie now, either,” said Graff. “My job isn’t to be friends. My job is to produce the best soldiers in the world. In the whole history of the world. We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself dictator, and died for it. My job is to produce such a creature, and all the men and women he’ll need to help him. Nowhere in that does it say I have to make friends with children.”

“You made them hate me.”

“So? What will you do about it? Crawl into a corner? Start kissing their little backsides so they’ll love you again? There’s only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that’s being so good at what you do that they can’t ignore you. I told them you were the best. Now you damn well better be.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then too bad. Look, Ender, I’m sorry if you’re lonely and afraid. But the buggers are out there. Ten billion, a hundred billion, a million billion of them, for all we know. With as many ships, for all we know. With weapons we can’t understand. And a willingness to use those weapons to wipe us out. It isn’t the world at stake, Ender. Just us. Just humankind. As far as the rest of the biosphere is concerned, we could be wiped out and it would adjust, it would get on with the next step in evolution. But humanity doesn’t want to die. As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire. Do you understand any of this?”

Ender thought he did, but wasn’t sure, and so said nothing.

“No. Of course not. So I’ll put it bluntly. Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me—to find out what you’re good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.”

“Is that all? Just tools?”

“Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.”

“That’s a lie.”

“No. It’s just a half truth. You can worry about the other half after we win this war.”

“It’ll be over before I grow up,” Ender said.

“I hope you’re wrong,” said Graff. “By the way, you aren’t helping yourself at all, talking to me. The other boys are no doubt telling each other that old Ender Wiggin is back there licking up to Graff. If word once gets around that you’re a teachers’ boy, you’re iced for sure.”

In other words, go away and leave me alone. “Goodbye,” Ender said. He pulled himself hand over hand along the tube where the other boys had gone.

Graff watched him go.

One of the teachers near him said, “Is that the one?”

“God knows,” said Graff. “If Ender isn’t him, then he’d better show up soon.”

“Maybe it’s nobody,” said the teacher.

“Maybe. But if that’s the case, Anderson, then in my opinion God is a bugger. You can quote me on that.”

“I will.”

They stood in silence a while longer.

“Anderson.”

“Mmm.”

“The kid’s wrong. I am his friend.”

“I know.”

“He’s clean. Right to the heart, he’s good.”

“I’ve read the reports.”

“Anderson, think what we’re going to do to him.”

Anderson was defiant. “We’re going to make him the best military commander in history.”

“And then put the fate of the world on his shoulders. For his sake, I hope it isn’t him. I do.”

“Cheer up. The buggers may kill us all before he graduates.”

Graff smiled. “You’re right. I feel better already.”

5

GAMES

“You have my admiration. Breaking an arm—that was a master stroke.”

“That was an accident.”

“Really? And I’ve already commended you in your official report.”

“It’s too strong. It makes that other little bastard into a hero. It could screw up training for a lot of kids. I thought Ender might call for help.”

“Call for help? I thought that was what you valued most in him—that he settles his own problems. When he’s out there surrounded by an enemy fleet, there ain’t gonna be nobody to help him if he calls.”

“Who would have guessed the little sucker’d be out of his seat? And that he’d land just wrong against the bulkhead?”

“Just one more example of the stupidity of the military. If you had any brains, you’d be in a real career, like selling life insurance.”

“You, too, mastermind.”

“We’ve just got to face the fact that we’re second rate. With the fate of humanity in our hands. Gives you a delicious feeling of power, doesn’t it? Especially because this time if we lose there won’t be any criticism of us at all.”

“I never thought of it that way. But let’s not lose.”

“See how Ender handles it. If we’ve already lost him, if he can’t handle this, who next? Who else?”

“I’ll make up a list.”

“In the meantime, figure out how to unlose Ender.”

“I told you. His isolation can’t be broken. He can never come to believe that anybody will ever help him out, ever. If he once thinks there’s an easy way out, he’s wrecked.”

“You’re right. That would be terrible, if he believed he had a friend.”

“He can have friends. It’s parents he can’t have.”

The other boys had already chosen their bunks when Ender arrived. Ender stopped in the doorway of the dormitory, looking for the sole remaining bed. The ceiling was low—Ender could reach up and touch it. A child-sized room, with the bottom bunk resting on the floor. The other boys were watching him, cornerwise. Sure enough, the bottom bunk right by the door was the only empty bed. For a moment it occurred to Ender that by letting the others put him in the worst place, he was inviting later bullying. Yet he couldn’t very well oust someone else.

So he smiled broadly. “Hey, thanks,” he said. Not sarcastically at all. He said it as sincerely as if they had reserved for him the best position. “I thought I was going to have to ask for low bunk by the door.”

He sat down and looked in the locker that stood open at the foot of the bunk. There was a paper taped to the inside of the door.

PLACE YOUR HAND ON THE SCANNER
AT THE HEAD OF YOUR BUNK
AND SPEAK YOUR NAME TWICE.

Ender found the scanner, a sheet of opaque plastic. He put his left hand on it and said, “Ender Wiggin. Ender Wiggin.”

The scanner glowed green for a moment. Ender closed his locker and tried to reopen it. He couldn’t. Then he put his hand on the scanner and said, “Ender Wiggin.” The locker popped open. So did three other compartments.

One of them contained four jumpsuits like the one he was wearing, and one white one. Another compartment contained a small desk, just like the ones at school. So they weren’t through with studies yet.

It was the largest compartment that contained the prize. It looked like a spacesuit at first glance, complete with helmet and gloves. But it wasn’t. There was no airtight seal. Still, it would effectively cover the whole body. It was thickly padded. It was also a little stiff.

And there was a pistol within. A lasergun, it looked like, since the end was solid, clear glass. But surely they wouldn’t let children have lethal weapons—

“Not a laser,” said a man. Ender looked up. It was one he hadn’t seen before. A young and kind-looking man. “But it has a tight enough beam. Well-focused. You can aim it and make a three-inch circle of light on a wall a hundred meters off.”

“What’s it for?” Ender asked.

“One of the games we play during recreation. Does anyone else have his locker open?” The man looked around. “I mean, have you followed directions and coded in your voices and hands? You can’t get into the lockers until you do. This room is your home for the first year or so here at the Battle School, so get the bunk you want and stay with it. Ordinarily, we let you elect your chief officer and install him in the lower bunk by the door, but apparently that position has been taken. Can’t recode the lockers now. So think about whom you want to choose. Dinner in seven minutes. Follow the lighted dots on the floor. Your color code is red yellow yellow—whenever you’re assigned a path to follow, it will be red yellow yellow, three dots side by side—go where those lights indicate. What’s your color code, boys?”

“Red, yellow, yellow.”

“Very good. My name is Dap. I’m your mom for the next few months.”

The boys laughed.

“Laugh all you like, but keep it in mind. If you get lost in the school, which is quite possible, don’t go opening doors. Some of them lead outside.” More laughter. “Instead just tell someone that your mom is Dap, and they’ll call me. Or tell them your color, and they’ll light up a path for you to get home. If you have a problem, come talk to me. Remember, I’m the only person here who’s paid to be nice to you. But not too nice. Give me any lip and I’ll break your face. OK?”

They laughed again. Dap had a room full of friends. Frightened children are so easy to win.

“Which way is down, anybody tell me?”

They told him.

“OK, that’s true. But that direction is toward the outside. The ship is spinning, and that’s what makes it feel like that is down. The floor actually curves around in that direction. Keep going long enough that way, and you come back to where you started. Except don’t try it. Because up that way is teachers’ quarters, and up that way is the bigger kids. And the bigger kids don’t like Launchies butting in. You might get pushed around. In fact, you will get pushed around. And when you do, don’t come crying to me. Got it? This is Battle School, not nursery school.”

“What are we supposed to do, then?” asked a boy, a really small black kid who had a top bunk near Ender’s.

“If you don’t like getting pushed around, figure out for yourself what to do about it. But I warn you—murder is strictly against the rules. So is any deliberate injury. I understand there was one attempted murder on the way up here. A broken arm. That kind of thing happens again, somebody ices out. You got it?”

“What’s icing out?” asked the boy with his arm puffed up in a splint.

“Ice. Put out in the cold. Sent Earthside. Finished at Battle School.”

Nobody looked at Ender.

“So, boys, if any of you are thinking of being troublemakers, at least be clever about it, OK?”

Dap left. They still didn’t look at Ender.

Ender felt the fear growing in his belly. The kid whose arm he broke—Ender didn’t feel sorry for him. He was a Stilson. And like Stilson, he was already gathering a gang. A little knot of kids, several of the bigger ones. They were laughing at the far end of the room, and every now and then one of them would turn to look at Ender.

With all his heart, Ender wanted to go home. What did any of this have to do with saving the world? There was no monitor now. It was Ender against the gang again, only they were right in his room. Peter again, but without Valentine.

The fear stayed, all through dinner as no one sat by him in the mess hall. The other boys were talking about things—the big scoreboard on one wall, the food, the bigger kids. Ender could only watch in isolation.

The scoreboards were team standings. Win-loss records, with the most recent scores. Some of the bigger boys apparently had bets on the most recent games. Two teams, Manticore and Asp, had no recent score—these boxes were flashing. Ender decided they must be playing right now.

He noticed that the older boys were divided into groups, according to the uniforms they wore. Some with different uniforms were talking together, but generally the groups each had their own area. Launchies—their own group, and the two or three next older groups—all had plain blue uniforms. But the big kids, the ones that were on teams, they were wearing much more flamboyant clothing. Ender tried to guess which ones went with which name. Scorpion and Spider were easy. So were Flame and Tide.

A bigger boy came to sit by him. Not just a little bigger—he looked to be twelve or thirteen. Getting his man’s growth started.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” Ender said.

“I’m Mick.”

“Ender.”

“That’s a name?”

“Since I was little. It’s what my sister called me.”

“Not a bad name here. Ender. Finisher. Hey.”

“Hope so.”

“Ender, you the bugger in your launch?”

Ender shrugged.

“I noticed you eating all alone. Every launch has one like that. Kid that nobody takes to right away. Sometimes I think the teachers do it on purpose. The teachers aren’t very nice. You’ll notice that.”

“Yeah.”

“So you the bugger?”

“I guess so.”

“Hey. Nothing to cry about, you know?” He gave Ender his roll, and took Ender’s pudding. “Eat nutritious stuff. It’ll keep you strong.” Mick dug into the pudding.

“What about you?” asked Ender.

“Me? I’m nothing. I’m a fart in the air conditioning. I’m always there, but most of the time nobody knows it.”

Ender smiled tentatively.

“Yeah, funny, but no joke. I got nowhere here. I’m getting big now. They’re going to send me to my next school pretty soon. No way it’ll be Tactical School for me. I’ve never been a leader, you see. Only the guys who get to be leaders have a shot at it.”

“How do you get to be a leader?”

“Hey, if I knew, you think I’d be like this? How many guys my size you see in here?”

Not many. Ender didn’t say it.

“A few. I’m not the only half-iced bugger-fodder. A few of us. The other guys—they’re all commanders. All the guys from my launch have their own teams now. Not me.”

Ender nodded.

“Listen, little guy. I’m doing you a favor. Make friends. Be a leader. Kiss butts if you’ve got to, but if the other guys despise you—you know what I mean?”

Ender nodded again.

“Naw, you don’t know nothing. You Launchies are all alike. You don’t know nothing. Minds like space. Nothing there. And if anything hits you, you fall apart. Look, when you end up like me, don’t forget that somebody warned you. It’s the last nice thing anybody’s going to do for you.”

“So why did you tell me?” asked Ender.

“What are you, a smartmouth? Shut up and eat.”

Ender shut up and ate. He didn’t like Mick. And he knew there was no chance he would end up like that. Maybe that was what the teachers were planning, but Ender didn’t intend to fit in with their plans.

I will not be the bugger of my group, Ender thought. I didn’t leave Valentine and Mother and Father to come here just to be iced.

As he lifted the fork to his mouth, he could feel his family around him, as they always had been. He knew just which way to turn his head to look up and see Mother, trying to get Valentine not to slurp. He knew just where Father would be, scanning the news on the table while pretending to be part of the dinner conversation. Peter, pretending to take a crushed pea out of his nose—even Peter could be funny.

It was a mistake to think of them. He felt a sob rise in his throat and swallowed it down; he could not see his plate.

He could not cry. There was no chance that he would be treated with compassion. Dap was not Mother. Any sign of weakness would tell the Stilsons and Peters that this boy could be broken. Ender did what he always did when Peter tormented him. He began to count doubles. One, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four. And on, as high as he could hold the numbers in his head: 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144. At 67108864 he began to be unsure—had he slipped out a digit? Should he be in the ten millions or the hundred millions or just the millions? He tried doubling again and lost it. 1342 something. 16? Or 17738? It was gone. Start over again. All the doubling he could hold. The pain was gone. The tears were gone. He would not cry.

Until that night, when the lights went dim, and in the distance he could hear several boys whimpering for their mothers or fathers or dogs. Then he could not help himself. His lips formed Valentine’s name. He could hear her voice laughing in the distance, just down the hall. He could see Mother passing his door, looking in to be sure he was all right. He could hear Father laughing at the video. It was all so clear, and it would never be that way again. I’ll be old when I ever see them again, twelve at the earliest. Why did I say yes? What was I such a fool for? Going to school would have been nothing. Facing Stilson every day. And Peter. He was a pissant, Ender wasn’t afraid of him.

I want to go home, he whispered.

But his whisper was the whisper he used when he cried out in pain when Peter tormented him. The sound didn’t travel farther than his own ears, and sometimes not that far.

And his tears could fall unwanted on his sheet, but his sobs were so gentle that they did not shake the bed, so quiet they could not be heard. But the ache was there, thick in his throat and the front of his face, hot in his chest and in his eyes. I want to go home.

Dap came to the door that night and moved quietly among the beds, touching a hand here, a forehead there. Where he went there was more crying, not less. The touch of kindness in this frightening place was enough to push some over the edge into tears. Not Ender, though. When Dap came, his crying was over, and his face was dry. It was the lying face he presented to Mother and Father, when Peter had been cruel to him and he dared not let it show. Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything I felt. More than ever, I need that now.

This was school. Every day, hours of classes. Reading. Numbers. History. Videos of the bloody battles in space, the Marines spraying their guts all over the walls of the bugger ships. Holos of the clean wars of the fleet, ships turning into puffs of light as the spacecraft killed each other deftly in the deep night. Many things to learn. Ender worked as hard as anyone; all of them struggled for the first time in their lives, as for the first time in their lives they competed with classmates who were at least as bright as they.

But the games—that was what they lived for. That was what filled the hours between waking and sleeping.

Dap introduced them to the game room on their second day. It was up, way above the decks where the boys lived and worked. They climbed ladders to where the gravity weakened, and there in the cavern they saw the dazzling lights of the games.

Some of the games they knew; some they had even played at home. Simple ones and hard ones. Ender walked past the two-dimensional games on video and began to study the games the bigger boys played, the holographic games with objects hovering in the air. He was the only Launchy in that part of the room, and every now and then one of the bigger boys would shove him out of the way. What’re you doing here? Get lost. Fly off. And of course he would fly, in the lower gravity here, leave his feet and soar until he ran into something or someone.

Every time, though, he extricated himself and went back, perhaps to a different spot, to get a different angle on the game. He was too small to see the controls, how the game was actually done. That didn’t matter. He got the movement of it in the air. The way the player dug tunnels in the darkness, tunnels of light, which the enemy ships would search for and then follow mercilessly until they caught the player’s ship. The player could make traps: mines, drifting bombs, loops in the air that forced the enemy ships to repeat endlessly. Some of the players were clever. Others lost quickly.

Ender liked it better, though, when two boys played against each other. Then they had to use each other’s tunnels, and it quickly became clear which of them was worth anything at the strategy of it.

Within an hour or so, it began to pall. Ender understood the regularities by then. Understood the rules the computer was following, so that he knew he could always, once he mastered the controls, outmaneuver the enemy. Spirals when the enemy was like this; loops when the enemy was like that. Lie in wait at one trap. Lay seven traps and then lure them like this. There was no challenge to it, then, just a matter of playing until the computer got so fast that no human reflexes could overcome it. That wasn’t fun. It was the other boys he wanted to play. The boys who had been so trained by the computer that even when they played against each other they each tried to emulate the computer. Think like a machine instead of a boy.

I could beat them this way. I could beat them that way.

“I’d like a turn against you,” he said to the boy who had just won.

“Lawsy me, what is this?” asked the boy. “Is it a bug or a bugger?”

“A new flock of dwarfs just came aboard,” said another boy.

“But it talks. Did you know they could talk?”

“I see,” said Ender. “You’re afraid to play me two out of three.”

“Beating you,” said the boy, “would be as easy as pissing in the shower.”

“And not half as fun,” said another.

“I’m Ender Wiggin.”

“Listen up, scrunchface. You nobody. Got that? You nobody, got that? You not anybody till you gots you first kill. Got that?”

The slang of the older boys had its own rhythm. Ender picked it up quick enough. “If I’m nobody, then how come you scared to play me two out of three?”

Now the other guys were impatient. “Kill the squirt quick and let’s get on with it.”

So Ender took his place at the unfamiliar controls. His hands were small, but the controls were simple enough. It took only a little experimentation to find out which buttons used certain weapons. Movement control was a standard wireball. His reflexes were slow at first. The other boy, whose name he still didn’t know, got ahead quickly. But Ender learned a lot and was doing much better by the time the game ended.

“Satisfied, Launchy?”

“Two out of three.”

“We don’t allow two out of three games.”

“So you beat me the first time I ever touched the game,” Ender said. “If you can’t do it twice, you can’t do it at all.”

They played again, and this time Ender was deft enough to pull off a few maneuvers that the boy had obviously never seen before. His patterns couldn’t cope with them. Ender didn’t win easily, but he won.

The bigger boys stopped laughing and joking then. The third game went in total silence. Ender won it quickly and efficiently.

When the game ended, one of the older boys said, “Bout time they replaced this machine. Getting so any pinbrain can beat it now.”

Not a word of congratulation. Just total silence as Ender walked away.

He didn’t go far. Just stood off in the near distance and watched as the next players tried to use the things he had shown them. Any pinbrain? Ender smiled inwardly. They won’t forget me.

He felt good. He had won something, and against older boys. Probably not the best of the older boys, but he no longer had the panicked feeling that he might be out of his depth, that Battle School might be too much for him. All he had to do was watch the game and understand how things worked, and then he could use the system, and even excel.

It was the waiting and watching that cost the most. For during that time he had to endure. The boy whose arm he had broken was out for vengeance. His name, Ender quickly learned, was Bernard. He spoke his own name with a French accent, since the French, with their arrogant Separatism, insisted that the teaching of Standard not begin until the age of four, when the French language patterns were already set. His accent made him exotic and interesting; his broken arm made him a martyr; his sadism made him a natural focus for all those who loved pain in others.

Ender became their enemy.

Little things. Kicking his bed every time they went in and out of the door. Jostling him with his meal tray. Tripping him on the ladders. Ender learned quickly not to leave anything of his outside his lockers; he also learned to be quick on his feet, to catch himself. “Maladroit,” Bernard called him once, and the name stuck.

There were times when Ender was very angry. With Bernard, of course, anger was inadequate. It was the kind of person he was—a tormentor. What enraged Ender was how willingly the others went along with him. Surely they knew there was no justice in Bernard’s revenge. Surely they knew that he had struck first at Ender in the shuttle, that Ender had only been responding to violence. If they knew, they acted as if they didn’t; even if they did not know, they should be able to tell from Bernard himself that he was a snake.

After all, Ender wasn’t his only target. Bernard was setting up a kingdom, wasn’t he?

Ender watched from the fringes of the group as Bernard established the hierarchy. Some of the boys were useful to him, and he flattered them outrageously. Some of the boys were willing servants, doing whatever he wanted even though he treated them with contempt.

But a few chafed under Bernard’s rule.

Ender, watching, knew who resented Bernard. Shen was small, ambitious, and easily needled. Bernard had discovered that quickly, and started calling him Worm. “Because he’s so small,” Bernard said, “and because he wriggles. Look how he shimmies his butt when he walks.”

Shen stormed off, but they only laughed louder. “Look at his butt. See ya, Worm!”

Ender said nothing to Shen—it would be too obvious, then, that he was starting his own competing gang. He just sat with his desk on his lap, looking as studious as possible.

He was not studying. He was telling his desk to keep sending a message into the interrupt queue every thirty seconds. The message was to everyone, and it was short and to the point. What made it hard was figuring out how to disguise who it was from, the way the teachers could. Messages from one of the boys always had their name automatically inserted. Ender hadn’t cracked the teachers’ security system yet, so he couldn’t pretend to be a teacher. But he was able to set up a file for a nonexistent student, whom he whimsically named God.

Only when the message was ready to go did he try to catch Shen’s eye. Like all the other boys, he was watching Bernard and his cronies laugh and joke, making fun of the math teacher, who often stopped in midsentence and looked around as if he had been let off the bus at the wrong stop and didn’t know where he was.

Eventually, though, Shen glanced around. Ender nodded to him, pointed to his desk, and smiled. Shen looked puzzled. Ender held up his desk a little and then pointed at it. Shen reached for his own desk. Ender sent the message then. Shen saw it almost at once. Shen read it, then laughed aloud. He looked at Ender as if to say, Did you do this? Ender shrugged, to say, I don’t know who did it but it sure wasn’t me.

Shen laughed again, and several of the other boys who were not close to Bernard’s group got out their desks and looked. Every thirty seconds the message appeared on every desk, marched around the screen quickly, then disappeared. The boys laughed together.

“What’s so funny?” Bernard asked. Ender made sure he was not smiling when Bernard looked around the room, imitating the fear that so many others felt. Shen, of course, smiled all the more defiantly. It took a moment; then Bernard told one of his boys to bring out a desk. Together they read the message.

COVER YOUR BUTT. BERNARD IS WATCHING.
—GOD

Bernard went red with anger. “Who did this!” he shouted.

“God,” said Shen.

“It sure as hell wasn’t you,” Bernard said. “This takes too much brains for a worm.”

Ender’s message expired after five minutes. After a while, a message from Bernard appeared on his desk.

I KNOW IT WAS YOU.
—BERNARD.

Ender didn’t look up. He acted, in fact, as if he hadn’t seen the message. Bernard just wants to catch me looking guilty. He doesn’t know.

Of course, it didn’t matter if he knew. Bernard would punish him all the more, because he had to rebuild his position. The one thing he couldn’t stand was having the other boys laughing at him. He had to make clear who was boss. So Ender got knocked down in the shower that morning. One of Bernard’s boys pretended to trip over him, and managed to plant a knee in his belly. Ender took it in silence. He was still watching, as far as the open war was concerned. He would do nothing.

But in the other war, the war of desks, he already had his next attack in place. When he got back from the shower, Bernard was raging, kicking beds and yelling at boys. “I didn’t write it! Shut up!”

Marching constantly around every boy’s desk was this message:

I LOVE YOUR BUTT. LET ME KISS IT.
—BERNARD

“I didn’t write that message!” Bernard shouted. After the shouting had been going on for some time, Dap appeared at the door.

“What’s the fuss?” he asked.

“Somebody’s been writing messages using my name.” Bernard was sullen.

“What message?”

“It doesn’t matter what message!”

“It does to me.” Dap picked up the nearest desk, which happened to belong to the boy who bunked above Ender. Dap read it, smiled very slightly, gave back the desk.

“Interesting,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to find out who did it?” demanded Bernard.

“Oh, I know who did it,” Dap said.

Yes, Ender thought. The system was too easily broken. They mean us to break it, or sections of it. They know it was me.

“Well, who, then?” Bernard shouted.

“Are you shouting at me, soldier?” asked Dap, very softly.

At once the mood in the room changed. From rage on the part of Bernard’s closest friends and barely contained mirth among the rest, all became somber. Authority was about to speak.

“No, sir,” said Bernard.

“Everybody knows that the system automatically puts on the name of the sender.”

“I didn’t write that!” Bernard said.

“Shouting?” asked Dap.

“Yesterday someone sent a message that was signed GOD,” Bernard said.

“Really?” said Dap. “I didn’t know he was signed onto the system.” Dap turned and left, and the room filled with laughter.

Bernard’s attempt to be ruler of the room was broken—only a few stayed with him now. But they were the most vicious. And Ender knew that until he was through watching, it would go hard on him. Still, the tampering with the system had done its work. Bernard was contained, and all the boys who had some quality were free of him. Best of all, Ender had done it without sending him to the hospital. Much better this way.

Then he settled down to the serious business of designing a security system for his own desk, since the safeguards built into the system were obviously inadequate. If a six-year-old could break them down, they were obviously put there as a plaything, not serious security. Just another game that the teachers set up for us. And this is one I’m good at.

“How did you do that?” Shen asked him at breakfast.

Ender noted quietly that this was the first time another Launchy from his own class had sat with him at a meal. “Do what?” he asked.

“Send a message with a fake name. And Bernard’s name! That was great. They’re calling him Buttwatcher now. Just Watcher in front of the teachers, but everybody knows what he’s watching.”

“Poor Bernard,” Ender murmured. “And he’s so sensitive.”

“Come on, Ender. You broke into the system. How’d you do it?”

Ender shook his head and smiled. “Thanks for thinking I’m bright enough to do that. I just happened to see it first, that’s all.”

“OK, you don’t have to tell me,” said Shen. “Still, it was great.” They ate in silence for a moment. “Do I wiggle my butt when I walk?”

“Naw,” Ender said. “Just a little. Just don’t take such big long steps, that’s all.”

Shen nodded.

“The only person who’d ever notice was Bernard.”

“He’s a pig,” said Shen.

Ender shrugged. “On the whole, pigs aren’t so bad.”

Shen laughed. “You’re right. I wasn’t being fair to the pigs.”

They laughed together, and two other Launchies joined them. Ender’s isolation was over. The war was just beginning.

6

THE GIANT’S DRINK

“We’ve had our disappointments in the past, hanging on for years, hoping they’ll pull through, and then they don’t. Nice thing about Ender, he’s determined to ice within the first six months.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t you see what’s going on here? He’s stuck at the Giant’s Drink in the mind game. Is the boy suicidal? You never mentioned it.”

“Everybody gets the Giant sometime.”

“But Ender won’t leave it alone. Like Pinual.”

“Everybody looks like Pinual at one time or another. But he’s the only one who killed himself. I don’t think it had anything to do with the Giant’s Drink.”

“You’re betting my life on that. And look what he’s done with his launch group.”

“Wasn’t his fault, you know.”

“I don’t care. His fault or not, he’s poisoning that group. They’re supposed to bond, and right where he stands there’s a chasm a mile wide.”

“I don’t plan to leave him there very long, anyway.”

“Then you’d better plan again. That launch is sick, and he’s the source of the disease. He stays till it’s cured.”

“I was the source of the disease. I was isolating him, and it worked.”

“Give him time with the group. To see what he does with it.”

“We don’t have time.”

“We don’t have time to rush too fast with a kid who has as much chance of being a monster as a military genius.”

“Is this an order?”

“The recorder’s on, it’s always on, your ass is covered, go to hell.”

“If it’s an order, then I’ll—”

“It’s an order. Hold him where he is until we see how he handles things in his launch group. Graff, you give me ulcers.”

“You wouldn’t have ulcers if you’d leave the school to me and take care of the fleet yourself.”

“The fleet is looking for a battle commander. There’s nothing to take care of until you get me that.”

They filed clumsily into the battleroom, like children in a swimming pool for the first time, clinging to the handholds along the side. Null gravity was frightening, disorienting; they soon found that things went better if they didn’t use their feet at all.

Worse, the suits were confining. It was harder to make precise movements, since the suits bent just a bit slower, resisted a bit more than any clothing they had ever worn before.

Ender gripped the handhold and flexed his knees. He noticed that along with the sluggishness, the suit had an amplifying effect on movement. It was hard to get them started, but the suit’s legs kept moving, and strongly, after his muscles had stopped. Give them a push this strong, and the suit pushes with twice the force. I’ll be clumsy for a while. Better get started.

So, still grasping the handhold, he pushed off strongly with his feet.

Instantly he flipped around, his feet flying over his head, and landed flat on his back against the wall. The rebound was stronger, it seemed, and his hands tore loose from the handhold. He flew across the battleroom, tumbling over and over.

For a sickening moment he tried to retain his old up-and-down orientation, his body attempting to right itself, searching for the gravity that wasn’t there. Then he forced himself to change his view. He was hurtling toward a wall. That was down. And at once he had control of himself. He wasn’t flying, he was falling. This was a dive. He could choose how he would hit the surface.

I’m going too fast to catch ahold and stay, but I can soften the impact, I can fly off at an angle if I roll when I hit and use my feet—

It didn’t work at all the way he had planned. He went off at an angle, but it was not the one he had predicted. Nor did he have time to consider. He hit another wall, this time too soon to have prepared for it. But quite accidently he discovered a way to use his feet to control the rebound angle. Now he was soaring across the room again, toward the other boys who still clung to the wall. This time he had slowed enough to be able to grip a rung. He was at a crazy angle in relation to the other boys, but once again his orientation had changed, and as far as he could tell, they were all lying on the floor, not hanging on a wall, and he was no more upside down than they were.

“What are you trying to do, kill yourself?” asked Shen.

“Try it,” Ender said. “The suit keeps you from hurting yourself, and you can control your bouncing with your legs, like this.” He approximated the movement he had made.

Shen shook his head—he wasn’t trying any fool stunt like that. But one boy did take off, not as fast as Ender had, because he didn’t begin with a flip, but fast enough. Ender didn’t even have to see his face to know that it was Bernard. And right after him, Bernard’s best friend, Alai.

Ender watched them cross the huge room, Bernard struggling to orient himself to the direction he thought of as the floor, Alai surrendering to the movement and preparing to rebound from the wall. No wonder Bernard broke his arm in the shuttle, Ender thought. He tightens up when he’s flying. He panics. Ender stored the information away for future reference.

And another bit of information, too. Alai did not push off in the same direction as Bernard. He aimed for a corner of the room. Their paths diverged more and more as they flew, and where Bernard made a clumsy, crunching landing and bounce on his wall, Alai did a glancing triple bounce on three surfaces near the corner that left him most of his speed and sent him flying off at a surprising angle. Alai shouted and whooped, and so did the boys watching him. Some of them forgot they were weightless and let go of the wall to clap their hands. Now they drifted lazily in many directions, waving their arms, trying to swim.

Now, that’s a problem, thought Ender. What if you catch yourself drifting? There’s no way to push off.

He was tempted to set himself adrift and try to solve the problem by trial and error. But he could see the others, their useless efforts at control, and he couldn’t think of what he would do that they weren’t already doing.

Holding onto the floor with one hand, he fiddled idly with the toy gun that was attached to his suit in front, just below the shoulder. Then he remembered the hand rockets sometimes used by marines when they did a boarding assault on an enemy station. He pulled the gun from his suit and examined it. He had pushed all the buttons back in the room, but the gun did nothing there. Maybe here in the battleroom it would work. There were no instructions on it. No labels on the controls. The trigger was obvious—he had had toy guns, as all children had, almost since infancy. There were two buttons that his thumb could easily reach, and several others along the bottom of the shaft that were almost inaccessible without using two hands. Obviously, the two buttons near his thumb were meant to be instantly usable.

He aimed the gun at the floor and pulled back on the trigger. He felt the gun grow instantly warm; when he let go of the trigger, it cooled at once. Also, a tiny circle of light appeared on the floor where he was aiming.

He thumbed the red button at the top of the gun, and pulled the trigger again. Same thing.

Then he pushed the white button. It gave a bright flash of light that illuminated a wide area, but not as intensely. The gun was quite cold when the button was pressed.

The red button makes it like a laser—but it is not a laser, Dap had said—while the white button makes it a lamp. Neither will be much help when it comes to maneuvering.

So everything depends on how you push off, the course you set when you start. It means we’re going to have to get very good at controlling our launches and rebounds or we’re all going to end up floating around in the middle of nowhere. Ender looked around the room. A few of the boys were drifting close to walls now, flailing their arms to catch a handhold. Most were bumping into each other and laughing; some were holding hands and going around in circles. Only a few, like Ender, were calmly holding onto the walls and watching.

One of them, he saw, was Alai. He had ended up on another wall not too far from Ender. On impulse, Ender pushed off and moved quickly toward Alai. Once in the air, he wondered what he would say. Alai was Bernard’s friend. What did Ender have to say to him?

Still, there was no changing course now. So he watched straight ahead, and practiced making tiny leg and hand movements to control which way he was facing as he drifted. Too late, he realized that he had aimed too well. He was not going to land near Alai—he was going to hit him.

“Here, snag my hand!” Alai called.

Ender held out his hand. Alai took the shock of impact and helped Ender make a fairly gentle landing against the wall.

“That’s good,” Ender said. “We ought to practice that kind of thing.”

“That’s what I thought, only everybody’s turning to butter out there,” Alai said. “What happens if we get out there together? We should be able to shove each other in opposite directions.”

“Yeah.”

“OK?”

It was an admission that all might not be right between them. Is it OK for us to do something together? Ender’s answer was to take Alai by the wrist and get ready to push off.

“Ready?” said Alai. “Go.”

Since they pushed off with different amounts of force, they began to circle each other. Ender made some small hand movements, then shifted a leg. They slowed. He did it again. They stopped orbiting. Now they were drifting evenly.

“Packed head, Ender,” Alai said. It was high praise. “Let’s push off before we run into that bunch.”

“And then let’s meet over in that corner.” Ender did not want this bridge into the enemy camp to fail.

“Last one there saves farts in a milk bottle,” Alai said.

Then, slowly, steadily, they maneuvered until they faced each other, spread-eagled, hand to hand, knee to knee.

“And then we just scrunch?” asked Alai.

“I’ve never done this before either,” said Ender.

They pushed off. It propelled them faster than they expected. Ender ran into a couple of boys and ended up on a wall that he hadn’t expected. It took him a moment to reorient and find the corner where he and Alai were to meet. Alai was already headed toward it. Ender plotted a course that would include two rebounds, to avoid the largest clusters of boys.

When Ender reached the corner, Alai had hooked his arms through two adjacent handholds and was pretending to doze.

“You win.”

“I want to see your fart collection,” Alai said.

“I stored it in your locker. Didn’t you notice?”

“I thought it was my socks.”

“We don’t wear socks anymore.”

“Oh yeah.” A reminder that they were both far from home. It took some of the fun out of having mastered a bit of navigation.

Ender took his pistol and demonstrated what he had learned about the two thumb buttons.

“What does it do when you aim at a person?” asked Alai.

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t we find out?”

Ender shook his head. “We might hurt somebody.”

“I meant why don’t we shoot each other in the foot or something. I’m not Bernard, I never tortured cats for fun.”

“Oh.”

“It can’t be too dangerous, or they wouldn’t give these guns to kids.”

“We’re soldiers now.”

“Shoot me in the foot.”

“No, you shoot me.”

“Let’s shoot each other.”

They did. Immediately Ender felt the leg of the suit grow stiff, immobile at the knee and ankle joints.

“You frozen?” asked Alai.

“Stiff as a board.”

“Let’s freeze a few,” Alai said. “Let’s have our first war. Us against them.”

They grinned. Then Ender said, “Better invite Bernard.”

Alai cocked an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“And Shen.”

“That little slanty-eyed butt-wiggler?”

Ender decided that Alai was joking. “Hey, we can’t all be niggers.”

Alai grinned. “My grandpa would’ve killed you for that.”

“My great great grandpa would have sold him first.”

“Let’s go get Bernard and Shen and freeze these bugger-lovers.”

In twenty minutes, everyone in the room was frozen except Ender, Bernard, Shen, and Alai. The four of them sat there whooping and laughing until Dap came in.

“I see you’ve learned how to use your equipment,” he said. Then he did something to a control he held in his hand. Everybody drifted slowly toward the wall he was standing on. He went among the frozen boys, touching them and thawing their suits. There was a tumult of complaint that it wasn’t fair how Bernard and Alai had shot them all when they weren’t ready.

“Why weren’t you ready?” asked Dap. “You had your suits just as long as they did. You had just as many minutes flapping around like drunken ducks. Stop moaning and we’ll begin.”

Ender noticed that it was assumed that Bernard and Alai were the leaders of the battle. Well, that was fine. Bernard knew that Ender and Alai had learned to use the guns together. And Ender and Alai were friends. Now others might believe that Ender had joined his group, but it wasn’t so. Ender had joined a new group. Alai’s group. Bernard had joined it too.

It wasn’t obvious to everyone; Bernard still blustered and sent his cronies on errands. But Alai now moved freely through the whole room, and when Bernard was crazy, Alai could joke a little and calm him down. When it came time to choose their launch leader, Alai was the almost unanimous choice. Bernard sulked for a few days and then he was fine, and everyone settled into the new pattern. The launch was no longer divided into Bernard’s in-group and Ender’s outcasts. Alai was the bridge.

Ender sat on his bed with his desk on his knees. It was private study time, and Ender was doing Free Play. It was a shifting, crazy kind of game in which the school computer kept bringing up new things, building a maze that you could explore. You could go back to events that you liked, for a while; if you left one alone too long, it disappeared and something else took its place.

Sometimes they were funny things. Sometimes exciting ones, and he had to be quick to stay alive. He had lots of deaths, but that was OK, games were like that, you died a lot until you got the hang of it.

His figure on the screen had started out as a little boy. For a while it had changed into a bear. Now it was a large mouse, with long and delicate hands. He ran his figure under a lot of large items of furniture depicted on the screen. He had played with the cat a lot, but now it was boring—too easy to dodge, he knew all the furniture.

Not through the mousehole this time, he told himself. I’m sick of the Giant. It’s a dumb game and I can’t ever win. Whatever I choose is wrong.

But he went through the mousehole anyway, and over the small bridge in the garden. He avoided the ducks and the divebombing mosquitoes—he had tried playing with them but they were too easy, and if he played with the ducks too long he turned into a fish, which he didn’t like. Being a fish reminded him too much of being frozen in the battleroom, his whole body rigid, waiting for the practice to end so Dap would thaw him. So, as usual, he found himself going up the rolling hills.

The landslides began. At first he had got caught again and again, crushed in an exaggerated blot of gore oozing out from under a rockpile. Now, though, he had mastered the skill of running up the slopes at an angle to avoid the crush, always seeking higher ground.

And, as always, the landslides finally stopped being jumbles of rock. The face of the hill broke open and instead of shale it was white bread, puffy, rising like dough as the crust broke away and fell. It was soft and spongy; his figure moved more slowly. And when he jumped down off the bread, he was standing on a table. Giant loaf of bread behind him; giant stick of butter beside him. And the Giant himself leaning his chin in his hands, looking at him. Ender’s figure was about as tall as the Giant’s head from chin to brow.

“I think I’ll bite your head off,” said the Giant, as he always did.

This time, instead of running away or standing there, Ender walked his figure up to the Giant’s face and kicked him in the chin.

The Giant stuck out his tongue and Ender fell to the ground.

“How about a guessing game?” asked the Giant. So it didn’t make any difference—the Giant only played the guessing game. Stupid computer. Millions of possible scenarios in its memory, and the Giant could only play one stupid game.

The Giant, as always, set two huge shot glasses, as tall as Ender’s knees, on the table in front of him. As always, the two were filled with different liquids. The computer was good enough that the liquids had never repeated, not that he could remember. This time the one had a thick, creamy looking liquid. The other hissed and foamed.

“One is poison and one is not,” said the Giant. “Guess right and I’ll take you into Fairyland.”

Guessing meant sticking his head into one of the glasses to drink. He never guessed right. Sometimes his head was dissolved. Sometimes he caught on fire. Sometimes he fell in and drowned. Sometimes he fell out, turned green, and rotted away. It was always ghastly, and the Giant always laughed.

Ender knew that whatever he chose he would die. The game was rigged. On the first death, his figure would reappear on the Giant’s table, to play again. On the second death, he’d come back to the landslides. Then to the garden bridge. Then to the mousehole. And then, if he still went back to the Giant and played again, and died again, his desk would go dark, “Free Play Over” would march around the desk, and Ender would lie back on his bed and tremble until he could finally go to sleep. The game was rigged but still the Giant talked about Fairyland, some stupid childish three-year-old’s Fairyland that probably had some stupid Mother Goose or Pac-Man or Peter Pan, it wasn’t even worth getting to, but he had to find some way of beating the Giant to get there.

He drank the creamy liquid. Immediately he began to inflate and rise like a balloon. The Giant laughed. He was dead again.

He played again, and this time the liquid set, like concrete, and held his head down while the Giant cut him open along the spine, deboned him like a fish, and began to eat while his arms and legs quivered.

He reappeared at the landslides and decided not to go on. He even let the landslides cover him once. But even though he was sweating and he felt cold, with his next life he went back up the hills till they turned into bread, and stood on the Giant’s table as the shot glasses were set before him.

He stared at the two liquids. The one foaming, the other with waves in it like the sea. He tried to guess what kind of death each one held. Probably a fish will come out of the ocean one and eat me. The foamy one will probably asphyxiate me. I hate this game. It isn’t fair. It’s stupid. It’s rotten.

And instead of pushing his face into one of the liquids, he kicked one over, then the other, and dodged the Giant’s huge hands as the Giant shouted, “Cheater, cheater!” He jumped at the Giant’s face, clambered up his lip and nose, and began to dig in the Giant’s eye. The stuff came away like cottage cheese, and as the Giant screamed, Ender’s figure burrowed into the eye, climbed right in, burrowed in and in.

The Giant fell over backward. The view shifted as he fell, and when the Giant came to rest on the ground, there were intricate, lacy trees all around. A bat flew up and landed on the dead Giant’s nose. Ender brought his figure up out of the Giant’s eye.

“How did you get here?” the bat asked. “Nobody ever comes here.”

Ender could not answer, of course. So he reached down, took a handful of the Giant’s eyestuff, and offered it to the bat.

The bat took it and flew off, shouting as it went, “Welcome to Fairyland.”

He had made it. He ought to explore. He ought to climb down from the Giant’s face and see what he had finally achieved.

Instead he signed off, put his desk in his locker, stripped off his clothes and pulled his blanket over him. He hadn’t meant to kill the Giant. This was supposed to be a game. Not a choice between his own grisly death and an even worse murder. I’m a murderer, even when I play. Peter would be proud of me.

7

SALAMANDER

“Isn’t it nice to know that Ender can do the impossible?”

“The player’s deaths have always been sickening, I’ve always thought the Giant’s Drink was the most perverted part of the whole mind game, but going for the eye like that—this is the one we want to put in command of our fleet?”

“What matters is that he won the game that couldn’t be won.”

“I suppose you’ll move him now.”

“We were waiting to see how he handled the thing with Bernard. He handled it perfectly.”

“So as soon as he can cope with a situation, you move him to one he can’t cope with. Doesn’t he get any rest?”

“He’ll have a month or two, maybe three, with his launch group. That’s really quite a long time in a child’s life.”

“Does it ever seem to you that these boys aren’t children? I look at what they do, the way they talk, and they don’t seem like little kids.”

“They’re the most brilliant children in the world, each in his own way.”

“But shouldn’t they still act like children? They aren’t normal. They act like—history. Napoleon and Wellington. Caesar and Brutus.”

“We’re trying to save the world, not heal the wounded heart. You’re too compassionate.”

“General Levy has no pity for anyone. All the videos say so. But don’t hurt this boy.”

“Are you joking?”

“I mean, don’t hurt him more than you have to.”

Alai sat across from Ender at dinner. “I finally figured out how you sent that message. Using Bernard’s name.”

“Me?” asked Ender.

“Come on, who else? It sure wasn’t Bernard. And Shen isn’t too hot on the computer. And I know it wasn’t me. Who else? Doesn’t matter. I figured out how to fake a new student entry. You just created a student named Bernard-blank, B-E-R-N-A-R-D-space, so the computer didn’t kick it out as a repeat of another student.”

“Sounds like that might work,” said Ender.

“OK, OK. It does work. But you did that practically on the first day.”

“Or somebody. Maybe Dap did it, to keep Bernard from getting too much control.”

“I found something else. I can’t do it with your name.”

“Oh?”

“Anything with Ender in it gets kicked out. I can’t get inside your files at all, either. You made your own security system.”

“Maybe.”

Alai grinned. “I just got in and trashed somebody’s files. He’s right behind me on cracking the system. I need protection, Ender. I need your system.”

“If I give you my system, you’ll know how I do it and you’ll get in and trash me.”

“You say me?” Alai asked. “I the sweetest friend you got!”

Ender laughed. “I’ll set up a system for you.”

“Now?”

“Can I finish eating?”

“You never finish eating.”

It was true. Ender’s tray always had food on it after a meal. Ender looked at the plate and decided he was through. “Let’s go then.”

When they got to the barracks, Ender squatted down by his bed and said, “Get your desk and bring it over here, I’ll show you how.” But when Alai brought his desk to Ender’s bed, Ender was just sitting there, his lockers still closed.

“What up?” asked Alai.

In answer, Ender palmed his locker. “Unauthorized Access Attempt,” it said. It didn’t open.

“Somebody done a dance on your head, mama,” Alai said. “Somebody eated your face.”

“You sure you want my security system now?” Ender got up and walked away from his bed.

“Ender,” said Alai.

Ender turned around. Alai was holding a little piece of paper.

“What is it?”

Alai looked up at him. “Don’t you know? This was on your bed. You must have sat on it.”

Ender took it from him.

ENDER WIGGIN
ASSIGNED SALAMANDER ARMY
COMMANDER BONZO MADRID
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY
CODE GREEN GREEN BROWN
NO POSSESSIONS TRANSFERRED

“You’re smart, Ender, but you don’t do the battleroom any better than me.”

Ender shook his head. It was the stupidest thing he could think of, to promote him now. Nobody got promoted before they were eight years old. Ender wasn’t even seven yet. And launches usually moved into the armies together, with most armies getting a new kid at the same time. There were no transfer slips on any of the other beds.

Just when things were finally coming together. Just when Bernard was getting along with everybody, even Ender. Just when Ender was beginning to make a real friend out of Alai. Just when his life was finally getting livable.

Ender reached down to pull Alai up from the bed.

“Salamander Army’s in contention, anyway,” Alai said.

Ender was so angry at the unfairness of the transfer that tears were coming to his eyes. Mustn’t cry, he told himself.

Alai saw the tears but had the grace not to say so. “They’re fartheads, Ender, they won’t even let you take anything you own.”

Ender grinned and didn’t cry after all. “Think I should strip and go naked?”

Alai laughed, too.

On impulse Ender hugged him, tight, almost as if he were Valentine. He even thought of Valentine then and wanted to go home. “I don’t want to go,” he said.

Alai hugged him back. “I understand them, Ender. You are the best of us. Maybe they in a hurry to teach you everything.”

“They don’t want to teach me everything,” Ender said. “I wanted to learn what it was like to have a friend.”

Alai nodded soberly. “Always my friend, always the best of my friends,” he said. Then he grinned. “Go slice up the buggers.”

“Yeah.” Ender smiled back.

Alai suddenly kissed Ender on the cheek and whispered in his ear, “Salaam.” Then, red-faced, he turned away and walked to his own bed at the back of the barracks. Ender guessed that the kiss and the word were somehow forbidden. A suppressed religion, perhaps. Or maybe the word had some private and powerful meaning for Alai alone. Whatever it meant to Alai, Ender knew that it was sacred; that he had uncovered himself for Ender, as once Ender’s mother had done, when he was very young, before they put the monitor in his neck, and she had put her hands on his head when she thought he was asleep, and prayed over him. Ender had never spoken of that to anyone, not even to Mother, but had kept it as a memory of holiness, of how his mother loved him when she thought that no one, not even he, could see or hear. That was what Alai had given him; a gift so sacred that even Ender could not be allowed to understand what it meant.

After such a thing nothing could be said. Alai reached his bed and turned around to see Ender. Their eyes held for only a moment, locked in understanding. Then Ender left.

There would be no green green brown in this part of the school; he would have to pick up the colors in one of the public areas. The others would be finished with dinner very soon; he didn’t want to go near the mess hall. The game room would be nearly empty.

None of the games appealed to him, the way he felt now. So he went to the bank of public desks at the back of the room and signed on to his own private game. He went quickly to Fairyland. The Giant was dead when he arrived now; he had to climb carefully down the table, jump to the leg of the Giant’s overturned chair, and then make the drop to the ground. For a while there had been rats gnawing at the Giant’s body, but Ender had killed one with a pin from the Giant’s ragged shirt, and they had left him alone after that.

The Giant’s corpse had essentially finished its decay. What could be torn by the small scavengers was torn; the maggots had done their work on the organs; now it was a desiccated mummy, hollowed-out, teeth in a rigid grin, eyes empty, fingers curled. Ender remembered burrowing through the eye when it had been alive and malicious and intelligent. Angry and frustrated as he was, Ender wished to do such violence again. But the Giant had become part of the landscape now, and so there could be no rage against him.

Ender had always gone over the bridge to the castle of the Queen of Hearts, where there were games enough for him; but none of those appealed to him now. He went around the giant’s corpse and followed the brook upstream, to where it emerged from the forest. There was a playground there, slides and monkeybars, teeter-totters and merry-go-rounds, with a dozen children laughing as they played. Ender came and found that in the game he had become a child, though usually his figure in the games was adult. In fact, he was smaller than the other children.

He got in line for the slide. The other children ignored him. He climbed up to the top, watched the boy before him whirl down the long spiral to the ground. Then he sat and began to slide.

He had not slid for a moment when he fell right through the slide and landed on the ground under the ladder. The slide would not hold him.

Neither would the monkey bars. He could climb a ways, but then at random a bar seemed to be insubstantial and he fell. He could sit on the seesaw until he rose to the apex; then he fell. When the merry-go-round went fast, he could not hold onto any of the bars, and centrifugal force hurled him off.

And the other children: their laughter was raucous, offensive. They circled around him and pointed and laughed for many seconds before they went back to their play.

Ender wanted to hit them, to throw them in the brook. Instead he walked into the forest. He found a path, which soon became an ancient brick road, much overgrown with weeds but still usable. There were hints of possible games off to either side, but Ender followed none of them. He wanted to see where the path led.

It led to a clearing, with a well in the middle, and a sign that said, “Drink, Traveler.” Ender went forward and looked at the well. Almost at once, he heard a snarl. Out of the woods emerged a dozen slavering wolves with human faces. Ender recognized them—they were the children from the playground. Only now their teeth could tear; Ender, weaponless, was quickly devoured.

His next figure appeared, as usual, in the same spot, and was eaten again, though Ender tried to climb down into the well.

The next appearance, though, was at the playground. Again the children laughed at him. Laugh all you like, Ender thought. I know what you are. He pushed one of them. She followed him, angry. Ender led her up the slide. Of course he fell through; but this time, following so closely behind him, she also fell through. When she hit the ground, she turned into a wolf and lay there, dead or stunned.

One by one Ender led each of the others into a trap. But before he had finished off the last of them, the wolves began reviving, and were no longer children. Ender was torn apart again.

This time, shaking and sweating, Ender found his figure revived on the Giant’s table. I should quit, he told himself. I should go to my new army.

But instead he made his figure drop down from the table and walk around the Giant’s body to the playground.

This time, as soon as the child hit the ground and turned into a wolf, Ender dragged the body to the brook and pulled it in. Each time, the body sizzled as though the water were acid; the wolf was consumed, and a dark cloud of smoke arose and drifted away. The children were easily dispatched, though they began following him in twos and threes at the end. Ender found no wolves waiting for him in the clearing, and he lowered himself into the well on the bucket rope.

The light in the cavern was dim, but he could see piles of jewels. He passed them by, noting that, behind him, eyes glinted among the gems. A table covered with food did not interest him. He passed through a group of cages hanging from the ceiling of the cave, each containing some exotic, friendly-looking creature. I’ll play with you later, Ender thought. At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds:

THE END OF THE WORLD

He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.

He stood on a small ledge, high on a cliff overlooking a terrain of bright and deep green forest with dashes of autumn color and patches here and there of cleared land, with oxdrawn plows and small villages, a castle on a rise in the distance, and clouds riding currents of air below him. Above him, the sky was the ceiling of a vast cavern, with crystals dangling in bright stalactites.

The door closed behind him; Ender studied the scene intently. With the beauty of it, he cared less for survival than usual. He cared little, at the moment, what the game of this place might be. He had found it, and seeing it was its own reward. And so, with no thought of consequences, he jumped from the ledge.

Now he plummeted downward toward a roiling river and savage rocks; but a cloud came between him and the ground as he fell, and caught him, and carried him away. It took him to the tower of the castle, and through the open window, bearing him in. There it left him, in a room with no apparent door in floor or ceiling, and windows looking out over a certainly fatal fall.

A moment ago he had thrown himself from a ledge carelessly; this time he hesitated.

The small rug before the fire unraveled itself into a long, slender serpent with wicked teeth.

“I am your only escape,” it said. “Death is your only escape.”

Ender looked around the room for a weapon, when suddenly the screen went dark. Words flashed around the rim of the desk.

REPORT TO COMMANDER IMMEDIATELY.
YOU ARE LATE.
GREEN GREEN BROWN.

Furious, Ender snapped off the desk and went to the color wall, where he found the ribbon of green green brown, touched it, and followed it as it lit up before him. The dark green, light green, and brown of the ribbon reminded him of the early autumn kingdom he had found in the game. I must go back there, he told himself. The serpent is a long thread; I can let myself down from the tower and find my way through that place. Perhaps it’s called the end of the world because it’s the end of the games, because I can go to one of the villages and become one of the little boys working and playing there, with nothing to kill and nothing to kill me, just living there.

As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what “just living” might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.

Armies were larger than launch groups, and the army barracks room was larger, too. It was long and narrow, with bunks on both sides; so long, in fact, that you could see the curvature of the floor as the far end bent upward, part of the wheel of the Battle School.

Ender stood at the door. A few boys near the door glanced at him, but they were older, and it seemed as though they hadn’t even seen him. They went on with their conversations, lying and leaning on bunks. They were discussing battles, of course—the older boys always did. They were all much larger than Ender. The ten- and eleven-year-olds towered over him; even the youngest were eight, and Ender was not large for his age.

He tried to see which of the boys was the commander, but most were somewhere between battle dress and what the soldiers always called their sleep uniform—skin from head to toe. Many of them had desks out, but few were studying.

Ender stepped into the room. The moment he did, he was noticed.

“What do you want?” demanded the boy who had the upper bunk by the door. He was the largest of them. Ender had noticed him before, a young giant who had whiskers growing raggedly on his chin. “You’re not a Salamander.”

“I’m supposed to be, I think,” Ender said. “Green green brown, right? I was transferred.” He showed the boy, obviously the doorguard, his paper.

The doorguard reached for it. Ender withdrew it, just out of reach. “I’m supposed to give it to Bonzo Madrid.”

Now another boy joined the conversation, a smaller boy, but still larger than Ender. “Not bahn-zoe, pisshead. Bone-So. The name’s Spanish. Bonzo Madrid. Aqui nosotros hablamos español, Señor Gran Fedor.”

“You must be Bonzo, then?” Ender asked, pronouncing the name correctly.

“No, just a brilliant and talented polyglot. Petra Arkanian. The only girl in Salamander Army. With more balls than anybody else in the room.”

“Mother Petra she talking,” said one of the boys, “she talking, she talking.”

Another one chimed in. “Shit talking, shit talking, shit talking!”

Quite a few laughed.

“Just between you and me,” Petra said, “if they gave the Battle School an enema, they’d stick it in at green green brown.”

Ender despaired. He already had nothing going for him—grossly under-trained, small, inexperienced, doomed to be resented for early advancement. And now, by chance, he had made exactly the wrong friend. An outcast in Salamander Army, and she had just linked him with her in the minds of the rest of the army. A good day’s work. For a moment, as Ender looked around at the laughing, jeering faces, he imagined their bodies covered with hair, their teeth pointed for tearing. Am I the only human being in this place? Are all the others animals, waiting only to devour?

Then he remembered Alai. In every army, surely, there was at least one worth knowing.

Suddenly, though no one said to be quiet, the laughter stopped and the group fell silent. Ender turned to the door. A boy stood there, tall and slender, with beautiful black eyes and slender lips that hinted at refinement. I would follow such beauty, said something inside Ender. I would see as those eyes see.

“Who are you?” asked the boy quietly.

“Ender Wiggin, sir,” Ender said. “Reassigned from launch to Salamander Army.” He held out the orders.

The boy took the paper in a swift, sure movement, without touching Ender’s hand. “How old are you, Wiggin?” he asked.

“Almost seven.”

Still quietly, he said, “I asked how old you are, not how old you almost are.”

“I am six years, nine months, and twelve days old.”

“How long have you been working in the battleroom?”

“A few months, now. My aim is better.”

“Any training in battle maneuvers? Have you ever been part of a toon? Have you ever carried out a joint exercise?”

Ender had never heard of such things. He shook his head.

Madrid looked at him steadily. “I see. As you will quickly learn, the officers in command of this school, most notably Major Anderson, who runs the game, are fond of playing tricks. Salamander Army is just beginning to emerge from indecent obscurity. We have won twelve of our last twenty games. We have surprised Rat and Scorpion and Hound, and we are ready to play for leadership in the game. So of course, of course I am given such a useless, untrained, hopeless specimen of underdevelopment as yourself.”

Petra said, quietly, “He isn’t glad to meet you.”

“Shut up, Arkanian,” Madrid said. “To one trial, we now add another. But whatever obstacles our officers choose to fling in our path, we are still—”

“Salamander!” cried the soldiers, in one voice.

Instinctively, Ender’s perception of these events changed. It was a pattern, a ritual. Madrid was not trying to hurt him, merely taking control of a surprising event and using it to strengthen his control of his army.

“We are the fire that will consume them, belly and bowel, head and heart, many flames of us, but one fire.”

“Salamander!” they cried again.

“Even this one will not weaken us.”

For a moment, Ender allowed himself to hope. “I’ll work hard and learn quickly,” he said.

“I didn’t give you permission to speak,” Madrid answered. “I intend to trade you away as quickly as I can. I’ll probably have to give up someone valuable along with you, but as small as you are you are worse than useless. One more frozen, inevitably, in every battle, that’s all you are, and we’re now at a point where every frozen soldier makes a difference in the standings. Nothing personal, Wiggin, but I’m sure you can get your training at someone else’s expense.”

“He’s all heart,” Petra said.

Madrid stepped closer to the girl and slapped her across the face with the back of his hand. It made little sound, for only his fingernails had hit her. But there were bright red marks, four of them, on her cheek, and little pricks of blood marked where the tips of his fingernails had struck.

“Here are your instructions, Wiggin. I expect that it is the last time I’ll need to speak to you. You will stay out of the way when we’re training in the battleroom. You have to be there, of course, but you will not belong to any toon and you will not take part in any maneuvers. When we’re called to battle, you will dress quickly and present yourself at the gate with everyone else. But you will not pass through the gate until four full minutes after the beginning of the game, and then you will remain at the gate, with your weapons undrawn and unfired, until such time as the game ends.”

Ender nodded. So he was to be a nothing. He hoped the trade happened soon.

He also noticed that Petra did not so much as cry out in pain, or touch her cheek, though one spot of blood had beaded and run, making a streak down to her jaw. Outcast she may be, but since Bonzo Madrid was not going to be Ender’s friend, no matter what, he might as well make friends with Petra.

He was assigned a bunk at the far end of the room. The upper bunk, so that when he lay on his bed he couldn’t even see the door: The curve of the ceiling blocked it. There were other boys near him, tired-looking boys, sullen, the ones least valued. They had nothing of welcome to say to Ender.

Ender tried to palm his locker open, but nothing happened. Then he realized the lockers were not secured. All four of them had rings on them, to pull them open. Nothing would be private, then, now that he was in an army.

There was a uniform in the locker. Not the pale green of the Launchies, but the orange-trimmed dark green of Salamander Army. It did not fit well. But then, they had probably never had to provide such a uniform for a boy so young.

He was starting to take it off when he noticed Petra walking down the aisle toward his bed. He slid off the bunk and stood on the floor to greet her.

“Relax,” she said. “I’m not an officer.”

“You’re a toon leader, aren’t you?”

Someone nearby snickered.

“Whatever gave you that idea, Wiggin?”

“You have a bunk in the front.”

“I bunk in the front because I’m the best sharpshooter in Salamander Army, and because Bonzo is afraid I’ll start a revolution if the toon leaders don’t keep an eye on me. As if I could start anything with boys like these.” She indicated the sullen-faced boys on the nearby bunks.

What was she trying to do, make it worse than it already was? “Everybody’s better than I am,” Ender said, trying to dissociate himself from her contempt for the boys who would, after all, be his near bunkmates.

“I’m a girl,” she said, “and you’re a pissant of a six-year-old. We have so much in common, why don’t we be friends?”

“I won’t do your deskwork for you,” he said.

In a moment she realized it was a joke. “Ha,” she said. “It’s all so military, when you’re in the game. School for us isn’t like it is for Launchies. History and strategy and tactics and buggers and math and stars, things you’ll need as a pilot or a commander. You’ll see.”

“So you’re my friend. Do I get a prize?” Ender asked. He was imitating her swaggering way of speaking, as if she cared about nothing.

“Bonzo isn’t going to let you practice. He’s going to make you take your desk to the battleroom and study. He’s right, in a way—he don’t want a totally untrained little kid to screw up his precision maneuvers.” She lapsed into giria, the slangy talk that imitated the pidgin English of uneducated people. “Bonzo, he pre-cise. He so careful, he piss on a plate and never splash.”

Ender grinned.

“The battleroom is open all the time. If you want, I’ll take you in the off hours and show you some of the things I know. I’m not a great soldier, but I’m pretty good, and I sure know more than you.”

“If you want,” Ender said.

“Starting tomorrow morning after breakfast.”

“What if somebody’s using the room? We always went right after breakfast, in my launch.”

“No problem. There are really nine battlerooms.”

“I never heard of any others.”

“They all have the same entrance. The whole center of the battle school, the hub of the wheel, is battlerooms. They don’t rotate with the rest of the station. That’s how they do the nullo, the no-gravity—it just holds still. No spin, no down. But they can set it up so that any one of the rooms is at the battleroom entrance corridor that we all use. Once you’re inside, they move it along and another battleroom’s in position.”

“Oh.”

“Like I said. Right after breakfast.”

“Right,” Ender said.

She started to walk away.

“Petra,” he said.

She turned back.

“Thanks.”

She said nothing, just turned around again and walked down the aisle.

Ender climbed back up on his bunk and finished taking off his uniform. He lay naked on the bed, doodling with his new desk, trying to decide if they had done anything to his access codes. Sure enough, they had wiped out his security system. He couldn’t own anything here, not even his desk.

The lights dimmed a little. Getting toward bedtime. Ender didn’t know which bathroom to use.

“Go left out of the door,” said the boy on the next bunk. “We share it with Rat, Condor, and Squirrel.”

Ender thanked him and started to walk on past.

“Hey,” said the boy. “You can’t go like that. Uniforms at all times out of this room.”

“Even going to the toilet?”

“Especially. And you’re forbidden to speak to anyone from any other army. At meals or in the toilet. You can get away with it sometimes in the game room, and of course whenever a teacher tells you to. But if Bonzo catch you, you dead, eh?”

“Thanks.”

“And, uh, Bonzo get mad if you skin by Petra.”

“She was naked when I came in, wasn’t she?”

“She do what she like, but you keep you clothes on. Bonzo’s orders.”

That was stupid. Petra still looked like a boy, it was a stupid rule. It set her apart, made her different, split the army. Stupid stupid. How did Bonzo get to be a commander, if he didn’t know better than that? Alai would be a better commander than Bonzo. He knew how to bring a group together.

I know to bring a group together, too, thought Ender. Maybe I’ll be commander someday.

In the bathroom, he was washing his hands when somebody spoke to him. “Hey, they putting babies in Salamander uniforms now?”

Ender didn’t answer. Just dried off his hands.

“Hey, look! Salamander’s getting babies now! Look at this! He could walk between my legs without touching my balls!”

“Cause you got none, Dink, that’s why,” somebody answered.

As Ender left the room, he heard somebody else say, “It’s Wiggin. You know, the smartass Launchie from the game room.”

He walked down the corridor smiling. He may be short, but they knew his name. From the game room, of course, so it meant nothing. But they’d see. He’d be a good soldier, too. They’d all know his name soon enough. Not in Salamander Army, maybe, but soon enough.

Petra was waiting in the corridor that led to the battleroom. “Wait a minute,” she said to Ender. “Rabbit Army just went in, and it takes a few minutes to change to the next battleroom.”

Ender sat down beside her. “There’s more to the battleroom than just switching from one to the next,” he said. “For instance, why is there gravity in the corridor outside the room, just before we go in?”

Petra closed her eyes. “And if the battlerooms are really free-floating, what happens when one is connected? Why doesn’t it start to move with the rotation of the school?”

Ender nodded.

“These are the mysteries,” Petra said in a deep whisper. “Do not pry into them. Terrible things happened to the last soldier who tried. He was discovered hanging by his feet from the ceiling of the bathroom, with his head stuffed in the toilet.”

Of course she was joking, but the message was clear. “So I’m not the first person to ask the question.”

“You remember this, little boy.” When she said little boy it sounded friendly, not contemptuous. “They never tell you any more truth than they have to. But any kid with brains knows that there’ve been some changes in science since the days of old Mazer Rackham and the Victorious Fleet. Obviously we can now control gravity. Turn it on and off, change the direction, maybe reflect it—I’ve thought of lots of neat things you could do with gravity weapons and gravity drives on starships. And think how starships could move near planets. Maybe tear big chunks out of them by reflecting the planet’s own gravity back on itself, only from another direction, and focused down to a smaller point. But they say nothing.”

Ender understood more than she said. Manipulation of gravity was one thing; deception by the officers was another; but the most important message was this: the adults are the enemy, not the other armies. They do not tell us the truth.

“Come, little boy,” she said. “The battleroom is ready. Petra’s hands are steady. The enemy is deadly.” She giggled. “Petra the poet, they call me.”

“They also say you’re crazy as a loon.”

“Better believe it, baby butt.” She had ten target balls in a bag. Ender held onto her suit with one hand and the wall with the other, to steady her as she threw them, hard, in different directions. In the null gravity, they bounced every which way. “Let go of me,” she said. She shoved off, spinning deliberately; with a few deft hand moves she steadied herself, and began aiming carefully at ball after ball. When she shot one, its glow changed from white to red. Ender knew that the color change lasted less than two minutes. Only one ball had changed back to white when she got the last one.

She rebounded accurately from a wall and came at high speed back to Ender. He caught her and held her against her own rebound—one of the first techniques they had taught him as a Launchy.

“You’re good,” he said.

“None better. And you’re going to learn how to do it.”

Petra taught him to hold his arm straight, to aim with the whole arm. “Something most soldiers don’t realize is that the farther away your target is, the longer you have to hold the beam within about a two-centimeter circle. It’s the difference between a tenth of a second and a half a second, but in battle that’s a long time. A lot of soldiers think they missed when they were right on target, but they moved away too fast. So you can’t use your gun like a sword, swish swish slice-em-in-half. You got to aim.”

She used the ballcaller to bring the targets back, then launched them slowly, one by one. Ender fired at them. He missed every one.

“Good,” she said. “You don’t have any bad habits.”

“I don’t have any good ones, either,” he pointed out.

“I give you those.”

They didn’t accomplish much that first morning. Mostly talk. How to think while you were aiming. You’ve got to hold your own motion and your enemy’s motion in your mind at the same time. You’ve got to hold your arm straight out and aim with your body, so in case your arm is frozen you can still shoot. Learn where your trigger actually fires and ride the edge, so you don’t have to pull so far each time you fire. Relax your body, don’t tense up, it makes you tremble.

It was the only practice Ender got that day. During the army’s drills in the afternoon, Ender was ordered to bring his desk and do his schoolwork, sitting in a corner of the room. Bonzo had to bring all his soldiers to the battleroom, but he didn’t have to use them.

Ender did not do his schoolwork, however. If he couldn’t drill as a soldier, he could study Bonzo as a tactician. Salamander Army was divided into the standard four toons of ten soldiers each. Some commanders set up their toons so that A toon consisted of the best soldiers, and D toon had the worst. Bonzo had mixed them, so that each consisted of good soldiers and weaker ones.

Except that B toon had only nine boys. Ender wondered who had been transferred to make room for him. It soon became plain that the leader of toon B was new. No wonder Bonzo was so disgusted—he had lost a toon leader to get Ender.

And Bonzo was right about another thing. Ender was not ready. All the practice time was spent working on maneuvers. Toons that couldn’t see each other practiced performing precision operations together with exact timing; toons practiced using each other to make sudden changes of direction without losing formation. All these soldiers took for granted skills that Ender didn’t have. The ability to make a soft landing and absorb most of the shock. Accurate flight. Course adjustment using the frozen soldiers floating randomly through the room. Rolls, spins, dodges. Sliding along the walls—a very difficult maneuver and yet one of the most valuable, since the enemy couldn’t get behind you.

Even as Ender learned how much he did not know, he also saw things that he could improve on. The well-rehearsed formations were a mistake. It allowed the soldiers to obey shouted orders instantly, but it also meant they were predictable. Also, the individual soldiers were given little initiative. Once a pattern was set, they were to follow it through. There was no room for adjustment to what the enemy did against the formation. Ender studied Bonzo’s formations like an enemy commander would, noting ways to disrupt the formation.

During free play that night, Ender asked Petra to practice with him.

“No,” she said. “I want to be a commander someday, so I’ve got to play the game room.” It was a common belief that the teachers monitored the games and spotted potential commanders there. Ender doubted it, though. Toon leaders had a better chance to show what they might do as commanders than any video player.

But he didn’t argue with Petra. The after-breakfast practice was generous enough. Still, he had to practice. And he couldn’t practice alone, except a few of the basic skills. Most of the hard things required partners or teams. If only he still had Alai or Shen to practice with.

Well, why shouldn’t he practice with them? He had never heard of a soldier practicing with Launchies, but there was no rule against it. It just wasn’t done; Launchies were held in too much contempt. Well, Ender was still being treated like a Launchy anyway. He needed someone to practice with, and in return he could help them learn some of the things he saw the older boys doing.

“Hey, the great soldier returns!” said Bernard. Ender stood in the doorway of his old barracks. He’d only been away for a day, but already it seemed like an alien place, and the others of his launch group were strangers. Almost he turned around and left. But there was Alai, who had made their friendship sacred. Alai was not a stranger.

Ender made no effort to conceal how he was treated in Salamander Army. “And they’re right. I’m about as useful as a sneeze in a spacesuit.” Alai laughed, and other Launchies started to gather around. Ender proposed his bargain. Free play, every day, working hard in the battleroom, under Ender’s direction. They would learn things from the armies, from the battles Ender would see; he would get the practice he needed in developing soldier skills. “We’ll get ready together.”

A lot of boys wanted to come, too. “Sure,” Ender said. “If you’re coming to work. If you’re just farting around, you’re out. I don’t have any time to waste.”

They didn’t waste any time. Ender was clumsy, trying to describe what he had seen, working out ways to do it. But by the time free play ended, they had learned some things. They were tired, but they were getting the knack of a few techniques.

“Where were you?” asked Bonzo.

Ender stood stiffly by his commander’s bunk. “Practicing in a battleroom.”

“I hear you had some of your old Launch group with you.”

“I couldn’t practice alone.”

“I won’t have any soldiers in Salamander Army hanging around with Launchies. You’re a soldier now.”

Ender regarded him in silence.

“Did you hear me, Wiggin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No more practicing with those little farts.”

“May I speak to you privately?” asked Ender.

It was a request that commanders were required to allow. Bonzo’s face went angry, and he led Ender out into the corridor. “Listen, Wiggin, I don’t want you, I’m trying to get rid of you, but don’t give me any problems or I’ll paste you to the wall.”

A good commander, thought Ender, doesn’t have to make stupid threats.

Bonzo grew annoyed at Ender’s silence. “Look, you asked me to come out here, now talk.”

“Sir, you were correct not to place me in a toon. I don’t know how to do anything.”

“I don’t need you to tell me when I’m correct.”

“But I’m going to become a good soldier. I won’t screw up your regular drill, but I’m going to practice, and I’m going to practice with the only people who will practice with me, and that’s my Launchies.”

“You’ll do what I tell you, you little bastard.”

“That’s right, sir. I’ll follow all the orders that you’re authorized to give. But free play is free. No assignments can be given. None. By anyone.”

He could see Bonzo’s anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender’s anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo’s was hot, and so it used him.

“Sir, I’ve got my own career to think of. I won’t interfere in your training and your battles, but I’ve got to learn sometime. I didn’t ask to be put into your army, you’re trying to trade me as soon as you can. But nobody will take me if I don’t know anything, will they? Let me learn something, and then you can get rid of me all the sooner and get a soldier you can really use.”

Bonzo was not such a fool that anger kept him from recognizing good sense when he heard it. Still, he couldn’t let go of his anger immediately.

“While you’re in Salamander Army, you’ll obey me.”

“If you try to control my free play, I can get you iced.”

It probably wasn’t true. But it was possible. Certainly if Ender made a fuss about it, interfering with free play could conceivably get Bonzo removed from command. Also, there was the fact that the officers obviously saw something in Ender, since they had promoted him. Maybe Ender did have influence enough with the teachers to ice somebody. “Bastard,” said Bonzo.

“It isn’t my fault you gave me that order in front of everybody,” Ender said. “But if you want, I’ll pretend you won this argument. Then tomorrow you can tell me you changed your mind.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

“I don’t want the other guys to think you backed down. You wouldn’t be able to command as well.”

Bonzo hated him for it, for the kindness. Ender tried to understand why. Maybe it seemed to Bonzo as if Ender were granting him his command as a favor. Galling, and yet he had no choice. No choice about anything. Well it was Bonzo’s own fault, for giving Ender an unreasonable order. Still, he would only know that Ender had beaten him, and then rubbed his nose in it by being magnanimous.

“I’ll have your ass someday,” Bonzo said.

“Probably,” said Ender. The lights out buzzer sounded. Ender walked back into the room, looking dejected. Beaten. Angry. The other boys drew the obvious conclusion.

And in the morning, as Ender was leaving for breakfast, Bonzo stopped him and spoke loudly. “I changed my mind, pinprick. Maybe by practicing with your Launchies you’ll learn something, and I can trade you easier. Anything to get rid of you faster.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ender said.

“Anything,” whispered Bonzo. “I hope you’re iced.”

Ender smiled gratefully and left the room. After breakfast he practiced again with Petra. All afternoon he watched Bonzo drill and figured out ways to destroy his army. During free play he and Alai and the others worked themselves to exhaustion. I can do this, thought Ender as he lay in his bed, his muscles throbbing, unknotting themselves. I can handle it.

Salamander Army had a battle four days later. Ender followed behind the real soldiers as they jogged along the corridors to the battleroom. There were two ribbons along the walls, the green green brown of Salamander and the black white black of Condor. When they came to the place where the battleroom had always been, the corridor split instead, with green green brown leading to the left and black white black to the right. Around another turn to the right, and the army stopped in front of a blank wall.

The toons formed up in silence. Ender stayed behind them all. Bonzo was giving his instructions. “A take the handles and go up. B left, C right, D down.” He saw that the toons were oriented to follow instructions, then added, “And you, pinprick, wait four minutes, then come just inside the door. Don’t even take your gun off your suit.”

Ender nodded. Suddenly the wall behind Bonzo became transparent. Not a wall at all, then, but a forcefield. The battleroom was different, too. Huge brown boxes were suspended in midair, partially obstructing the view. So these were the obstacles that the soldiers called stars. They were distributed seemingly at random. Bonzo seemed not to care where they were. Apparently the soldiers already knew how to handle the stars.

But it soon became clear to Ender, as he sat and watched the battle from the corridor, that they did not know how to handle the stars. They did know how to softland on one and use it for cover, the tactics of assaulting the enemy’s position on a star. They showed no sense at all of which stars mattered. They persisted in assaulting stars that could have been bypassed by wallsliding to a more advanced position.

The other commander was taking advantage of Bonzo’s neglect of strategy. Condor Army forced the Salamanders into costly assaults. Fewer and fewer Salamanders were unfrozen for the attack on the next star. It was clear, after only four minutes, that Salamander Army could not defeat the enemy by attacking.

Ender stepped through the gate. He drifted slightly downward. The battlerooms he had practiced in always had their doors at floor level. For real battles, however, the door was set in the middle of the wall, as far from the floor as from the ceiling.

Abruptly he felt himself reorient, as he had in the shuttle. What had been down was now up, and now sideways. In nullo, there was no reason to stay oriented the way he had been in the corridor. It was impossible to tell, looking at the perfectly square doors, which way had been up. And it didn’t matter. For now Ender had found the orientation that made sense. The enemy’s gate was down. The object of the game was to fall toward the enemy’s home.

Ender made the motions that oriented himself in his new direction. Instead of being spread out, his whole body presented to the enemy, now Ender’s legs pointed toward them. He was a much smaller target.

Someone saw him. He was, after all, drifting aimlessly in the open. Instinctively he pulled his legs up under him. At that moment he was flashed, and the legs of his suit froze in position. His arms remained unfrozen, for without a direct body hit, only the limbs that were shot froze up. It occurred to Ender that if he had not been presenting his legs to the enemy, it would have been his body they hit. He would have been immobilized.

Since Bonzo had ordered him not to draw his weapon, Ender continued to drift, not moving his head or arms, as if they had been frozen, too. The enemy ignored him and concentrated their fire on the soldiers who were firing at them. It was a bitter battle. Outnumbered now, Salamander Army gave ground stubbornly. The battle disintegrated into a dozen individual shootouts. Bonzo’s discipline paid off now, for each Salamander that froze took at least one enemy with him. No one ran or panicked, everyone remained calm and aimed carefully.

Petra was especially deadly. Condor Army noticed it and took great effort to freeze her. They froze her shooting arm first, and her stream of curses was only interrupted when they froze her completely and the helmet clamped down on her jaw. In a few minutes it was over. Salamander Army offered no more resistance.

Ender noted with pleasure that Condor could only muster the minimal five soldiers necessary to open the gate to victory. Four of them touched their helmets to the lighted spots at the four corners of Salamander’s door, while the fifth passed through the forcefield. That ended the game. The lights came back on to their full brightness, and Anderson came out of the teacher door.

I could have drawn my gun, thought Ender, as the enemy approached the door. I could have drawn my gun and shot just one of them, and they would have been too few. The game would have been a draw. Without four men to touch the four corners and a fifth man to pass through the gate, Condor would have had no victory. Bonzo, you ass, I could have saved you from this defeat. Maybe even turned it to victory, since they were sitting there, easy targets, and they wouldn’t have known at first where the shots were coming from. I’m a good enough shot for that.

But orders were orders, and Ender had promised to obey. He did get some satisfaction out of the fact that on the official tally Salamander Army recorded, not the expected forty-one disabled or eliminated, but rather forty eliminated and one damaged. Bonzo couldn’t understand it, until he consulted Anderson’s book and realized who it was. I was only damaged, Bonzo, thought Ender. I could still shoot.

He expected Bonzo to come to him and say, “Next time, when it’s like that, you can shoot.” But Bonzo didn’t say anything to him at all until the next morning after breakfast. Of course, Bonzo ate in the commanders’ mess, but Ender was pretty sure the odd score would cause as much stir there as it did in the soldiers’ dining hall. In every other game that wasn’t a draw, every member of the losing team was either eliminated—totally frozen—or disabled, which meant they had some body parts still unfrozen, but were unable to shoot or inflict damage on the enemy. Salamander was the only losing army with one man in the Damaged but Active category.

Ender volunteered no explanation, but the other members of Salamander Army let it be known why it had happened. And when other boys asked him why he hadn’t disobeyed orders and fired, he calmly answered, “I obey orders.”

After breakfast, Bonzo looked for him. “The order still stands,” he said, “and don’t you forget it.”

It will cost you, you fool. I may not be a good soldier, but I can still help and there’s no reason you shouldn’t let me.

Ender said nothing.

An interesting side effect of the battle was that Ender emerged at the top of the soldier efficiency list. Since he hadn’t fired a shot, he had a perfect record on shooting—no misses at all. And since he had never been eliminated or disabled, his percentage there was excellent. No one else came close. It made a lot of boys laugh, and others were angry, but on the prized efficiency list, Ender was now the leader.

He kept sitting out the army practice sessions, and kept working hard on his own, with Petra in the mornings and his friends at night. More Launchies were joining them now, not on a lark but because they could see results—they were getting better and better. Ender and Alai stayed ahead of them, though. In part, it was because Alai kept trying new things, which forced Ender to think of new tactics to cope with them. In part it was because they kept making stupid mistakes, which suggested things to do that no self-respecting, well-trained soldier would even have tried. Many of the things they attempted turned out to be useless. But it was always fun, always exciting, and enough things worked that they knew it was helping them. Evening was the best time of the day.

The next two battles were easy Salamander victories; Ender came in after four minutes and remained untouched by the defeated enemy. Ender began to realize that Condor Army, which had beaten them, was unusually good; Salamander, weak as Bonzo’s grasp of strategy might be, was one of the better teams, climbing steadily in the ratings, clawing for fourth place with Rat Army.

Ender turned seven. They weren’t much for dates and calendars at the Battle School, but Ender had found out how to bring up the date on his desk, and he noticed his birthday. The school noticed it, too; they took his measurements and issued him a new Salamander uniform and a new flash suit for the battleroom. He went back to the barracks with the new clothing on. It felt strange and loose, like his skin no longer fit properly.

He wanted to stop at Petra’s bunk and tell her about his home, about what his birthdays were usually like, just tell her it was his birthday so she’d say something about it being a happy one. But nobody told birthdays. It was childish. It was what landsiders did. Cakes and silly customs. Valentine baked him his cake on his sixth birthday. It fell and it was terrible. Nobody knew how to cook anymore, it was the kind of crazy thing Valentine would do. Everybody teased Valentine about it, but Ender saved a little bit of it in his cupboard. Then they took out his monitor and he left and for all he knew, it was still there, a little piece of greasy yellow dust. Nobody talked about home, not among the soldiers; there had been no life before Battle School. Nobody got letters, and nobody wrote any. Everybody pretended that they didn’t care.

But I do care, thought Ender. The only reason I’m here is so that a bugger won’t shoot out Valentine’s eye, won’t blast her head open like the soldiers in the videos of the first battles with the buggers. Won’t split her head with a beam so hot that her brains burst the skull and spill out like rising bread dough, the way it happens in my worst nightmares, in my worst nights, when I wake up trembling but silent, must keep silent or they’ll hear that I miss my family, I want to go home.

It was better in the morning. Home was merely a dull ache in the back of his memory. A tiredness in his eyes. That morning Bonzo came in as they were dressing. “Flash suits!” he called. It was a battle. Ender’s fourth game.

The enemy was Leopard Army. It would be easy. Leopard was new, and it was always in the bottom quarter in the standings. It had been organized only six months ago, with Pol Slattery as its commander. Ender put on his new battle suit and got into line; Bonzo pulled him roughly out of line and made him march at the end. You didn’t need to do that, Ender said silently. You could have let me stay in line.

Ender watched from the corridor. Pol Slattery was young, but he was sharp, he had some new ideas. He kept his soldiers moving, darting from star to star, wallsliding to get behind and above the stolid Salamanders. Ender smiled. Bonzo was hopelessly confused, and so were his men. Leopard seemed to have men in every direction. However, the battle was not as lopsided as it seemed. Ender noticed that Leopard was losing a lot of men, too—their reckless tactics exposed them too much. What mattered, however, was that Salamander felt defeated. They had surrendered the initiative completely. Though they were still fairly evenly matched with the enemy, they huddled together like the last survivors of a massacre, as if they hoped the enemy would overlook them in the carnage.

Ender slipped slowly through the gate, oriented himself so the enemy’s gate was down, and drifted slowly eastward to a corner where he wouldn’t be noticed. He even fired at his own legs, to hold them in the kneeling position that offered him the best protection. He looked to any casual glance like another frozen soldier who had drifted helplessly out of the battle.

With Salamander Army waiting abjectly for destruction, Leopard obligingly destroyed them. When Salamander finally stopped firing, Leopard had nine boys left. They formed up and started to open the Salamander gate.

Ender aimed carefully with a straight arm, as Petra had taught him. Before anyone knew what was happening, he froze three of the soldiers who were about to press their helmets against the lighted corners of the door. Then some of the others spotted him and fired—but at first they hit only his already-frozen legs. It gave him time to get the last two men at the gate. Leopard had only four men left unfrozen when Ender was finally hit in the arm and disabled. The game was a draw, and they never had hit him in the body.

Pol Slattery was furious, but there had been nothing unfair about it. Everyone in Leopard Army assumed that it had been a strategy of Bonzo’s, to leave a man till the last minute. It didn’t occur to them that little Ender had fired against orders. But Salamander Army knew. Bonzo knew, and Ender could see from the way his commander looked at him that Bonzo hated him for rescuing him from total defeat. I don’t care, Ender told himself. It will just make me easier to trade away, and in the meantime you won’t drop so far in the standings. Just trade me. I’ve learned all I’m ever going to learn from you. How to fail with style, that’s all you know, Bonzo.

What have I learned so far? Ender listed things in his mind as he undressed by his bunk. The enemy’s gate is down. Use my legs as a shield in battle. A small reserve, held back until the end of the game, can be decisive. And soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they’ve been given.

Naked, he was about to climb into bed when Bonzo came toward him, his face hard and set. I have seen Peter like this, thought Ender, silent with murder in his eye. But Bonzo is not Peter. Bonzo has more fear.

“Wiggin, I finally traded you. I was able to persuade Rat Army that your incredible place on the efficiency list is more than an accident. You go over there tomorrow.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ender said.

Perhaps he sounded too grateful. Suddenly Bonzo swung at him, caught his jaw with a vicious open-handed slap. It knocked Ender sideways, into his bunk, and he almost fell. Then Bonzo slugged him, hard, in the stomach. Ender dropped to his knees.

“You disobeyed me,” Bonzo said. Loudly, for all to hear. “No good soldier ever disobeys.”

Even as he cried from the pain, Ender could not help but take vengeful pleasure in the murmurs he heard rising through the barracks. You fool, Bonzo. You aren’t enforcing discipline, you’re destroying it. They know I turned defeat into a draw. And now they see how you repay me. You made yourself look stupid in front of everyone. What is your discipline worth now?

The next day, Ender told Petra that for her sake the shooting practice in the morning would have to end. Bonzo didn’t need anything that looked like a challenge now, and so she’d better stay clear of Ender for a while. She understood perfectly. “Besides,” she said, “you’re as close to being a good shot as you’ll ever be.”

He left his desk and flash suit in the locker. He would wear his Salamander uniform until he could get to the commissary and change it for the brown and black of Rat. He had brought no possessions with him; he would take none away. There were none to have—everything of value was in the school computer or his own head and hands.

He used one of the public desks in the game room to register for an earth-gravity personal combat course during the hour immediately after breakfast. He didn’t plan to get vengeance on Bonzo for hitting him. But he did intend that no one would be able to do that to him again.

8

RAT

“Colonel Graff, the games have always been run fairly before. Either random distribution of stars, or symmetrical.”

“Fairness is a wonderful attribute, Major Anderson. It has nothing to do with war.”

“The game will be compromised. The comparative standings will become meaningless.”

“Alas.”

“It will take months. Years, to develop the new battlerooms and run the simulations.”

“That’s why I’m asking you now. To begin. Be creative. Think of every stacked, impossible, unfair star arrangement you can. Think of other ways to bend the rules. Late notification. Unequal forces. Then run the simulations and see which ones are hardest, which easiest. We want an intelligent progression here. We want to bring him along.”

“When do you plan to make him a commander? When he’s eight?”

“Of course not. I haven’t assembled his army yet.”

“Oh, so you’re stacking it that way, too?”

“You’re getting too close to the game, Anderson. You’re forgetting that it is merely a training exercise.”

“It’s also status, identity, purpose, name; all that makes these children who they are comes out of this game. When it becomes known that the game can be manipulated, weighted, cheated, it will undo this whole school. I’m not exaggerating.”

“I know.”

“So I hope Ender Wiggin truly is the one, because you’ll have degraded the effectiveness of our training method for a long time to come.”

“If Ender isn’t the one, if his peak of military brilliance does not coincide with the arrival of our fleet at the bugger homeworlds, then it doesn’t really matter what our training method is or isn’t.”

“I hope you will forgive me, Colonel Graff, but I feel that I must report your orders and my opinion of their consequences to the Strategos and the Hegemon.”

“Why not our dear Polemarch?”

“Everybody knows you have him in your pocket.”

“Such hostility, Major Anderson. And I thought we were friends.”

“We are. And I think you may be right about Ender. I just don’t believe you, and you alone, should decide the fate of the world.”

“I don’t even think it’s right for me to decide the fate of Ender Wiggin.”

“So you won’t mind if I notify them?”

“Of course I mind, you meddlesome ass. This is something to be decided by people who know what they’re doing, not these frightened politicians who got their office because they happen to be politically potent in the country they come from.”

“But you understand why I’m doing it.”

“Because you’re such a short-sighted little bureaucratic bastard that you think you need to cover yourself in case things go wrong. Well, if things go wrong we’ll all be bugger meat. So trust me now, Anderson, and don’t bring the whole damn Hegemony down on my neck. What I’m doing is hard enough without them.”

“Oh, is it unfair? Are things stacked against you? You can do it to Ender, but you can’t take it, is that it?”

“Ender Wiggin is ten times smarter and stronger than I am. What I’m doing to him will bring out his genius. If I had to go through it myself, it would crush me. Major Anderson, I know I’m wrecking the game, and I know you love it better than any of the boys who play. Hate me if you like, but don’t stop me.”

“I reserve the right to communicate with the Hegemony and the Strategoi at any time. But for now—do what you want.”

“Thank you so very kindly.”

“Ender Wiggin, the little farthead who leads the standings, what a pleasure to have you with us.” The commander of Rat Army lay sprawled on a lower bunk wearing only his desk. “With you around, how can any army lose?” Several of the boys nearby laughed.

There could not have been two more opposite armies than Salamander and Rat. The room was rumpled, cluttered, noisy. After Bonzo, Ender had thought that undiscipline would be a welcome relief. Instead, he found that he had come to expect quiet and order, and the disorder here made him uncomfortable.

“We doing OK, Ender Bender. I Rose de Nose, Jewboy extraordinaire, and you ain’t nothin but a pinheaded pinprick of a goy. Don’t you forget it.”

Since the I.F. was formed, the Strategos of the military forces had always been a Jew. There was a myth that Jewish generals didn’t lose wars. And so far it was still true. It made any Jew in the Battle School dream of being Strategos, and conferred prestige on him from the start. It also caused resentment. Rat Army was often called the Kike Force, half in praise, half in parody of Mazer Rackham’s Strike Force. There were many who liked to remember that during the Second Invasion, even though an American Jew, as President, was Hegemon of the alliance, an Israeli Jew was Strategos in overall command of I.F. defense, and a Russian Jew was Polemarch of the fleet, it was Mazer Rackham, a little-known, twice-court-martialled, half-Maori New Zealander whose Strike Force broke up and finally destroyed the bugger fleet in the action around Saturn.

If Mazer Rackham could save the world, then it didn’t matter a bit whether you were a Jew or not, people said.

But it did matter, and Rose the Nose knew it. He mocked himself to forestall the mocking comments of anti-semites—almost everyone he defeated in battle became, at least for a time, a Jew-hater—but he also made sure everyone knew what he was. His army was in second place, bucking for first.

“I took you on, goy, because I didn’t want people to think I only win because I got great soldiers. I want them to know that even with a little puke of a soldier like you I can still win. We only got three rules here. Do what I tell you and don’t piss in the bed.”

Ender nodded. He knew that Rose wanted him to ask what the third rule was. So he did.

“That was three rules. We don’t do too good in math, here.”

The message was clear. Winning is more important than anything.

“Your practice sessions with half-assed little Launchies are over, Wiggin. Done. You’re in a big boys’ army now. I’m putting you in Dink Meeker’s toon. From now on, as far as you’re concerned, Dink Meeker is God.”

“Then who are you?”

“The personnel officer who hired God.” Rose grinned. “And you are forbidden to use your desk again until you’ve frozen two enemy soldiers in the same battle. This order is out of self-defense. I hear you’re a genius programmer. I don’t want you screwing around with my desk.”

Everybody erupted in laughter. It took Ender a moment to understand why. Rose had programmed his desk to display and animate a bigger-than-lifesize picture of male genitals, which waggled back and forth as Rose held the desk on his naked lap. This is just the sort of commander Bonzo would trade me to, thought Ender. How does a boy who spends his time like this win battles?

Ender found Dink Meeker in the game room, not playing, just sitting and watching. “A guy pointed you out,” Ender said. “I’m Ender Wiggin.”

“I know,” said Meeker.

“I’m in your toon.”

“I know,” he said again.

“I’m pretty inexperienced.”

Dink looked up at him. “Look, Wiggin, I know all this. Why do you think I asked Rose to get you for me?”

He had not been dumped, he had been picked up, he had been asked for. Meeker wanted him. “Why?” asked Ender.

“I’ve watched your practice sessions with the Launchies. I think you show some promise. Bonzo is stupid and I wanted you to get better training than Petra could give you. All she can do is shoot.”

“I needed to learn that.”

“You still move like you were afraid to wet your pants.”

“So teach me.”

“So learn.”

“I’m not going to quit my freetime practice sessions.”

“I don’t want you to quit them.”

“Rose the Nose does.”

“Rose the Nose can’t stop you. Likewise, he can’t stop you from using your desk.”

“So why did he order it?”

“Listen, Ender, commanders have just as much authority as you let them have. The more you obey them, the more power they have over you.”

“What’s to stop them from hurting me?” Ender remembered Bonzo’s blow.

“I thought that was why you were taking personal attack classes.”

“You’ve really been watching me, haven’t you?”

Dink didn’t answer.

“I don’t want to get Rose mad at me. I want to be part of the battles now, I’m tired of sitting out till the end.”

“Your standings will go down.”

This time Ender didn’t answer.

“Listen, Ender, as long as you’re part of my toon, you’re part of the battle.”

Ender soon learned why. Dink trained his toon independently from the rest of Rat Army, with discipline and vigor; he never consulted with Rose, and only rarely did the whole army maneuver together. It was as if Rose commanded one army, and Dink commanded a much smaller one that happened to practice in the battleroom at the same time.

Dink started out the first practice by asking Ender to demonstrate his feet-first attack position. The other boys didn’t like it. “How can we attack lying on our backs?” they asked.

To Ender’s surprise, Dink didn’t correct them, didn’t say, “You aren’t attacking on your back, you’re dropping downward toward them.” He had seen what Ender was doing, but he had not understood the orientation that it implied. It soon became clear to Ender that even though Dink was very, very good, his persistence in holding onto the corridor gravity orientation instead of thinking of the enemy gate as downward was limiting his thinking.

They practiced attacking an enemy-held star. Before trying Ender’s feet-first method, they had always gone in standing up, their whole bodies available as a target. Even now, though, they reached the star and then assaulted the enemy from one direction only; “Over the top,” cried Dink, and over they went. To his credit, he then repeated the exercise, calling, “Again, upside down,” but because of their insistence on a gravity that didn’t exist, the boys became awkward when the maneuver was under, as if vertigo seized them.

They hated the feet-first attack. Dink insisted that they use it. As a result, they hated Ender. “Do we have to learn how to fight from a Launchy?” one of them muttered, making sure Ender could hear. “Yes,” answered Dink. They kept working.

And they learned it. In practice skirmishes, they began to realize how much harder it was to shoot an enemy who is attacking feet first. As soon as they were convinced of that, they practiced the maneuver more willingly.

That night was the first time Ender had come to one of his launchy practice sessions after a whole afternoon of work. He was tired.

“Now you’re really in an army,” said Alai, “you don’t have to keep practicing with us.”

“From you I can learn things that nobody knows,” said Ender.

“Dink Meeker is the best. I hear he’s your toon leader.”

“Then let’s get busy. I’ll teach you what I learned from him today.”

He put Alai and two dozen others through the same exercises that had worn him out all afternoon. But he put new touches on the patterns, made the boys try the maneuvers with one leg frozen, with both legs frozen, or using frozen boys for leverage to change directions.

Halfway through the practice, Ender noticed Petra and Dink together, standing in the doorway, watching. Later, when he looked again, they were gone.

So they’re watching me, and what we’re doing is known. He did not know whether Dink was his friend; he believed that Petra was, but nothing could be sure. They might be angry that he was doing what only commanders and toon leaders were supposed to do—drilling and training soldiers. They might be offended that a soldier would associate so closely with Launchies. It made him uneasy, to have older children watching.

“I thought I told you not to use your desk.” Rose the Nose stood by Ender’s bunk.

Ender did not look up. “I’m completing the trigonometry assignment for tomorrow.”

Rose bumped his knee into Ender’s desk. “I said not to use it.”

Ender set the desk on his bunk and stood up. “I need trigonometry more than I need you.”

Rose was taller than Ender by at least forty centimeters. But Ender was not particularly worried. It would not come to physical violence, and if it did, Ender thought he could hold his own. Rose was lazy and didn’t know personal combat.

“You’re going down in the standings, boy,” said Rose.

“I expect to. I was only leading the list because of the stupid way Salamander Army was using me.”

“Stupid? Bonzo’s strategy won a couple of key games.”

“Bonzo’s strategy wouldn’t win a salad fight. I was violating orders every time I fired my gun.”

Rose hadn’t known that. It made him angry. “So everything Bonzo said about you was a lie. You’re not only short and incompetent, you’re insubordinate, too.”

“But I turned defeat into stalemate, all by myself.”

“We’ll see how you do all by yourself next time.” Rose went away.

One of Ender’s toonmates shook his head. “You dumb as a thumb.”

Ender looked at Dink, who was doodling on his desk. Dink looked up, noticed Ender watching him, and gazed steadily back at him. No expression. Nothing. OK, thought Ender, I can take care of myself.

Battle came two days later. It was Ender’s first time fighting as part of a toon; he was nervous. Dink’s toon lined up against the right-hand wall of the corridor and Ender was very careful not to lean, not to let his weight slip to either side. Stay balanced.

“Wiggin!” called Rose the Nose.

Ender felt dread come over him from throat to groin, a tingle of fear that made him shudder. Rose saw it.

“Shivering? Trembling? Don’t wet your pants, little Launchy.” Rose hooked a finger over the butt of Ender’s gun and pulled him to the forcefield that hid the battleroom from view. “We’ll see how well you do now, Ender. As soon as that door opens, you jump through, go straight ahead toward the enemy’s door.”

Suicide. Pointless, meaningless self-destruction. But he had to follow orders now, this was battle, not school. For a moment Ender raged silently; then he calmed himself. “Excellent, sir,” he said. “The direction I fire my gun is the direction of their main contingent.”

Rose laughed. “You won’t have time to fire anything, pinprick.”

The wall vanished. Ender jumped up, took hold of the ceiling handholds, and threw himself out and down, speeding toward the enemy door.

It was Centipede Army, and they only began to emerge from their door when Ender was halfway across the battleroom. Many of them were able to get under cover of stars quickly, but Ender had doubled up his legs under him and, holding his pistol at his crotch, he was firing between his legs and freezing many of them as they emerged.

They flashed his legs, but he had three precious seconds before they could hit his body and put him out of action. He froze several more, then flung out his arms in equal and opposite directions. The hand that held his gun ended up pointing toward the main body of Centipede Army. He fired into the mass of the enemy, and then they froze him.

A second later he smashed into the forcefield of the enemy’s door and rebounded with a crazy spin. He landed in a group of enemy soldiers behind a star; they shoved him off and spun him even more rapidly. He rebounded out of control through the rest of the battle, though gradually friction with the air slowed him down. He had no way of knowing how many men he had frozen before getting iced himself, but he did get the general idea that Rat Army won again, as usual.

After the battle Rose didn’t speak to him. Ender was still first in the standings, since he had frozen three, disabled two, and damaged seven. There was no more talk about insubordination and whether Ender could use his desk. Rose stayed in his part of the barracks, and left Ender alone.

Dink Meeker began to practice instant emergence from the corridor—Ender’s attack on the enemy while they were still coming out of the door had been devastating. “If one man can do that much damage, think what a toon can do.” Dink got Major Anderson to open a door in the middle of a wall, even during practice sessions, instead of just the floor-level door, so they could practice launching under battle conditions. Word got around. From now on no one could take five or ten or fifteen seconds in the corridor to size things up. The game had changed.

More battles. This time Ender played a proper role within a toon. He made mistakes. Skirmishes were lost. He dropped from first to second in the standings, then to fourth. Then he made fewer mistakes, and began to feel comfortable within the framework of the toon, and he went back up to third, then second, then first.

After practice one afternoon, Ender stayed in the battleroom. He had noticed that Dink Meeker usually came late to dinner, and he assumed it was for extra practice. Ender wasn’t very hungry, and he wanted to see what it was Dink practiced when no one else could see.

But Dink didn’t practice. He stood near the door, watching Ender.

Ender stood across the room, watching Dink.

Neither spoke. It was plain Dink expected Ender to leave. It was just as plain that Ender was saying no.

Dink turned his back on Ender, methodically took off his flash suit, and gently pushed off from the floor. He drifted slowly toward the center of the room, very slowly, his body relaxing almost completely, so that his hands and arms seemed to be caught by almost nonexistent air currents in the room.

After the speed and tension of practice, the exhaustion, the alertness, it was restful just to watch him drift. He did it for ten minutes or so before he reached another wall. Then he pushed off rather sharply, returned to his flash suit, and pulled it on.

“Come on,” he said to Ender.

They went to the barracks. The room was empty, since all the boys were at dinner. Each went to his own bunk and changed into regular uniforms. Ender walked to Dink’s bunk and waited for a moment till Dink was ready to go.

“Why did you wait?” asked Dink.

“Wasn’t hungry.”

“Well, now you know why I’m not a commander.”

Ender had wondered.

“Actually, they promoted me twice, and I refused.”

Refused?

“The second time they took away my old locker and bunk and desk, assigned me to a commander’s cabin, and gave me an army. But I just stayed in the cabin until they gave in and put me back into somebody else’s army.”

“Why?”

“Because I won’t let them do it to me. I can’t believe you haven’t seen through all this crap yet, Ender. But I guess you’re young. These other armies, they aren’t the enemy. It’s the teachers, they’re the enemy. They get us to fight each other, to hate each other. The game is everything. Win win win. It amounts to nothing. We kill ourselves, go crazy trying to beat each other, and all the time the old bastards are watching us, studying us, discovering our weak points, deciding whether we’re good enough or not. Well, good enough for what? I was six years old when they brought me here. What the hell did I know? They decided I was right for the program, but nobody ever asked me if the program was right for me.”

“So why don’t you go home?”

Dink smiled crookedly. “Because I can’t give up the game.” He tugged at the fabric of his flash suit, which lay on the bunk beside him. “Because I love this.”

“So why not be a commander?”

Dink shook his head. “Never. Look what it does to Rosen. The boy’s crazy. Rose de Nose. Sleeps in here with us instead of in his cabin. Why? Because he’s scared to be alone, Ender. Scared of the dark.”

“Rose?”

“But they made him a commander and so he has to act like one. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s winning, but that scares him worst of all, because he doesn’t know why he’s winning, except that I have something to do with it. Any minute somebody could find out that Rosen isn’t some magic Israeli general who can win no matter what. He doesn’t know why anybody wins or loses. Nobody does.”

“It doesn’t mean he’s crazy, Dink.”

“I know, you’ve been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they’re not. We’re not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won’t let us have anything new, but I’ve got a pretty good idea what children are, and we’re not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren’t in armies, they aren’t commanders, they don’t rule over forty other kids, it’s more than anybody can take and not get crazy.”

Ender tried to remember what other children were like, in his class at school, back in the city. But all he could think of was Stilson.

“I had a brother. Just a normal guy. All he cared about was girls. And flying. He wanted to fly. He used to play ball with the guys. A pickup game, shooting balls at a hoop, dribbling down the corridors until the peace officers confiscated your ball. We had a great time. He was teaching me how to dribble when I was taken.”

Ender remembered his own brother, and the memory was not fond.

Dink misunderstood the expression on Ender’s face. “Hey, I know, nobody’s supposed to talk about home. But we came from somewhere. The Battle School didn’t create us, you know. The Battle School doesn’t create anything. It just destroys. And we all remember things from home. Maybe not good things, but we remember and then we lie and pretend that—look, Ender, why is it that nobody talks about home, ever? Doesn’t that tell you how important it is? That nobody even admits that—oh hell.”

“No, it’s all right,” Ender said. “I was just thinking about Valentine. My sister.”

“I wasn’t trying to make you upset.”

“It’s OK. I don’t think of her very much, because I always get—like this.”

“That’s right, we never cry. I never thought of that. Nobody ever cries. We really are trying to be adults. Just like our fathers. I bet your father was like you. I bet he was quiet and took it, and then busted out and—”

“I’m not like my father.”

“So maybe I’m wrong. But look at Bonzo, your old commander. He’s got an advanced case of Spanish honor. He can’t allow himself to have weaknesses. To be better than him, that’s an insult. To be stronger, that’s like cutting off his balls. That’s why he hates you, because you didn’t suffer when he tried to punish you. He hates you for that, he honestly wants to kill you. He’s crazy. They’re all crazy.”

“And you aren’t?”

“I be crazy too, little buddy, but at least when I be craziest, I be floating all alone in space and the crazy, she float out of me, she soak into the walls, and she don’t come out till there be battles and little boys bump into the walls and squish out de crazy.”

Ender smiled.

“And you be crazy too,” said Dink. “Come on, let’s go eat.”

“Maybe you can be a commander and not be crazy. Maybe knowing about craziness means you don’t have to fall for it.”

“I’m not going to let the bastards run me, Ender. They’ve got you pegged, too, and they don’t plan to treat you kindly. Look what they’ve done to you so far.”

“They haven’t done anything except promote me.”

“And she make you life so easy, neh?”

Ender laughed and shook his head. “So maybe you’re right.”

“They think they got you on ice. Don’t let them.”

“But that’s what I came for,” Ender said. “For them to make me into a tool. To save the world.”

“I can’t believe you still believe it.”

“Believe what?”

“The bugger menace. Save the world. Listen, Ender, if the buggers were coming back to get us, they’d be here. They aren’t invading again. We beat them and they’re gone.”

“But the videos—”

“All from the First and Second Invasions. Your grandparents weren’t born yet when Mazer Rackham wiped them out. You watch. It’s all a fake. There is no war, and they’re just screwing around with us.”

“But why?”

“Because as long as people are afraid of the buggers, the I.F. can stay in power, and as long as the I.F. is in power, certain countries can keep their hegemony. But keep watching the vids, Ender. People will catch onto this game pretty soon, and there’ll be a civil war to end all wars. That’s the menace, Ender, not the buggers. And in that war, when it comes, you and I won’t be friends. Because you’re American, just like our dear teachers. And I am not.”

They went to the mess hall and ate, talking about other things. But Ender could not stop thinking about what Dink had said. The Battle School was so enclosed, the game so important in the minds of the children, that Ender had forgotten there was a world outside. Spanish honor. Civil war. Politics. The Battle School was really a very small place, wasn’t it?

But Ender did not reach Dink’s conclusions. The buggers were real. The threat was real. The I.F. controlled a lot of things, but it didn’t control the videos and the nets. Not where Ender had grown up. In Dink’s home in the Netherlands, with three generations under Russian hegemony, perhaps it was all controlled, but Ender knew that lies could not last long in America. So he believed.

Believed, but the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

There weren’t as many boys at the evening practice, not by half.

“Where’s Bernard?” asked Ender.

Alai grinned. Shen closed his eyes and assumed a look of blissful meditation.

“Haven’t you heard?” said another boy, a Launchy from a younger group. “Word’s out that any Launchy who comes to your practice sessions won’t ever amount to anything in anybody’s army. Word’s out that the commanders don’t want any soldiers who’ve been damaged by your training.”

Ender nodded.

“But the way I brain it,” said the Launchy, “I be the best soldier I can, and any commander worth a damn, he take me. Neh?”

“Eh,” said Ender, with finality.

They went on with practice. About a half hour into it, when they were practicing throwing off collisions with frozen soldiers, several commanders in different uniforms came in. They ostentatiously took down names.

“Hey,” shouted Alai. “Make sure you spell my name right!”

The next night there were even fewer boys. Now Ender was hearing the stories—little Launchies getting slapped around in the bathrooms, or having accidents in the mess hall and the game room, or getting their files trashed by older boys who had broken the primitive security system that guarded the Launchies’ desks.

“No practice tonight,” Ender said.

“The hell there’s not,” said Alai.

“Give it a few days. I don’t want any of the little kids getting hurt.”

“If you stop, even one night, they’ll figure it works to do this kind of thing. Just like if you’d ever backed down to Bernard back when he was being a swine.”

“Besides,” said Shen, “we aren’t scared and we don’t care, so you owe it to us to go on. We need the practice and so do you.”

Ender remembered what Dink had said. The game was trivial, compared to the whole world. Why should anybody give every night of his life to this stupid, stupid game?

“We don’t accomplish that much anyway,” Ender said. He started to leave.

Alai stopped him. “They scare you, too? They slap you up in the bathroom? Stick you head in the pissah? Somebody gots a gun up you bung?”

“No,” Ender said.

“You still my friend?” asked Alai, more quietly.

“Yes.”

“Then I still you friend, Ender, and I stay here and practice with you.”

The older boys came again, but fewer of them were commanders. Most were members of a couple of armies. Ender recognized Salamander uniforms. Even a couple of Rats. They didn’t take names this time. Instead, they mocked and shouted and ridiculed as the Launchies tried to master difficult skills with untrained muscles. It began to get to a few of the boys.

“Listen to them,” Ender said to the other boys. “Remember the words. If you ever want to make your enemy crazy, shout that kind of stuff at them. It makes them do dumb things, to be mad. But we don’t get mad.”

Shen took the idea to heart, and after each jibe from the older boys, he had a group of four Launchies recite the words, loudly, five or six times. When they started singing the taunts like nursery rhymes, some of the older boys launched themselves from the wall and came out for a fight.

The flash suits were designed for wars fought with harmless light; they offered little protection and seriously hampered movement if it came to hand-to-hand fighting in nullo. Half the boys were flashed, anyway, and couldn’t fight; but the stiffness of their suits made them potentially useful. Ender quickly ordered his Launchies to gather in one corner of the room. The older boys laughed at them even more, and some who had waited by the wall came forward to join in the attack, seeing Ender’s group in retreat.

Ender and Alai decided to throw a frozen soldier in the face of an enemy. The frozen Launchy struck helmet first, and the two caromed off each other. The older boy clutched his chest where the helmet had hit him, and screamed in pain.

The mockery was over. The rest of the older boys launched themselves to enter the battle. Ender didn’t really have much hope of any of the boys getting away without some injury. But the enemy was coming haphazardly, uncoordinatedly; they had never worked together before, while Ender’s little practice army, though there were only a dozen of them now, knew each other well and knew how to work together.

“Go nova!” shouted Ender. The other boys laughed. They gathered into three groups, feet together, squatting, holding hands so they formed small stars against the back wall. “We’ll go around them and make for the door. Now!”

At his signal, the three stars burst apart, each boy launching in a different direction, but angled so he could rebound off a wall and head for the door. Since all of the enemy were in the middle of the room, where course changes were far more difficult, it was an easy maneuver to carry out.

Ender had positioned himself so that when he launched, he would rendezvous with the frozen soldier he had just used as a missile. The boy wasn’t frozen now, and he let Ender catch him, whirl him around and send him toward the door. Unfortunately, the necessary result of the action was for Ender to head in the opposite direction, and at a reduced speed. Alone of all his soldiers, he was drifting fairly slowly, and at the end of the battleroom where the older boys were gathered. He shifted himself so he could see that all his soldiers were safely gathered at the far wall.

In the meantime, the furious and disorganized enemy had just spotted him. Ender calculated how soon he would reach the wall so he could launch again. Not soon enough. Several enemies had already rebounded toward him. Ender was startled to see Stilson’s face among them. Then he shuddered and realized he had been wrong. Still, it was the same situation, and this time they wouldn’t sit still for a single combat settlement. There was no leader, as far as Ender knew, and these boys were a lot bigger than him.

Still, he had learned some things about weight-shifting in personal combat class, and about the physics of moving objects. Game battles almost never got to hand-to-hand combat—you never bumped into an enemy that wasn’t frozen unless you were frozen yourself. So in the few seconds he had, Ender tried to position himself to receive his guests.

Fortunately, they knew as little about nullo fighting as he did, and the few who tried to punch him found that throwing a punch was pretty ineffective when their bodies moved backward just as quickly as their fists moved forward. But there were some in the group who had bone-breaking on their minds, as Ender quickly saw. He didn’t plan to be there for it, though.

He caught one of the punchers by the arm and threw him as hard as he could. It hurled Ender out of the way of the rest of the first onslaught, though he still wasn’t getting any closer to the door. “Stay there!” he shouted at his friends, who obviously were forming up to come and rescue him. “Just stay there!”

Someone caught Ender by the foot. The tight grip gave Ender some leverage; he was able to stamp firmly on the other boy’s ear and shoulder, making him cry out and let go. If the boy had let go just as Ender kicked downward, it would have hurt him much less and allowed Ender to use the maneuver as a launch. Instead, the boy had hung on too well; his ear was torn and scattering blood in the air, and Ender was drifting even more slowly.

I’m doing it again, thought Ender. I’m hurting people again, just to save myself. Why don’t they leave me alone, so I don’t have to hurt them?

Three more boys were converging on him now, and this time they were acting together. Still, they had to grab him before they could hurt him. Ender positioned himself quickly so that two of them would take his feet, leaving his hands free to deal with the third.

Sure enough, they took the bait. Ender grasped the shoulders of the third boy’s shirt and pulled him up sharply, butting him in the face with his helmet. Again a scream and a shower of blood. The two boys who had his legs were wrenching at them, twisting him. Ender threw the boy with the bleeding nose at one of them; they entangled, and Ender’s leg came free. It was a simple matter then to use the other boy’s hold for leverage to kick him firmly in the groin, then shove off him in the direction of the door. He didn’t get that good a launch, so that his speed was nothing special, but it didn’t matter. No one was following him.

He got to his friends at the door. They caught him and handed him along to the door. They were laughing and slapping him playfully. “You bad!” they said. “You scary! You flame!”

“Practice is over for the day,” Ender said.

“They’ll be back tomorrow,” said Shen.

“Won’t do them any good,” said Ender. “If they come without suits, we’ll do this again. If they come with suits, we can flash them.”

“Besides,” said Alai, “the teachers won’t let it happen.”

Ender remembered what Dink had told him, and wondered if Alai was right.

“Hey Ender!” shouted one of the older boys, as Ender left the battleroom. “You nothing, man! You be nothing!”

“My old commander Bonzo,” said Ender. “I think he doesn’t like me.”

Ender checked the rosters on his desk that night. Four boys turned up on medical report. One with bruised ribs, one with a bruised testicle, one with a torn ear, and one with a broken nose and a loose tooth. The cause of injury was the same in all cases:

ACCIDENTAL COLLISION IN NULL G

If the teachers were allowing that to turn up on the official report, it was obvious they didn’t intend to punish anyone for the nasty little skirmish in the battleroom. Aren’t they going to do anything? Don’t they care what goes on in this school?

Since he was back to the barracks earlier than usual, Ender called up the fantasy game on his desk. It had been a while since he last used it. Long enough that it didn’t start him where he had left off. Instead, he began by the Giant’s corpse. Only now, it was hardly identifiable as a corpse at all, unless you stood off a ways and studied it. The body had eroded into a hill, entwined with grass and vines. Only the crest of the Giant’s face was still visible, and it was white bone, like limestone protruding from a discouraged, withering mountain.

Ender did not look forward to fighting with the wolf-children again, but to his surprise they weren’t there. Perhaps, killed once, they were gone forever. It made him a little sad.

He made his way down underground, through the tunnels, to the cliff ledge overlooking the beautiful forest. Again he threw himself down, and again a cloud caught him and carried him into the castle turret room.

The snake began to unweave itself from the rug again, only this time Ender did not hesitate. He stepped on the head of the snake and crushed it under his foot. It writhed and twisted under him, and in response he twisted and ground it deeper into the stone floor. Finally it was still. Ender picked it up and shook it, until it unwove itself and the pattern in the rug was gone. Then, still dragging the snake behind him, he began to look for a way out.

Instead, he found a mirror. And in the mirror he saw a face that he easily recognized. It was Peter, with blood dripping down his chin and a snake’s tail protruding from a corner of his mouth.

Ender shouted and thrust his desk from him. The few boys in the barracks were alarmed at the noise, but he apologized and told them it was nothing. They went away. He looked again into his desk. His figure was still there, staring into the mirror. He tried to pick up some of the furniture, to break the mirror, but it could not be moved. The mirror would not come off the wall, either. Finally Ender threw the snake at it. The mirror shattered, leaving a hole in the wall behind it. Out of the hole came dozens of tiny snakes, which quickly bit Ender’s figure again and again. Tearing the snakes frantically from itself, the figure collapsed and died in a writhing heap of small serpents.

The screen went blank, and words appeared.

PLAY AGAIN?

Ender signed off and put the desk away.

The next day, several commanders came to Ender or sent soldiers to tell him not to worry, most of them thought the extra practice sessions were a good idea, he should keep it up. And to make sure nobody bothered him, they were sending a few of their older soldiers who needed extra practice to come join him. “They’re as big as most of the buggers who attacked you last night. They’ll think twice.”

Instead of a dozen boys, there were forty-five that night, more than an army, and whether it was because of the presence of older boys on Ender’s side or because they had had enough the night before, none of their enemies came.

Ender didn’t go back to the fantasy game. But it lived in his dreams. He kept remembering how it felt to kill the snake, grinding it in, the way he tore the ear off that boy, the way he destroyed Stilson, the way he broke Bernard’s arm. And then to stand up, holding the corpse of his enemy, and find Peter’s face looking out at him from the mirror. This game knows too much about me. This game tells filthy lies. I am not Peter. I don’t have murder in my heart.

And then a worse fear, that he was a killer, only better at it than Peter ever was; that it was this very trait that pleased the teachers. It’s killers they need for the bugger wars. It’s people who can grind the enemy’s face into the dust and spatter their blood all over space.

Well, I’m your man. I’m the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I’m your tool, and what difference does it make if I hate the part of me that you most need? What difference does it make that when the little serpents killed me in the game, I agreed with them, and was glad.

9

LOCKE AND DEMOSTHENES

“I didn’t call you in here to waste time. How in hell did the computer do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“How could it pick up a picture of Ender’s brother and put it into the graphics in this Fairyland routine?”

“Colonel Graff, I wasn’t there when it was programmed. All I know is that the computer’s never taken anyone to this place before. Fairyland was strange enough, but this isn’t Fairyland anymore. It’s beyond the End of the World, and—”

“I know the names of the places, I just don’t know what they mean.”

“Fairyland was programmed in. It’s mentioned in a few other places. But nothing talks about the End of the World. We don’t have any experience with it.”

“I don’t like having the computer screw around with Ender’s mind that way. Peter Wiggin is the most potent person in his life, except maybe his sister Valentine.”

“And the mind game is designed to help shape them, help them find worlds they can be comfortable in.”

“You don’t get it, do you, Major Imbu? I don’t want Ender being comfortable with the end of the world. Our business here is not to be comfortable with the end of the world!”

“The End of the World in the game isn’t necessarily the end of humanity in the bugger wars. It has a private meaning to Ender.”

“Good. What meaning?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’m not the kid. Ask him.”

“Major Imbu, I’m asking you.”

“There could be a thousand meanings.”

“Try one.”

“You’ve been isolating the boy. Maybe he’s wishing for the end of this world, the Battle School. Or maybe it’s about the end of the world he grew up with as a little boy, his home, coming here. Or maybe it’s his way of coping with having broken up so many other kids here. Ender’s a sensitive kid, you know, and he’s done some pretty bad things to people’s bodies, he might be wishing for the end of that world.”

“Or none of the above.”

“The mind game is a relationship between the child and the computer. Together they create stories. The stories are true, in the sense that they reflect the reality of the child’s life. That’s all I know.”

“And I’ll tell you what I know, Major Imbu. That picture of Peter Wiggin was not one that could have been taken from our files here at the school. We have nothing on him, electronically or otherwise, since Ender came here. And that picture is more recent.”

“It’s only been a year and a half, sir, how much can the boy change?”

“He’s wearing his hair completely differently now. His mouth was redone with orthodontia. I got a recent photograph from landside and compared. The only way the computer here in the Battle School could have got that picture was by requisitioning it from a landside computer. And not even one connected with the I.F. That takes requisitionary powers. We can’t just go into Guilford County North Carolina and pluck a picture out of school files. Did anyone at this school authorize getting this?”

“You don’t understand, sir. Our Battle School computer is only a part of the I.F. network. If we want a picture, we have to get a requisition, but if the mind game program determines that the picture is necessary—”

“It can just go take it.”

“Not just every day. Only when it’s for the child’s own good.”

“OK, it’s for his good. But why. His brother is dangerous, his brother was rejected for this program because he’s one of the most ruthless and unreliable human beings we’ve laid hands on. Why is he so important to Ender? Why, after all this time?”

“Honestly, sir, I don’t know. And the mind game program is designed so that it can’t tell us. It may not know itself, actually. This is uncharted territory.”

“You mean the computer’s making this up as it goes along?”

“You might put it that way.”

“Well, that does make me feel a little better. I thought I was the only one.”

Valentine celebrated Ender’s eighth birthday alone, in the wooded back yard of their new home in Greensboro. She scraped a patch of ground bare of pine needles and leaves, and there scratched his name in the dirt with a twig. Then she made a small teepee of twigs and needles and lit a small fire. It made smoke that interwove with the branches and needles of the pine overhead. All the way into space, she said silently. All the way to the Battle School.

No letters had ever come, and as far as they knew their own letters had never reached him. When he first was taken, Father and Mother sat at the table and keyed in long letters to him every few days. Soon, though, it was once a week, and when no answers came, once a month. Now it had been two years since he went, and there were no letters, none at all, and no remembrance on his birthday. He is dead, she thought bitterly, because we have forgotten him.

But Valentine had not forgotten him. She did not let her parents know, and above all never hinted to Peter how often she thought about Ender, how often she wrote him letters that she knew he would not answer. And when Mother and Father had announced to them that they were leaving the city to move to North Carolina, of all places, Valentine knew that they never expected to see Ender again. They were leaving the only place where he knew to find them. How would Ender find them here, among these trees, under this changeable and heavy sky? He had lived deep in corridors all his life, and if he was still in the Battle School, there was less of nature there. What would he make of this?

Valentine knew why they had moved here. It was for Peter, so that living among trees and small animals, so that nature, in as raw a form as Mother and Father could conceive of it, might have a softening influence on their strange and frightening son. And, in a way, it had. Peter took to it right away. Long walks out in the open, cutting through woods and out into the open country—going sometimes for a whole day, with only a sandwich or two sharing space with his desk in the pack on his back, with only a small pocket knife in his pocket.

But Valentine knew. She had seen a squirrel half-skinned, spiked by its little hands and feet with twigs pushed into the dirt. She pictured Peter trapping it, staking it, then carefully parting and peeling back the skin without breaking into the abdomen, watching the muscles twist and ripple. How long had it taken the squirrel to die? And all the while Peter had sat nearby, leaning against the tree where perhaps the squirrel had nested, playing with his desk while the squirrel’s life seeped away.

At first she was horrified, and nearly threw up at dinner, watching how Peter ate so vigorously, talked so cheerfully. But later she thought about it and realized that perhaps, for Peter, it was a kind of magic, like her little fires; a sacrifice that somehow stilled the dark gods that hunted for his soul. Better to torture squirrels than other children. Peter has always been a husbandman of pain, planting it, nurturing it, devouring it greedily when it was ripe; better he should take it in these small, sharp doses than with dull cruelty to children in the school.

“A model student,” said his teachers. “I wish we had a hundred others in the school just like him. Studies all the time, turns in all his work on time. He loves to learn.”

But Valentine knew it was a fraud. Peter loved to learn, all right, but the teachers hadn’t taught him anything, ever. He did his learning through his desk at home, tapping into libraries and databases, studying and thinking and, above all, talking to Valentine. Yet at school he acted as though he were excited about the puerile lesson of the day. Oh, wow, I never knew that frogs looked like this inside, he’d say, and then at home he studied the binding of cells into organisms through the philotic collation of DNA. Peter was a master of flattery, and all his teachers bought it.

Still, it was good. Peter never fought anymore. Never bullied. Got along well with everybody. It was a new Peter.

Everyone believed it. Father and Mother said it, so often it made Valentine want to scream at them. It isn’t the new Peter! It’s the old Peter, only smarter!

How smart? Smarter than you, Father. Smarter than you. Mother. Smarter than anybody you have ever met.

But not smarter than me.

“I’ve been deciding,” said Peter, “whether to kill you or what.”

Valentine leaned against the trunk of the pine tree, her little fire a few smoldering ashes. “I love you, too, Peter.”

“It would be so easy. You always make these stupid little fires. It’s just a matter of knocking you out and burning you up. You’re such a firebug.”

“I’ve been thinking of castrating you in your sleep.”

“No you haven’t. You only think of things like that when I’m with you. I bring out the best in you. No, Valentine, I’ve decided not to kill you. I’ve decided that you’re going to help me.”

“I am?” A few years ago, Valentine would have been terrified at Peter’s threats. Now, though, she was not so afraid. Not that she doubted that he was capable of killing her. She couldn’t think of anything so terrible that she didn’t believe Peter might do it. She also knew, though, that Peter was not insane, not in the sense that he wasn’t in control of himself. He was in better control of himself than anyone she knew. Except perhaps herself. Peter could delay any desire as long as he needed to; he could conceal any emotion. And so Valentine knew that he would never hurt her in a fit of rage. He would only do it if the advantages outweighed the risks. And they did not. In a way, she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always, always acted out of intelligent self-interest. And so, to keep herself safe, all she had to do was make sure it was more in Peter’s interest to keep her alive than to have her dead.

“Valentine, things are coming to a head. I’ve been tracking troop movements in Russia.”

“What are we talking about?”

“The world, Val. You know Russia? Big Empire? The Second Warsaw Pact? Rulers of Eurasia from the Netherlands to Pakistan?”

“They don’t publish their troop movements, Peter.”

“Of course not. But they do publish their passenger and freight train schedules. I’ve had my desk analyzing those schedules and figuring out when the secret troop trains are moving over the same tracks. Done it backward over the past three years. In the last six months, they’ve stepped up, they’re getting ready for war. Land war.”

“But what about the League? What about the buggers?” Valentine didn’t know what Peter was getting at, but he often launched discussions like this, practical discussions of world events. He used her to test his ideas, to refine them. In the process, she also refined her own thinking. She found that while she rarely agreed with Peter about what the world ought to be, they rarely disagreed about what the world actually was. They had become quite deft at sifting accurate information out of the stories of the hopelessly ignorant, gullible news writers. The news herd, as Peter called them.

“The Polemarch is Russian, isn’t he? And he knows what’s happening with the fleet. Either they’ve found out the buggers aren’t a threat after all, or we’re about to have a big battle. One way or another, the bugger war is about to be over. They’re getting ready for after the war.”

“If they’re moving troops, it must be under the direction of the Strategos.”

“It’s all internal, within the Warsaw Pact.”

This was troubling. The facade of peace and cooperation had been undisturbed almost since the bugger wars began. What Peter had detected was a fundamental shift in the world order. She had a mental picture, as clear as memory, of the way the world had been before the buggers forced peace upon them. “So it’s back to the way it was before.”

“A few changes. The shields make it so nobody bothers with nuclear weapons anymore. We have to kill each other thousands at a time instead of millions.” Peter grinned. “Val, it was bound to happen. Right now there’s a vast international fleet and army in existence, with North American hegemony. When the bugger wars are over, all that power will vanish, because it’s all built on fear of the buggers. And suddenly we’ll look around and discover that all the old alliances are gone, dead and gone, except one, the Warsaw Pact. And it’ll be the dollar against five million lasers. We’ll have the asteroid belt, but they’ll have Earth, and you run out of raisins and celery kind of fast out there, without Earth.”

What disturbed Valentine most of all was that Peter did not seem at all worried. “Peter, why do I get the idea that you are thinking of this as a golden opportunity for Peter Wiggin?”

“For both of us, Val.”

“Peter, you’re twelve years old. I’m ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.”

“But we don’t think like other children, do we, Val? We don’t talk like other children. And above all, we don’t write like other children.”

“For a discussion that began with death threats, Peter, we’ve strayed from the topic, I think.” Still, Valentine found herself getting excited. Writing was something Val did better than Peter. They both knew it. Peter had even named it once, when he said that he could always see what other people hated most about themselves, and bully them, while Val could always see what other people liked best about themselves, and flatter them. It was a cynical way of putting it, but it was true. Valentine could persuade other people to her point of view—she could convince them that they wanted what she wanted them to want. Peter, on the other hand, could only make them fear what he wanted them to fear. When he first pointed this out to Val, she resented it. She had wanted to believe she was good at persuading people because she was right, not because she was clever. But no matter how much she told herself that she didn’t ever want to exploit people the way Peter did, she enjoyed knowing that she could, in her way, control other people. And not just control what they did. She could control, in a way, what they wanted to do. She was ashamed that she took pleasure in this power, and yet she found herself using it sometimes. To get teachers to do what she wanted, and other students. To get Mother and Father to see things her way. Sometimes, she was able to persuade even Peter. That was the most frightening thing of all—that she could understand Peter well enough, could empathize with him enough to get inside him that way. There was more Peter in her than she could bear to admit, though sometimes she dared to think about it anyway. This is what she thought as Peter spoke: You dream of power, Peter, but in my own way I am more powerful than you.

“I’ve been studying history,” Peter said. “I’ve been learning things about patterns in human behavior. There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world. Think what Pericles did in Athens, and Demosthenes—”

“Yes, they managed to wreck Athens twice.”

“Pericles, yes, but Demosthenes was right about Philip—”

“Or provoked him—”

“See? This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismarck. Lenin.”

“Not exactly parallel cases, Peter.” Now she was disagreeing with him out of habit; she saw what he was getting at, and she thought it might just be possible.

“I didn’t expect you to understand. You still believe that teachers know something worth learning.”

I understand more than you think, Peter. “So you see yourself as Bismarck?”

“I see myself as knowing how to insert ideas into the public mind. Haven’t you ever thought of a phrase, Val, a clever thing to say, and said it, and then two weeks or a month later you hear some adult saying it to another adult, both of them strangers? Or you see it on a video or pick it up on a net?”

“I always figured I heard it before and only thought I was making it up.”

“You were wrong. There are maybe two or three thousand people in the world as smart as us, little sister. Most of them are making a living somewhere. Teaching, the poor bastards, or doing research. Precious few of them are actually in positions of power.”

“I guess we’re the lucky few.”

“Funny as a one-legged rabbit, Val.”

“Of which there are no doubt several in these woods.”

“Hopping in neat little circles.”

Valentine laughed at the gruesome image and hated herself for thinking it was funny.

“Val, we can say the words that everyone else will be saying two weeks later. We can do that. We don’t have to wait until we’re grown up and safely put away in some career.”

“Peter, you’re twelve.”

“Not on the nets I’m not. On the nets I can name myself anything I want, and so can you.”

“On the nets we are clearly identified as students, and we can’t even get into the real discussions except in audience mode, which means we can’t say anything anyway.”

“I have a plan.”

“You always do.” She pretended nonchalance, but she listened eagerly.

“We can get on the nets as full-fledged adults, with whatever net names we want to adopt, if Father gets us onto his citizen’s access.”

“And why would he do that? We already have student access. What do you tell him, I need citizen’s access so I can take over the world?”

“No, Val. I won’t tell him anything. You’ll tell him how you’re worried about me. How I’m trying so very hard to do well at school, but you know it’s driving me crazy because I can never talk to anybody intelligent, everybody always talks down to me because I’m young, I never get to converse with my peers. You can prove that the stress is getting to me. There’s even evidence.”

Valentine thought of the corpse of the squirrel in the woods and realized that even that discovery was part of Peter’s plan. Or at least he had made it part of his plan, after it happened.

“So you get him to authorize us to share his citizen’s access. To adopt our own identities there, to conceal who we are so people will give us the intellectual respect we deserve.”

Valentine could challenge him on ideas, but never on things like this. She could not say, What makes you think you deserve respect? She had read about Adolf Hitler. She wondered what he was like at the age of twelve. Not this smart, not like Peter that way, but craving honor, probably that. And what would it have meant to the world if in childhood he had been caught in a thresher or trampled by a horse?

“Val,” Peter said. “I know what you think of me. I’m not a nice person, you think.”

Valentine threw a pine needle at him. “An arrow through your heart.”

“I’ve been planning to come talk to you for a long time. But I kept being afraid.”

She put a pine needle in her mouth and blew it at him. It dropped almost straight down. “Another failed launch.” Why was he pretending to be weak?

“Val, I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me. That you wouldn’t believe I could do it.”

“Peter, I believe you could do anything, and probably will.”

“But I was even more afraid that you’d believe me and try to stop me.”

“Come on, threaten to kill me again, Peter.” Did he actually believe she could be fooled by his nice-and-humble-kid act?

“So I’ve got a sick sense of humor. I’m sorry. You know I was teasing. I need your help.”

“You’re just what the world needs. A twelve-year-old to solve all our problems.”

“It’s not my fault I’m twelve right now. And it’s not my fault that right now is when the opportunity is open. Right now is the time when I can shape events. The world is always a democracy in times of flux, and the man with the best voice will win. Everybody thinks Hitler got to power because of his armies, because they were willing to kill, and that’s partly true, because in the real world power is always built on the threat of death and dishonor. But mostly he got to power on words, on the right words at the right time.”

“I was just thinking of comparing you to him.”

“I don’t hate Jews, Val. I don’t want to destroy anybody. And I don’t want war, either. I want the world to hold together. Is that so bad? I don’t want us to go back to the old way. Have you read about the world wars?”

“Yes.”

“We can go back to that again. Or worse. We could find ourselves locked into the Warsaw Pact. Now, there’s a cheerful thought.”

“Peter, we’re children, don’t you understand that? We’re going to school, we’re growing up—” But even as she resisted, she wanted him to persuade her. She had wanted him to persuade her from the beginning.

But Peter didn’t know that he had already won. “If I believe that, if I accept that, then I’ve got to sit back and watch while all the opportunities vanish, and then when I’m old enough it’s too late. Val, listen to me. I know how you feel about me, you always have. I was a vicious, nasty brother. I was cruel to you and crueler to Ender before they took him. But I didn’t hate you. I loved you both, I just had to be—had to have control, do you understand that? It’s the most important thing to me, it’s my greatest gift, I can see where the weak points are, I can see how to get in and use them, I just see those things without even trying. I could become a businessman and run some big corporation, I’d scramble and maneuver until I was at the top of everything and what would I have? Nothing. I’m going to rule, Val, I’m going to have control of something. But I want it to be something worth ruling. I want to accomplish something worthwhile. A Pax Americana through the whole world. So that when somebody else comes, after we beat the buggers, when somebody else comes here to defeat us, they’ll find we’ve already spread over a thousand worlds, we’re at peace with ourselves and impossible to destroy. Do you understand? I want to save mankind from self-destruction.”

She had never seen him speak with such sincerity. With no hint of mockery, no trace of a lie in his voice. He was getting better at this. Or maybe he was actually touching on the truth. “So a twelve-year-old boy and his kid sister are going to save the world?”

“How old was Alexander? I’m not going to do it overnight. I’m just going to start now. If you’ll help me.”

“I don’t believe what you did to those squirrels was part of an act. I think you did it because you love to do it.”

Suddenly Peter wept into his hands. Val assumed that he was pretending, but then she wondered. It was possible, wasn’t it, that he loved her, and that in this time of terrifying opportunity he was willing to weaken himself before her in order to win her love. He’s manipulating me, she thought, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t sincere. His cheeks were wet when he took his hands away, his eyes rimmed in red. “I know,” he said. “It’s what I’m most afraid of. That I really am a monster. I don’t want to be a killer but I just can’t help it.”

She had never seen him show such weakness. You’re so clever, Peter. You saved your weakness so you could use it to move me now.

And yet it did move her. Because if it were true, even partly true, then Peter was not a monster, and so she could satisfy her Peter-like love of power without fear of becoming monstrous herself. She knew that Peter was calculating even now, but she believed that under the calculations he was telling the truth. It had been hidden layers deep, but he had probed her until he found her trust.

“Val, if you don’t help me, I don’t know what I’ll become. But if you’re there, my partner in everything, you can keep me from becoming—like that. Like the bad ones.”

She nodded. You are only pretending to share power with me, she thought, but in fact I have power over you, even though you don’t know it. “I will. I’ll help you.”

As soon as Father got them both onto his citizen’s access, they began testing the waters. They stayed away from the nets that required use of a real name. That wasn’t hard because real names only had to do with money. They didn’t need money. They needed respect, and that they could earn. With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were their words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.

They used throwaway names with their early efforts, not the identities that Peter planned to make famous and influential. Of course they were not invited to take part in the great national and international political forums—they could only be audiences there until they were invited or elected to take part. But they signed on and watched, reading some of the essays published by the great names, witnessing the debates that played across their desks.

And in the lesser conferences, where common people commented about the great debates, they began to insert their comments. At first Peter insisted that they be deliberately inflammatory. “We can’t learn how our style of writing is working unless we get responses—and if we’re bland, no one will answer.”

They were not bland, and people answered. The responses that got posted on the public nets were vinegar; the responses that were sent as mail, for Peter and Valentine to read privately, were poisonous. But they did learn what attributes of their writing were seized upon as childish and immature. And they got better.

When Peter was satisfied that they knew how to sound adult, he killed the old identities and they began to prepare to attract real attention.

“We have to seem completely separate. We’ll write about different things at different times. We’ll never refer to each other. You’ll mostly work on the west coast nets, and I’ll mostly work in the south. Regional issues, too. So do your homework.”

They did their homework. Mother and Father worried sometimes, with Peter and Valentine constantly together, their desks tucked under their arms. But they couldn’t complain—their grades were good, and Valentine was such a good influence on Peter. She had changed his whole attitude toward everything. And Peter and Valentine sat together in the woods, in good weather, and in pocket restaurants and indoor parks when it rained, and they composed their political commentaries. Peter carefully designed both characters so neither one had all of his ideas; there were even some spare identities that they used to drop in third party opinions. “Let both of them find a following as they can,” said Peter.

Once, tired of writing and rewriting until Peter was satisfied, Val despaired and said, “Write it yourself, then!”

“I can’t,” he answered. “They can’t both sound alike. Ever. You forget that someday we’ll be famous enough that somebody will start running analyses. We have to come up as different people every time.”

So she wrote on. Her main identity on the nets was Demosthenes—Peter chose the name. He called himself Locke. They were obvious pseudonyms, but that was part of the plan. “With any luck, they’ll start trying to guess who we are.”

“If we get famous enough, the government can always get access and find out who we really are.”

“When that happens, we’ll be too entrenched to suffer much loss. People might be shocked that Demosthenes and Locke are two kids, but they’ll already be used to listening to us.”

They began composing debates for their characters. Valentine would prepare an opening statement, and Peter would invent a throwaway name to answer her. His answer would be intelligent, and the debate would be lively, lots of clever invective and good political rhetoric. Valentine had a knack for alliteration that made her phrases memorable. Then they would enter the debate into the network, separated by a reasonable amount of time, as if they were actually making them up on the spot. Sometimes a few other netters would interpose comments, but Peter and Val would usually ignore them or change their own comments only slightly to accommodate what had been said.

Peter took careful note of all their most memorable phrases and then did searches from time to time to find those phrases cropping up in other places. Not all of them did, but most of them were repeated here and there, and some of them even showed up in the major debates on the prestige nets. “We’re being read,” Peter said. “The ideas are seeping out.”

“The phrases, anyway.”

“That’s just the measure. Look, we’re having some influence. Nobody quotes us by name, yet, but they’re discussing the points we raise. We’re helping set the agenda. We’re getting there.”

“Should we try to get into the main debates?”

“No. We’ll wait until they ask us.”

They had been doing it only seven months when one of the west coast nets sent Demosthenes a message. An offer for a weekly column in a pretty good newsnet.

“I can’t do a weekly column,” Valentine said. “I don’t even have a monthly period yet.”

“The two aren’t related,” Peter said.

“They are to me. I’m still a kid.”

“Tell them yes, but since you prefer not to have your true identity revealed, you want them to pay you in network time. A new access code through their corporate identity.”

“So when the government traces me—”

“You’ll just be a person who can sign on through CalNet. Father’s citizen’s access doesn’t get involved. What I can’t figure out is why they wanted Demosthenes before Locke.”

“Talent rises to the top.”

As a game, it was fun. But Valentine didn’t like some of the positions Peter made Demosthenes take. Demosthenes began to develop as a fairly paranoid anti-Russian writer. It bothered her because Peter was the one who knew how to exploit fear in his writing—she had to keep coming to him for ideas on how to do it. Meanwhile, his Locke followed her moderate, empathic strategies. It made sense, in a way. By having her write Demosthenes, it meant he also had some empathy, just as Locke also could play on others’ fears. But the main effect was to keep her inextricably tied to Peter. She couldn’t go off and use Demosthenes for her own purposes. She wouldn’t know how to use him. Still, it worked both ways. He couldn’t write Locke without her. Or could he?

“I thought the idea was to unify the world. If I write this like you say I should, Peter, I’m pretty much calling for war to break up the Warsaw Pact.”

“Not war, just open nets and prohibition of interception. Free flow of information. Compliance with the League rules, for heaven’s sake.”

Without meaning to, Valentine started talking in Demosthenes’ voice, even though she certainly wasn’t speaking Demosthenes’ opinions. “Everyone knows that from the beginning of the League the Second Warsaw Pact was to be regarded as a single entity where those rules were concerned. International free flow is still open. But between the Warsaw Pact nations these things are internal matters. That was why they were willing to allow American hegemony in the League.”

“You’re arguing Locke’s part, Val. Trust me. You have to call for the Warsaw Pact to lose official status. You have to get a lot of people really angry. Then, later, when you begin to recognize the need for compromise—”

“Then they stop listening to me and go off and fight a war.”

“Val, trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

“How do you know? You’re not any smarter than me, and you’ve never done this before either.”

“I’m thirteen and you’re ten.”

“Almost eleven.”

“And I know how these things work.”

“All right, I’ll do it your way. But I won’t do any of these liberty or death things.”

“You will too.”

“And someday when they catch us and they wonder why your sister was such a warmonger, I can just bet you’ll tell them that you told me to do it.”

“Are you sure you’re not having a period, little woman?”

“I hate you, Peter Wiggin.”

What bothered Valentine most was when her column got syndicated into several other regional newsnets, and Father started reading it and quoting from it at table. “Finally, a man with some sense,” he said. Then he quoted some of the passages Valentine hated worst in her own work. “It’s fine to work with these hegemonist Russians with the buggers out there, but after we win, I can’t see leaving half the civilized world as virtual serfs in the Russian Empire, can you, dear?”

“I think you’re taking this all too seriously,” said Mother.

“I like this Demosthenes. I like the way he thinks. I’m surprised he isn’t in the major nets—I looked for him in the international relations debates and you know, he’s never taken part in any of them.”

Valentine lost her appetite and left the table. Peter followed her after a respectable interval.

“So you don’t like lying to Father,” he said. “So what? You’re not lying to him. He doesn’t think that you’re really Demosthenes, and Demosthenes isn’t saying things you really believe. They cancel each other out, they amount to nothing.”

“That’s the kind of reasoning that makes Locke such an ass.” But what really bothered her was not that she was lying to Father—it was the fact that Father actually agreed with Demosthenes. She had thought that only fools would follow him.

A few days later Locke got picked up for a column in a New England newsnet, specifically to provide a contrasting view for their popular column from Demosthenes. “Not bad for two kids who’ve only got about eight pubic hairs between them,” Peter said.

“It’s a long way between writing a newsnet column and ruling the world,” Valentine reminded him. “It’s such a long way that no one has ever done it.”

“They have, though. Or the moral equivalent. I’m going to say snide things about Demosthenes in my first column.”

“Well, Demosthenes isn’t even going to notice that Locke exists. Ever.”

“For now.”

With their identities now fully supported by their income from writing columns, they used Father’s access now only for the throwaway identities. Mother commented that they were spending too much time on the nets. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” she reminded Peter.

Peter let his hand tremble a little, and he said, “If you think I should stop, I think I might be able to keep things under control this time, I really do.”

“No, no,” Mother said. “I don’t want you to stop. Just—be careful, that’s all.”

“I’m careful, Mom.”

Nothing was different, nothing had changed in a year. Ender was sure of it, and yet it all seemed to have gone sour. He was still the leading soldier in the standings, and no one doubted that he deserved it now. At the age of nine he was a toon leader in Phoenix Army, with Petra Arkanian as his commander. He still led his evening practice sessions, and now they were attended by an elite group of soldiers nominated by their commanders, though any Launchy who wanted to could still come. Alai was also a toon leader, in another army, and they were still good friends; Shen was not a leader, but that was no barrier. Dink Meeker had finally accepted command and succeeded Rose the Nose in Rat Army’s command. All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better—

So why do I hate my life?

He went through the paces of the practices and games. He liked teaching the boys in his toon, and they followed him loyally. He had the respect of everyone, and he was treated with deference in his evening practices. Commanders came to study what he did. Other soldiers approached his table at mess and asked permission to sit down. Even the teachers were respectful.

He had so much damn respect he wanted to scream.

He watched the young kids in Petra’s army, fresh out of their launch groups, watched how they played, how they made fun of their leaders when they thought no one was looking. He watched the camaraderie of old friends who had known each other in the Battle School for years, who talked and laughed about old battles and long-graduated soldiers and commanders.

But with his old friends there was no laughter, no remembering. Just work. Just intelligence and excitement about the game, but nothing beyond that. Tonight it had come to a head in the evening practice. Ender and Alai were discussing the nuances of open-space maneuvers when Shen came up and listened for a few moments, then suddenly took Alai by the shoulders and shouted, “Nova! Nova! Nova!” Alai burst out laughing, and for a moment or two Ender watched them remember together the battle where open-room maneuvering had been for real, and they had dodged past the older boys and—

Suddenly they remembered that Ender was there. “Sorry, Ender,” Shen said.

Sorry. For what? For being friends? “I was there, too, you know,” Ender said.

And they apologized again. Back to business. Back to respect. And Ender realized that in their laughter, in their friendship, it had not occurred to them that he could have been included.

How could they think I was part of it? Did I laugh? Did I join in? Just stood there, watching, like a teacher.

That’s how they think of me, too. Teacher. Legendary soldier. Not one of them. Not someone that you embrace and whisper Salaam in his ear. That only lasted while Ender still seemed a victim. Still seemed vulnerable. Now he was the master soldier, and he was completely, utterly alone.

Feel sorry for yourself, Ender. He typed the words on his desk as he lay on his bunk. POOR ENDER. Then he laughed at himself and cleared away the words. Not a boy or girl in this school who wouldn’t be glad to trade places with me.

He called up the fantasy game. He walked as he often did through the village that the dwarves had built in the hill made by the Giant’s corpse. It was easy to build sturdy walls, with the ribs already curved just right, just enough space between them to leave windows. The whole corpse was cut into apartments, opening onto the path down the Giant’s spine. The public amphitheatre was carved into the pelvic bowl, and the common herd of ponies was pastured between the Giant’s legs. Ender was never sure what the dwarves were doing as they went about their business, but they left him alone as he picked his way through the village, and in return he did them no harm either.

He vaulted the pelvic bone at the base of the public square, and walked through the pasture. The ponies shied away from him. He did not pursue them. Ender did not understand how the game functioned anymore. In the old days, before he had first gone to the End of the World, everything was combat and puzzles to solve—defeat the enemy before he kills you, or figure out how to get past the obstacle. Now, though, no one attacked, there was no war, and wherever he went, there was no obstacle at all.

Except, of course, in the room in the castle at the End of the World. It was the one dangerous place left. And Ender, however often he vowed that he would not, always went back there, always killed the snake, always looked his brother in the face, and always, no matter what he did next, died.

It was no different this time. He tried to use the knife on the table to pry through the mortar and pull out a stone from the wall. As soon as he breached the seal of the mortar, water began to gush in through the crack, and Ender watched his desk as his figure, now out of his control, struggled madly to stay alive, to keep from drowning. The windows of his room were gone, the water rose, and his figure drowned. All the while, the face of Peter Wiggin in the mirror stayed and looked at him.

I’m trapped here, Ender thought, trapped at the End of the World with no way out. And he knew at last the sour taste that had come to him, despite all his successes in the Battle School. It was despair.

There were uniformed men at the entrances to the school when Valentine arrived. They weren’t standing like guards, but rather slouched around as if they were waiting for someone inside to finish his business. They wore the uniforms of I.F. Marines, the same uniforms that everyone saw in bloody combat on the videos. It lent an air of romance to this day at school; all the other kids were excited about it.

Valentine was not. It made her think of Ender, for one thing. And for another, it made her afraid. Someone had recently published a savage commentary on Demosthenes’ collected writings. The commentary, and therefore her work, had been discussed in the open conference of the international relations net, with some of the most important people of the day attacking and defending Demosthenes. What worried her most was the comment of an Englishman: “Whether he likes it or not, Demosthenes cannot remain incognito forever. He has outraged too many wise men and pleased too many fools to hide behind his too-appropriate pseudonym much longer. Either he will unmask himself in order to assume leadership of the forces of stupidity he has marshalled, or his enemies will unmask him in order to better understand the disease that has produced such a warped and twisted mind.”

Peter had been delighted, but then he would be. Valentine was afraid that enough powerful people had been annoyed by the vicious persona of Demosthenes that she would indeed be tracked down. The I.F. could do it, even if the American government was constitutionally bound not to. And here were I.F. troops gathered at Western Guilford Middle School, of all places. Not exactly the regular recruiting grounds for the I.F. Marines.

So she was not surprised to find a message marching around her desk as soon as she logged in.

PLEASE LOG OFF AND GO TO DR.
LINEBERRY’S OFFICE AT ONCE.

Valentine waited nervously outside the principal’s office until Dr. Lineberry opened the door and beckoned her inside. Her last doubt was removed when she saw the soft-bellied man in the uniform of an I.F. colonel sitting in the one comfortable chair in the room.

“You’re Valentine Wiggin,” he said.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I’m Colonel Graff. We’ve met before.”

Before? When had she had any dealings with the I.F.?

“I’ve come to talk to you in confidence, about your brother.”

It’s not just me, then, she thought. They have Peter. Or is this something new? Has he done something crazy? I thought he stopped doing crazy things.

“Valentine, you seem frightened. There’s no need to be. Please, sit down. I assure you that your brother is well. He has more than fulfilled our expectations.”

And now, with a great inward gush of relief, she realized that it was Ender they had come about. This must be the officer who had taken him away. Ender. It wasn’t punishment at all, it was little Ender, who had disappeared so long ago, who was no part of Peter’s plots now. You were the lucky one, Ender. You got away before Peter could trap you into his conspiracy.

“How do you feel about your brother, Valentine?”

“Ender?”

“Of course.”

“How can I feel about him? I haven’t seen him or heard from him since I was eight.”

“Dr. Lineberry, will you excuse us?”

Lineberry was annoyed.

“On second thought, Dr. Lineberry, I think Valentine and I will have a much more productive conversation if we walk. Outside. Away from the recording devices that your assistant principal has placed in this room.”

It was the first time Valentine had seen Dr. Lineberry speechless. Colonel Graff lifted a picture out from the wall and peeled a sound-sensitive membrane from the wall, along with its small broadcast unit. “Cheap,” said Graff, “but effective. I thought you knew.”

Lineberry took the device and sat down heavily at her desk. Graff led Valentine outside.

They walked out into the football field. The soldiers followed at a discreet distance; they split up and formed a large circle, to guard them from the widest possible perimeter.

“Valentine, we need your help for Ender.”

“What kind of help?”

“We aren’t even sure of that. We need you to help us figure out how you can help us.”

“Well, what’s wrong?”

“That’s part of the problem. We don’t know.”

Valentine couldn’t help but laugh. “I haven’t seen him in three years! You’ve got him up there with you all the time!”

“Valentine, it costs more money than your father will make in his lifetime for me to fly to Earth and back to the Battle School again. I don’t commute casually.”

“The king had a dream,” said Valentine, “but he forgot what it was, so he told his wise men to interpret the dream or they’d die. Only Daniel could interpret it, because he was a prophet.”

“You read the Bible?”

“We’re doing classics this year in advanced English. I’m not a prophet.”

“I wish I could tell you everything about Ender’s situation. But it would take hours, maybe days, and afterward I’d have to put you in protective confinement because so much of it is strictly confidential. So let’s see what we can do with limited information. There’s a game that our students play with the computer.” And he told her about the End of the World and the closed room and the picture of Peter in the mirror.

“It’s the computer that puts the picture there, not Ender. Why not ask the computer?”

“The computer doesn’t know.”

“I’m supposed to know?”

“This is the second time since Ender’s been with us that he’s taken this game to a dead end. To a game that seems to have no solution.”

“Did he solve the first one?”

“Eventually.”

“Then give him time, he’ll probably solve this one.”

“I’m not sure. Valentine, your brother is a very unhappy little boy.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know much, do you?”

Valentine thought for a moment that the man might get angry. Instead, though, he decided to laugh. “No, not much. Valentine, why would Ender keep seeing your brother Peter in the mirror?”

“He shouldn’t. It’s stupid.”

“Why is it stupid?”

“Because if there’s ever anybody who was the opposite of Ender, it’s Peter.”

“How?”

Valentine could not think of a way to answer him that wasn’t dangerous. Too much questioning about Peter could lead to real trouble. Valentine knew enough about the world to know that no one would take Peter’s plans for world domination seriously, as a danger to existing governments. But they might well decide he was insane and needed treatment for his megalomania.

“You’re preparing to lie to me,” Graff said.

“I’m preparing not to talk to you anymore,” Valentine answered.

“And you’re afraid. Why are you afraid?”

“I don’t like questions about my family. Just leave my family out of this.”

“Valentine, I’m trying to leave your family out of this. I’m coming to you so I don’t have to start a battery of tests on Peter and question your parents. I’m trying to solve this problem now, with the person Ender loves and trusts most in the world, perhaps the only person he loves and trusts at all. If we can’t solve it this way, then we’ll sequester your family and do as we like from then on. This is not a trivial matter, and I won’t just go away.”

The only person Ender loves and trusts at all. She felt a deep stab of pain, of regret, of shame that now it was Peter she was close to, Peter who was the center of her life. For you, Ender, I light fires on your birthday. For Peter I help fulfil all his dreams. “I never thought you were a nice man. Not when you came to take Ender away, and not now.”

“Don’t pretend to be an ignorant little girl. I saw your tests when you were little, and at the present moment there aren’t very many college professors who could keep up with you.”

“Ender and Peter hate each other.”

“I knew that. You said they were opposites. Why?”

“Peter—can be hateful sometimes.”

“Hateful in what way?”

“Mean. Just mean, that’s all.”

“Valentine, for Ender’s sake, tell me what he does when he’s being mean.”

“He threatens to kill people a lot. He doesn’t mean it. But when we were little, Ender and I were both afraid of him. He told us he’d kill us. Actually, he told us he’d kill Ender.”

“We monitored some of that.”

“It was because of the monitor.”

“Is that all? Tell me more about Peter.”

So she told him about the children in every school that Peter attended. He never hit them, but he tortured them just the same. Found what they were most ashamed of and told it to the person whose respect they most wanted. Found what they most feared and made sure they faced it often.

“Did he do this with Ender?”

Valentine shook her head.

“Are you sure? Didn’t Ender have a weak place? A thing he feared most, or that he was ashamed of?”

“Ender never did anything to be ashamed of.” And suddenly, deep in her own shame for having forgotten and betrayed Ender, she started to cry.

“Why are you crying?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t explain what it was like to think of her little brother, who was so good, whom she had protected for so long, and then remember that now she was Peter’s ally, Peter’s helper, Peter’s slave in a scheme that was completely out of her control. Ender never surrendered to Peter, but I have turned, I’ve become part of him, as Ender never was. “Ender never gave in,” she said.

“To what?”

“To Peter. To being like Peter.”

They walked in silence along the goal line.

“How would Ender ever be like Peter?”

Valentine shuddered. “I already told you.”

“But Ender never did that kind of thing. He was just a little boy.”

“We both wanted to, though. We both wanted to—to kill Peter.”

“Ah.”

“No, that isn’t true. We never said it. Ender never said that he wanted to do that. I just—thought it. It was me, not Ender. He never said that he wanted to kill him.”

“What did he want?”

“He just didn’t want to be—”

“To be what?”

“Peter tortures squirrels. He stakes them out on the ground and skins them alive and sits and watches them until they die. He did that for a while, after Ender left; he doesn’t do it now. But he did it. If Ender knew that, if Ender saw him, I think that he’d—”

“He’d what? Rescue the squirrels? Try to heal them?”

“No, in those days you didn’t—undo what Peter did. You didn’t cross him. But Ender would be kind to squirrels. Do you understand? He’d feed them.”

“But if he fed them, they’d become tame, and that much easier for Peter to catch.”

Valentine began to cry again. “No matter what you do, it always helps Peter. Everything helps Peter, everything, you just can’t get away, no matter what.”

“Are you helping Peter?” asked Graff.

She didn’t answer.

“Is Peter such a very bad person, Valentine?”

She nodded.

“Is Peter the worst person in the world?”

“How can he be? I don’t know. He’s the worst person I know.”

“And yet you and Ender are his brother and sister. You have the same genes, the same parents, how can he be so bad if—”

Valentine turned and screamed at him, screamed as if he were killing her. “Ender is not like Peter! He is not like Peter in any way! Except that he’s smart, that’s all—in every other way a person could possibly be like Peter he is nothing nothing nothing like Peter! Nothing!”

“I see,” said Graff.

“I know what you’re thinking, you bastard, you’re thinking that I’m wrong, that Ender’s like Peter. Well maybe I’m like Peter, but Ender isn’t, he isn’t at all, I used to tell him that when he cried, I told him that lots of times, you’re not like Peter, you never like to hurt people, you’re kind and good and not like Peter at all!”

“And it’s true.”

His acquiescence calmed her. “Damn right it’s true. It’s true.”

“Valentine, will you help Ender?”

“I can’t do anything for him now.”

“It’s really the same thing you always did for him before. Just comfort him and tell him that he never likes to hurt people, that he’s good and kind and not like Peter at all. That’s the most important thing. That he’s not like Peter at all.”

“I can see him?”

“No. I want you to write a letter.”

“What good does that do? Ender never answered a single letter I sent.”

Graff sighed. “He answered every letter he got.”

It took only a second for her to understand. “You really stink.”

“Isolation is—the optimum environment for creativity. It was his ideas we wanted, not the—never mind, I don’t have to defend myself to you.”

Then why are you doing it, she did not ask.

“But he’s slacking off. He’s coasting. We want to push him forward, and he won’t go.”

“Maybe I’d be doing Ender a favor if I told you to go stuff yourself.”

“You’ve already helped me. You can help me more. Write to him.”

“Promise you won’t cut out anything I write.”

“I won’t promise any such thing.”

“Then forget it.”

“No problem. I’ll write your letter myself. We can use your other letters to reconcile the writing styles. Simple matter.”

“I want to see him.”

“He gets his first leave when he’s eighteen.”

“You told him it would be when he was twelve.”

“We changed the rules.”

“Why should I help you!”

“Don’t help me. Help Ender. What does it matter if that helps us, too?”

“What kind of terrible things are you doing to him up there?”

Graff chuckled. “Valentine, my dear little girl, the terrible things are only about to begin.”

Ender was four lines into the letter before he realized that it wasn’t from one of the other soldiers in the Battle School. It had come in the regular way—a MAIL WAITING message when he signed into his desk. He read four lines into it, then skipped to the end and read the signature. Then he went back to the beginning, and curled up on his bed to read the words over and over again.

ENDER,
THE BASTARDS WOULDN’T PUT ANY OF
MY LETTERS THROUGH TILL NOW. I
MUST HAVE WRITTEN A HUNDRED TIMES
BUT YOU MUST HAVE THOUGHT I NEVER
DID. WELL I DID. I HAVEN’T
FORGOTTEN YOU. I REMEMBER YOUR
BIRTHDAY. I REMEMBER EVERYTHING.
SOME PEOPLE MIGHT THINK THAT
BECAUSE YOU’RE BEING A SOLDIER
YOU ARE NOW A CRUEL AND HARD
PERSON WHO LIKES TO HURT PEOPLE,
LIKE THE MARINES IN THE VIDEOS,
BUT I KNOW THAT ISN’T TRUE. YOU
ARE NOTHING LIKE YOU-KNOW-WHO.
HE’S NICER-SEEMING BUT HE’S
STILL A SLUMBITCH INSIDE.
MAYBE YOU SEEM MEAN, BUT IT
WON’T FOOL ME. STILL PADDLING
THE OLD KNEW,
ALL MY LOVE TURKEY LIPS,
VAL
DON’T WRITE BACK THEY’LL PROBLY
SIKOWANALIZE YOUR LETTER.

Obviously it was written with the full approval of the teachers. But there was no doubt it was written by Val. The spelling of psychoanalyze, the epithet slumbitch for Peter, the joke about pronouncing knew like canoe were all things that no one could know but Val.

And yet they came pretty thick, as though someone wanted to make very sure that Ender believed that the letter was genuine. Why should they be so eager if it’s the real thing?

It isn’t the real thing anyway. Even if she wrote it in her own blood, it isn’t the real thing because they made her write it. She’d written before, and they didn’t let any of those letters through. Those might have been real, but this was asked for, this was part of their manipulation.

And the despair filled him again. Now he knew why. Now he knew what he hated so much. He had no control over his own life. They ran everything. They made all the choices. Only the game was left to him, that was all, everything else was them and their rules and plans and lessons and programs, and all he could do was go this way or that way in battle. The one real thing, the one precious real thing was his memory of Valentine, the person who loved him before he ever played a game, who loved him whether there was a bugger war or not, and they had taken her and put her on their side. She was one of them now.

He hated them and all their games. Hated them so badly that he cried, reading Val’s empty asked-for letter again. The other boys in Phoenix Army noticed and looked away. Ender Wiggin crying? That was disturbing. Something terrible was going on. The best soldier in any army, lying on his bunk crying. The silence in the room was deep.

Ender deleted the letter, wiped it out of memory and then punched up the fantasy game. He was not sure why he was so eager to play the game, to get to the End of the World, but he wasted no time getting there. Only when he coasted on the cloud, skimming over the autumnal colors of the pastoral world, only then did he realize what he hated most about Val’s letter. All that it said was about Peter. About how he was not at all like Peter. The words she had said so often as she held him, comforted him as he trembled in fear and rage and loathing after Peter had tortured him, that was all that the letter had said.

And that was what they had asked for. The bastards knew about that, and they knew about Peter in the mirror in the castle room, they knew about everything and to them Val was just one more tool to use to control him, just one more trick to play. Dink was right, they were the enemy, they loved nothing and cared for nothing and he was not going to do what they wanted, he was damn well not going to do anything for them. He had had only one memory that was safe, one good thing, and those bastards had plowed it into him with the rest of the manure—and so he was finished, he wasn’t going to play.

As always the serpent waited in the tower room, unraveling itself from the rug on the floor. But this time Ender didn’t grind it underfoot. This time he caught it in his hands, knelt before it, and gently, so gently, brought the snake’s gaping mouth to his lips.

And kissed.

He had not meant to do that. He had meant to let the snake bite him on the mouth. Or perhaps he had meant to eat the snake alive, as Peter in the mirror had done, with his bloody chin and the snake’s tail dangling from his lips. But he kissed it instead.

And the snake in his hands thickened and bent into another shape. A human shape. It was Valentine, and she kissed him again.

The snake could not be Valentine. He had killed it too often for it to be his sister. Peter had devoured it too often for Ender to bear it that it might have been Valentine all along.

Was this what they planned when they let him read her letter? He didn’t care.

She arose from the floor of the tower room and walked to the mirror. Ender made his figure also rise and go with her. They stood before the mirror, where instead of Peter’s cruel reflection there stood a dragon and a unicorn. Ender reached out his hand and touched the mirror and so did Valentine; the wall fell open and revealed a great stairway downward, carpeted and lined with shouting, cheering multitudes. Together, arm in arm, he and Valentine walked down the stairs. Tears filled his eyes, tears of relief that at last he had broken free of the room at the End of the World. And because of the tears, he didn’t notice that every member of the multitude wore Peter’s face. He only knew that wherever he went in this world, Valentine was with him.

Valentine opened the letter that Dr. Lineberry had given her. “Dear Valentine,” it said, “We thank you and commend you for your efforts on behalf of the war effort. You are hereby notified that you have been awarded the Star of the Order of the League of Humanity, First Class, which is the highest military award that can be given to a civilian. Unfortunately, I.F. security forbids us to make this award public until after the successful conclusion of current operations, but we want you to know that your efforts resulted in complete success. Sincerely, General Shimon Levy, Strategos.”

When she had read it twice, Dr. Lineberry took it from her hands. “I was instructed to let you read it, and then destroy it.” She took a cigarette lighter from a drawer and set the paper afire. It burned brightly in the ashtray. “Was it good or bad news?” she asked.

“I sold my brother,” Valentine said, “and they paid me for it.”

“That’s a bit melodramatic, isn’t it, Valentine?”

Valentine went back to class without answering. That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no disaster, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. “The most noble title any child can have,” Demosthenes wrote, “is Third.”

For you, Ender, she said to herself as she wrote.

Peter laughed in delight when he read it. “That’ll make them sit up and take notice. Third! A noble title! Oh, you have a wicked streak.”

10

DRAGON

“Now?”

“I suppose so.”

“It has to be an order, Colonel Graff. Armies don’t move because a commander says ‘I suppose it’s time to attack.’ ”

“I’m not a commander. I’m a teacher of little children.”

“Colonel, sir, I admit I was on you, I admit I was a pain in the ass, but it worked, everything worked just like you wanted it to. The last few weeks Ender’s even been, been—”

“Happy.”

“Content. He’s doing well. His mind is keen, his play is excellent. Young as he is, we’ve never had a boy better prepared for command. Usually they go at eleven, but at nine and a half he’s top flight.”

“Well, yes. For a few minutes there, it actually occurred to me to wonder what kind of a man would heal a broken child of some of his hurt, just so he could throw him back into battle again. A little private moral dilemma. Please overlook it. I was tired.”

“Saving the world, remember?”

“Call him in.”

“We’re doing what must be done, Colonel Graff.”

“Come on, Anderson, you’re just dying to see how he handles all those rigged games I had you work out.”

“That’s a pretty low thing to—”

“So I’m a low kind of guy. Come on, Major. We’re both the scum of the earth. I’m dying to see how he handles them, too. After all, our lives depend on him doing real well. Neh?”

“You’re not starting to use the boys’ slang, are you?”

“Call him in, Major. I’ll dump the rosters into his files and give him his security system. What we’re doing to him isn’t all bad, you know. He gets his privacy again.”

“Isolation, you mean.”

“The loneliness of power. Go call him in.”

“Yes sir. I’ll be back with him in fifteen minutes.”

“Good-bye. Yes sir yessir yezzir. I hope you had fun, I hope you had a nice, nice time being happy, Ender. It might be the last time in your life. Welcome, little boy. Your dear Uncle Graff has plans for you.”

Ender knew what was happening from the moment they brought him in. Everyone expected him to go commander early. Perhaps not this early, but he had topped the standings almost continuously for three years, no one else was remotely close to him, and his evening practices had become the most prestigious group in the school. There were some who wondered why the teachers had waited this long.

He wondered which army they’d give him. Three commanders were graduating soon, including Petra, but it was beyond hope for them to give him Phoenix Army—no one ever succeeded to command of the same army he was in when he was promoted.

Anderson took him first to his new quarters. That sealed it—only commanders had private rooms. Then he had him fitted for new uniforms and a new flash suit. He looked on the forms to discover the name of his army.

Dragon, said the form. There was no Dragon Army.

“I’ve never heard of Dragon Army,” Ender said.

“That’s because there hasn’t been a Dragon Army in four years. We discontinued the name because there was a superstition about it. No Dragon Army in the history of the Battle School ever won even a third of its games. It got to be a joke.”

“Well, why are you reviving it now?”

“We had a lot of extra uniforms to use up.”

Graff sat at his desk, looking fatter and wearier than the last time Ender had seen him. He handed Ender his hook, the small box that allowed commanders to go where they wanted in the battleroom during practices. Some said they worked magnetically, some said it was gravity. Many times during his evening practice sessions Ender had wished that he had a hook, instead of having to rebound off walls to get where he wanted to go. Now that he’d got quite deft at maneuvering without one, here it was. “It only works,” Anderson pointed out, “during your regularly scheduled practice sessions.” Since Ender already planned to have extra practices, it meant the hook would only be useful some of the time. It also explained why so many commanders never held extra practices. They depended on the hook, and it wouldn’t do anything for them during the extra times. If they felt that the hook was their authority, their power over the other boys, then they were even less likely to work without it. That’s an advantage I’ll have over some of my enemies, Ender thought.

Graff’s official welcome speech sounded bored and over-rehearsed. Only at the end did he begin to sound interested in his own words. “We’re doing something unusual with Dragon Army. I hope you don’t mind. We’ve assembled a new army by advancing the equivalent of an entire launch course early and delaying the graduation of quite a few advanced students. I think you’ll be pleased with the quality of your soldiers. I hope you are, because we’re forbidding you to transfer any of them.”

“No trades?” asked Ender. It was how commanders always shored up their weak points, by trading around.

“None. You see, you’ve been conducting your extra practice sessions for three years now. You have a following. Many good soldiers would put unfair pressure on their commanders to trade them into your army. We’ve given you an army that can, in time, be competitive. We have no intention of letting you dominate unfairly.”

“What if I’ve got a soldier I just can’t get along with?”

“Get along with him.” Graff closed his eyes, Anderson stood up and the interview was over.

Dragon was assigned the colors grey, orange, grey; Ender changed into his flash suit, then followed the ribbons of light until he came to the barracks that contained his army. They were there already, milling around near the entrance. Ender took charge at once. “Bunking will be arranged by seniority. Veterans to the back of the room, newest soldiers to the front.”

It was the reverse of the usual pattern, and Ender knew it. He also knew that he didn’t intend to be like many commanders, who never even saw the younger boys because they were always in the back.

As they sorted themselves out according to their arrival dates, Ender walked up and down the aisle. Almost thirty of his soldiers were new, straight out of their launch group, completely inexperienced in battle. Some were even underage—the ones nearest the door were pathetically small. Ender reminded himself that that’s how he must have looked to Bonzo Madrid when he first arrived. Still, Bonzo had had only one underage soldier to cope with.

Not one of the veterans belonged to Ender’s elite practice group. None had ever been a toon leader. None, in fact, was older than Ender himself, which meant that even his veterans didn’t have more than eighteen months’ experience. Some he didn’t even recognize, they had made so little impression.

They recognized Ender, of course, since he was the most celebrated soldier in the school. And some, Ender could see, resented him. At least they did me one favor—none of my soldiers is older than me.

As soon as each soldier had a bunk, Ender ordered them to put on their flash suits and come to practice. “We’re on the morning schedule, straight to practice after breakfast. Officially you have a free hour between breakfast and practice. We’ll see what happens after I find out how good you are.” After three minutes, though many of them still weren’t dressed, he ordered them out of the room.

“But I’m naked!” said one boy.

“Dress faster next time. Three minutes from first call to running out the door—that’s the rule this week. Next week the rule is two minutes. Move!” It would soon be a joke in the rest of the school that Dragon Army was so dumb they had to practice getting dressed.

Five of the boys were completely naked, carrying their flash suits as they ran through the corridors; few were fully dressed. They attracted a lot of attention as they passed open classroom doors. No one would be late again if he could help it.

In the corridors leading to the battleroom, Ender made them run back and forth in the halls, fast, so they were sweating a little, while the naked ones got dressed. Then he led them to the upper door, the one that opened into the middle of the battleroom just like the doors in the actual games. Then he made them jump up and use the ceiling handholds to hurl themselves into the room. “Assemble on the far wall,” he said. “As if you were going for the enemy’s gate.”

They revealed themselves as they jumped, four at a time, through the door. Almost none of them knew how to establish a direct line to the target, and when they reached the far wall few of the new ones had any idea how to catch on or even control their rebounds.

The last boy out was a small kid, obviously underage. There was no way he was going to reach the ceiling handhold.

“You can use a side handhold if you want,” Ender said.

“Go suck on it,” said the boy. He took a flying leap, touched the ceiling handhold with a finger tip, and hurtled through the door with no control at all, spinning in three directions at once. Ender tried to decide whether to like the little kid for refusing to take a concession or to be annoyed at his insubordinate attitude.

They finally got themselves together along the wall. Ender noticed that without exception they had lined up with their heads still in the direction that had been up in the corridor. So Ender deliberately took hold of what they were treating as a floor and dangled from it upside down. “Why are you upside down, soldier?” he demanded.

Some of them started to turn the other way.

“Attention!” They held still. “I said why are you upside down!”

No one answered. They didn’t know what he expected.

“I said why does every one of you have his feet in the air and his head toward the ground!”

Finally one of them spoke. “Sir, this is the direction we were in coming out of the door.”

“Well what difference is that supposed to make! What difference does it make what the gravity was back in the corridor! Are we going to fight in the corridor? Is there any gravity here?”

No sir. No sir.

“From now on, you forget about gravity before you go through that door. The old gravity is gone, erased. Understand me? Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember—the enemy’s gate is down. Your feet are toward the enemy gate. Up is toward your own gate. North is that way, south is that way, east is that way, west is—what way?”

They pointed.

“That’s what I expected. The only process you’ve mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you’ve mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet. What was the circus I saw out here! Did you call that forming up? Did you call that flying? Now everybody, launch and form up on the ceiling! Right now! Move!”

As Ender expected, a good number of them instinctively launched, not toward the wall with the door in it, but toward the wall that Ender had called north, the direction that had been up when they were in the corridor. Of course they quickly realized their mistake, but too late—they had to wait to change things until they had rebounded off the north wall.

In the meantime, Ender was mentally grouping them into slow learners and fast learners. The littlest kid, the one who had been last out of the door, was the first to arrive at the correct wall, and he caught himself adroitly. They had been right to advance him. He’d do well. He was also cocky and rebellious, and probably resented the fact that he had been one of the ones Ender had sent naked through the corridors.

“You!” Ender said, pointing at the small one. “Which way is down?”

“Toward the enemy door.” The answer was quick. It was also surly, as if to say, OK, OK, now get on with the important stuff.

“Name, kid?”

“This soldier’s name is Bean, sir.”

“Get that for size or for brains?” The other boys laughed a little. “Well, Bean, you’re right onto things. Now listen to me, because this matters. Nobody’s going to get through that door without a good chance of getting hit. In the old days, you had ten, twenty seconds before you even had to move. Now if you aren’t already streaming out of the door when the enemy comes out, you’re frozen. Now, what happens when you’re frozen?”

“Can’t move,” one of the boys said.

“That’s what frozen means,” Ender said. “But what happens to you?”

It was Bean, not intimidated at all, who answered intelligently. “You keep going in the direction you started in. At the speed you were going when you were flashed.”

“That’s true. You five, there on the end, move!” Startled, the boys looked at each other. Ender flashed them all. “The next five, move!”

They moved. Ender flashed them, too, but they kept moving, heading toward the walls. The first five, though, were drifting uselessly near the main group.

“Look at these so-called soldiers,” Ender said. “Their commander ordered them to move, and now look at them. Not only are they frozen, they’re frozen right here, where they can get in the way. While the others, because they moved when they were ordered, are frozen down there, plugging up the enemy’s lanes, blocking the enemy’s vision. I imagine that about five of you have understood the point of this. And no doubt Bean is one of them. Right, Bean?”

He didn’t answer at first. Ender looked at him until he said, “Right, sir.”

“Then what is the point?”

“When you are ordered to move, move fast, so if you get iced you’ll bounce around instead of getting in the way of your own army’s operations.”

“Excellent. At least I have one soldier who can figure things out.” Ender could see resentment growing in the way the other soldiers shifted their weight and glanced at each other, the way they avoided looking at Bean. Why am I doing this? What does this have to do with being a good commander, making one boy the target of all the others? Just because they did it to me, why should I do it to him? Ender wanted to undo his taunting of the boy, wanted to tell the others that the little one needed their help and friendship more than anyone else. But of course Ender couldn’t do that. Not on the first day. On the first day even his mistakes had to look like part of a brilliant plan.

Ender hooked himself nearer the wall and pulled one of the boys away from the others. “Keep your body straight,” said Ender. He rotated the boy in midair so his feet pointed toward the others. When the boy kept moving his body, Ender flashed him. The others laughed. “How much of his body could you shoot?” Ender asked a boy directly under the frozen soldier’s feet.

“Mostly all I can hit is his feet.”

Ender turned to the boy next to him. “What about you?”

“I can see his body.”

“And you?”

A boy a little farther down the wall answered. “All of him.”

“Feet aren’t very big. Not much protection.” Ender pushed the frozen soldier out of the way. Then he doubled his legs under him, as if he were kneeling in midair, and flashed his own legs. Immediately the legs of his suit went rigid, holding them in that position.

Ender twisted himself in the air, so that he knelt above the other boys.

“What do you see?” he asked.

A lot less, they said.

Ender thrust his gun between his legs. “I can see fine,” he said, and proceeded to flash the boys directly under him. “Stop me!” he shouted. “Try and flash me!”

They finally did, but not until he had flashed more than a third of them. He thumbed his hook and thawed himself and every other frozen soldier. “Now,” he said, “which way is the enemy’s gate?”

“Down!”

“And what is our attack position?”

Some started to answer with words, but Bean answered by flipping himself away from the wall with his legs doubled under him, straight toward the opposite wall, flashing between his legs all the way.

For a moment Ender wanted to shout at him, to punish him; then he caught himself, rejected the ungenerous impulse. Why should I be so angry at this little boy? “Is Bean the only one who knows how?” Ender shouted.

Immediately the entire army pushed off toward the opposite wall, kneeling in the air, firing between their legs, shouting at the top of their lungs. There may be a time, thought Ender, when this is exactly the strategy I’ll need—forty screaming boys in an unbalancing attack.

When they were all at the other side, Ender called for them to attack him, all at once. Yes, thought Ender. Not bad. They gave me an untrained army, with no excellent veterans, but at least it isn’t a crop of fools. I can work with this.

When they were assembled again, laughing and exhilarated, Ender began the real work. He had them freeze their legs in the kneeling position. “Now, what are your legs good for, in combat?”

Nothing, said some boys.

“Bean doesn’t think so,” said Ender.

“They’re the best way to push off walls.”

“Right,” Ender said.

The other boys started to complain that pushing off walls was movement, not combat.

“There is no combat without movement,” Ender said. They fell silent and hated Bean a little more. “Now, with your legs frozen like this, can you push off walls?”

No one dared answer, for fear they’d be wrong.

“Bean?” asked Ender.

“I’ve never tried it, but maybe if you faced the wall and doubled over at the waist—”

“Right but wrong. Watch me. My back’s to the wall, legs are frozen. Since I’m kneeling, my feet are against the wall. Usually, when you push off you have to push downward, so you string out your body behind you like a string bean, right?”

Laughter.

“But with my legs frozen, I use pretty much the same force, pushing downward from the hips and thighs, only now it pushes my shoulders and my feet backward, shoots out my hips, and when I come loose my body’s tight, nothing stringing out behind me. Watch this.”

Ender forced his hips forward, which shot him away from the wall; in a moment he readjusted his position and was kneeling, legs downward, rushing toward the opposite wall. He landed on his knees, flipped over on his back, and jackknifed off the wall in another direction. “Shoot me!” he shouted. Then he set himself spinning in the air as he took a course roughly parallel to the boys along the far wall. Because he was spinning, they couldn’t get a continuous beam on him.

He thawed his suit and hooked himself back to them. “That’s what we’re working on for the first half hour today. Build up some muscles you didn’t know you had. Learn to use your legs as a shield and control your movements so you can get that spin. Spinning doesn’t do any good up close, but far away, they can’t hurt you if you’re spinning—at that distance the beam has to hit the same spot for a couple of moments, and if you’re spinning it can’t happen. Now freeze yourself and get started.”

“Aren’t you going to assign lanes?” asked a boy.

“No I’m not going to assign lanes. I want you bumping into each other and learning how to deal with it all the time, except when we’re practicing formations, and then I’ll usually have you bump into each other on purpose. Now move!”

When he said move, they moved.

Ender was the last one out after practice, since he stayed to help some of the slower ones improve on technique. They’d had good teachers, but the inexperienced soldiers fresh out of their launch groups were completely helpless when it came to doing two or three things at the same time. It was fine to practice jackknifing with frozen legs, they had no trouble maneuvering in midair, but to launch in one direction, fire in another, spin twice, rebound with a jackknife off a wall, and come out firing, facing the right direction—that was way beyond them. Drill drill drill, that was all Ender would be able to do with them for a while. Strategies and formations were nice, but they were nothing if the soldiers didn’t know how to handle themselves in battle.

He had to get this army ready now. He was early at being a commander, and the teachers were changing the rules now, not letting him trade, giving him no top-notch veterans. There was no guarantee that they’d give him the usual three months to get his army together before sending them into battle.

At least in the evenings he’d have Alai and Shen to help him train his new boys.

He was still in the corridor leading out of the battleroom when he found himself face to face with little Bean. Bean looked angry. Ender didn’t want problems right now.

“Ho, Bean.”

“Ho, Ender.”

Pause.

“Sir,” Ender said softly.

“I know what you’re doing, Ender, sir, and I’m warning you.”

“Warning me?”

“I can be the best man you’ve got, but don’t play games with me.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll be the worst man you’ve got. One or the other.”

“And what do you want, love and kisses?” Ender was getting angry now.

Bean looked unworried. “I want a toon.”

Ender walked back to him and stood looking down into his eyes. “Why should you get a toon?”

“Because I’d know what to do with it.”

“Knowing what to do with a toon is easy,” Ender said. “It’s getting them to do it that’s hard. Why would any soldier want to follow a little pinprick like you?”

“They used to call you that, I hear. I hear Bonzo Madrid still does.”

“I asked you a question, soldier.”

“I’ll earn their respect, sir, if you don’t stop me.”

Ender grinned. “I’m helping you.”

“Like hell,” said Bean.

“Nobody would notice you, except to feel sorry for the little kid. But I made sure they all noticed you today. They’ll be watching every move you make. All you have to do to earn their respect now is be perfect.”

“So I don’t even get a chance to learn before I’m being judged.”

“Poor kid. Nobody’s treatin’ him fair.” Ender gently pushed Bean back against the wall. “I’ll tell you how to get a toon. Prove to me you know what you’re doing as a soldier. Prove to me you know how to use other soldiers. And then prove to me that somebody’s willing to follow you into battle. Then you’ll get your toon. But not bloody well until.”

Bean smiled. “That’s fair. If you actually work that way, I’ll be a toon leader in a month.”

Ender reached down and grabbed the front of his uniform and shoved him into the wall. “When I say I work a certain way, Bean, then that’s the way I work.”

Bean just smiled. Ender let go of him and walked away. When he got to his room he lay down on his bed and trembled. What am I doing? My first practice session, and I’m already bullying people the way Bonzo did. And Peter. Shoving people around. Picking on some poor little kid so the others’ll have somebody they all hate. Sickening. Everything I hated in a commander, and I’m doing it.

Is it some law of human nature that you inevitably become whatever your first commander was? I can quit right now, if that’s so.

Over and over he thought of the things he did and said in his first practice with his new army. Why couldn’t he talk like he always did in his evening practice group? No authority except excellence. Never had to give orders, just made suggestions. But that wouldn’t work, not with an army. His informal practice group didn’t have to learn to do things together. They didn’t have to develop a group feeling; they never had to learn how to hold together and trust each other in battle. They didn’t have to respond instantly to commands.

And he could go to the other extreme, too. He could be as lax and incompetent as Rose the Nose, if he wanted. He could make stupid mistakes no matter what he did. He had to have discipline, and that meant demanding—and getting—quick, decisive obedience. He had to have a well-trained army, and that meant drilling the soldiers over and over again, long after they thought they had mastered a technique, until it was so natural to them that they didn’t have to think about it anymore.

But what was this thing with Bean? Why had he gone for the smallest, weakest, and possibly the brightest of the boys? Why had he done to Bean what had been done to Ender by commanders that he despised?

Then he remembered that it hadn’t begun with his commanders. Before Rose and Bonzo treated him with contempt, he had been isolated in his launch group. And it wasn’t Bernard who began that, either. It was Graff.

It was the teachers who had done it. And it wasn’t an accident. Ender realized that now. It was a strategy. Graff had deliberately set him up to be separate from the other boys, made it impossible for him to be close to them. And he began now to suspect the reasons behind it. It wasn’t to unify the rest of the group—in fact, it was divisive. Graff had isolated Ender to make him struggle. To make him prove, not that he was competent, but that he was far better than everyone else. That was the only way he could win respect and friendship. It made him a better soldier than he would ever have been otherwise. It also made him lonely, afraid, angry, untrusting. And maybe those traits, too, made him a better soldier.

That’s what I’m doing to you, Bean. I’m hurting you to make you a better soldier in every way. To sharpen your wit. To intensify your effort. To keep you off balance, never sure what’s going to happen next, so you always have to be ready for anything, ready to improvise, determined to win no matter what. I’m also making you miserable. That’s why they brought you to me, Bean. So you could be just like me. So you could grow up to be just like the old man.

And me—am I supposed to grow up like Graff? Fat and sour and unfeeling, manipulating the lives of little boys so they turn out factory perfect, generals and admirals ready to lead the fleet in defense of the homeland? You get all the pleasures of the puppeteer. Until you get a soldier who can do more than anyone else. You can’t have that. It spoils the symmetry. You must get him in line, break him down, isolate him, beat him until he gets in line with everyone else.

Well, what I’ve done to you this day, Bean, I’ve done. But I’ll be watching you, more compassionately than you know, and when the time is right you’ll find that I’m your friend, and you are the soldier you want to be.

Ender did not go to classes that afternoon. He lay on his bunk and wrote down his impressions of each of the boys in his army, the things he noticed right about them, the things that needed more work. In practice tonight, he would talk with Alai and they’d figure out ways to teach small groups the things they needed to know. At least he wouldn’t be in this thing alone.

But when Ender got to the battleroom that night, while most others were still eating, he found Major Anderson waiting for him. “There has been a rule change, Ender. From now on, only members of the same army may work together in a battleroom during freetime. And, therefore, battlerooms are available only on a scheduled basis. After tonight, your next turn is in four days.”

“Nobody else is holding extra practices.”

“They are now, Ender. Now that you command another army, they don’t want their boys practicing with you. Surely you can understand that. So they’ll conduct their own practices.”

“I’ve always been in another army from them. They still sent their soldiers to me for training.”

“You weren’t commander then.”

“You gave me a completely green army, Major Anderson, sir—”

“You have quite a few veterans.”

“They aren’t any good.”

“Nobody gets here without being brilliant, Ender. Make them good.”

“I needed Alai and Shen to—”

“It’s about time you grew up and did some things on your own, Ender. You don’t need these other boys to hold your hand. You’re a commander now. So kindly act like it, Ender.”

Ender walked past Anderson toward the battleroom. Then he stopped, turned, asked a question. “Since these evening practices are now regularly scheduled, does it mean I can use the hook?”

Did Anderson almost smile? No. Not a chance of that. “We’ll see,” he said.

Ender turned his back and went on into the battleroom. Soon his army arrived, and no one else; either Anderson waited around to intercept anyone coming to Ender’s practice group, or word had already passed through the whole school that Ender’s informal evenings were through.

It was a good practice, they accomplished a lot, but at the end of it Ender was tired and lonely. There was a half hour before bedtime. He couldn’t go into his army’s barracks—he had long since learned that the best commanders stay away unless they have some reason to visit. The boys have to have a chance to be at peace, at rest, without someone listening, to favor or despise them depending on the way they talk and act and think.

So he wandered to the game room, where a few other boys were using the last half hour before final bell to settle bets or beat their previous scores on the games. None of the games looked interesting, but he played one anyway, an easy animated game designed for Launchies. Bored, he ignored the objectives of the game and used the little player-figure, a bear, to explore the animated scenery around him.

“You’ll never win that way.”

Ender smiled, “Missed you at practice, Alai.”

“I was there. But they had your army in a separate place. Looks like you’re big time now, can’t play with the little boys anymore.”

“You’re a full cubit taller than I am.”

“Cubit! Has God been telling you to build a boat or something? Or are you in an archaic mood?”

“Not archaic, just arcane. Secret, subtle, roundabout. I miss you already, you circumcised dog.”

“Don’t you know? We’re enemies now. Next time I meet you in battle, I’ll whip your ass.”

It was banter, as always, but now there was too much truth behind it. Now when Ender heard Alai talk as if it were all a joke, he felt the pain of losing his friend, and the worse pain of wondering if Alai really felt as little pain as he showed.

“You can try,” said Ender. “I taught you everything you know. But I didn’t teach you everything I know.”

“I knew all along that you were holding something back, Ender.”

A pause. Ender’s bear was in trouble on the screen. He climbed a tree. “I wasn’t, Alai. Holding anything back.”

“I know,” said Alai. “Neither was I.”

“Salaam, Alai.”

“Alas, it is not to be.”

“What isn’t?”

“Peace. It’s what salaam means. Peace be unto you.”

The words brought forth an echo from Ender’s memory. His mother’s voice reading to him softly, when he was very young. Think not that I am come to bring peace on earth. I came not to bring peace, but a sword. Ender had pictured his mother piercing Peter the Terrible with a bloody rapier, and the words had stayed in his mind along with the image.

In the silence, the bear died. It was a cute death, with funny music. Ender turned around. Alai was already gone. Ender felt as if part of himself had been taken away, an inward prop that was holding up his courage and confidence. With Alai, to a degree impossible even with Shen, Ender had come to feel a unity so strong that the word we came to his lips much more easily than I.

But Alai had left something behind. Ender lay in bed, dozing into the night, and felt Alai’s lips on his cheek as he muttered the word peace. The kiss, the word, the peace were with him still. I am only what I remember, and Alai is my friend in a memory so intense that they can’t tear him out. Like Valentine, the strongest memory of all.

The next day he passed Alai in the corridor, and they greeted each other, touched hands, talked, but they both knew that there was a wall now. It might be breached, that wall, sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken.

The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached, that in his heart Alai was glad of the separation, and was ready to be Ender’s enemy. For now that they could not be together, they must be infinitely apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other.

It made him sorrowful, but Ender did not weep. He was done with that. When they had turned Valentine into a stranger, when they had used her as a tool to work on Ender, from that day forward they could never hurt him deep enough to make him cry again. Ender was certain of that.

And with that anger, he decided he was strong enough to defeat them—the teachers, his enemies.

11

VENI VIDI VICI

“You can’t be serious about this schedule of battles.”

“Yes I can.”

“He’s only had his army three and a half weeks.”

“I told you. We did computer simulations on probable results. And here is what the computer estimated Ender would do.”

“We want to teach him, not give him a nervous breakdown.”

“The computer knows him better than we do.”

“The computer is also not famous for having mercy.”

“If you wanted to be merciful, you should have gone to a monastery.”

“You mean this isn’t a monastery?”

“This is best for Ender, too. We’re bringing him to his full potential.”

“I thought we’d give him two years as commander. We usually give them a battle every two weeks, starting after three months. This is a little extreme.”

“Do we have two years to spare?”

“I know. I just have this picture of Ender a year from now. Completely useless, worn out, because he was pushed farther than he or any living person could go.”

“We told the computer that our highest priority was having the subject remain useful after the training program.”

“Well, as long as he’s useful—”

“Look, Colonel Graff, you’re the one who made me prepare this, over my protests, if you’ll remember.”

“I know, you’re right, I shouldn’t burden you with my conscience. But my eagerness to sacrifice little children in order to save mankind is wearing thin. The Polemarch has been to see the Hegemon. It seems Russian intelligence is concerned that some of the active citizens on the nets are already figuring how America ought to use the I.F. to destroy the Warsaw Pact as soon as the buggers are destroyed.”

“Seems premature.”

“It seems insane. Free speech is one thing, but to jeopardize the League over nationalistic rivalries—and it’s for people like that, short-sighted, suicidal people, that we’re pushing Ender to the edge of human endurance.”

“I think you underestimate Ender.”

“But I fear that I also underestimate the stupidity of the rest of mankind. Are we absolutely sure that we ought to win this war?”

“Sir, those words sound like treason.”

“It was black humor.”

“It wasn’t funny. When it comes to the buggers, nothing—”

“Nothing is funny, I know.”

Ender Wiggin lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. Since becoming commander, he never slept more than five hours a night. But the lights went off at 2200 and didn’t come on again until 0600. Sometimes he worked at his desk, anyway, straining his eyes to use the dim display. Usually, though, he stared at the invisible ceiling and thought.

Either the teachers had been kind to him after all, or he was a better commander than he thought. His ragged little group of veterans, utterly without honor in their previous armies, were blossoming into capable leaders. So much so that instead of the usual four toons, he had created five, each with a toon leader and a second; every veteran had a position. He had the army drill in eight-man toon maneuvers and four-man half-toons, so that at a single command, his army could be assigned as many as ten separate maneuvers and carry them out at once. No army had ever fragmented itself like that before, but Ender was not planning to do anything that had been done before, either. Most armies practiced mass maneuvers, preformed strategies. Ender had none. Instead he trained his toon leaders to use their small units effectively in achieving limited goals. Unsupported, alone, on their own initiative. He staged mock wars after the first week, savage affairs in the practice room that left everybody exhausted. But he knew, with less than a month of training, that his army had the potential of being the best fighting group ever to play the game.

How much of this did the teachers plan? Did they know they were giving him obscure but excellent boys? Did they give him thirty Launchies, many of them underage, because they knew the little boys were quick learners, quick thinkers? Or was this what any similar group could become under a commander who knew what he wanted his army to do, and knew how to teach them to do it?

The question bothered him, because he wasn’t sure whether he was confounding or fulfilling their expectations.

All he was sure of was that he was eager for battle. Most armies needed three months because they had to memorize dozens of elaborate formations. We’re ready now. Get us into battle.

The door opened in darkness. Ender listened. A shuffling step. The door closed.

He rolled off his bunk and crawled in the darkness the two meters to the door. There was a slip of paper there. He couldn’t read it, of course, but he knew what it was. Battle. How kind of them. I wish, and they deliver.

Ender was already dressed in his Dragon Army flash suit when the lights came on. He ran down the corridor at once, and by 0601 he was at the door of his army’s barracks.

“We have a battle with Rabbit Army at 0700. I want us warmed up in gravity and ready to go. Strip down and get to the gym. Bring your flash suits and we’ll go to the battleroom from there.”

What about breakfast?

“I don’t want anybody throwing up in the battleroom.”

Can we at least take a leak first?

“No more than a decaliter.”

They laughed. The ones who didn’t sleep naked stripped down; everyone bundled up their flash suits and followed Ender at a jog through the corridors to the gym. He put them through the obstacle course twice, then split them into rotations on the tramp, the mat, and the bench. “Don’t wear yourselves out, just wake yourselves up.” He didn’t need to worry about exhaustion. They were in good shape, light and agile, and above all excited about the battle to come. A few of them spontaneously began to wrestle—the gym, instead of being tedious, was suddenly fun, because of the battle to come. Their confidence was the supreme confidence of those who have never been in the contest, and think they are ready. Well, why shouldn’t they think so? They are. And so am I.

At 0640 he had them dress out. He talked to the toon leaders and their seconds while they dressed. “Rabbit Army is mostly veterans, but Carn Carby was made their commander only five months ago, and I never fought them under him. He was a pretty good soldier, and Rabbit has done fairly well in the standings over the years. But I expect to see formations, and so I’m not worried.”

At 0650 he made them all lie down on the mats and relax. Then, at 0656, he ordered them up and they jogged along the corridor to the battleroom. Ender occasionally leaped up to touch the ceiling. The boys all jumped to touch the same spot on the ceiling. Their ribbon of color led to the left; Rabbit Army had already passed through to the right. And at 0658 they reached their gate to the battleroom.

The toons lined up in five columns. A and E were ready to grab the side handholds and flip themselves out toward the sides. B and D lined up to catch the two parallel ceiling holds and flip upward into null gravity. C toon were ready to slap the sill of the doorway and flip downward.

Up, down, left, right; Ender stood at the front, between columns so he’d be out of the way, and reoriented them. “Which way is the enemy’s gate?”

Down, they all said, laughing. And in that moment up became north, down became south, and left and right became east and west.

The grey wall in front of them disappeared, and the battleroom was visible. It wasn’t a dark game, but it wasn’t a bright one either—the lights were about half, like dusk. In the distance, in the dim light, he could see the enemy door, their lighted flash suits already pouring out. Ender knew a moment’s pleasure. Everyone had learned the wrong lesson from Bonzo’s misuse of Ender Wiggin. They all dumped through the door immediately, so that there was no chance to do anything other than name the formation they would use. Commanders didn’t have time to think. Well, Ender would take the time, and trust his soldiers’ ability to fight with flashed legs to keep them intact as they came late through the door.

Ender sized up the shape of the battleroom. The familiar open grid of most early games, like the monkey bars at the park, with seven or eight stars scattered through the grid. There were enough of them, and in forward enough positions, that they were worth going for. “Spread to the near stars,” Ender said. “C try to slide the wall. If it works, A and E will follow. If it doesn’t, I’ll decide from there. I’ll be with D. Move.”

All the soldiers knew what was happening, but tactical decisions were entirely up to the toon leaders. Even with Ender’s instructions, they were only ten seconds late getting through the gate. Rabbit Army was already doing some elaborate dance down at the end of the room. In all the other armies Ender had fought in, he would have been worrying right now about making sure he and his toon were in their proper place in their own formation. Instead, he and all his men were only thinking of ways to slip around past the formation, control the stars and the corners of the room, and then break the enemy formation into meaningless chunks that didn’t know what they were doing. Even with less than four weeks together, the way they fought already seemed like the only intelligent way, the only possible way. Ender was almost surprised that Rabbit Army didn’t know already that they were hopelessly out of date.

C toon slipped along the wall, coasting with their bent knees facing the enemy. Crazy Tom, the leader of C toon, had apparently ordered his men to flash their own legs already. It was a pretty good idea in this dim light, since the lighted flash suits went dark wherever they were frozen. It made them less easily visible. Ender would commend him for that.

Rabbit Army was able to drive back C toon’s attack, but not until Crazy Tom and his boys had carved them up, freezing a dozen Rabbits before retreating to the safety of a star. But it was a star behind the Rabbit formation, which meant they were going to be easy pickings now.

Han Tzu, commonly called Hot Soup, was the leader of D toon. He slid quickly along the lip of the star to where Ender knelt. “How about flipping off the north wall and kneeling on their faces?”

“Do it,” Ender said. “I’ll take B south to get behind them.” Then he shouted, “A and E slow on the walls!” He slid footward along the star, hooked his feet on the lip, and flipped himself up to the top wall, then rebounded down to E toon’s star. In a moment he was leading them down against the south wall. They rebounded in near perfect unison and came up behind the two stars that Carn Carby’s soldiers were defending. It was like cutting butter with a hot knife. Rabbit Army was gone, just a little cleanup left to do. Ender broke his toons up into half-toons to scour the corners for any enemy soldiers who were whole or merely damaged. In three minutes his toon leaders reported the room clean. Only one of Ender’s boys was completely frozen—one of C toon, which had borne the brunt of the assault—and only five were disabled. Most were damaged, but those were leg shots and many of them were self-inflicted. All in all, it had gone even better than Ender expected.

Ender had his toon leaders do the honors at the gate—four helmets at the corners, and Crazy Tom to pass through the gate. Most commanders took whoever was left alive to pass the gate; Ender could have picked practically anyone. A good battle.

The lights went full, and Major Anderson himself came through the teachergate at the south end of the battleroom. He looked very solemn as he offered Ender the teacher hook that was ritually given to the victor in the game. Ender used it to thaw his own army’s flash suits, of course, and he assembled them in toons before thawing the enemy. Crisp, military appearance, that’s what he wanted when Carby and Rabbit Army got their bodies under control again. They may curse us and lie about us, but they’ll remember that we destroyed them, and no matter what they say other soldiers and other commanders will see that in their eyes; in those Rabbit eyes, they’ll see us in neat formation, victorious and almost undamaged in our first battle. Dragon Army isn’t going to be an obscure name for long.

Carn Carby came to Ender as soon as he was unfrozen. He was a twelve-year-old, who had apparently made commander only in his last year at the school. So he wasn’t cocky, like the ones who made it at eleven. I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it’s due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don’t have to do it often.

Anderson dismissed Dragon Army last, after Rabbit Army had straggled through the door that Ender’s boys had come through. Then Ender led his army through the enemy’s door. The light along the bottom of the door reminded them of which way was down once they got back to gravity. They all landed lightly on their feet, running. They assembled in the corridor. “It’s 0715,” Ender said, “and that means you have fifteen minutes for breakfast before I see you all in the battleroom for the morning practice.” He could hear them silently saying, Come on, we won, let us celebrate. All right, Ender answered, you may. “And you have your commander’s permission to throw food at each other during breakfast.”

They laughed, they cheered, and then he dismissed them and sent them jogging on to the barracks. He caught his toon leaders on the way out and told them that he wouldn’t expect anyone to come to practice till 0745, and that practice would be over early so the boys could shower. Half an hour for breakfast, and no shower right after a battle—it was still stingy, but it would look lenient compared to fifteen minutes. And Ender liked having the announcement of the extra fifteen minutes come from the toon leaders. Let the boys learn that leniency comes from their toon leaders, and harshness from their commander—it will bind them better in the small, tight knots of this fabric.

Ender ate no breakfast. He wasn’t hungry. Instead he went to the bathroom and showered, putting his flash suit in the cleaner so it would be ready when he was dried off. He washed himself twice and let the water run and run on him. It would all be recycled. Let everybody drink some of my sweat today. They had given him an untrained army, and he had won, and not just nip and tuck, either. He had won with only six frozen or disabled. Let’s see how long other commanders keep using their formations now that they’ve seen what a flexible strategy can do.

He was floating in the middle of the battleroom when his soldiers began to arrive. No one spoke to him, of course. He would speak, they knew, when he was ready, and not before.

When all were there, Ender hooked himself near them and looked at them, one by one. “Good first battle,” he said, which was excuse enough for a cheer, and an attempt to start a chant of Dragon, Dragon, which he quickly stopped. “Dragon Army did all right against Rabbits. But the enemy isn’t always going to be that bad. If that had been a good army, C toon, your approach was so slow they would have had you from the flanks before you got into good position. You should have split and angled in from two directions, so they couldn’t flank you. A and E, your aim was wretched. The tallies show that you averaged only one hit for every two soldiers. That means most of the hits were made by attacking soldiers close in. That can’t go on—a competent enemy would cut up the assault force unless they have much better cover from the soldiers at a distance. I want every toon to work on distance marksmanship at moving and unmoving targets. Half-toons take turns being targets. I’ll thaw the flash suits every three minutes. Now move.”

“Will we have any stars to work with?” asked Hot Soup. “To steady our aim?”

“I don’t want you to get used to having something to steady your arms. If your arm isn’t steady, freeze your elbows! Now move!”

The toon leaders quickly got things going, and Ender moved from group to group to make suggestions and help soldiers who were having particular trouble. The soldiers knew by now that Ender could be brutal in the way he talked to groups, but when he worked with an individual he was always patient, explaining as often as necessary, making suggestions quietly, listening to questions and problems and explanations. But he never laughed when they tried to banter with him, and they soon stopped trying. He was commander every moment they were together. He never had to remind them of it; he simply was.

They worked all day with the taste of victory in their mouths, and cheered again when they broke half an hour early for lunch. Ender held the toon leaders until the regular lunch hour, to talk about the tactics they had used and evaluate the work of their individual soldiers. Then he went to his own room and methodically changed into his uniform for lunch. He would enter the commanders’ mess about ten minutes late. Exactly the timing that he wanted. Since this was his first victory, he had never seen the inside of the commanders’ mess hall and had no idea what new commanders were expected to do, but he did know that he wanted to enter last today, when the scores of the morning’s battles were already posted. Dragon Army will not be an obscure name now.

There was no great stir when he came in. But when some of them noticed how small he was, and saw the dragons on the sleeves of the uniform, they stared at him openly, and by the time he got his food and sat at a table, the room was silent. Ender began to eat, slowly and carefully, pretending not to notice that he was the center of attention. Gradually conversation and noise started up again, and Ender could relax enough to look around.

One entire wall of the room was a scoreboard. Soldiers were kept aware of an army’s overall record for the past two years; in here, however, records were kept for each commander. A new commander couldn’t inherit a good standing from his predecessor—he was ranked according to what he had done.

Ender had the best ranking. A perfect won-lost record, of course, but in the other categories he was far ahead. Average soldiers-disabled, average enemy-disabled, average time-elapsed-before-victory—in every category he was ranked first.

When he was nearly through eating, someone came up behind him and touched his shoulder.

“Mind if I sit?” Ender didn’t have to turn around to know it was Dink Meeker.

“Ho Dink,” said Ender. “Sit.”

“You gold-plated fart,” said Dink cheerfully. “We’re all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake.”

“A habit,” said Ender.

“One victory is not a habit,” Dink said. “Don’t get cocky. When you’re new they seed you against weak commanders.”

“Carn Carby isn’t exactly on the bottom of the rankings.” It was true. Carby was just about in the middle.

“He’s OK,” Dink said, “considering that he only just started. Shows some promise. You don’t show promise. You show threat.”

“Threat to what? Do they feed you less if I win? I thought you told me this was all a stupid game and none of it mattered.”

Dink didn’t like having his words thrown back at him, not under these circumstances. “You were the one who got me playing along with them. But I’m not playing games with you, Ender. You won’t beat me.”

“Probably not,” Ender said.

“I taught you,” Dink said.

“Everything I know,” said Ender. “I’m just playing it by ear right now.”

“Congratulations,” said Dink.

“It’s good to know I have a friend here.” But Ender wasn’t sure Dink was his friend anymore. Neither was Dink. After a few empty sentences, Dink went back to his table.

Ender looked around when he was through with his meal. There were quite a few small conversations going on. Ender spotted Bonzo, who was now one of the oldest commanders. Rose the Nose had graduated. Petra was with a group in a far corner, and she didn’t look at him once. Since most of the others stole glances at him from time to time, including the ones Petra was talking with, Ender was pretty sure she was deliberately avoiding his glance. That’s the problem with winning right from the start, thought Ender. You lose friends.

Give them a few weeks to get used to it. By the time I have my next battle, things will have calmed down in here.

Carn Carby made a point of coming to greet Ender before the lunch period ended. It was, again, a gracious gesture, and, unlike Dink, Carby did not seem wary. “Right now I’m in disgrace,” he said frankly. “They won’t believe me when I tell them you did things that nobody’s ever seen before. So I hope you beat the snot out of the next army you fight. As a favor to me.”

“As a favor to you,” Ender said. “And thanks for talking to me.”

“I think they’re treating you pretty badly. Usually new commanders are cheered when they first join the mess. But then, usually a new commander has had a few defeats under his belt before he first makes it in here. I only got in here a month ago. If anybody deserves a cheer, it’s you. But that’s life. Make them eat dust.”

“I’ll try.” Carn Carby left, and Ender mentally added him to his private list of people who also qualified as human beings.

That night, Ender slept better than he had in a long time. Slept so well, in fact, that he didn’t wake up until the lights came on. He woke up feeling good, jogged on out to take his shower, and did not notice the piece of paper on his floor until he came back and started dressing in his uniform. He only saw the paper because it moved in the wind as he snapped out the uniform to put it on. He picked up the paper and read it.

PETRA ARKANIAN, PHOENIX ARMY, 0700

It was his old army, the one he had left less than four weeks before, and he knew their formations backward and forward. Partly because of Ender’s influence, they were the most flexible of armies, responding relatively quickly to new situations. Phoenix Army would be the best able to cope with Ender’s fluid, unpatterned attack. The teachers were determined to make life interesting for him.

0700, said the paper, and it was already 0630. Some of his boys might already be heading for breakfast. Ender tossed his uniform aside, grabbed his flash suit, and in a moment stood in the doorway of his army’s barracks.

“Gentlemen, I hope you learned something yesterday, because today we’re doing it again.”

It took a moment for them to realize that he meant a battle, not a practice. It had to be a mistake, they said. Nobody ever had battles two days in a row.

He handed the paper to Fly Molo, the leader of A toon, who immediately shouted “Flash suits” and started changing clothes.

“Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” demanded Hot Soup. Hot had a way of asking Ender questions that nobody else dared ask.

“I thought you needed the shower,” Ender said. “Yesterday Rabbit Army claimed we only won because the stink knocked them out.”

The soldiers who heard him laughed.

“Didn’t find the paper till you got back from the showers, right?”

Ender looked for the source of the voice. It was Bean, already in his flash suit, looking insolent. Time to repay old humiliations, is that it, Bean?

“Of course,” Ender said, contemptuously. “I’m not as close to the floor as you are.”

More laughter. Bean flushed with anger.

“It’s plain we can’t count on old ways of doing things,” Ender said. “So you’d better plan on battles anytime. And often. I can’t pretend I like the way they’re screwing around with us, but I do like one thing—that I’ve got an army that can handle it.”

After that, if he had asked them to follow him to the moon without space suits, they would have done it.

Petra was not Carn Carby; she had more flexible patterns and responded much more quickly to Ender’s darting, improvised, unpredictable attack. As a result, Ender had three boys flashed and nine disabled at the end of the battle. Petra was not gracious about bowing over his hand at the end, either. The anger in her eyes seemed to say, I was your friend, and you humiliate me like this?

Ender pretended not to notice her fury. He figured that after a few more battles, she’d realize that in fact she had scored more hits against him than he expected anyone ever would again. And he was still learning from her. In practice today he would teach his toon leaders how to counter the tricks Petra had played on them. Soon they would be friends again.

He hoped.

At the end of the week Dragon Army had fought seven battles in seven days. The score stood 7 wins and 0 losses. Ender had never had more losses than in the battle with Phoenix Army, and in two battles he had suffered not one soldier frozen or disabled. No one believed anymore that it was a fluke that put him first in the standings. He had beaten top armies by unheard-of margins. It was no longer possible for the other commanders to ignore him. A few of them sat with him at every meal, carefully trying to learn from him how he had defeated his most recent opponents. He told them freely, confident that few of them would know how to train their soldiers and their toon leaders to duplicate what his could do. And while Ender talked with a few commanders, much larger groups gathered around the opponents Ender had defeated, trying to find out how Ender might be beaten.

There were many, too, who hated him. Hated him for being young, for being excellent, for having made their victories look paltry and weak. Ender saw it first in their faces when he passed them in the corridors; then he began to notice that some boys would get up in a group and move to another table if he sat near them in the commanders’ mess; and there began to be elbows that accidently jostled him in the game room, feet that got entangled with his when he walked into and out of the gym, spittle and wads of wet paper that struck him from behind as he jogged through the corridors. They couldn’t beat him in the battleroom, and knew it—so instead they would attack him where it was safe, where he was not a giant but just a little boy. Ender despised them—but secretly, so secretly that he didn’t even know it himself, he feared them. It was just such little torments that Peter had always used, and Ender was beginning to feel far too much at home.

These annoyances were petty, though, and Ender persuaded himself to accept them as another form of praise. Already the other armies were beginning to imitate Ender. Now most soldiers attacked with knees tucked under them; formations were breaking up now, and more commanders were sending out toons to slip along the walls. None had caught on yet to Ender’s five-toon organization—it gave him the slight advantage that when they had accounted for the movements of four units, they wouldn’t be looking for a fifth.

Ender was teaching them all about null gravity tactics. But where could Ender go to learn new things?

He began to use the video room, filled with propaganda vids about Mazer Rackham and other great commanders of the forces of humanity in the First and Second Invasion. Ender stopped the general practice an hour early, and allowed his toon leaders to conduct their own practice in his absence. Usually they staged skirmishes, toon against toon. Ender stayed long enough to see that things were going well, then left to watch the old battles.

Most of the vids were a waste of time. Heroic music, closeups of commanders and medal-winning soldiers, confused shots of marines invading bugger installations. But here and there he found useful sequences: ships, like points of light, maneuvering in the dark of space, or, better still, the lights on shipboard plotting screens, showing the whole of a battle. It was hard, from the videos, to see all three dimensions, and the scenes were often short and unexplained. But Ender began to see how well the buggers used seemingly random flight paths to create confusion, how they used decoys and false retreats to draw the I.F. ships into traps. Some battles had been cut into many scenes, which were scattered through the various videos; by watching them in sequence, Ender was able to reconstruct whole battles. He began to see things that the official commentators never mentioned. They were always trying to arouse pride in human accomplishments and loathing of the buggers, but Ender began to wonder how humanity had won at all. Human ships were sluggish; fleets responded to new circumstances unbearably slowly, while the bugger fleet seemed to act in perfect unity, responding to each challenge instantly. Of course, in the First Invasion the human ships were completely unsuited to fast combat, but then so were the bugger ships; it was only in the Second Invasion that the ships and weapons were swift and deadly.

So it was from the buggers, not the humans, that Ender learned strategy. He felt ashamed and afraid of learning from them, since they were the most terrible enemy, ugly and murderous and loathsome. But they were also very good at what they did. To a point. They always seemed to follow one basic strategy only—gather the greatest number of ships at the key point of conflict. They never did anything surprising, anything that seemed to show either brilliance or stupidity in a subordinate officer. Discipline was apparently very tight.

And there was one oddity. There was plenty of talk about Mazer Rackham but precious little video of his actual battle. Some scenes from early in the battle, Rackham’s tiny force looking pathetic against the vast power of the main bugger fleet. The buggers had already beaten the main human fleet out in the comet shield, wiping out the earliest starships and making a mockery of human attempts at high strategy—that film was often shown, to arouse again and again the agony and terror of bugger victory. Then the fleet coming to Mazer Rackham’s little force near Saturn, the hopeless odds, and then—

Then one shot from Mazer Rackham’s little cruiser, one enemy ship blowing up. That’s all that was ever shown. Lots of film showing marines carving their way into bugger ships. Lots of bugger corpses lying around inside. But no film of buggers killing in personal combat, unless it was spliced in from the First Invasion. It frustrated Ender that Mazer Rackham’s victory was so obviously censored. Students in the Battle School had much to learn from Mazer Rackham, and everything about his victory was concealed from view. The passion for secrecy was not very helpful to the children who had to learn to accomplish again what Mazer Rackham had done.

Of course, as soon as word got around that Ender Wiggin was watching the war vids over and over again, the video room began to draw a crowd. Almost all were commanders, watching the same vids Ender watched, pretending they understood why he was watching and what he was getting out of it. Ender never explained anything. Even when he showed seven scenes from the same battle, but from different vids, only one boy asked, tentatively, “Are some of those from the same battle?”

Ender only shrugged, as if it didn’t matter.

It was during the last hour of practice on the seventh day, only a few hours after Ender’s army had won its seventh battle, that Major Anderson himself came into the video room. He handed a slip of paper to one of the commanders sitting there, and then spoke to Ender. “Colonel Graff wishes to see you in his office immediately.”

Ender got up and followed Anderson through the corridors. Anderson palmed the locks that kept students out of the officers’ quarters; finally they came to where Graff had taken root on a swivel chair bolted to the steel floor. His belly spilled over both armrests now, even when he sat upright. Ender tried to remember. Graff hadn’t seemed particularly fat at all when Ender first met him, only four years ago. Time and tension were not being kind to the administrator of the Battle School.

“Seven days since your first battle, Ender,” said Graff.

Ender did not reply.

“And you’ve won seven battles, once a day.”

Ender nodded.

“Your scores are unusually high, too.”

Ender blinked.

“To what, commander, do you attribute your remarkable success?”

“You gave me an army that does whatever I can think for it to do.”

“And what have you thought for it to do?”

“We orient downward toward the enemy gate and use our lower legs as a shield. We avoid formations and keep our mobility. It helps that I’ve got five toons of eight instead of four of ten. Also, our enemies haven’t the time to respond effectively to our new techniques, so we keep beating them with the same tricks. That won’t hold up for long.”

“So you don’t expect to keep winning.”

“Not with the same tricks.”

Graff nodded. “Sit down, Ender.”

Ender and Anderson both sat. Graff looked at Anderson, and Anderson spoke next. “What condition is your army in, fighting so often?”

“They’re all veterans now.”

“But how are they doing? Are they tired?”

“If they are, they won’t admit it.”

“Are they still alert?”

“You’re the ones with the computer games that play with people’s minds. You tell me.”

“We know what we know. We want to know what you know.”

“These are very good soldiers, Major Anderson. I’m sure they have limits, but we haven’t reached them yet. Some of the newer ones are having trouble because they never really mastered some basic techniques, but they’re working hard and improving. What do you want me to say, that they need to rest? Of course they need to rest. They need a couple of weeks off. Their studies are shot to hell, none of us are doing any good in our classes. But you know that, and apparently you don’t care, so why should I?”

Graff and Anderson exchanged glances. “Ender, why are you studying the videos of the bugger wars?”

“To learn strategy, of course.”

“Those videos were created for propaganda purposes. All our strategies have been edited out.”

“I know.”

Graff and Anderson exchanged glances again. Graff drummed on his table. “You don’t play the fantasy game anymore,” he said.

Ender didn’t answer.

“Tell me why you don’t play it.”

“Because I won.”

“You never win everything in that game. There’s always more.”

“I won.”

“Ender, we want to help you be as happy as possible, but if you—”

“You want to make me the best soldier possible. Go down and look at the standings. Look at the all-time standings. So far you’re doing an excellent job with me. Congratulations. Now when are you going to put me up against a good army?”

Graff’s set lips turned to a smile, and he shook a little with silent laughter.

Anderson handed Ender a slip of paper. “Now,” he said.

BONZO MADRID, SALAMANDER ARMY, 1200

“That’s ten minutes from now,” said Ender. “My army will be in the middle of showering up after practice.”

Graff smiled, “Better hurry, then, boy.”

He got to his army’s barracks five minutes later. Most were dressing after their showers; some had already gone to the game room or the video room to wait for lunch. He sent three younger boys to call everyone in, and made everyone else dress for battle as quickly as they could.

“This one’s hot and there’s no time,” Ender said. “They gave Bonzo notice about twenty minutes ago, and by the time we get to the door they’ll have been inside for a good five minutes at least.”

The boys were outraged, complaining loudly in the slang that they usually avoided around the commander. What they doing to us? They be crazy, neh?

“Forget why, we’ll worry about that tonight. Are you tired?”

Fly Molo answered. “We worked our butts off in practice today. Not to mention beating the crap out of Ferret Army this morning.”

“Same day nobody ever do two battles!” said Crazy Tom.

Ender answered in the same tone. “Nobody ever beat Dragon Army, either. This be your big chance to lose?” Ender’s taunting question was the answer to their complaints. Win first, ask questions later.

All of them were back in the room, and most of them were dressed. “Move!” shouted Ender, and they ran along behind him, some of them still dressing when they reached the corridor outside the battleroom. Many of them were panting, a bad sign; they were too tired for this battle. The door was already open. There were no stars at all. Just empty, empty space in a dazzlingly bright room. Nowhere to hide, not even in darkness.

“My heart,” said Crazy Tom, “they haven’t come out yet, either.”

Ender put his hand across his own mouth, to tell them to be silent. With the door open, of course the enemy could hear every word they said. Ender pointed all around the door, to tell them that Salamander Army was undoubtedly deployed against the wall all around the door, where they couldn’t be seen but could easily flash anyone who came out.

Ender motioned for them all to back away from the door. Then he pulled forward a few of the taller boys, including Crazy Tom, and made them kneel, not squatting back to sit on their heels, but fully upright, so they formed an L with their bodies. He flashed them. In silence the army watched him. He selected the smallest boy, Bean, handed him Tom’s gun, and made Bean kneel on Tom’s frozen legs. Then he pulled Bean’s hands, each holding a gun, through Tom’s armpits.

Now the boys understood. Tom was a shield, an armored spacecraft, and Bean was hiding inside. He was certainly not invulnerable, but he would have time.

Ender assigned two more boys to throw Tom and Bean through the door, but signalled them to wait. He went on through the army, quickly assigning groups of four—a shield, a shooter, and two throwers. Then, when all were frozen or armed or ready to throw, he signalled the throwers to pick up their burdens, throw them through the door, and then jump through themselves.

“Move!” shouted Ender.

They moved. Two at a time the shield-pairs went through the door, backward so that the shield would be between the shooter and the enemy. The enemy opened fire at once, but they mostly hit the frozen boy in front. In the meantime, with two guns to work with and their targets neatly lined up and spread flat along the wall, the Dragons had an easy time of it. It was almost impossible to miss. And as the throwers also jumped through the door, they got handholds on the same wall with the enemy, shooting at a deadly angle so that the Salamanders couldn’t figure out whether to shoot at the shield-pairs slaughtering them from above or the throwers shooting at them from their own level. By the time Ender himself came through the door, the battle was over. It hadn’t taken a full minute from the time the first Dragon passed through the door until the shooting stopped. Dragon had lost twenty frozen or disabled, and only twelve boys were undamaged. It was their worst score yet, but they had won.

When Major Anderson came out and gave Ender the hook, Ender could not contain his anger. “I thought you were going to put us against an army that could match us in a fair fight.”

“Congratulations on the victory, commander.”

“Bean!” shouted Ender. “If you had commanded Salamander Army, what would you have done?”

Bean, disabled but not completely frozen, called out from where he drifted near the enemy door. “Keep a shifting pattern of movement going in front of the door. You never hold still when the enemy knows exactly where you are.”

“As long as you’re cheating,” Ender said to Anderson, “why don’t you train the other army to cheat intelligently!”

“I suggest that you remobilize your army,” said Anderson.

Ender pressed the buttons to thaw both armies at once. “Dragon Army dismissed!” he shouted immediately. There would be no elaborate formation to accept the surrender of the other army. This had not been a fair fight, even though they had won—the teachers had meant them to lose, and it was only Bonzo’s ineptitude that had saved them. There was no glory in that.

Only as Ender himself was leaving the battleroom did he realize that Bonzo would not realize that Ender was angry at the teachers. Spanish honor. Bonzo would only know that he had been defeated even when the odds were stacked in his favor; that Ender had had the youngest child in his army publicly state what Bonzo should have done to win; and that Ender had not even stayed to receive Bonzo’s dignified surrender. If Bonzo had not already hated Ender, he would surely have begun; and hating him as he did, this would surely turn his rage murderous. Bonzo was the last person to strike me, thought Ender. I’m sure he has not forgotten that.

Nor had he forgotten the bloody affair in the battleroom when the older boys tried to break up Ender’s practice session. Nor had many others. They were hungry for blood then; Bonzo will be thirsting for it now. Ender toyed with the idea of taking advanced personal defense; but with battles now possible not only every day, but twice in the same day, Ender knew he could not spare the time. I’ll have to take my chances. The teachers got me into this—they can keep me safe.

Bean flopped down on his bunk in utter exhaustion—half the boys in the barracks were already asleep, and it was still fifteen minutes before lights out. Wearily he pulled his desk from its locker and signed on. There was a test tomorrow in geometry and Bean was woefully unprepared. He could always reason things out if he had enough time, and he had read Euclid when he was five, but the test had a time limit so there wouldn’t be a chance to think. He had to know. And he didn’t know. And he would probably do badly on the test. But they had won twice today, and so he felt good.

As soon as he signed on, however, all thoughts of geometry were banished. A message paraded around the desk:

SEE ME AT ONCE—ENDER

The time was 2150, only ten minutes before lights out. How long ago had Ender sent it? Still, he’d better not ignore it. There might be another battle in the morning—the thought made him weary—and whatever Ender wanted to talk to him about, there wouldn’t be time then. So Bean rolled off the bunk and walked emptily through the corridor to Ender’s room. He knocked.

“Come in,” said Ender.

“Just saw your message.”

“Fine,” said Ender.

“It’s near lights out.”

“I’ll help you find your way in the dark.”

“I just didn’t know if you knew what time it was—”

“I always know what time it is.”

Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into an argument. Bean hated it. He recognized Ender’s genius and honored him for it. Why couldn’t Ender ever see anything good in him?

“Remember four weeks ago, Bean? When you told me to make you a toon leader?”

“Eh.”

“I’ve made five toon leaders and five assistants since then. And none of them was you.” Ender raised his eyebrows. “Was I right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So tell me how you’ve done in these eight battles.”

“Today was the first time they disabled me, but the computer listed me as getting eleven hits before I had to stop. I’ve never had less than five hits in a battle. I’ve also completed every assignment I’ve been given.”

“Why did they make you a soldier so young, Bean?”

“No younger than you were.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do, and so do I.”

“I’ve tried to guess, but they’re just guesses. You’re—very good. They knew that, they pushed you ahead—”

“Tell me why, Bean.”

“Because they need us, that’s why.” Bean sat down on the floor and stared at Ender’s feet. “Because they need somebody to beat the buggers. That’s the only thing they care about.”

“It’s important that you know that, Bean. Because most boys in this school think the game is important for itself, but it isn’t. It’s only important because it helps them find kids who might grow up to be real commanders, in the real war. But as for the game, screw that. That’s what they’re doing. Screwing up the game.”

“Funny. I thought they were just doing it to us.”

“A game nine weeks earlier than it should have come. A game every day. And now two games in the same day. Bean, I don’t know what the teachers are doing, but my army is getting tired, and I’m getting tired, and they don’t care at all about the rules of the game. I’ve pulled the old charts up from the computer. No one has ever destroyed so many enemies and kept so many of his own soldiers whole in the history of the game.”

“You’re the best, Ender.”

Ender shook his head. “Maybe. But it was no accident that I got the soldiers I got. Launchies, rejects from other armies, but put them together and my worst soldier could be a toon leader in another army. They’ve loaded things my way, but now they’re loading it all against me. Bean, they want to break us down.”

“They can’t break you.”

“You’d be surprised.” Ender breathed sharply, suddenly, as if there were a stab of pain, or he had to catch a sudden breath in a wind; Bean looked at him and realized that the impossible was happening. Far from baiting him, Ender Wiggin was actually confiding in him. Not much. But a little. Ender was human and Bean had been allowed to see.

“Maybe you’ll be surprised,” said Bean.

“There’s a limit to how many clever new ideas I can come up with every day. Somebody’s going to come up with something to throw at me that I haven’t thought of before, and I won’t be ready.”

“What’s the worst that could happen? You lose one game.”

“Yes. That’s the worst that could happen. I can’t lose any games. Because if I lose any—”

He didn’t explain himself, and Bean didn’t ask.

“I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven’t seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they’re absolutely stupid.”

“Why me?”

“Because even though there are some better soldiers than you in Dragon Army—not many, but some—there’s nobody who can think better and faster than you.” Bean said nothing. They both knew it was true.

Ender showed him his desk. On it were twelve names. Two or three from each toon. “Choose five of these,” said Ender. “One from each toon. They’re a special squad, and you’ll train them. Only during the extra practice sessions. Talk to me about what you’re training them to do. Don’t spend too long on any one thing. Most of the time you and your squad will be part of the whole army, part of your regular toons. But when I need you. When there’s something to be done that only you can do.”

“These are all new,” said Bean. “No veterans.”

“After last week, Bean, all our soldiers are veterans. Don’t you realize that on the individual soldier standings, all forty of our soldiers are in the top fifty? That you have to go down seventeen places to find a soldier who isn’t a Dragon?”

“What if I can’t think of anything?”

“Then I was wrong about you.”

Bean grinned. “You weren’t wrong.”

The lights went out.

“Can you find your way back, Bean?”

“Probably not.”

“Then stay here. If you listen very carefully, you can hear the good fairy come in the night and leave our assignment for tomorrow.”

“They won’t give us another battle tomorrow, will they?”

Ender didn’t answer. Bean heard him climb into bed. He got up from the floor and did likewise. He thought of a half dozen ideas before he went to sleep. Ender would be pleased—every one of them was stupid.

12

BONZO

“General Pace, please sit down. I understand you have come to me about a matter of some urgency.”

“Ordinarily, Colonel Graff, I would not presume to interfere in the internal workings of the Battle School. Your autonomy is guaranteed, and despite our difference in ranks I am quite aware that it is my authority only to advise, not to order you to take action.”

“Action?”

“Do not be disingenuous with me, Colonel Graff. Americans are quite apt at playing stupid when they choose to, but I am not to be deceived. You know why I am here.”

“Ah. I guess this means Dap filed a report.”

“He feels—paternal toward the students here. He feels your neglect of a potentially lethal situation is more than negligence—that it borders on conspiracy to cause the death or serious injury of one of the students here.”

“This is a school for children, General Pace. Hardly a matter to bring the chief of I.F. military police here for.”

“Colonel Graff, the name of Ender Wiggin has percolated through the high command. It has even reached my ears. I have heard him described modestly as our only hope of victory in the upcoming invasion. When it is his life or health that is in danger, I do not think it untoward that the military police take some interest in preserving and protecting the boy. Do you?”

“Damn Dap and damn you too, sir, I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?”

“Better than anyone else.”

“Oh, that is obvious, since nobody else has the faintest idea what you’re doing. You have known for eight days that there is a conspiracy among some of the more vicious of these ‘children’ to cause the beating of Ender Wiggin, if they can. And that some members of this conspiracy, notably the boy named Bonito de Madrid, commonly called Bonzo, are quite likely to exhibit no self-restraint when this punishment takes place, so that Ender Wiggin, an inestimably important international resource, will be placed in serious danger of having his brains pasted on the walls of your orbiting schoolhouse. And you, fully warned of this danger, propose to do exactly—”

“Nothing.”

“You can see how this excites our puzzlement.”

“Ender Wiggin has been in this situation before. Back on Earth, the day he lost his monitor, and again when a large group of older boys—”

“I did not come here ignorant of the past. Ender Wiggin has provoked Bonzo Madrid beyond human endurance. And you have no military police standing by to break up disturbances. It is unconscionable.”

“When Ender Wiggin holds our fleets in his control, when he must make the decisions that bring us victory or destruction, will there be military police to come save him if things get out of hand?”

“I fail to see the connection.”

“Obviously. But the connection is there. Ender Wiggin must believe that no matter what happens, no adult will ever, ever step in to help him in any way. He must believe, to the core of his soul, that he can only do what he and the other children work out for themselves. If he does not believe that, then he will never reach the peak of his abilities.”

“He will also not reach the peak of his abilities if he is dead or permanently crippled.”

“He won’t be.”

“Why don’t you simply graduate Bonzo? He’s old enough.”

“Because Ender knows that Bonzo plans to kill him. If we transfer Bonzo ahead of schedule, he’ll know that we saved him. Heaven knows Bonzo isn’t a good enough commander to be promoted on merit.”

“What about the other children? Getting them to help him?”

“We’ll see what happens. That is my first, final, and only decision.”

“God help you if you’re wrong.”

“God help us all if I’m wrong.”

“I’ll have you before a capital court martial. I’ll have your name disgraced throughout the world if you’re wrong.”

“Fair enough. But do remember, if I happen to be right, to make sure I get a few dozen medals.”

“For what!”

“For keeping you from meddling.”

Ender sat in a corner of the battleroom, his arm hooked through a handhold, watching Bean practice with his squad. Yesterday they had worked on attacks without guns, disarming enemies with their feet. Ender had helped them with some techniques from gravity personal combat—many things had to be changed, but inertia in flight was a tool that could be used against the enemy as easily in nullo as in Earth gravity.

Today, though, Bean had a new toy. It was a deadline, one of the thin, almost invisible twines used during construction in space to hold two objects together. Deadlines were sometimes kilometers long. This one was just a bit longer than a wall of the battleroom, and yet it looped easily, almost invisibly, around Bean’s waist. He pulled it off like an article of clothing and handed one end to one of his soldiers. “Hook it to a handhold and wind it around a few times.” Bean carried the other end across the battleroom.

As a tripwire it wasn’t too useful, Bean decided. It was invisible enough, but one strand of twine wouldn’t have much chance of stopping an enemy that could easily go above or below it. Then he got the idea of using it to change his direction of movement in midair. He fastened it around his waist, the other end still fastened to a handhold, slipped a few meters away, and launched himself straight out. The twine caught him, changed his direction abruptly, and swung him in an arc that crashed him brutally against the wall.

He screamed and screamed. It took Ender a moment to realize that he wasn’t screaming in pain. “Did you see how fast I went! Did you see how I changed direction!”

Soon all of Dragon Army stopped work to watch Bean practice with the twine. The changes in direction were stunning, especially when you didn’t know where to look for the twine. When he used the twine to wrap himself around a star, he attained speeds no one had ever seen before.

It was 2140 when Ender dismissed the evening practice. Weary but delighted at having seen something new, his army walked through the corridors back to the barracks. Ender walked among them, not talking, but listening to their talk. They were tired, yes—a battle every day for more than four weeks, often in situations that tested their abilities to the utmost. But they were proud, happy, close—they had never lost, and they had learned to trust each other. They trusted their fellow soldiers to fight hard and well; trusted their leaders to use them rather than waste their efforts; above all trusted Ender to prepare them for anything and everything that might happen.

As they walked the corridor, Ender noticed several older boys seemingly engaged in conversations in branching corridors and ladderways; some were in their corridor, walking slowly in the other direction. It became too much of a coincidence, however, that so many of them were wearing Salamander uniforms, and that those who weren’t were often older boys belonging to armies whose commanders most hated Ender Wiggin. A few of them looked at him, and looked away too quickly; others were too tense, too nervous as they pretended to be relaxed. What will I do if they attack my army here in the corridor? My boys are all young, all small, and completely untrained in gravity combat. When would they learn?

“Ho, Ender!” someone called. Ender stopped and looked back. It was Petra. “Ender, can I talk to you.”

Ender saw in a moment that if he stopped and talked, his army would quickly pass him by and he would be alone with Petra in the hallway. “Walk with me,” Ender said.

“It’s just for a moment.”

Ender turned around and walked on with his army. He heard Petra running to catch up. “All right, I’ll walk with you,” Ender tensed when she came near. Was she one of them, one of the ones who hated him enough to hurt him?

“A friend of yours wanted me to warn you. There are some boys who want to kill you.”

“Surprise,” said Ender. Some of his soldiers seemed to perk up at this. Plots against their commander were interesting news, it seemed.

“Ender, they can do it. He said they’ve been planning it ever since you went commander—”

“Ever since I beat Salamander, you mean.”

“I hated you after you beat Phoenix Army, too, Ender.”

“I didn’t say I blamed anybody.”

“It’s true. He told me to take you aside today and warn you, on the way back from the battleroom, to be careful tomorrow because—”

“Petra, if you had actually taken me aside just now, there are about a dozen boys following along who would have taken me in the corridor. Can you tell me you didn’t notice them?”

Suddenly her face flushed. “No, I didn’t. How can you think I did? Don’t you know who your friends are?” She pushed her way through Dragon Army, got ahead of him, and scrambled up a ladderway to a higher deck.

“Is it true?” asked Crazy Tom.

“Is what true?” Ender scanned the room and shouted for two roughhousing boys to get to bed.

“That some of the older boys want to kill you?”

“All talk,” said Ender. But he knew that it wasn’t. Petra had known something, and what he saw on the way here tonight wasn’t imagination.

“It may be all talk, but I hope you’ll understand when I say you’ve got five toon leaders who are going to escort you to your room tonight.”

“Completely unnecessary.”

“Humor us. You owe us a favor.”

“I owe you nothing.” He’d be a fool to turn them down. “Do as you want.” He turned and left. The toon leaders trotted along with him. One ran ahead and opened his door. They checked the room, made Ender promise to lock it, and left him just before lights out.

There was a message on his desk.

DON’T BE ALONE. EVER. —DINK

Ender grinned. So Dink was still his friend. Don’t worry. They won’t do anything to me. I have my army.

But in the darkness he did not have his army. He dreamed that night of Stilson, only he saw now how small Stilson was, only six years old, how ridiculous his tough-guy posturing was; and yet in the dream Stilson and his friends tied Ender so he couldn’t fight back, and then everything that Ender had done to Stilson in life, they did to Ender in the dream. And afterward Ender saw himself babbling like an idiot, trying hard to give orders to his army, but all his words came out as nonsense.

He awoke in darkness, and he was afraid. Then he calmed himself by remembering that the teachers obviously valued him, or they wouldn’t be putting so much pressure on him; they wouldn’t let anything happen to him, nothing bad, anyway. Probably when the older kids attacked him in the battleroom years ago, there were teachers just outside the room, waiting to see what would happen; if things had got out of hand, they would have stepped in and stopped it. I probably could have sat there and done nothing, and they would have seen to it I came through all right. They’ll push me as hard as they can in the game, but outside the game they’ll keep me safe.

With that assurance, he slept again, until the door opened softly and the morning’s war was left on the floor for him to find.

They won, of course, but it was a grueling affair, with the battleroom so filled with a labyrinth of stars that hunting down the enemy during mop-up took forty-five minutes. It was Pol Slattery’s Badger Army, and they refused to give up. There was a new wrinkle in the game, too—when they disabled or damaged an enemy, he thawed in about five minutes, the way it worked in practice. Only when the enemy was completely frozen did he stay out of action the whole time. But the gradual thawing did not work for Dragon Army. Crazy Tom was the one who realized what was happening, when they started getting hit from behind by people they thought were safely out of the way. And at the end of the battle, Slattery shook Ender’s hand and said, “I’m glad you won. If I ever beat you, Ender, I want to do it fair.”

“Use what they give you,” Ender said. “If you’ve ever got an advantage over the enemy, use it.”

“Oh, I did,” said Slattery. He grinned. “I’m only fair-minded before and after battles.”

The battle took so long that breakfast was over. Ender looked at his hot, sweating, tired soldiers waiting in the corridor and said, “Today you know everything. No practice. Get some rest. Have some fun. Pass a test.” It was a measure of their weariness that they didn’t even cheer or laugh or smile, just walked into the barracks and stripped off their clothes. They would have practiced if he had asked them to, but they were reaching the end of their strength, and going without breakfast was one unfairness too many.

Ender meant to shower right away, but he was also tired. He lay down on his bed in his flash suit, just for a moment, and woke up at the beginning of lunchtime. So much for his idea of studying more about the buggers this morning. Just time to clean up, go eat, and head for class.

He peeled off his flash suit, which stank from his sweat. His body felt cold, his joints oddly weak. Shouldn’t have slept in the middle of the day. I’m beginning to slack off. I’m beginning to wear down. Can’t let it get to me.

So he jogged to the gym and forced himself to climb the rope three times before going to the bathroom to shower. It didn’t occur to him that his absence in the commanders’ mess would be noticed, that showering during the noon hour, when his own army would be wolfing down their first meal of the day, he would be completely, helplessly alone.

Even when he heard them come into the bathroom he paid no attention. He was letting the water pour over his head, over his body; the muffled sound of footsteps was hardly noticeable. Maybe lunch was over, he thought. He started to soap himself again. Maybe somebody finished practice late.

And maybe not. He turned around. There were seven of them, leaning back against the metal sinks or standing closer to the showers, watching him. Bonzo stood in front of them. Many were smiling, the condescending leer of the hunter for his cornered victim. Bonzo was not smiling, however.

“Ho,” Ender said.

Nobody answered.

So Ender turned off the shower, even though there was still soap on him, and reached for his towel. It wasn’t there. One of the boys was holding it. It was Bernard. All it would take for the picture to be complete was for Stilson and Peter to be there, too. They needed Peter’s smile; they needed Stilson’s obvious stupidity.

Ender recognized the towel as their opening point. Nothing would make him look weaker than to chase naked after the towel. That was what they wanted, to humiliate him, to break him down. He wasn’t going to play. He refused to feel weak because he was wet and cold and unclothed. He stood strongly, facing them, his arms at his sides. He fastened his gaze on Bonzo.

“Your move,” Ender said.

“This is no game,” said Bernard. “We’re tired of you, Ender. You graduate today. On ice.”

Ender did not look at Bernard. It was Bonzo who hungered for his death, even though he was silent. The others were along for the ride, daring themselves to see how far they might go. Bonzo knew how far he would go.

“Bonzo,” Ender said softly. “Your father would be proud of you.”

Bonzo stiffened.

“He would love to see you now, come to fight a naked boy in a shower, smaller than you, and you brought six friends. He would say, Oh, what honor.”

“Nobody came to fight you,” said Bernard. “We just came to talk you into playing fair with the games. Maybe lose a couple now and then.”

The others laughed, but Bonzo didn’t laugh, and neither did Ender.

“Be proud, Bonito, pretty boy. You can go home and tell your father, Yes, I beat up Ender Wiggin, who was barely ten years old, and I was thirteen. And I had only six of my friends to help me, and somehow we managed to defeat him, even though he was naked and wet and alone—Ender Wiggin is so dangerous and terrifying it was all we could do not to bring two hundred.”

“Shut your mouth, Wiggin,” said one of the boys.

“We didn’t come to hear the little bastard talk,” said another.

“You shut up,” said Bonzo. “Shut up and stand out of the way.” He began to take off his uniform. “Naked and wet and alone, Ender, so we’re even. I can’t help that I’m bigger than you. You’re such a genius, you figure out how to handle me.” He turned to the others. “Watch the door. Don’t let anyone else in.”

The bathroom wasn’t large, and plumbing fixtures protruded everywhere. It had been launched in one piece, as a low-orbit satellite, packed full of the water reclamation equipment; it was designed to have no wasted space. It was obvious what their tactics would have to be. Throw the other boy against fixtures until one of them does enough damage that he stops.

When Ender saw Bonzo’s stance, his heart sank. Bonzo had also taken classes. And probably more recently than Ender. His reach was better, he was stronger, and he was full of hate. He would not be gentle. He will go for my head, thought Ender. He will try above all to damage my brain. And if this fight is long, he’s bound to win. His strength can control me. If I’m to walk away from here, I have to win quickly, and permanently. He could still feel again the sickening way that Stilson’s bones had given way. But this time it will be my body that breaks, unless I can break him first.

Ender stepped back, flipped the showerhead so it turned outward, and turned on pure hot water. Almost at once the steam began to rise. He turned on the next, and the next.

“I’m not afraid of hot water,” said Bonzo. His voice was soft.

But it wasn’t the hot water that Ender wanted. It was the heat. His body still had soap on it, and his sweat moistened it, made his skin more slippery than Bonzo would expect.

Suddenly there was a voice from the door. “Stop it!” For a moment Ender thought it was a teacher, come to stop the fight, but it was only Dink Meeker. Bonzo’s friends caught him at the door, held him. “Stop it, Bonzo!” Dink cried. “Don’t hurt him!”

“Why not?” asked Bonzo, and for the first time he smiled. Ah, thought Ender, he loves to have someone recognize that he is the one in control, that he has power.

“Because he’s the best, that’s why! Who else can fight the buggers! That’s what matters, you fool, the buggers!”

Bonzo stopped smiling. It was the thing he hated most about Ender, that Ender really mattered to other people, and, in the end, Bonzo did not. You’ve killed me with those words, Dink. Bonzo doesn’t want to hear that I might save the world.

Where are the teachers? thought Ender. Don’t they realize that the first contact between us in this fight might be the end of it? This isn’t like the fight in the battleroom, where no one had the leverage to do any terrible damage. There’s gravity in here, and the floor and walls are hard and jutted with metal. Stop this now or not at all.

“If you touch him you’re a buggerlover!” cried Dink. “You’re a traitor, if you touch him you deserve to die!” They jammed Dink’s face backward into the door and he was silent.

The mist from the showers dimmed the room, and the sweat was streaming down Ender’s body. Now, before the soap is carried off me. Now, while I’m still too slippery to hold.

Ender stepped back, letting the fear he felt show in his face. “Bonzo, don’t hurt me,” he said. “Please.”

It was what Bonzo was waiting for, the confession that he was in power. For other boys it might have been enough that Ender had submitted; for Bonzo, it was only a sign that his victory was sure. He swung his leg as if to kick, but changed it to a leap at the last moment. Ender noticed the shifting weight and stooped lower, so that Bonzo would be more off-balance when he tried to grab Ender and throw him.

Bonzo’s tight, hard ribs came against Ender’s face, and his hands slapped against his back, trying to grip him. But Ender twisted, and Bonzo’s hands slipped. In an instant Ender was completely turned, yet still inside Bonzo’s grasp. The classic move at this moment would be to bring up his heel into Bonzo’s crotch. But for that move to be effective required too much accuracy, and Bonzo expected it. He was already rising onto his toes, thrusting his hips backward to keep Ender from reaching his groin. Without seeing him, Ender knew it would bring his face closer, almost in Ender’s hair; so instead of kicking, he lunged upward off the floor, with the powerful lunge of the soldier bounding from the wall, and jammed his head into Bonzo’s face.

Ender whirled in time to see Bonzo stagger backward, his nose bleeding, gasping from surprise and pain. Ender knew that at this moment he might be able to walk out of the room and end the battle. The way he had escaped from the battleroom after drawing blood. But the battle would only be fought again. Again and again until the will to fight was finished. The only way to end things completely was to hurt Bonzo enough that his fear was stronger than his hate.

So Ender leaned back against the wall behind him, then jumped up and pushed off with his arms. His feet landed in Bonzo’s belly and chest. Ender spun in the air and landed on his toes and hands; he flipped over, scooted under Bonzo, and this time when he kicked upward into Bonzo’s crotch, he connected, hard and sure.

Bonzo did not cry out in pain. He did not react at all, except that his body rose a little in the air. It was as if Ender had kicked a piece of furniture. Bonzo collapsed, fell to the side, and sprawled directly under the spray of steaming water from a shower. He made no movement whatever to escape the murderous heat.

“My God!” someone shouted. Bonzo’s friends leaped to turn off the water. Ender slowly rose to his feet. Someone thrust his towel at him. It was Dink. “Come on out of here,” Dink said. He led Ender away. Behind them they heard the heavy clatter of adults running down a ladderway. Now the teachers would come. The medical staff. To dress the wounds of Ender’s enemy. Where were they before the fight, when there might have been no wounds at all?

There was no doubt now in Ender’s mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

Dink led him to his room, made him lie on the bed. “Are you hurt anywhere?” he asked.

Ender shook his head.

“You took him apart. I thought you were dead meat, the way he grabbed you. But you took him apart. If he’d stood up longer, you would’ve killed him.”

“He meant to kill me.”

“I know it. I know him. Nobody hates like Bonzo. But not anymore. If they don’t ice him for this and send him home, he’ll never look you in the eye again. You or anybody. He had twenty centimeters on you, and you made him look like a crippled cow standing there chewing her cud.”

All Ender could see, though, was the way Bonzo looked as Ender kicked upward into his groin. The empty, dead look in his eyes. He was already finished then. Already unconscious. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t thinking or moving anymore, just that dead, stupid look on his face, that terrible look, the way Stilson looked when I finished with him.

“They’ll ice him, though,” Dink said. “Everybody knows he started it. I saw them get up and leave the commanders’ mess. Took me a couple of seconds to realize you weren’t there, either, and then a minute more to find out where you had gone. I told you not to be alone.”

“Sorry.”

“They’re bound to ice him. Troublemaker. Him and his stinking honor.”

Then, to Dink’s surprise, Ender began to cry. Lying on his back, still soaking wet with sweat and water, he gasped his sobs, tears seeping out of his closed eyelids and disappearing in the water on his face.

“Are you all right?”

“I didn’t want to hurt him!” Ender cried. “Why didn’t he just leave me alone!”

He heard his door open softly, then close. He knew at once that it was his battle instructions. He opened his eyes, expecting to find the darkness of early morning, before 0600. Instead, the lights were on. He was naked, and when he moved the bed was soaking wet. His eyes were puffy and painful from crying. He looked at the clock on his desk. 1820, it said. It’s the same day. I already had a battle today, I had two battles today—the bastards know what I’ve been through, and they’re doing this to me.

WILLIAM BEE, GRIFFIN ARMY, TALO MOMOE,
TIGER ARMY, 1900

He sat on the edge of the bed. The note trembled in his hand. I can’t do this, he said silently. And then not silently. “I can’t do this.”

He got up, bleary, and looked for his flash suit. Then he remembered—he had put it in the cleaner while he showered. It was still there.

Holding the paper, he walked out of his room. Dinner was nearly over, and there were a few people in the corridor, but no one spoke to him, just watched him, perhaps in awe of what had happened at noon in the bathroom, perhaps because of the forbidding, terrible look on his face. Most of his boys were in the barracks.

Ho, Ender. There gonna be a practice tonight?

Ender handed the paper to Hot Soup. “Those sons of bitches,” he said. “Two at once?”

“Two armies!” shouted Crazy Tom.

“They’ll just trip over each other,” said Bean.

“I’ve got to clean up,” Ender said. “Get them ready, get everybody together, I’ll meet you there, at the gate.”

He walked out of the barracks, A tumult of conversation rose behind them. He heard Crazy Tom scream, “Two fart-eating armies! We’ll whip their butts!”

The bathroom was empty. All cleaned up. None of the blood that poured from Bonzo’s nose into the shower water. All gone. Nothing bad ever happened here.

Ender stepped under the water and rinsed himself, took the sweat of combat and let it run down the drain. All gone, except they recycled it and we’ll be drinking Bonzo’s bloodwater in the morning. All the life gone out of it, but his blood just the same, his blood and my sweat, washed down in their stupidity or cruelty or whatever it was that made them let it happen.

He dried himself, dressed in his flash suit, and walked to the battleroom. His army was waiting in the corridor, the door still not opened. They watched him in silence as he walked to the front to stand by the blank grey forcefield. Of course they all knew about his fight in the bathroom today; that and their own weariness from the battle that morning kept them quiet, while the knowledge that they would be facing two armies filled them with dread.

Everything they can do to beat me, thought Ender. Everything they can think of, change all the rules, they don’t care, just so they beat me. Well, I’m sick of the game. No game is worth Bonzo’s blood pinking the water on the bathroom floor. Ice me, send me home, I don’t want to play anymore.

The door disappeared. Only three meters out there were four stars together, completely blocking the view from the door.

Two armies weren’t enough. They had to make Ender deploy his forces blind.

“Bean,” said Ender. “Take your boys and tell me what’s on the other side of this star.”

Bean pulled the coil of twine from his waist, tied one end around him, handed the other end to a boy in his squad, and stepped gently through the door. His squad quickly followed. They had practiced this several times, and it took only a moment before they were braced on the star, holding the end of the twine. Bean pushed off at great speed, in a line almost parallel to the door; when he reached the corner of the room, he pushed off again and rocketed straight out toward the enemy. The spots of light on the wall showed that the enemy was shooting at him. As the rope was stopped by each edge of the star in turn, his arc became tighter, his direction changed, and he became an impossible target to hit. His squad caught him neatly as he came around the star from the other side. He moved all his arms and legs so those waiting inside the door would know that the enemy hadn’t flashed him anywhere.

Ender dropped through the gate.

“It’s really dim,” said Bean, “but light enough you can’t follow people easily by the lights on their suits. Worst possible for seeing. It’s all open space from this star to the enemy side of the room. They’ve got eight stars making a square around their door. I didn’t see anybody except the ones peeking around the boxes. They’re just sitting there waiting for us.”

As if to corroborate Bean’s statement, the enemy began to call out to them. “Hey! We be hungry, come and feed us! Your ass is draggin’! Your ass is Dragon!”

Ender’s mind felt dead. This was stupid. He didn’t have a chance, outnumbered two to one and forced to attack a protected enemy. “In a real war, any commander with brains at all would retreat and save this army.”

“What the hell,” said Bean. “It’s only a game.”

“It stopped being a game when they threw away the rules.”

“So, you throw ’em away, too.”

Ender grinned. “OK. Why not. Let’s see how they react to a formation.”

Bean was appalled. “A formation! We’ve never done a formation in the whole time we’ve been an army!”

“We’ve still got a month to go before our training period is normally supposed to end. About time we started doing formations. Always have to know formations.” He formed an A with his fingers, showed it to the blank door, and beckoned. A toon quickly emerged and Ender began arranging them behind the star. Three meters wasn’t enough room to work in, the boys were frightened and confused, and it took nearly five minutes just to get them to understand what they were doing.

Tiger and Griffin soldiers were reduced to chanting catcalls, while their commanders argued about whether to try to use their overwhelming force to attack Dragon Army while they were still behind the star. Momoe was all for attacking—”We outnumber him two to one”—while Bee said, “Sit tight and we can’t lose, move out and he can figure out a way to beat us.”

So they sat tight, until finally in the dusky light they saw a large mass slip out from behind Ender’s star. It held its shape, even when it abruptly stopped moving sideways and launched itself toward the dead center of the eight stars where eighty-two soldiers waited.

“Doobie doo,” said a Griffin. “They’re doing a formation.”

“They must have been putting that together for all five minutes,” said Momoe. “If we’d attacked while they were doing it, we could’ve destroyed them.”

“Eat it, Momoe,” whispered Bee. “You saw the way that little kid flew. He went all the way around the star and back behind without ever touching a wall. Maybe they’ve all got hooks, did you think of that? They’ve got something new there.”

The formation was a strange one. A square formation of tightly-packed bodies in front, making a wall. Behind it, a cylinder, six boys in circumference and two boys deep, their limbs outstretched and frozen so they couldn’t possibly be holding on to each other. Yet they held together as tightly as if they had been tied—which, in fact, they were.

From inside the formation, Dragon Army was firing with deadly accuracy, forcing Griffins and Tigers to stay tightly packed on their stars.

“The back of that sucker is open,” said Bee. “As soon as they get between the stars, we can get around behind—”

“Don’t talk about it, do it!” said Momoe. Then he took his own advice and ordered his boys to launch against the wall and rebound out behind the Dragon formation.

In the chaos of their takeoff, while Griffin Army held tight to their stars, the Dragon formation abruptly changed. Both the cylinder and the front wall split in two, as boys inside it pushed off; almost at once, the formations also reversed direction, heading back toward the Dragon gate. Most of the Griffins fired at the formations and the boys moving backward with them; and the Tigers took the survivors of Dragon Army from behind.

But there was something wrong. William Bee thought for a moment and realized what it was. Those formations couldn’t have reversed direction in midflight unless someone pushed off in the opposite direction, and if they took off with enough force to make that twenty-man formation move backward, they must be going fast.

There they were, six small Dragon soldiers down near William Bee’s own door. From the number of lights showing on their flash suits, Bee could see that three of them were disabled and two of them damaged; only one was whole. Nothing to be frightened of. Bee casually aimed at them, pressed the button, and—

Nothing happened.

The lights went on.

The game was over.

Even though he was looking right at them, it took Bee a moment to realize what had just happened. Four of the Dragon soldiers had their helmets pressed on the corners of the door. And one of them had just passed through. They had just carried out the victory ritual. They were getting destroyed, they had hardly inflicted any casualties, and they had the gall to perform the victory and end the game right under their noses.

Only then did it occur to William Bee that not only had Dragon Army ended the game, it was possible that, under the rules, they had won it. After all, no matter what happened, you were not certified as the winner unless you had enough unfrozen soldiers to touch the corners of the gate and pass someone through into the enemy’s corridor. Therefore, by one way of thinking, you could argue that the ending ritual was victory. The battleroom certainly recognized it as the end of the game.

The teachergate opened and Major Anderson came into the room. “Ender,” he called, looking around.

One of the frozen Dragon soldiers tried to answer him through jaws that were clamped shut by the flash suit. Anderson hooked over to him and thawed him.

Ender was smiling. “I beat you again, sir,” he said.

“Nonsense, Ender,” Anderson said softly. “Your battle was with Griffin and Tiger.”

“How stupid do you think I am?” said Ender.

Loudly, Anderson said, “After that little maneuver, the rules are being revised to require that all of the enemy’s soldiers must be frozen or disabled before the gate can be reversed.”

“It could only work once anyway,” Ender said.

Anderson handed him the hook. Ender unfroze everyone at once. To hell with protocol. To hell with everything. “Hey!” he shouted as Anderson moved away. “What is it next time? My army in a cage without guns, with the rest of the Battle School against them? How about a little equality?”

There was a loud murmur of agreement from the other boys, and not all of it came from Dragon Army. Anderson did not so much as turn around to acknowledge Ender’s challenge. Finally, it was William Bee who answered. “Ender, if you’re on one side of the battle, it won’t be equal no matter what the conditions are.”

Right! called the boys. Many of them laughed. Talo Momoe began clapping his hands. “Ender Wiggin!” he shouted. The other boys also clapped and shouted Ender’s name.

Ender passed through the enemy gate. His soldiers followed him. The sound of them shouting his name followed him through the corridors.

“Practice tonight?” asked Crazy Tom.

Ender shook his head.

“Tomorrow morning then?”

“No.”

“Well, when?”

“Never again, as far as I’m concerned.”

He could hear the murmurs behind him.

“Hey, that’s not fair,” said one of the boys. “It’s not our fault the teachers are screwing up the game. You can’t just stop teaching us stuff because—”

Ender slammed his open hand against the wall and shouted at the boy. “I don’t care about the game anymore!” His voice echoed through the corridor. Boys from other armies came to their doors. He spoke quietly into the silence. “Do you understand that?” And he whispered. “The game is over.”

He walked back to his room alone. He wanted to lie down, but he couldn’t because the bed was wet. It reminded him of all that had happened today, and in fury he tore the mattress and blankets from the bedframe and shoved them out into the corridor. Then he wadded up a uniform to serve as a pillow and lay on the fabric of wires strung across the frame. It was uncomfortable, but Ender didn’t care enough to get up.

He had only been there a few minutes when someone knocked on the door.

“Go away,” he said softly. Whoever was knocking didn’t hear him or didn’t care. Finally Ender said to come in.

It was Bean.

“Go away, Bean.”

Bean nodded but didn’t leave. Instead he looked at his shoes. Ender almost yelled at him, cursed at him, screamed at him to leave. Instead he noticed how very tired Bean looked, his whole body bent with weariness, his eyes dark from lack of sleep; and yet his skin was still soft and translucent, the skin of a child, the soft curved cheek, the slender limbs of a little boy. He wasn’t eight years old yet. It didn’t matter he was brilliant and dedicated and good. He was a child. He was young.

No he isn’t, thought Ender. Small, yes. But Bean has been through a battle with a whole army depending on him and on the soldiers that he led, and he performed splendidly, and they won. There’s no youth in that. No childhood.

Taking Ender’s silence and softening expression as permission to stay, Bean took another step into the room. Only then did Ender see the small slip of paper in his hand.

“You’re transferred?” asked Ender. He was incredulous, but his voice came out sounding uninterested, dead.

“To Rabbit Army.”

Ender nodded. Of course. It was obvious. If I can’t be defeated with my army, they’ll take my army away. “Carn Carby’s a good man,” said Ender. “I hope he recognizes what you’re worth.”

“Carn Carby was graduated today. He got his notice while we were fighting our battle.”

“Well, who’s commanding Rabbit then?”

Bean held his hands out helplessly. “Me.”

Ender looked at the ceiling and nodded. “Of course. After all, you’re only four years younger than the regular age.”

“It isn’t funny. I don’t know what’s going on here. All the changes in the game. And now this. I wasn’t the only one transferred, you know. They graduated half the commanders, and transferred a lot of our guys to command their armies.”

“Which guys?”

“It looks like—every toon leader and every assistant.”

“Of course. If they decide to wreck my army, they’ll cut it to the ground. Whatever they’re doing, they’re thorough.”

“You’ll still win, Ender. We all know that. Crazy Tom, he said, ‘You mean I’m supposed to figure out how to beat Dragon Army?’ Everybody knows you’re the best. They can’t break you down, no matter what they—”

“They already have.”

“No, Ender, they can’t—”

“I don’t care about their game anymore, Bean. I’m not going to play it anymore. No more practices. No more battles. They can put their little slips of paper on the floor all they want, but I won’t go. I decided that before I went through the door today. That’s why I had you go for the gate. I didn’t think it would work, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to go out in style.”

“You should’ve seen William Bee’s face. He just stood there trying to figure out how he had lost when you only had seven boys who could wiggle their toes and he only had three who couldn’t.”

“Why should I want to see William Bee’s face? Why should I want to beat anybody?” Ender pressed his palms against his eyes. “I hurt Bonzo really bad today, Bean. I really hurt him bad.”

“He had it coming.”

“I knocked him out standing up. It was like he was dead, standing there. And I kept hurting him.”

Bean said nothing.

“I just wanted to make sure he never hurt me again.”

“He won’t,” said Bean. “They sent him home.”

“Already?”

“The teachers didn’t say much, they never do. The official notice says he was graduated, but where they put the assignment—you know, tactical school, support, precommand, navigation, that kind of thing—it just said Cartagena, Spain. That’s his home.”

“I’m glad they graduated him.”

“Hell, Ender, we’re just glad he’s gone. If we’d known what he was doing to you, we would’ve killed him on the spot. Was it true he had a whole bunch of guys gang up on you?”

“No. It was just him and me. He fought with honor.” If it weren’t for his honor, he and the others would have beaten me together. They might have killed me, then. His sense of honor saved my life. “I didn’t fight with honor,” Ender added. “I fought to win.”

Bean laughed. “And you did. Kicked him right out of orbit.”

A knock on the door. Before Ender could answer, the door opened. Ender had been expecting more of his soldiers. Instead it was Major Anderson. And behind him came Colonel Graff.

“Ender Wiggin,” said Graff.

Ender got to his feet. “Yes sir.”

“Your display of temper in the battleroom today was insubordinate and is not to be repeated.”

“Yes sir,” said Ender.

Bean was still feeling insubordinate, and he didn’t think Ender deserved the rebuke. “I think it was about time somebody told a teacher how we felt about what you’ve been doing.”

The adults ignored him. Anderson handed Ender a sheet of paper. A full-sized sheet. Not one of the little slips of paper that served for internal orders within the Battle School; it was a full-fledged set of orders. Bean knew what it meant. Ender was being transferred out of the school.

“Graduated?” asked Bean. Ender nodded. “What took them so long? You’re only two or three years early. You’ve already learned how to walk and talk and dress yourself. What will they have left to teach you?”

Ender shook his head. “All I know is, the game’s over.” He folded up the paper. “None too soon. Can I tell my army?”

“There isn’t time,” said Graff. “Your shuttle leaves in twenty minutes. Besides, it’s better not to talk to them after you get your orders. It makes it easier.”

“For them or for you?” Ender asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned quickly to Bean, took his hand for a moment, and then headed for the door.

“Wait,” said Bean. “Where are you going? Tactical? Navigational? Support?”

“Command School,” Ender answered.

“Pre-command?”

“Command,” said Ender, and then he was out the door. Anderson followed him closely. Bean grabbed Colonel Graff by the sleeve. “Nobody goes to Command School until they’re sixteen!”

Graff shook off Bean’s hand and left, closing the door behind him.

Bean stood alone in the room, trying to grasp what this might mean. Nobody went to Command School without three years of Pre-command in either Tactical or Support. But then, nobody left Battle School without at least six years, and Ender had had only four.

The system is breaking up. No doubt about it. Either somebody at the top is going crazy, or something’s gone wrong with the war, the real war, the bugger war. Why else would they break down the training system like this, wreck the game the way they did? Why else would they put a little kid like me in command of an army?

Bean wondered about it as he walked back down the corridor to his own bed. The lights went out just as he reached his bunk. He undressed in darkness, fumbling to put his clothing in a locker he couldn’t see. He felt terrible. At first he thought he felt bad because he was afraid of leading an army, but it wasn’t true. He knew he’d make a good commander. He felt himself wanting to cry. He hadn’t cried since the first few days of homesickness after he got here. He tried to put a name on the feeling that put a lump in his throat and made him sob silently, however much he tried to hold it down. He bit down on his hand to stop the feeling, to replace it with pain. It didn’t help. He would never see Ender again.

Once he named the feeling, he could control it. He lay back and forced himself to go through the relaxing routine until he didn’t feel like crying anymore. Then he drifted off to sleep. His hand was near his mouth. It lay on his pillow hesitantly, as if Bean couldn’t decide whether to bite his nails or suck on his fingertips. His forehead was creased and furrowed. His breathing was quick and light. He was a soldier, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn’t have known what they meant.

When he was crossing into the shuttle, Ender noticed for the first time that the insignia on Major Anderson’s uniform had changed. “Yes, he’s a colonel now,” said Graff. “In fact, Major Anderson has been placed in command of the Battle School, as of this afternoon. I have been reassigned to other duties.”

Ender did not ask him what they were.

Graff strapped himself into a seat across the aisle from him. There was only one other passenger, a quiet man in civilian clothes who was introduced as General Pace. Pace was carrying a briefcase, but Graff carried no more luggage than Ender did. Somehow that was comforting to Ender, that Graff also came away empty.

Ender spoke only once on the voyage home. “Why are we going home?” he asked. “I thought Command School was in the asteroids somewhere.”

“It is,” said Graff. “But the Battle School has no facilities for docking long-range ships. So you get a short landside leave.”

Ender wanted to ask if that meant he could see his family. But suddenly, at the thought that it might be possible, he was afraid, and so he didn’t ask. Just closed his eyes and tried to sleep. Behind him, General Pace was studying him; for what purpose, Ender could not guess.

It was a hot summer afternoon in Florida when they landed. Ender had been so long without sunlight that the light nearly blinded him. He squinted and sneezed and wanted to get back indoors. Everything was far away and flat; the ground, lacking the upward curve of Battle School floors, seemed instead to fall away, so that on level ground Ender felt as though he were on a pinnacle. The pull of real gravity felt different and he scuffed his feet when he walked. He hated it. He wanted to go back home, back to the Battle School, the only place in the universe where he belonged.

“Arrested?”

“Well, it’s a natural thought. General Pace is the head of the military police. There was a death in the Battle School.”

“They didn’t tell me whether Colonel Graff was being promoted or court-martialed. Just transferred, with orders to report to the Polemarch.”

“Is that a good sign or bad?”

“Who knows? On the one hand, Ender Wiggin not only survived, he passed a threshold, he graduated in dazzlingly good shape, you have to give old Graff credit for that. On the other hand, there’s the fourth passenger on the shuttle. The one traveling in a bag.”

“Only the second death in the history of the school. At least it wasn’t a suicide this time.”

“How is murder better, Major Imbu?”

“It wasn’t murder, Colonel. We have it on video from two angles. No one can blame Ender.”

“But they might blame Graff. After all this is over, the civilians can rake over our files and decide what was right and what was not. Give us medals where they think we were right, take away our pensions and put us in jail where they decide we were wrong. At least they had the good sense not to tell Ender that the boy died.”

“It’s the second time, too.”

“They didn’t tell him about Stilson, either.”

“The kid is scary.”

“Ender Wiggin isn’t a killer. He just wins—thoroughly. If anybody’s going to be scared, let it be the buggers.”

“Makes you almost feel sorry for them, knowing Ender’s going to be coming after them.”

“The only one I feel sorry for is Ender. But not sorry enough to suggest they ought to let up on him. I just got access to the material that Graff’s been getting all this time. About fleet movements, that sort of thing. I used to sleep easy at night.”

“Time’s getting short?”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I can’t tell you secured information.”

“I know.”

“Let’s leave it at this: they didn’t get him to Command School a day too soon. And maybe a couple of years too late.”

13

VALENTINE

“Children?”

“Brother and sister. They’d layered themselves five times through the nets—writing for companies that paid for their memberships, that sort of thing. Devil of a time tracking them down.”

“What are they hiding?”

“Could be anything. The most obvious thing to hide, though, is their ages. The boy is fourteen, the girl is twelve.”

“Which one is Demosthenes?”

“The girl. The twelve-year-old.”

“Pardon me. I don’t really think it’s funny, but I can’t help but laugh. All this time we’ve been worried, all the time we’ve been trying to persuade the Russians not to take Demosthenes too seriously, we held up Locke as proof that Americans weren’t all crazy warmongers. Brother and sister, pubescent—”

“And their last name is Wiggin.”

“Ah. Coincidence?”

“The Wiggin is a third. They are one and two.”

“Oh, excellent. The Russians will never believe—”

“That Demosthenes and Locke aren’t as much under our control as the Wiggin.”

“Is there a conspiracy? Is someone controlling them?”

“We have been able to detect no contact between these two children and any adult who might be directing them.”

“That is not to say that someone might not have invented some method you can’t detect. It’s hard to believe that two children—”

“I interviewed Colonel Graff when he arrived from the Battle School. It is his best judgment that nothing these children have done is out of their reach. Their abilities are virtually identical with—the Wiggin. Only their temperaments are different. What surprised him, however, was the orientation of the two personas. Demosthenes is definitely the girl, but Graff says the girl was rejected for Battle School because she was too pacific, too conciliatory, and above all, too empathic.”

“Definitely not Demosthenes.”

“And the boy has the soul of a jackal.”

“Wasn’t it Locke that was recently praised as ‘The only truly open mind in America’?”

“It’s hard to know what’s really happening. But Graff recommended, and I agree, that we should leave them alone. Not expose them. Make no report at this time except that we have determined that Locke and Demosthenes have no foreign connections and have no connections with any domestic group, either, except those publicly declared on the nets.”

“In other words, give them a clean bill of health.”

“I know Demosthenes seems dangerous, in part because he—or she—has such a wide following. But I think it’s significant that the one of the two of them who is most ambitious has chosen the moderate, wise persona. And they’re still just talking. They have influence, but no power.”

“In my experience, influence is power.”

“If we ever find them getting out of line, we can easily expose them.”

“Only in the next few years. The longer we wait, the older they get, and the less shocking it is to discover who they are.”

“You know what the Russian troop movements have been. There’s always the chance that Demosthenes is right. In which case—”

“We’d better have Demosthenes around. All right. We’ll show them clean, for now. But watch them. And I, of course, have to find ways of keeping the Russians calm.”

In spite of all her misgivings, Valentine was having fun being Demosthenes. Her column was now being carried on practically every newsnet in the country, and it was fun to watch the money pile up in her attorney’s accounts. Every now and then she and Peter would, in Demosthenes’ name, donate a carefully calculated sum to a particular candidate or cause: enough money that the donation would be noticed, but not so much that the candidate would feel she was trying to buy a vote. She was getting so many letters now that her newsnet had hired a secretary to answer certain classes of routine correspondence for her. The fun letters, from national and international leaders, sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly, always diplomatically trying to pry into Demosthenes’ mind—those she and Peter read together, laughing in delight sometimes that people like this were writing to children, and didn’t know it.

Sometimes, though, she was ashamed. Father was reading Demosthenes regularly; he never read Locke, or if he did, he said nothing about it. At dinner, though, he would often regale them with some telling point Demosthenes had made in that day’s column. Peter loved it when Father did that—”See, it shows that the common man is paying attention”—but it made Valentine feel humiliated for Father. If he ever found out that all this time I was writing the columns he told us about, and that I didn’t even believe half the things I wrote, he would be angry and ashamed.

At school, she once nearly got them in trouble, when her history teacher assigned the class to write a paper contrasting the views of Demosthenes and Locke as expressed in two of their early columns. Valentine was careless, and did a brilliant job of analysis. As a result, she had to work hard to talk the principal out of having her essay published on the very newsnet that carried Demosthenes’ column. Peter was savage about it. “You write too much like Demosthenes, you can’t get published, I should kill Demosthenes now, you’re getting out of control.”

If he raged about that blunder, Peter frightened her still more when he went silent. It happened when Demosthenes was invited to take part in the President’s Council on Education for the Future, a blue-ribbon panel that was designed to do nothing, but do it splendidly. Valentine thought Peter would take it as a triumph, but he did not. “Turn it down,” he said.

“Why should I?” she asked. “It’s no work at all, and they even said that because of Demosthenes’ well-known desire for privacy, they would net all the meetings. It makes Demosthenes into a respectable person, and—”

“And you love it that you got that before I did.”

“Peter, it isn’t you and me, it’s Demosthenes and Locke. We made them up. They aren’t real. Besides, this appointment doesn’t mean they like Demosthenes better than Locke, it just means that Demosthenes has a much stronger base of support. You knew he would. Appointing him pleases a large number of Russian-haters and chauvinists.”

“It wasn’t supposed to work this way. Locke was supposed to be the respected one.”

“He is! Real respect takes longer than official respect. Peter, don’t be angry at me because I’ve done well with the things you told me to do.”

But he was angry, for days, and ever since then he had left her to think through all her own columns, instead of telling her what to write. He probably assumed that this would make the quality of Demosthenes’ columns deteriorate, but if it did no one noticed. Perhaps it made him even angrier that she never came to him weeping for help. She had been Demosthenes too long now to need anyone to tell her what Demosthenes would think about things.

And as her correspondence with other politically active citizens grew, she began to learn things, information that simply wasn’t available to the general public. Certain military people who corresponded with her dropped hints about things without meaning to, and she and Peter put them together to build up a fascinating and frightening picture of Warsaw Pact activity. They were indeed preparing for war, a vicious and bloody earthbound war. Demosthenes wasn’t wrong to suspect that the Second Warsaw Pact was not abiding by the terms of the League.

And the character of Demosthenes gradually took on a life of his own. At times she found herself thinking like Demosthenes at the end of a writing session, agreeing with ideas that were supposed to be calculated poses. And sometimes she read Peter’s Locke essays and found herself annoyed at his obvious blindness to what was really going on.

Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be. She thought of that, worried about it for a few days, and then wrote a column using that as a premise, to show that politicians who toadied to the Russians in order to keep the peace would inevitably end up subservient to them in everything. It was a lovely bite at the party in power, and she got a lot of good mail about it. She also stopped being frightened of the idea of becoming, to a degree, Demosthenes. He’s smarter than Peter and I ever gave him credit for, she thought.

Graff was waiting for her after school. He stood leaning on his car. He was in civilian clothes, and he had gained weight, so she didn’t recognize him at first. But he beckoned to her, and before he could introduce himself she remembered his name.

“I won’t write another letter,” she said. “I never should have written that one.”

“You don’t like medals, then, I guess.”

“Not much.”

“Come for a ride with me, Valentine.”

“I don’t ride with strangers.”

He handed her a paper. It was a release form, and her parents had signed it.

“I guess you’re not a stranger. Where are we going?”

“To see a young soldier who is in Greensboro on leave.”

She got in the car. “Ender’s only ten years old,” she said. “I thought you told me last time he’d be eligible for a leave when he was sixteen.”

“He skipped a few grades.”

“So he’s doing well?”

“Ask him when you see him.”

“Why me? Why not the whole family?”

Graff sighed. “Ender sees the world his own way. We had to persuade him to see you. As for Peter and your parents, he was not interested. Life at the Battle School was—intense.”

“What do you mean, he’s gone crazy?”

“On the contrary, he’s the sanest person I know. He’s sane enough to know that his parents are not particularly eager to reopen a book of affection that was closed quite tightly four years ago. As for Peter—we didn’t even suggest a meeting, and so he didn’t have a chance to tell us to go to hell.”

They went out Lake Brandt Road and turned off just past the lake, following a road that wound down and up until they came to a white clapboard mansion that sprawled along the top of a hill. It looked over Lake Brandt on one side and a five-acre private lake on the other. “This is the house that Medly’s Mist-E-Rub built,” said Graff. “The I.F. picked it up in a tax sale about twenty years ago. Ender insisted that his conversation with you should not be bugged. I promised him it wouldn’t be, and to help inspire confidence, the two of you are going out on a raft he built himself. I should warn you, though. I intend to ask you questions about your conversation when it is finished. You don’t have to answer, but I hope you will.”

“I didn’t bring a swimming suit.”

“We can provide one.”

“One that isn’t bugged?”

“At some point, there must be trust. For instance, I know who Demosthenes really is.”

She felt a thrill of fear run through her, but said nothing.

“I’ve known since I landed from the Battle School. There are, perhaps, six of us in the world who know his identity. Not counting the Russians—God only knows what they know. But Demosthenes has nothing to fear from us. Demosthenes can trust our discretion. Just as I trust Demosthenes not to tell Locke what’s going on here today. Mutual trust. We tell each other things.”

Valentine couldn’t decide whether it was Demosthenes they approved of, or Valentine Wiggin. If the former, she would not trust them; if the latter, then perhaps she could. The fact that they did not want her to discuss this with Peter suggested that perhaps they knew the difference between them. She did not stop to wonder whether she herself knew the difference anymore.

“You said he built the raft. How long has he been here?”

“Two months. We meant his leave to last only a few days. But you see, he doesn’t seem interested in going on with his education.”

“Oh. So I’m therapy again.”

“This time we can’t censor your letter. We’re just taking our chances. We need your brother badly. Humanity is on the cusp.”

This time Val had grown up enough to know just how much danger the world was in. And she had been Demosthenes long enough that she didn’t hesitate to do her duty. “Where is he?”

“Down at the boat slip.”

“Where’s the swimming suit?”

Ender didn’t wave when she walked down the hill toward him, didn’t smile when she stepped onto the floating boat slip. But she knew that he was glad to see her, knew it because of the way his eyes never left her face.

“You’re bigger than I remembered.” she said stupidly.

“You too,” he said. “I also remembered that you were beautiful.”

“Memory does play tricks on us.”

“No. Your face is the same, but I don’t remember what beautiful means anymore. Come on. Let’s go out into the lake.”

She looked at the small raft with misgivings.

“Don’t stand up on it, that’s all,” he said. He got on by crawling, spiderlike, on toes and fingers. “It’s the first thing I built with my own hands since you and I used to build with blocks. Peter-proof buildings.”

She laughed. They used to take pleasure in building things that would stand up even when a lot of the obvious supports had been removed. Peter, in turn, liked to remove a block here or there, so the structure would be fragile enough that the next person to touch it would knock it down. Peter was an ass, but he did provide some focus to their childhood.

“Peter’s changed,” she said.

“Let’s not talk about him,” said Ender.

“All right.”

She crawled onto the boat, not as deftly as Ender. He used a paddle to maneuver them slowly toward the center of the private lake. She noticed aloud that he was sunbrowned and strong.

“The strong part comes from Battle School. The sunbrowning comes from this lake. I spend a lot of time on the water. When I’m swimming, it’s like being weightless. I miss being weightless. Also, when I’m here on the lake, the land slopes up in every direction.”

“Like living in a bowl.”

“I’ve lived in a bowl for four years.”

“So we’re strangers now?”

“Aren’t we, Valentine?”

“No,” she said. She reached out and touched his leg. Then, suddenly, she squeezed his knee, right where he had always been most ticklish.

But almost at the same moment, he caught her wrist in his hand. His grip was very strong, even though his hands were smaller than hers and his own arms were slender and tight. For a moment he looked dangerous; then he relaxed. “Oh, yes,” he said. “You used to tickle me.”

“Not any more,” she said, taking back her hand.

“Want to swim?”

In answer, she dropped herself over the side of the raft. The water was clear and clean, and there was no chlorine in it. She swam for a while, then returned to the raft and lay on it in the hazy sunlight. A wasp circled her, then landed on the raft beside her head. She knew it was there, and ordinarily would have been afraid of it. But not today. Let it walk on this raft, let it bake in the sun as I’m doing.

Then the raft rocked, and she turned to see Ender calmly crushing the life out of the wasp with one finger. “These are a nasty breed,” Ender said. “They sting you without waiting to be insulted first.” He smiled. “I’ve been learning about preemptive strategies. I’m very good. No one ever beat me. I’m the best soldier they ever had.”

“Who would expect less?” she said. “You’re a Wiggin.”

“Whatever that means,” he said.

“It means that you are going to make a difference in the world.” And she told him what she and Peter were doing.

“How old is Peter, fourteen? Already planning to take over the world?”

“He thinks he’s Alexander the Great. And why shouldn’t he be? Why shouldn’t you be, too?”

“We can’t both be Alexander.”

“Two faces of the same coin. And I am the metal in between.” Even as she said it, she wondered if it was true. She had shared so much with Peter these last few years that even when she thought she despised him, she understood him. While Ender had been only a memory till now. A very small, fragile boy who needed her protection. Not this cold-eyed, dark-skinned manling who kills wasps with his fingers. Maybe he and Peter and I are all the same, and have been all along. Maybe we only thought we were different from each other out of jealousy.

“The trouble with coins is, when one face is up, the other face is down.”

And right now you think you’re down. “They want me to encourage you to go on with your studies.”

“They aren’t studies, they’re games. All games, from beginning to end, only they change the rules whenever they feel like it.” He held up a limp hand. “See the strings?”

“But you can use them, too.”

“Only if they want to be used. Only if they think they’re using you. No, it’s too hard, I don’t want to play anymore. Just when I start to be happy, just when I think I can handle things, they stick in another knife. I keep having nightmares, now that I’m here. I dream I’m in the battleroom, only instead of being weightless, they’re playing games with gravity. They keep changing its direction. So I never end up on the wall I launched for. I never end up where I meant to go. And I keep pleading with them just to let me get to the door, and they won’t let me out, they keep sucking me back in.”

She heard the anger in his voice and assumed it was directed at her. “I suppose that’s what I’m here for. To suck you back in.”

“I didn’t want to see you.”

“They told me.”

“I was afraid that I’d still love you.”

“I hoped that you would.”

“My fear, your wish—both granted.”

“Ender, it really is true. We may be young, but we’re not powerless. We play by their rules long enough, and it becomes our game.” She giggled. “I’m on a presidential commission. Peter is so angry.”

“They don’t let me use the nets. There isn’t a computer in the place, except the household machines that run the security system and the lighting. Ancient things. Installed back a century ago, when they made computers that didn’t hook up with anything. They took away my army, they took away my desk, and you know something? I don’t really mind.”

“You must be good company for yourself.”

“Not me. My memories.”

“Maybe that’s who you are, what you remember.”

“No. My memories of strangers. My memories of the buggers.”

Valentine shivered, as if a cold breeze had suddenly passed. “I refuse to watch the bugger vids anymore. They’re always the same.”

“I used to study them for hours. The way their ships move through space. And something funny, that only occurred to me lying out here on the lake. I realized that all the battles in which buggers and humans fought hand to hand, all those are from the First Invasion. All the scenes from the Second Invasion, when our soldiers are in I.F. uniforms, in those scenes the buggers are always already dead. Lying there, slumped over their controls. Not a sign of struggle or anything. And Mazer Rackham’s battle—they never show us any footage from that battle.”

“Maybe it’s a secret weapon.”

“No, no, I don’t care about how we killed them. It’s the buggers themselves. I don’t know anything about them, and yet someday I’m supposed to fight them. I’ve been through a lot of fights in my life, sometimes games, sometimes—not games. Every time, I’ve won because I could understand the way my enemy thought. From what they did. I could tell what they thought I was doing, how they wanted the battle to take shape. And I played off of that. I’m very good at that. Understanding how other people think.”

“The curse of the Wiggin children.” She joked, but it frightened her, that Ender might understand her as completely as he did his enemies. Peter always understood her, or at least thought he did, but he was such a moral sinkhole that she never had to feel embarrassed when he guessed even her worst thoughts. But Ender—she did not want him to understand her. It would make her naked before him. She would be ashamed. “You don’t think you can beat the buggers unless you know them.”

“It goes deeper than that. Being here alone with nothing to do, I’ve been thinking about myself, too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly.”

“No, Ender.”

“Don’t tell me ‘No, Ender.’ It took me a long time to realize that I did, but believe me, I did. Do. And it came down to this: In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them—”

“You beat them.” For a moment she was not afraid of his understanding.

“No, you don’t understand. I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don’t exist.”

“Of course you don’t.” And now the fear came again, worse than before. Peter has mellowed, but you, they’ve made you into a killer. Two sides of the same coin, but which side is which?

“I’ve really hurt some people, Val. I’m not making this up.”

“I know, Ender.” How will you hurt me?

“See what I’m becoming, Val?” he said softly. “Even you are afraid of me.” And he touched her cheek so gently that she wanted to cry. Like the touch of his soft baby hand when he was still an infant. She remembered that, the touch of his soft and innocent hand on her cheek.

“I’m not,” she said, and in that moment it was true.

“You should be.”

No. I shouldn’t. “You’re going to shrivel up if you stay in the water. Also, the sharks might get you.”

He smiled. “The sharks learned to leave me alone a long time ago.” But he pulled himself onto the raft, bringing a wash of water across it as it tipped. It was cold on Valentine’s back.

“Ender, Peter’s going to do it. He’s smart enough to take the time it takes, but he’s going to win his way into power—if not right now, then later. I’m not sure yet whether that’ll be a good thing or a bad thing. Peter can be cruel, but he knows the getting and keeping of power, and there are signs that once the bugger war is over, and maybe even before it ends, the world will collapse into chaos again. The Russian Empire was on its way to hegemony before the First Invasion. If they try for it afterward—”

“So even Peter might be a better alternative.”

“You’ve been discovering some of the destroyer in yourself, Ender. Well, so have I. Peter didn’t have a monopoly on that, whatever the testers thought. And Peter has some of the builder in him. He isn’t kind, but he doesn’t break every good thing he sees anymore. Once you realize that power will always end up with the sort of people who crave it, I think that there are worse people who could have it than Peter.”

“With that strong a recommendation, I could vote for him myself.”

“Sometimes it seems absolutely silly. A fourteen-year-old boy and his kid sister plotting to take over the world.” She tried to laugh. It wasn’t funny. “We aren’t just ordinary children, are we. None of us.”

“Don’t you sometimes wish we were?”

She tried to imagine herself being like the other girls at school. Tried to imagine life if she didn’t feel responsible for the future of the world. “It would be so dull.”

“I don’t think so.” And he stretched out on the raft, as if he could lie on the water forever.

It was true. Whatever they did to Ender in the Battle School, they had spent his ambition. He really did not want to leave the sun-warmed waters of this bowl.

No, she realized. No, he believes that he doesn’t want to leave here, but there is still too much of Peter in him. Or too much of me. None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing. Or perhaps it’s just that none of us could be happy living with no other company than ourself.

So she began to prod again. “What is the one name that everyone in the world knows?”

“Mazer Rackham.”

“And what if you win the next war, the way Mazer did?”

“Mazer Rackham was a fluke. A reserve. Nobody believed in him. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

“But suppose you do it. Suppose you beat the buggers and your name is known the way Mazer Rackham’s name is known.”

“Let somebody else be famous. Peter wants to be famous. Let him save the world.”

“I’m not talking about fame, Ender. I’m not talking about power, either. I’m talking about accidents, just like the accident that Mazer Rackham happened to be the one who was there when somebody had to stop the buggers.”

“If I’m here,” said Ender, “then I won’t be there. Somebody else will. Let them have the accident.”

His tone of weary unconcern infuriated her. “I’m talking about my life, you self-centered little bastard.” If her words bothered him, he didn’t show it. Just lay there, eyes closed. “When you were little and Peter tortured you, it’s a good thing I didn’t lie back and wait for Mom and Dad to save you. They never understood how dangerous Peter was. I knew you had the monitor, but I didn’t wait for them, either. Do you know what Peter used to do to me because I stopped him from hurting you?”

“Shut up,” Ender whispered.

Because she saw that his chest was trembling, because she knew that she had indeed hurt him, because she knew that just like Peter, she had found his weakest place and stabbed him there, she fell silent.

“I can’t beat them,” Ender said softly. “I’ll be out there like Mazer Rackham one day, and everybody will be depending on me, and I won’t be able to do it.”

“If you can’t, Ender, then nobody could. If you can’t beat them, then they deserve to win because they’re stronger and better than us. It won’t be your fault.”

“Tell it to the dead.”

“If not you, then who?”

“Anybody.”

“Nobody, Ender. I’ll tell you something. If you try and lose then it isn’t your fault. But if you don’t try and we lose, then it’s all your fault. You killed us all.”

“I’m a killer no matter what.”

“What else should you be? Human beings didn’t evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing’s the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we’d be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.”

“I could never beat Peter. No matter what I said or did. I never could.”

So it came back to Peter. “He was years older than you. And stronger.”

“So are the buggers.”

She could see his reasoning. Or rather, his unreasoning. He could win all he wanted, but he knew in his heart that there was always someone who could destroy him. He always knew that he had not really won, because there was Peter, undefeated champion.

“You want to beat Peter?” she asked.

“No,” he answered.

“Beat the buggers. Then come home and see who notices Peter Wiggin anymore. Look him in the eye when all the world loves and reveres you. That’ll be defeat in his eyes, Ender. That’s how you win.”

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t. I don’t want to beat Peter.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want him to love me.”

She had no answer. As far as she knew, Peter didn’t love anybody.

Ender said nothing more. Just lay there. And lay there.

Finally Valentine, the sweat dripping off her, the mosquitos beginning to hover as the dusk came on, took one final dip in the water and then began to push the raft in to shore. Ender showed no sign that he knew what she was doing, but his irregular breathing told her that he was not asleep. When they got to the shore, she climbed onto the dock and said, “I love you, Ender. More than ever. No matter what you decide.”

He didn’t answer. She doubted that he believed her. She walked back up the hill, savagely angry at them for making her come to Ender like this. For she had, after all, done just what they wanted. She had talked Ender into going back into his training, and he wouldn’t soon forgive her for that.

Ender came in the door, still wet from his last dip in the lake. It was dark outside, and dark in the room where Graff waited for him.

“Are we going now?” asked Ender.

“If you want to,” Graff said.

“When?”

“When you’re ready.”

Ender showered and dressed. He was finally used to the way civilian clothes fit together, but he still didn’t feel right without a uniform or a flash suit. I’ll never wear a flash suit again, he thought. That was the Battle School game, and I’m through with that. He heard the crickets chirping madly in the woods; in the near distance he heard the crackling sound of a car driving slowly on gravel.

What else should he take with him? He had read several of the books in the library, but they belonged to the house and he couldn’t take them. The only thing he owned was the raft he had made with his own hands. That would stay here, too.

The lights were on now in the room where Graff waited. He, too, had changed clothing. He was back in uniform.

They sat in the back seat of the car together, driving along country roads to come at the airport from the back. “Back when the population was growing,” said Graff, “they kept this area in woods and farms. Watershed land. The rainfall here starts a lot of rivers flowing, a lot of underground water moving around. The Earth is deep, and right to the heart it’s alive, Ender. We people only live on the top, like the bugs that live on the scum of the still water near the shore.”

Ender said nothing.

“We train our commanders the way we do because that’s what it takes—they have to think in certain ways, they can’t be distracted by a lot of things, so we isolate them. You. Keep you separate. And it works. But it’s so easy, when you never meet people, when you never know the Earth itself, when you live with metal walls keeping out the cold of space, it’s easy to forget why Earth is worth saving. Why the world of people might be worth the price you pay.”

So that’s why you brought me here, thought Ender. With all your hurry, that’s why you took three months, to make me love Earth. Well, it worked. All your tricks worked. Valentine, too; she was another one of your tricks, to make me remember that I’m not going to school for myself. Well, I remember.

“I may have used Valentine,” said Graff, “and you may hate me for it, Ender, but keep this in mind—it only works because what’s between you, that’s real, that’s what matters. Billions of those connections between human beings. That’s what you’re fighting to keep alive.”

Ender turned his face to the window and watched the helicopters and dirigibles rise and fall.

They took a helicopter to the I.F. spaceport at Stumpy Point. It was officially named for a dead Hegemon, but everybody called it Stumpy Point, after the pitiful little town that had been paved over when they made the approaches to the vast islands of steel and concrete that dotted Pamlico Sound. There were still waterbirds taking their fastidious little steps in the saltwater, where mossy trees dipped down as if to drink. It began to rain lightly, and the concrete was black and slick; it was hard to tell where it left off and the Sound began.

Graff led him through a maze of clearances. Authority was a little plastic ball that Graff carried. He dropped it into chutes, and doors opened and people stood up and saluted and the chutes spat out the ball and Graff went on. Ender noticed that at first everyone watched Graff, but as they penetrated deeper into the spaceport, people began watching Ender. At first it was the man of real authority they noticed, but later, where everyone had authority, it was his cargo they cared to see.

Only when Graff strapped himself into the shuttle seat beside him did Ender realize Graff was going to launch with him.

“How far?” asked Ender. “How far are you going with me?”

Graff smiled thinly. “All the way, Ender.”

“Are they making you administrator of Command School?”

“No.”

So they had removed Graff from his post at Battle School solely to accompany Ender to his next assignment. How important am I, he wondered. And like a whisper of Peter’s voice inside his mind, he heard the question, How can I use this?

He shuddered and tried to think of something else. Peter could have fantasies about ruling the world, but Ender didn’t have them. Still, thinking back on his life in Battle School, it occurred to him that although he had never sought power, he had always had it. But he decided that it was a power born of excellence, not manipulation. He had no reason to be ashamed of it. He had never, except perhaps with Bean, used his power to hurt someone. And with Bean, things had worked well after all. Bean had become a friend, finally, to take the place of the lost Alai, who in turn took the place of Valentine. Valentine, who was helping Peter in his plotting. Valentine, who still loved Ender no matter what happened. And following that train of thought led him back to Earth, back to the quiet hours in the center of the clear water ringed by a bowl of tree-covered hills. That is the Earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometers around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of the hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upward from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the bugs that lived at the border between water and sky. Earth was the constant noise of crickets and winds and birds. And the voice of one girl, who spoke to him out of his far-off childhood. The same voice that had once protected him from terror. The same voice that he would do anything to keep alive, even return to school, even leave Earth behind again for another four or forty or four thousand years. Even if she loved Peter more.

His eyes were closed, and he had not made any sound but breathing; still, Graff reached out and touched his hand across the aisle. Ender stiffened in surprise, and Graff soon withdrew, but for a moment Ender was struck with the startling thought that perhaps Graff felt some affection for him. But no, it was just another calculated gesture. Graff was creating a commander out of a little boy. No doubt Unit 17 in the course of studies included an affectionate gesture from the teacher.

The shuttle reached the IPL satellite in only a few hours. Inter-Planetary Launch was a city of three thousand inhabitants, breathing oxygen from the plants that also fed them, drinking water that had already passed through their bodies ten thousand times, living only to service the tugs that did all the oxwork in the solar system and the shuttles that took their cargoes and passengers back to the Earth or the Moon. It was a world where, briefly, Ender felt at home, since its floors sloped upward as they did in the Battle School.

Their tug was fairly new; the I.F. was constantly casting off its old vehicles and purchasing the latest models. It had just brought a vast load of drawn steel processed by a factory ship that was taking apart minor planets in the asteroid belt. The steel would be dropped to the Moon, and now the tug was linked to fourteen barges. Graff dropped his ball into the reader again, however, and the barges were uncoupled from the tug. It would be making a fast run this time, to a destination of Graff’s specification, not to be stated until the tug had cut loose from IPL.

“It’s no great secret,” said the tug’s captain. “Whenever the destination is unknown, it’s for ISL.” By analogy with IPL, Ender decided the letters meant Inter-Stellar Launch.

“This time it isn’t,” said Graff.

“Where then?”

“I.F. Command.”

“I don’t have security clearance even to know where that is, sir.”

“Your ship knows,” said Graff. “Just let the computer have a look at this, and follow the course it plots.” He handed the captain the plastic ball.

“And I’m supposed to close my eyes during the whole voyage, so I don’t figure out where we are?”

“Oh, no, of course not. I.F. Command is on the minor planet Eros, which should be about three months away from here at the highest possible speed. Which is the speed you’ll use, of course.”

“Eros? But I thought that the buggers burned that to a radioactive—ah. When did I receive security clearance to know this?”

“You didn’t. So when we arrive at Eros, you will undoubtedly be assigned to permanent duty there.”

The captain understood immediately, and didn’t like it. “I’m a pilot, you son of a bitch, and you got no right to lock me up on a rock!”

“I will overlook your derisive language to a superior officer. I do apologize, but my orders were to take the fastest available military tug. At the moment I arrived, that was you. It isn’t as though anyone were out to get you. Cheer up. The war may be over in another fifteen years, and then the location of I.F. Command won’t have to be a secret anymore. By the way, you should be aware, in case you’re one of those who relies on visuals for docking, that Eros has been blacked out. Its albedo is only slightly brighter than a black hole. You won’t see it.”

“Thanks,” said the captain.

It was nearly a month into the voyage before he managed to speak civilly to Colonel Graff.

The shipboard computer had a limited library—it was geared primarily to entertainment rather than education. So during the voyage, after breakfast and morning exercises, Ender and Graff would usually talk. About Command School. About Earth. About astronomy and physics and whatever Ender wanted to know.

And above all, he wanted to know about the buggers.

“We don’t know much,” said Graff. “We’ve never had a live one in custody. Even when we caught one unarmed and alive, he died the moment it became obvious he was captured. Even the he is uncertain—the most likely thing, in fact, is that most bugger soldiers are females, but with atrophied or vestigial sexual organs. We can’t tell. It’s their psychology that would be most useful to you, and we haven’t exactly had a chance to interview them.”

“Tell me what you know, and maybe I’ll learn something that I need.”

So Graff told him. The buggers were organisms that could conceivably have evolved on Earth, if things had gone a different way a billion years ago. At the molecular level, there were no surprises. Even the genetic material was the same. It was no accident that they looked insectlike to human beings. Though their internal organs were now much more complex and specialized than any insects, and they had evolved an internal skeleton and shed most of the exoskeleton, their physical structure still echoed their ancestors, who could easily have been very much like Earth’s ants. “But don’t be fooled by that,” said Graff. “It’s just as meaningful to say that our ancestors could easily have been very much like squirrels.”

“If that’s all we have to go on, that’s something,” said Ender.

“Squirrels never built starships,” said Graff. “There are usually a few changes on the way from gathering nuts and seeds to harvesting asteroids and putting permanent research stations on the moons of Saturn.”

The buggers could probably see about the same spectrum of light as human beings, and there was artificial lighting in their ships and ground installations. However, their antennae seemed almost vestigial. There was no evidence from their bodies that smelling, tasting, or hearing were particularly important to them. “Of course, we can’t be sure. But we can’t see any way that they could have used sound for communication. The oddest thing of all was that they also don’t have any communication devices on their ships. No radios, nothing that could transmit or receive any kind of signal.”

“They communicate ship to ship. I’ve seen the videos, they talk to each other.”

“True. But body to body, mind to mind. It’s the most important thing we learned from them. Their communication, however they do it, is instantaneous. Lightspeed is no barrier. When Mazer Rackham defeated their invasion fleet, they all closed up shop. At once. There was no time for a signal. Everything just stopped.”

Ender remembered the videos of uninjured buggers lying dead at their posts.

“We knew then that it was possible. To communicate faster than light. That was seventy years ago, and once we knew what could be done, we did it. Not me, mind you, I wasn’t born then.”

“How is it possible?”

“I can’t explain philotic physics to you. Half of it nobody understands anyway. What matters is we built the ansible. The official name is Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator, but somebody dredged the name ansible out of an old book somewhere and it caught on. Not that most people even know the machine exists.”

“That means that ships could talk to each other even when they’re across the solar system,” said Ender.

“It means,” said Graff, “that ships could talk to each other even when they’re across the galaxy. And the buggers can do it without machines.”

“So they knew about their defeat the moment it happened,” said Ender. “I always figured—everybody always said that they probably only found out they lost the battle twenty-five years ago.”

“It keeps people from panicking,” said Graff. “I’m telling you things that you can’t know, by the way, if you’re ever going to leave I.F. Command. Before the war’s over.”

Ender was angry. “If you know me at all, you know I can keep a secret.”

“It’s a regulation. People under twenty-five are assumed to be a security risk. It’s very unjust to a good many responsible children, but it helps narrow the number of people who might let something slip.”

“What’s all the secrecy for, anyway?”

“Because we’ve taken some terrible risks, Ender, and we don’t want to have every net on earth second-guessing those decisions. You see, as soon as we had a working ansible, we tucked it into our best starships and launched them to attack the buggers home systems.”

“Do we know where they are?”

“Yes.”

“So we’re not waiting for the Third Invasion.”

“We are the Third Invasion.”

“We’re attacking them. Nobody says that. Everybody thinks we have a huge fleet of warships waiting in the comet shield—”

“Not one. We’re quite defenseless here.”

“What if they’ve sent a fleet to attack us?”

“Then we’re dead. But our ships haven’t seen such a fleet, not a sign of one.”

“Maybe they gave up and they’re planning to leave us alone.”

“Maybe. You’ve seen the videos. Would you bet the human race on the chance of them giving up and leaving us alone?”

Ender tried to grasp the amounts of time that had gone by. “And the ships have been traveling for seventy years—”

“Some of them. And some for thirty years, and some for twenty. We make better ships now. We’re learning how to play with space a little better. But every starship that is not still under construction is on its way to a bugger world or outpost. Every starship, with cruisers and fighters tucked into its belly, is out there approaching the buggers. Decelerating. Because they’re almost there. The first ships we sent to the most distant objectives, the more recent ships to the closer ones. Our timing was pretty good. They’ll all be arriving in combat range within a few months of each other. Unfortunately, our most primitive, outdated equipment will be attacking their homeworld. Still, they’re armed well enough—we have some weapons the buggers never saw before.”

“When will they arrive?”

“Within the next five years, Ender. Everything is ready at I.F. Command. The master ansible is there, in contact with all our invasion fleet; the ships are all working, ready to fight. All we lack, Ender, is the battle commander. Someone who knows what the hell to do with those ships when they get there.”

“And what if no one knows what to do with them?”

“We’ll just do our best, with the best commander we can get.”

Me, thought Ender. They want me to be ready in five years. “Colonel Graff, there isn’t a chance I’ll be ready to command a fleet in time.”

Graff shrugged. “So. Do your best. If you aren’t ready, we’ll make do with what we’ve got.”

That eased Ender’s mind.

But only for a moment. “Of course, Ender, what we’ve got right now is nobody.”

Ender knew that this was another of Graff’s games. Make me believe that it all depends on me, so I can’t slack off, so I push myself as hard as possible.

Game or not, though, it might also be true. And so he would work as hard as possible. It was what Val had wanted of him. Five years. Only five years until the fleet arrives, and I don’t know anything yet. “I’ll only be fifteen in five years,” Ender said.

“Going on sixteen,” said Graff. “It all depends on what you know.”

“Colonel Graff,” he said. “I just want to go back and swim in the lake.”

“After we win the war,” said Graff. “Or lose it. We’ll have a few decades before they get back here to finish us off. The house will be there, and I promise you can swim to your heart’s content.”

“But I’ll still be too young for security clearance.”

“We’ll keep you under armed guard at all times. The military knows how to handle these things.”

They both laughed, and Ender had to remind himself that Graff was only acting like a friend, that everything he did was a lie or a cheat calculated to turn Ender into an efficient fighting machine. I’ll become exactly the tool you want me to be, said Ender silently, but at least I won’t be fooled into it. I’ll do it because I choose to, not because you tricked me, you sly bastard.

The tug reached Eros before they could see it. The captain showed them the visual scan, then superimposed the heat scan on the same screen. They were practically on top of it—only four thousand kilometers out—but Eros, only twenty-four kilometers long, was invisible if it didn’t shine with reflected sunlight.

The captain docked the ship on one of the three landing platforms that circled Eros. It could not land directly because Eros had enhanced gravity, and the tug, designed for towing cargoes, could never escape the gravity well. He bade them an irritable good-bye, but Ender and Graff remained cheerful. The captain was bitter at having to leave his tug; Ender and Graff felt like prisoners finally paroled from jail. When they boarded the shuttle that would take them to the surface of Eros, they repeated perverse misquotations of lines from the videos that the captain had endlessly watched, and laughed like madmen. The captain grew surly and withdrew by pretending to go to sleep. Then, almost as an afterthought, Ender asked Graff one last question.

“Why are we fighting the buggers?”

“I’ve heard all kinds of reasons,” said Graff. “Because they have an overcrowded system and they’ve got to colonize. Because they can’t stand the thought of other intelligent life in the universe. Because they don’t think we are intelligent life. Because they have some weird religion. Because they watched our old video broadcasts and decided we were hopelessly violent. All kinds of reasons.”

“What do you believe?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe.”

“I want to know anyway.”

“They must talk to each other directly, Ender, mind to mind. What one thinks, another can also think; what one remembers, another can also remember. Why would they ever develop language? Why would they ever learn to read and write? How would they know what reading and writing were if they saw them? Or signals? Or numbers? Or anything that we use to communicate? This isn’t just a matter of translating from one language to another. They don’t have a language at all. We used every means we could think of to communicate with them, but they don’t even have the machinery to know we’re signaling. And maybe they’ve been trying to think to us, and they can’t understand why we don’t respond.”

“So the whole war is because we can’t talk to each other.”

“If the other fellow can’t tell you his story, you can never be sure he isn’t trying to kill you.”

“What if we just left them alone?”

“Ender, we didn’t go to them first, they came to us. If they were going to leave us alone, they could have done it a hundred years ago, before the First Invasion.”

“Maybe they didn’t know we were intelligent life. Maybe—”

“Ender, believe me, there’s a century of discussion on this very subject. Nobody knows the answer. When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let’s make damn sure we’re the ones alive at the end. Our genes won’t let us decide any other way. Nature can’t evolve a species that hasn’t a will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist. So if we can we’ll kill every last one of the buggers, and if they can they’ll kill every last one of us.”

“As for me,” said Ender, “I’m in favor of surviving.”

“I know,” said Graff. “That’s why you’re here.”

14

ENDER’S TEACHER

“Took your time, didn’t you, Graff? The voyage isn’t short, but the three-month vacation seems excessive.”

“I prefer not to deliver damaged merchandise.”

“Some men simply have no sense of hurry. Oh well, it’s only the fate of the world. . . . Never mind me. You must understand our anxiety. We’re here with the ansible, receiving constant reports of the progress of our starships. We have to face the coming war every day. If you can call them days. He’s such a very little boy.”

“There’s greatness in him. A magnitude of spirit.”

“A killer instinct, too, I hope.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve planned out an impromptu course of study for him. All subject to your approval, of course.”

“I’ll look at it. I don’t pretend to know the subject matter, Admiral Chamrajnagar. I’m only here because I know Ender. So don’t be afraid that I’ll try to second-guess the order of your presentation. Only the pace.”

“How much can we tell him?”

“Don’t waste his time on the physics of interstellar travel.”

“What about the ansible?”

“I already told him about that, and the fleets. I said they would arrive at their destination within five years.”

“It seems there’s very little left for us to tell him.”

“You can tell him about the weapons systems. He has to know enough to make intelligent decisions.”

“Ah. We can be useful after all, how very kind. We’ve devoted one of the five simulators to his exclusive use.”

“What about the others?”

“The other simulators?”

“The other children.”

“You were brought here to take care of Ender Wiggin.”

“Just curious. Remember, they were all my students at one time or another.”

“And now they are all mine. They are entering into the mysteries of the fleet, Colonel Graff, to which you, as a soldier, have never been introduced.”

“You make it sound like a priesthood.”

“And a god. And a religion. Even those of us who command by ansible know the majesty of flight among the stars. I can see you find my mysticism distasteful. I assure you that your distaste only reveals your ignorance. Soon enough Ender Wiggin will also know what I know; he will dance the graceful ghost dance through the stars, and whatever greatness there is within him will be unlocked, revealed, set forth before the universe for all to see. You have the soul of a stone, Colonel Graff, but I sing to a stone as easily as to another singer. You may go to your quarters and establish yourself.”

“I have nothing to establish except the clothing I’m wearing.”

“You own nothing?”

“They keep my salary in an account somewhere on Earth. I’ve never needed it. Except to buy civilian clothes on my—vacation.”

“A non-materialist. And yet you are unpleasantly fat. A gluttonous ascetic? Such a contradiction.”

“When I’m tense, I eat. Whereas when you’re tense, you spout solid waste.”

“I like you, Colonel Graff. I think we shall get along.”

“I don’t much care, Admiral Chamrajnagar. I came here for Ender. And neither of us came here for you.”

Ender hated Eros from the moment he shuttled down from the tug. He had been uncomfortable enough on Earth, where floors were flat; Eros was hopeless. It was a roughly spindle-shaped rock only six and a half kilometers thick at its narrowest point. Since the surface of the planetoid was entirely devoted to absorbing sunlight and converting it to energy, everyone lived in the smooth-walled rooms linked by tunnels that laced the interior of the asteroid. The closed-in space was no problem for Ender—what bothered him was that all the tunnel floors noticeably sloped downward. From the start, Ender was plagued by vertigo as he walked through the tunnels, especially the ones that girdled Eros’s narrow circumference. It did not help that gravity was only half of Earth-normal—the illusion of being on the verge of falling was almost complete.

There was also something disturbing about the proportions of the rooms—the ceilings were too low for the width, the tunnels too narrow. It was not a comfortable place.

Worst of all, though, was the number of people. Ender had no important memories of the scale of the cities of Earth. His idea of a comfortable number of people was the Battle School, where he had known by sight every person who dwelt there. Here, though, ten thousand people lived within the rock. There was no crowding, despite the amount of space devoted to life support and other machinery. What bothered Ender was that he was constantly surrounded by strangers.

They never let him come to know anyone. He saw the other Command School students often, but since he never attended any class regularly, they remained only faces. He would attend a lecture here or there, but usually he was tutored by one teacher after another, or occasionally helped to learn a process by another student, whom he met once and never saw again. He ate alone or with Colonel Graff. His recreation was in a gym, but he rarely saw the same people in it twice.

He recognized that they were isolating him again, this time not by setting the other students to hating him, but rather by giving them no opportunity to become friends. He could hardly have been close to most of them anyway—except for Ender, the other students were all well into adolescence.

So Ender withdrew into his studies and learned quickly and well. Astrogation and military history he absorbed like water; abstract mathematics was more difficult, but whenever he was given a problem that involved patterns in space and time, he found that his intuition was more reliable than his calculation—he often saw at once a solution that he could only prove after minutes or hours of manipulating numbers.

And for pleasure, there was the simulator, the most perfect videogame he had ever played. Teachers and students trained him, step by step, in its use. At first, not knowing the awesome power of the game, he had played only at the tactical level, controlling a single fighter in continuous maneuvers to find and destroy an enemy. The computer-controlled enemy was devious and powerful, and whenever Ender tried a tactic he found the computer using it against him within minutes.

The game was a holographic display, and his fighter was represented only by a tiny light. The enemy was another light of a different color, and they danced and spun and maneuvered through a cube of space that must have been ten meters to a side. The controls were powerful. He could rotate the display in any direction, so he could watch from any angle, and he could move the center so that the duel took place nearer or farther from him.

Gradually, as he became more adept at controlling the fighter’s speed, direction of movement, orientation, and weapons, the game was made more complex. He might have two enemy ships at once; there might be obstacles, the debris of space; he began to have to worry about fuel and limited weapons; the computer began to assign him particular things to destroy or accomplish, so that he had to avoid distractions and achieve an objective in order to win.

When he had mastered the one-fighter game, they allowed him to step back into the four-fighter squadron. He spoke commands to simulated pilots of four fighters, and instead of merely carrying out the computer’s instructions, he was allowed to determine tactics himself, deciding which of several objectives was the most valuable and directing his squadron accordingly. At any time he could take personal command of one of the fighters for a short time, and at first he did this often; when he did, however, the other three fighters in his squadron were soon destroyed, and as the games became harder and harder he had to spend more and more of his time commanding the squadron. When he did, he won more and more often.

By the time he had been at Command School for a year, he was adept at running the simulator at any of fifteen levels, from controlling an individual fighter to commanding a fleet. He had long since realized that as the battleroom was to Battle School, so the simulator was to Command School. The classes were valuable, but the real education was the game. People dropped in from time to time to watch him play. They never spoke—hardly anyone ever did, unless they had something specific to teach him. The watchers would stay, silently watching him run through a difficult simulation, and then leave just as he finished. What are you doing, he wanted to ask. Judging me? Determining whether you want to trust the fleet to me? Just remember that I didn’t ask for it.

He found that a great deal of what he had learned at Battle School transferred to the simulator. He would routinely reorient the simulator every few minutes, rotating it so that he didn’t get trapped into an up-down orientation, constantly reviewing his position from the enemy point of view. It was exhilarating at last to have such control over the battle, to be able to see every point of it.

It was also frustrating to have so little control, too, for the computer-controlled fighters were only as good as the computer allowed. They took no initiative. They had no intelligence. He began to wish for his toon leaders, so that he could count on some of the squadrons doing well without having his constant supervision.

At the end of his first year he was winning every battle on the simulator, and played the game as if the machine were a natural part of his body. One day, eating a meal with Graff, he asked, “Is that all the simulator does?”

“Is what all?”

“The way it plays now. It’s easy, and it hasn’t got any harder for a while.”

“Oh.”

Graff seemed unconcerned. But then, Graff always seemed unconcerned. The next day everything changed. Graff went away, and in his place they gave Ender a companion.

He was in the room when Ender awoke in the morning. He was an old man, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Ender looked at him expectantly, waiting for the man to speak. He said nothing. Ender got up and showered and dressed, content to let the man keep his silence if he wanted. He had long since learned that when something unusual was going on, something that was part of someone else’s plan and not his own, he would find out more information by waiting than by asking. Adults almost always lost their patience before Ender did.

The man still hadn’t spoken when Ender was ready and went to the door to leave the room. The door didn’t open. Ender turned to face the man sitting on the floor. He looked to be about sixty, by far the oldest man Ender had seen on Eros. He had a day’s growth of white whiskers that grizzled his face only slightly less than his close-cut hair. His face sagged a little and his eyes were surrounded by creases and lines. He looked at Ender with an expression that bespoke only apathy.

Ender turned back to the door and tried again to open it.

“All right,” he said, giving up. “Why’s the door locked?”

The old man continued to look at him blankly.

So this is a game, thought Ender. Well, if they want me to go to class, they’ll unlock the door. If they don’t, they won’t. I don’t care.

Ender didn’t like games where the rules could be anything and the objective was known to them alone. So he wouldn’t play. He also refused to get angry. He went through a relaxing exercise as he leaned on the door, and soon he was calm again. The old man continued to watch him impassively.

It seemed to go on for hours, Ender refusing to speak, the old man seeming to be a mindless mute. Sometimes Ender wondered if he were mentally ill, escaped from some medical ward somewhere in Eros, living out some insane fantasy here in Ender’s room. But the longer it went on, with no one coming to the door, no one looking for him, the more certain he became that this was something deliberate, meant to disconcert him. Ender did not want to give the old man the victory. To pass the time he began to do exercises. Some were impossible without the gym equipment, but others, especially from his personal defense class, he could do without any aids.

The exercises moved him around the room. He was practicing lunges and kicks. One move took him near the old man, as he had come near him before, but this time the old claw shot out and seized Ender’s left leg in the middle of a kick. It pulled Ender off his feet and landed him heavily on the floor.

Ender leapt to his feet immediately, furious. He found the old man sitting calmly, cross-legged, not breathing heavily, as if he had never moved. Ender stood poised to fight, but the other’s immobility made it impossible for Ender to attack. What, kick the old man’s head off? And then explain it to Graff—oh, the old man kicked me, and I had to get even.

He went back to his exercises; the old man kept watching.

Finally, tired and angry at this wasted day, a prisoner in his room, Ender went back to his bed to get his desk. As he leaned over to pick up the desk, he felt a hand jab roughly between his thighs and another hand grab his hair. In a moment he had been turned upside down. His face and shoulders were being pressed into the floor by the old man’s knee, while his back was excruciatingly bent and his legs were pinioned by the old man’s arm. Ender was helpless to use his arms, he couldn’t bend his back to gain slack so he could use his legs. In less than two seconds the old man had completely defeated Ender Wiggin.

“All right,” Ender gasped. “You win.”

The man’s knee thrust painfully downward. “Since when,” asked the man, his voice soft and rasping, “do you have to tell the enemy when he has won?”

Ender remained silent.

“I surprised you once, Ender Wiggin. Why didn’t you destroy me immediately afterward? Just because I looked peaceful? You turned your back on me. Stupid. You have learned nothing. You have never had a teacher.”

Ender was angry now, and made no attempt to control or conceal it. “I’ve had too many teachers, how was I supposed to know you’d turn out to be a—”

“An enemy, Ender Wiggin,” whispered the old man. “I am your enemy, the first one you’ve ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on I am your teacher.”

Then the old man let Ender’s legs fall. Because he still held Ender’s head to the floor, the boy couldn’t use his arms to compensate, and his legs hit the surface with a loud crack and a sickening pain. Then the old man stood and let Ender rise.

Slowly Ender pulled his legs under him, with a faint groan of pain. He knelt on all fours for a moment, recovering. Then his right arm flashed out, reaching for his enemy. The old man quickly danced back and Ender’s hand closed on air as his teacher’s foot shot forward to catch Ender on the chin.

Ender’s chin wasn’t there. He was lying flat on his back, spinning on the floor, and during the moment that his teacher was off balance from his kick, Ender’s feet smashed into the old man’s other leg. He fell in a heap—but close enough to strike out and hit Ender in the face. Ender couldn’t find an arm or a leg that held still long enough to be grabbed, and in the meantime blows were landing on his back and arms. Ender was smaller—he couldn’t reach past the old man’s flailing limbs. Finally he managed to pull away and scramble back near the door.

The old man was sitting cross-legged again, but now the apathy was gone. He was smiling. “Better, this time, boy. But slow. You will have to be better with a fleet than you are with your body or no one will be safe with you in command. Lesson learned?”

Ender nodded slowly. He ached in a hundred places.

“Good,” said the old man. “Then we’ll never have to have such a battle again. All the rest with the simulator. I will program your battles now, not the computer; I will devise the strategy of your enemy, and you will learn to be quick and discover what tricks the enemy has for you. Remember, boy. From now on the enemy is more clever than you. From now on the enemy is stronger than you. From now on you are always about to lose.”

The old man’s face grew serious again. “You will be about to lose, Ender, but you will win. You will learn to defeat the enemy. He will teach you how.”

The teacher got up. “In this school, it has always been the practice for a young student to be chosen by an older student. The two become companions, and the older boy teaches the younger one everything he knows. Always they fight, always they compete, always they are together. I have chosen you.”

Ender spoke as the old man walked to the door. “You’re too old to be a student.”

“One is never too old to be a student of the enemy. I have learned from the buggers. You will learn from me.”

As the old man palmed the door open, Ender leaped into the air and kicked him in the small of the back with both feet. He hit hard enough that he rebounded onto his feet, as the old man cried out and collapsed on the floor.

The old man got up slowly, holding onto the door handle, his face contorted with pain. He seemed disabled, but Ender didn’t trust him. Yet in spite of his suspicion he was caught off guard by the old man’s speed. In a moment he found himself on the floor near the opposite wall, his nose and lip bleeding where his face had hit the bed. He was able to turn enough to see the old man standing in the doorway, wincing and holding his back. The old man grinned.

Ender grinned back. “Teacher,” he said. “Do you have a name?”

“Mazer Rackham,” said the old man. Then he was gone.

From then on, Ender was either with Mazer Rackham or alone. The old man rarely spoke, but he was there; at meals, at tutorials, at the simulator, in his room at night. Sometimes Mazer would leave, but always, when Mazer wasn’t there, the door was locked, and no one came until Mazer returned. Ender went through a week in which he called him Jailor Rackman. Mazer answered to the name as readily as to his own, and showed no sign that it bothered him at all. Ender soon gave it up.

There were compensations. Mazer took Ender through the videos of the old battles from the First Invasion and the disastrous defeats of the I.F. in the Second Invasion. These were not pieced together from the censored public videos, but whole and continuous. Since many videos were working in the major battles, they studied bugger tactics and strategies from many angles. For the first time in his life, a teacher was pointing out things that Ender had not already seen for himself. For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire.

“Why aren’t you dead?” Ender asked him. “You fought your battle seventy years ago. I don’t think you’re even sixty years old.”

“The miracle of relativity,” said Mazer. “They kept me here for twenty years after the battle, even though I begged them to let me command one of the starships they launched against the bugger home planet and the bugger colonies. Then they—came to understand some things about the way soldiers behave in the stress of battle.”

“What things?”

“You’ve never been taught enough psychology to understand. Enough to say that they realized that even though I would never be able to command the fleet—I’d be dead before the fleet even arrived—I was still the only person able to understand the things I understood about the buggers. I was, they realized, the only person who had ever defeated the buggers by intelligence rather than luck. They needed me here to—teach the person who would command the fleet.”

“So they sent you out in a starship, got you up to a relativistic speed—”

“And then I turned around and came home. A very dull voyage, Ender. Fifty years in space. Officially, only eight years passed for me, but it felt like five hundred. All so I could teach the next commander everything I knew.”

“Am I to be the commander, then?”

“Let’s say that you’re our best bet at present.”

“There are others being prepared, too?”

“No.”

“That makes me the only choice, then, doesn’t it?”

Mazer shrugged.

“Except you. You’re still alive, aren’t you? Why not you?”

Mazer shook his head.

“Why not? You won before.”

“I cannot be the commander for good and sufficient reasons.”

“Show me how you beat the buggers, Mazer.”

Mazer’s face went inscrutable.

“You’ve shown me every other battle seven times at least. I think I’ve seen ways to beat what the buggers did before, but you’ve never shown me how you actually did beat them.”

“The video is a very tightly kept secret, Ender.”

“I know. I’ve pieced it together, partly. You, with your tiny reserve force, and their armada, those great big heavy-bellied starships launching their swarms of fighters. You dart in at one ship, fire at it, an explosion. That’s where they always stop the clips. After that, it’s just soldiers going into bugger ships and already finding them dead inside.”

Mazer grinned. “So much for tightly kept secrets. Come on, let’s watch the video.”

They were alone in the video room, and Ender palmed the door locked. “All right, let’s watch.”

The video showed exactly what Ender had pieced together. Mazer’s suicidal plunge into the heart of the enemy formation, the single explosion, and then—

Nothing. Mazer’s ship went on, dodged the shock wave, and wove his way among the other bugger ships. They did not fire on him. They did not change course. Two of them crashed into each other and exploded—a needless collision that either pilot could have avoided. Neither made the slightest movement.

Mazer sped up the action. Skipped ahead. “We waited for three hours,” he said. “Nobody could believe it.” Then the I.F. ships began approaching the bugger starships. Marines began their cutting and boarding operations. The videos showed the buggers already dead at their posts.

“So you see,” said Mazer, “you already knew all there was to see.”

“Why did it happen?”

“Nobody knows. I have my personal opinions. But there are plenty of scientists who tell me I’m less than qualified to have opinions.”

“You’re the one who won the battle.”

“I thought that qualified me to comment, too, but you know how it is. Xenobiologists and xenopsychologists can’t accept the idea that a starpilot scooped them by sheer guesswork. I think they all hate me because, after they saw these videos, they had to live out the rest of their natural lives here on Eros. Security, you know. They weren’t happy.”

“Tell me.”

“The buggers don’t talk. They think to each other, and it’s instantaneous, like the philotic effect. Like the ansible. But most people always thought that meant a controlled communication, like language—I think you a thought and then you answer me. I never believed that. It’s too immediate, the way they respond together to things. You’ve seen the videos. They aren’t conversing and deciding among possible courses of action. Every ship acts like part of a single organism. It responds the way your body responds during combat, different parts automatically, thoughtlessly doing everything they’re supposed to do. They aren’t having a mental conversation between people with different thought processes. All their thoughts are present, together, at once.”

“A single person, and each bugger is like a hand or a foot?”

“Yes. I wasn’t the first person to suggest it, but I was the first person to believe it. And something else. Something so childish and stupid that the xenobiologists laughed me to silence when I said it after the battle. The buggers are bugs. They’re like ants and bees. A queen, the workers. That was maybe a hundred million years ago, but that’s how they started, that kind of pattern. It’s a sure thing none of the buggers we saw had any way of making more little buggers. So when they evolved this ability to think together, wouldn’t they still keep the queen? Wouldn’t the queen still be the center of the group? Why would that ever change?”

“So it’s the queen who controls the whole group.”

“I had evidence, too. Not evidence that any of them could see. It wasn’t there in the First Invasion, because that was exploratory. But the Second Invasion was a colony. To set up a new hive, or whatever.”

“And so they brought a queen.”

“The videos of the Second Invasion, when they were destroying our fleets out in the comet shell.” He began to call them up and display the buggers’ patterns. “Show me the queen’s ship.”

It was subtle. Ender couldn’t see it for a long time. The bugger ships kept moving, all of them. There was no obvious flagship, no apparent nerve center. But gradually, as Mazer played the videos over and over again, Ender began to see the way that all the movements focused on, radiated from a center point. The center point shifted, but it was obvious, after he looked long enough, that the eyes of the fleet, the I of the fleet, the perspective from which all decisions were being made, was one particular ship. He pointed it out.

“You see it. I see it. That makes two people out of all of those who have seen this video. But it’s true, isn’t it.”

“They make that ship move just like any other ship.”

“They know it’s their weak point.”

“But you’re right. That’s the queen. But then you’d think that when you went for it, they would have immediately focused all their power on you. They could have blown you out of the sky.”

“I know. That part I don’t understand. Not that they didn’t try to stop me—they were firing at me. But it’s as if they really couldn’t believe, until it was too late, that I would actually kill the queen. Maybe in their world, queens are never killed, only captured, only checkmated. I did something they didn’t think an enemy would ever do.”

“And when she died, the others all died.”

“No, they just went stupid. The first ships we boarded, the buggers were still alive. Organically. But they didn’t move, didn’t respond to anything, even when our scientists vivisected some of them to see if we could learn a few more things about buggers. After a while they all died. No will. There’s nothing in those little bodies when the queen is gone.”

“Why don’t they believe you?”

“Because we didn’t find a queen.”

“She got blown to pieces.”

“Fortunes of war. Biology takes second place to survival. But some of them are coming around to my way of thinking. You can’t live in this place without the evidence staring you in the face.”

“What evidence is there in Eros?”

“Ender, look around you. Human beings didn’t carve this place. We like taller ceilings, for one thing. This was the buggers’ advance post in the First Invasion. They carved this place out before we even knew they were here. We’re living in a bugger hive. But we already paid our rent. It cost the marines a thousand lives to clear them out of these honeycombs, room by room. The buggers fought for every meter of it.”

Now Ender understood why the rooms had always felt wrong to him. “I knew this place wasn’t a human place.”

“This was the treasure trove. If they had known we would win that first war, they probably would never have built this place. We learned gravity manipulation because they enhanced the gravity here. We learned efficient use of stellar energy because they blacked out this planet. In fact, that’s how we discovered them. In a period of three days, Eros gradually disappeared from telescopes. We sent a tug to find out why. It found out. The tug transmitted its videos, including the buggers boarding and slaughtering the crew. It kept right on transmitting through the entire bugger examination of the boat. Not until they finally dismantled the entire tug did the transmissions stop. It was their blindness—they never had to transmit anything by machine, and so with the crew dead, it didn’t occur to them that anybody could be watching.”

“Why did they kill the crew?”

“Why not? To them, losing a few crew members would be like clipping your nails. Nothing to get upset about. They probably thought they were routinely shutting down our communications by turning off the workers running the tug. Not murdering living, sentient beings with an independent genetic future. Murder’s no big deal to them. Only queen-killing, really, is murder, because only queen-killing closes off a genetic path.”

“So they didn’t know what they were doing.”

“Don’t start apologizing for them, Ender. Just because they didn’t know they were killing human beings doesn’t mean they weren’t killing human beings. We do have a right to defend ourselves as best we can, and the only way we found that works is killing the buggers before they kill us. Think of it this way. In all the bugger wars so far, they’ve killed thousands and thousands of living, thinking beings. And in all those wars, we’ve killed only one.”

“If you hadn’t killed the queen, Mazer, would we have lost the war?”

“I’d say the odds would have been three to two against us. I still think I could have trashed their fleet pretty badly before they burned us out. They have great response time and a lot of firepower, but we have a few advantages, too. Every single one of our ships contains an intelligent human being who’s thinking on his own. Every one of us is capable of coming up with a brilliant solution to a problem. They can only come up with one brilliant solution at a time. The buggers think fast, but they aren’t smart all over. But on our side, even when some incredibly timid and stupid commanders lost the major battles of the Second Invasion, some of their subordinates were able to do real damage to the bugger fleet.”

“What about when our invasion reaches them? Will we just get the queen again?”

“The buggers didn’t learn interstellar travel by being dumb. That was a strategy that could work only once. I suspect that we’ll never get near a queen unless we actually make it to their home planet. After all, the queen doesn’t have to be with them to direct a battle. The queen only has to be present to have little baby buggers. The Second Invasion was a colony—the queen was coming to populate the Earth. But this time—no, that won’t work. We’ll have to beat them fleet by fleet. And because they have the resources of dozens of star systems to draw on, my guess is they’ll outnumber us by a lot, in every battle.”

Ender remembered his battle against two armies at once. And I thought they were cheating. When the real war begins, it’ll be like that every time. And there won’t be any gate I can go for.

“We’ve only got two things going for us, Ender. We don’t have to aim particularly well. Our weapons have great spread.”

“Then we aren’t using the nuclear missiles from the First and Second Invasions?”

“Dr. Device is much more powerful. Nuclear weapons, after all, were weak enough to be used on Earth at one time. The Little Doctor could never be used on a planet. Still, I wish I’d had one during the Second Invasion.”

“How does it work?”

“I don’t know, not well enough to build one. At the focal point of two beams, it sets up a field in which molecules can’t hold together anymore. Electrons can’t be shared. How much physics do you know, at that level?”

“We spend most of our time on astrophysics, but I know enough to get the idea.”

“The field spreads out in a sphere, but it gets weaker the farther it spreads. Except that where it actually runs into a lot of molecules, it gets stronger and starts over. The bigger the ship, the stronger the new field.”

“So each time the field hits a ship, it sends out a new sphere—”

“And if their ships are too close together, it can set up a chain that wipes them all out. Then the field dies down, the molecules come back together, and where you had a ship, you now have a lump of dirt with a lot of iron molecules in it. No radioactivity, no mess. Just dirt. We may be able to trap them close together on the first battle, but they learn fast. They’ll keep their distance from each other.”

“So Dr. Device isn’t a missile—I can’t shoot around corners.”

“That’s right. Missiles wouldn’t do any good now. We learned a lot from them in the First Invasion, but they also learned from us—how to set up the Ecstatic Shield, for instance.”

“The Little Doctor penetrates the shield?”

“As if it weren’t there. You can’t see through the shield to aim and focus the beams, but since the generator of the Ecstatic Shield is always in the exact center, it isn’t hard to figure it out.”

“Why haven’t I ever been trained with this?”

“You always have. We just let the computer tend to it for you. Your job is to get into a superior strategic position and choose a target. The shipboard computers are much better at aiming the Doctor than you are.”

“Why is it called Dr. Device?”

“When it was developed, it was called a Molecular Detachment Device. M.D. Device.”

Ender still didn’t understand.

“M.D. The initials stand for Medical Doctor, too. M.D. Device, therefore Dr. Device. It was a joke.” Ender didn’t see what was funny about it.

They had changed the simulator. He could still control the perspective and the degree of detail, but there were no ship’s controls anymore. Instead, it was a new panel of levers, and a small headset with earphones and a small microphone.

The technician who was waiting there quickly explained how to wear the headset.

“But how do I control the ships?” asked Ender.

Mazer explained. He wasn’t going to control ships anymore. “You’ve reached the next phase of your training. You have experience in every level of strategy, but now it’s time for you to concentrate on commanding an entire fleet. As you worked with toon leaders in Battle School, so now you will work with squadron leaders. You have been assigned three dozen such leaders to train. You must teach them intelligent tactics; you must learn their strengths and limitations; you must make them into a whole.”

“When will they come here?”

“They’re already in place in their own simulators. You will speak to them through the headset. The new levers on your control panel enable you to see from the perspective of any of your squadron leaders. This more closely duplicates the conditions you might encounter in a real battle, where you will know only what your ships can see.”

“How can I work with squadron leaders I never see?”

“And why would you need to see them?”

“To know who they are, how they think—”

“You’ll learn who they are and how they think from the way they work with the simulator. But even so, I think you won’t be concerned. They’re listening to you right now. Put on the headset so you can hear them.”

Ender put on the headset.

“Salaam,” said a whisper in his ears.

“Alai,” said Ender.

“And me, the dwarf.”

“Bean.”

And Petra, and Dink; Crazy Tom, Shen, Hot Soup, Fly Molo, Carn Carby, all the best students Ender had fought with or fought against, everyone that Ender had trusted in Battle School. “I didn’t know you were here,” he said. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“They’ve been flogging us through the simulator for three months now,” said Dink.

“You’ll find that I’m by far the best tactician,” said Petra. “Dink tries, but he has the mind of a child.”

So they began working together, each squadron leader commanding individual pilots, and Ender commanding the squadron leaders. They learned many ways of working together, as the simulator forced them to try different situations. Sometimes the simulator gave them a larger fleet to work with; Ender set them up then in three or four toons that consisted of three or four squadrons each. Sometimes the simulator gave them a single starship with its twelve fighters, and he chose three squadron leaders with four fighters each.

It was pleasure; it was play. The computer-controlled enemy was none too bright, and they always won despite their mistakes, their miscommunications. But in the three weeks they practiced together, Ender came to know them very well. Dink, who deftly carried out instructions but was slow to improvise; Bean, who couldn’t control large groups of ships effectively but could use a few like a scalpel, reacting beautifully to anything the computer threw at him; Alai, who was almost as good a strategist as Ender and could be entrusted to do well with half a fleet and only vague instructions.

The better Ender knew them, the faster he could deploy them, the better he could use them. The simulator would display the situation on the screen. In that moment Ender learned for the first time what his own fleet would consist of and how the enemy fleet was deployed. It took him only a few minutes now to call the squadron leaders that he needed, assign them to certain ships or groups of ships, and give them their assignments. Then, as the battle progressed, he would skip from one leader’s point of view to another’s, making suggestions and, occasionally, giving orders as the need arose. Since the others could see only their own battle perspective, he would sometimes give them orders that made no sense to them; but they, too, learned to trust Ender. If he told them to withdraw, they withdrew, knowing that either they were in an exposed position, or their withdrawal might entice the enemy into a weakened posture. They also knew that Ender trusted them to do as they judged best when he gave them no orders. If their style of fighting were not right for the situation they were placed in, Ender would not have chosen them for that assignment.

The trust was complete, the working of the fleet quick and responsive. And at the end of three weeks, Mazer showed him a replay of their most recent battle, only this time from the enemy’s point of view.

“This is what he saw as you attacked. What does it remind you of? The quickness of response, for instance?”

“We look like a bugger fleet.”

“You match them, Ender. You’re as fast as they are. And here—look at this.”

Ender watched as all his squadrons moved at once, each responding to its own situation, all guided by Ender’s overall command, but daring, improvising, feinting, attacking with an independence no bugger fleet had ever shown.

“The bugger hive-mind is very good, but it can only concentrate on a few things at once. All your squadrons can concentrate a keen intelligence on what they’re doing, and what they’ve been assigned to do is also guided by a clever mind. So you see that you do have some advantages. Superior, though not irresistible, weaponry; comparable speed and greater available intelligence. These are your advantages. Your disadvantage is that you will always, always be outnumbered, and after each battle your enemy will learn more about you, how to fight you, and those changes will be put into effect instantly.”

Ender waited for his conclusion.

“So Ender, we will now begin your education. We have programmed the computer to simulate the kinds of situations we might expect in encounters with the enemy. We are using the movement patterns we saw in the Second Invasion. But instead of mindlessly following these same patterns, I will be controlling the enemy simulation. At first you will see easy situations that you are expected to win handily. Learn from them, because I will always be there, one step ahead of you, programming more difficult and advanced patterns into the computer so that your next battle is more difficult, so that you are pushed to the limit of your abilities.”

“And beyond?”

“The time is short. You must learn as quickly as you can. When I gave myself to starship travel, just so I would still be alive when you appeared, my wife and children all died, and my grandchildren were my own age when I came back. I had nothing to say to them. I was cut off from all the people that I loved, everything I knew, living in this alien catacomb and forced to do nothing of importance but teach student after student, each one so hopeful, each one, ultimately, a weakling, a failure. I teach, I teach, but no one learns. You, too, have great promise, like so many students before you, but the seeds of failure may be in you, too. It’s my job to find them, to destroy you if I can, and believe me, Ender, if you can be destroyed I can do it.”

“So I’m not the first.”

“No, of course you’re not. But you’re the last. If you don’t learn, there’ll be no time to find anyone else. So I have hope for you, if only because you are the only one left to hope for.”

“What about the others? My squadron leaders?”

“Which of them is fit to take your place?”

“Alai.”

“Be honest.”

Ender had no answer, then.

“I am not a happy man, Ender. Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it. So, Ender, I hope you do not bore me during your training with complaints that you are not having fun. Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, but your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing. When you can give me back my dead wife, Ender, then you can complain to me about what this education costs you.”

“I wasn’t trying to get out of anything.”

“But you will, Ender. Because I am going to grind you down to dust, if I can. I’m going to hit you with everything I can imagine, and I will have no mercy, because when you face the buggers they will think of things I can’t imagine, and compassion for human beings is impossible for them.”

“You can’t grind me down, Mazer.”

“Oh, can’t I?”

“Because I’m stronger than you.”

Mazer smiled. “We’ll see about that, Ender.”

Mazer wakened him before morning; the clock said 0340, and Ender felt groggy as he padded along the corridor behind Mazer. “Early to bed and early to rise,” Mazer intoned, “makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.”

He had been dreaming that buggers were vivisecting him. Only instead of cutting open his body, they were cutting up his memories and displaying them like holographs and trying to make sense of them. It was a very odd dream, and Ender couldn’t easily shake loose of it, even as he walked through the tunnels to the simulator room. The buggers tormented him in his sleep, and Mazer wouldn’t leave him alone when he was awake. Between the two of them he had no rest. Ender forced himself awake. Apparently Mazer meant it when he said he meant to break Ender down—and forcing him to play when tired and sleepy was just the sort of cheap and easy trick Ender should have expected. Well, today, it wouldn’t work.

He got to the simulator and found his squadron leaders already on the wire, waiting for him. There was no enemy yet, so he divided them into two armies and began a mock battle, commanding both sides so he could control the test that each of his leaders was going through. They began slowly, but soon were vigorous and alert.

Then the simulator field went blank, the ships disappeared, and everything changed at once. At the near edge of the simulator field they could see the shapes, drawn in holographic light, of three starships from the human fleet. Each would have twelve fighters. The enemy, obviously aware of the human presence, had formed a globe with a single ship at the center. Ender was not fooled—it would not be a queen ship. The buggers outnumbered Ender’s fighter force by two to one, but they were also grouped much closer together than they should have been—Dr. Device would be able to do much more damage than the enemy expected.

Ender selected one starship, made it blink in the simulator field, and spoke into the microphone. “Alai, this is yours; assign Petra and Vlad to the fighters as you wish.” He assigned the other two starships with their fighter forces, except for one fighter from each starship that he reserved for Bean. “Slip the wall and get below them, Bean, unless they start chasing you—then run back to the reserves for safety. Otherwise, get in a place where I can call on you for quick results. Alai, form your force into a compact assault at one point in their globe. Don’t fire until I tell you. This is maneuver only.”

“This one’s easy, Ender,” Alai said.

“It’s easy, so why not be careful? I’d like to do this without the loss of a single ship.”

Ender grouped his reserves in two forces that shadowed Alai at a distance; Bean was already off the simulator, though Ender occasionally flipped to Bean’s point of view to keep track of where he was.

It was Alai, however, who played the delicate game with the enemy. He was in a bullet-shaped formation, and probed the enemy globe. Wherever he came near, the bugger ships pulled back, as if to draw him in toward the ship in the center. Alai skimmed to the side; the bugger ships kept up with him, withdrawing wherever he was close, returning to the sphere pattern when he had passed.

Feint, withdraw, skim the globe to another point, withdraw again, feint again; and then Ender said, “Go on in, Alai.”

His bullet started in, while he said to Ender, “You know they’ll just let me through and surround me and eat me alive.”

“Just ignore that ship in the middle.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

Sure enough, the globe began to contract. Ender brought the reserves forward; the enemy ships concentrated on the side of the globe nearer the reserves. “Attack them there, where they’re most concentrated,” Ender said.

“This defies four thousand years of military history,” said Alai, moving his fighters forward. “We’re supposed to attack where we outnumber them.”

“In this simulation they obviously don’t know what our weapons can do. It’ll only work once, but let’s make it spectacular. Fire at will.”

Alai did. The simulation responded beautifully: first one or two, then a dozen, then most of the enemy ships exploded in dazzling light as the field leapt from ship to ship in the tight formation. “Stay out of the way,” Ender said.

The ships on the far side of the globe formation were not affected by the chain reaction, but it was a simple matter to hunt them down and destroy them. Bean took care of stragglers that tried to escape toward his end of space. The battle was over. It had been easier than most of their recent exercises.

Mazer shrugged when Ender told him so. “This is a simulation of a real invasion. There had to be one battle in which they didn’t know what we could do. Now your work begins. Try not to be too arrogant about the victory. I’ll give you the real challenges soon enough.”

Ender practiced ten hours a day with his squadron leaders, but not all at once; he gave them a few hours in the afternoon to rest. Simulated battles under Mazer’s supervision came every two or three days, and as Mazer had promised, they were never so easy again. The enemy quickly abandoned its attempt to surround Ender, and never again grouped its forces closely enough to allow a chain reaction. There was something new every time, something harder. Sometimes Ender had only a single starship and eight fighters; once the enemy dodged through an asteroid belt; sometimes the enemy left stationary traps, large installations that blew up if Ender brought one of his squadrons too close, often crippling or destroying some of Ender’s ships. “You cannot absorb losses!” Mazer shouted at him after one battle. “When you get into a real battle you won’t have the luxury of an infinite supply of computer-generated fighters. You’ll have what you brought with you and nothing more. Now get used to fighting without unnecessary waste.”

“It wasn’t unnecessary waste,” Ender said. “I can’t win battles if I’m so terrified of losing a ship that I never take any risks.”

Mazer smiled. “Excellent, Ender. You’re beginning to learn. But in a real battle, you would have superior officers and, worst of all, civilians shouting those things at you. Now, if the enemy had been at all bright, they would have caught you here, and taken Tom’s squadron.” Together they went over the battle; in the next practice, Ender would show his leaders what Mazer had shown him, and they’d learn to cope with it the next time they saw it.

They thought they had been ready before, that they had worked smoothly together as a team. Now, though, having fought through real challenges together, they all began to trust each other more than ever, and battles became exhilarating. They told Ender that the ones who weren’t actually playing would come into the simulator rooms and watch. Ender imagined what it would be like to have his friends there with him, cheering or laughing or gasping with apprehension; sometimes he thought it would be a great distraction, but other times he wished for it with all his heart. Even when he had spent his days lying out in the sunlight on a raft in a lake, he had not been so lonely. Mazer Rackham was his companion, was his teacher, but was not his friend.

He made no complaint, though. Mazer had told him there would be no pity, and his private unhappiness meant nothing to anyone. Most of the time it meant nothing even to Ender. He kept his mind on the game, trying to learn from the battles. And not just the particular lessons of that battle, but what the buggers might have done if they had been more clever, and how Ender would react if they did it in the future. He lived with past battles and future battles both, waking and sleeping, and he drove his squadron leaders with an intensity that occasionally provoked rebelliousness.

“You’re too kind to us,” said Alai one day. “Why don’t you get annoyed with us for not being brilliant every moment of every practice. If you keep coddling us like this we’ll think you like us.”

Some of the others laughed into their microphones. Ender recognized the irony, of course, and answered with a long silence. When he finally spoke, he ignored Alai’s complaint. “Again,” he said, “and this time without self-pity.” They did it again, and did it right.

But as their trust in Ender as a commander grew, their friendship, remembered from the Battle School days, gradually disappeared. It was to each other that they became close; it was with each other that they exchanged confidences. Ender was their teacher and commander, as distant from them as Mazer was from him, and as demanding.

They fought all the better for it. And Ender was not distracted from his work.

At least, not while he was awake. As he drifted off to sleep each night, it was with thoughts of the simulator playing through his mind. But in the night he thought of other things. Often he remembered the corpse of the Giant, decaying steadily; he did not remember it, though, in the pixels of the picture on his desk. Instead it was real, the faint odor of death still lingering near it. Things were changed in his dreams. The little village that had grown up between the Giant’s ribs was composed of buggers now, and they saluted him gravely, like gladiators greeting Caesar before they died for his entertainment. He did not hate the buggers in his dream; and even though he knew that they had hidden their queen from him, he did not try to search for her. He always left the Giant’s body quickly, and when he got to the playground, the children were always there, wolven and mocking; they wore faces that he knew. Sometimes Peter and sometimes Bonzo, sometimes Stilson and Bernard; just as often, though, the savage creatures were Alai and Shen, Dink and Petra; sometimes one of them would be Valentine, and in his dream he also shoved her under the water and waited for her to drown. She writhed in his hands, fought to come up, but at last was still. He dragged her out of the lake and onto the raft, where she lay with her face in the rictus of death. He screamed and wept over her, crying again and again that it was a game, a game, he was only playing!—

Then Mazer Rackham shook him awake. “You were calling out in your sleep,” he said.

“Sorry,” Ender said.

“Never mind. It’s time for another battle.”

Steadily the pace increased. There were usually two battles a day now, and Ender held practices to a minimum. He would use the time while the others rested to pore over the replays of past games, trying to spot his own weaknesses, trying to guess what would happen next. Sometimes he was fully prepared for the enemy’s innovations; sometimes he was not.

“I think you’re cheating,” Ender told Mazer one day.

“Oh?”

“You can observe my practice sessions. You can see what I’m working on. You seem to be ready for everything I do.”

“Most of what you see is computer simulations,” Mazer said. “The computer is programmed to respond to your innovations only after you use them once in battle.”

“Then the computer is cheating.”

“You need to get more sleep, Ender.”

But he could not sleep. He lay awake longer and longer each night, and his sleep was less restful. He woke too often in the night. Whether he was waking up to think more about the game or to escape from his dreams, he wasn’t sure. It was as if someone rode him in his sleep, forcing him to wander through his worst memories, to live in them again as if they were real. Nights were so real that days began to seem dreamlike to him. He began to worry that he would not think clearly enough, that he would be too tired when he played. Always when the game began, the intensity of it awoke him, but if his mental abilities began to slip, he wondered, would he notice it?

And he seemed to be slipping. He never had a battle anymore in which he did not lose at least a few fighters. Several times the enemy was able to trick him into exposing more weakness than he meant to; other times the enemy was able to wear him down by attrition until his victory was as much a matter of luck as strategy. Mazer would go over the game with a look of contempt on his face. “Look at this,” he would say. “You didn’t have to do this.” And Ender would return to practice with his leaders, trying to keep up their morale, but sometimes letting slip his disappointment with their weaknesses, the fact that they made mistakes.

“Sometimes we make mistakes,” Petra whispered to him once. It was a plea for help.

“And sometimes we don’t,” Ender answered her. If she got help, it would not be from him. He would teach; let her find her friends among the others.

Then came a battle that nearly ended in disaster. Petra led her force too far; they were exposed, and she discovered it in a moment when Ender wasn’t with her. In only a few moments she had lost all but two of her ships. Ender found her then, ordered her to move them in a certain direction; she didn’t answer. There was no movement. And in a moment those two fighters, too, would be lost.

Ender knew at once that he had pushed her too hard—because of her brilliance he had called on her to play far more often and under much more demanding circumstances than all but a few of the others. But he had no time now to worry about Petra, or to feel guilty about what he had done to her. He called on Crazy Tom to command the two remaining fighters, then went on, trying to salvage the battle; Petra had occupied a key position, and now all of Ender’s strategy came apart. If the enemy had not been too eager and clumsy in exploiting their advantage, Ender would have lost. But Shen was able to catch a group of the enemy in too tight a formation and took them out with a single chain reaction. Crazy Tom brought his two surviving fighters in through the gap and caused havoc with the enemy, and though his ships and Shen’s as well were finally destroyed, Fly Molo was able to mop up and complete the victory.

At the end of the battle, he could hear Petra crying out, trying to get a microphone, “Tell him I’m sorry, I was just so tired, I couldn’t think, that was all, tell Ender I’m sorry.”

She was not there for the next few practices, and when she did come back she was not as quick as she had been, not as daring. Much of what had made her a good commander was lost. Ender couldn’t use her anymore, except in routine, closely supervised assignments. She was no fool. She knew what had happened. But she also knew that Ender had no other choice, and told him so.

The fact remained that she had broken, and she was far from being the weakest of his squad leaders. It was a warning—he could not press his commanders more than they could bear. Now, instead of using his leaders whenever he needed their skills, he had to keep in mind how often they had fought. He had to spell them off, which meant that sometimes he went into battle with commanders he trusted a little less. As he eased the pressure on them, he increased the pressure on himself.

Late one night he woke up in pain. There was blood on his pillow, the taste of blood in his mouth. His fingers were throbbing. He saw that in his sleep he had been gnawing on his own fist. The blood was still flowing smoothly. “Mazer!” he called. Rackham woke up and called at once for a doctor.

As the doctor treated the wound, Mazer said, “I don’t care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won’t get you out of this school.”

“I was asleep,” Ender said. “I don’t want to get out of Command School.”

“Good.”

“The others. The ones who didn’t make it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Before me. Your other students, who didn’t make it through the training. What happened to them?”

“They didn’t make it. That’s all. We don’t punish the ones who fail. They just—don’t go on.”

“Like Bonzo.”

“Bonzo?”

“He went home.”

“Not like Bonzo.”

“What, then? What happened to them? When they failed?”

“Why does it matter, Ender?”

Ender didn’t answer.

“None of them failed at this point in their course, Ender. You made a mistake with Petra. She’ll recover. But Petra is Petra, and you are you.”

“Part of what I am is her. Is what she made me.”

“You won’t fail, Ender. Not this early in the course. You’ve had some tight ones, but you’ve always won. You don’t know what your limits are yet, but if you’ve reached them already you’re a good deal feebler than I thought.”

“Do they die?”

“Who?”

“The ones who fail.”

“No, they don’t die. Good heavens, boy, you’re playing games.”

“I think that Bonzo died. I dreamed about it last night. I remembered the way he looked after I jammed his face with my head. I think I must have pushed his nose back into his brain. The blood was coming out of his eyes. I think he was dead right then.”

“It was just a dream.”

“Mazer, I don’t want to keep dreaming these things. I’m afraid to sleep. I keep thinking of things that I don’t want to remember. My whole life keeps playing out as if I were a recorder and someone else wanted to watch the most terrible parts of my life.”

“We can’t drug you if that’s what you’re hoping for. I’m sorry if you have bad dreams. Should we leave the light on at night?”

“Don’t make fun of me!” Ender said. “I’m afraid I’m going crazy.”

The doctor was finished with the bandage. Mazer told him he could go. He went.

“Are you really afraid of that?” Mazer asked.

Ender thought about it and wasn’t sure.

“In my dreams,” said Ender, “I’m never sure whether I’m really me.”

“Strange dreams are a safety valve, Ender. I’m putting you under a little pressure for the first time in your life. Your body is finding ways to compensate, that’s all. You’re a big boy now. It’s time to stop being afraid of the night.”

“All right,” Ender said. He decided then that he would never tell Mazer about his dreams again.

The days wore on, with battles every day, until at last Ender settled into the routine of the destruction of himself. He began to have pains in his stomach. They put him on a bland diet, but soon he didn’t have an appetite for anything at all. “Eat,” Mazer said, and Ender would mechanically put food in his mouth. But if nobody told him to eat, he didn’t eat.

Two more of his squadron leaders collapsed the way that Petra had; the pressure on the rest became all the greater. The enemy outnumbered them by three or four to one in every battle now; the enemy also retreated more readily when things went badly, regrouping to keep the battle going longer and longer. Sometimes battles lasted for hours before they finally destroyed the last enemy ship. Ender began rotating his squadron leaders within the same battle, bringing in fresh and rested ones to take the place of those who were beginning to get sluggish.

“You know,” said Bean one time, as he took over command of Hot Soup’s four remaining fighters, “this game isn’t quite as fun as it used to be.”

Then one day in practice, as Ender was drilling his squadron leaders, the room went black and he woke up on the floor with his face bloody where he had hit the controls.

They put him to bed then, and for three days he was very ill. He remembered seeing faces in his dreams, but they weren’t real faces, and he knew it even while he thought he saw them. He thought he saw Valentine sometimes, and sometimes Peter; sometimes his friends from the Battle School, and sometimes the buggers vivisecting him. Once it seemed very real when he saw Colonel Graff bending over him, speaking softly to him, like a kind father. But then he woke up and found only his enemy, Mazer Rackham.

“I’m awake,” said Ender.

“So I see,” Mazer answered. “Took you long enough. You have a battle today.”

So Ender got up and fought the battle and won it. But there was no second battle that day, and they let him go to bed earlier. His hands were shaking as he undressed.

During the night he thought he felt hands touching him gently. Hands with affection in them, and gentleness. He dreamed he heard voices.

“You haven’t been kind to him.”

“That wasn’t the assignment.”

“How long can he go on? He’s breaking down.”

“Long enough. It’s nearly finished.”

“So soon?”

“A few days, and then he’s through.”

“How will he do, when he’s already like this?”

“Fine. Even today, he fought better than ever.”

In his dream, the voices sounded like Colonel Graff and Mazer Rackham. But that was the way dreams were, the craziest things could happen, because he dreamed he heard one of the voices saying, “I can’t bear to see what this is doing to him.” And the other voice answered, “I know. I love him too.” And then they changed into Valentine and Alai, and in his dream they were burying him, only a hill grew up where they laid his body down, and he dried out and became a home for buggers, like the Giant was.

All dreams. If there was love or pity for him, it was only in his dreams.

He woke up and fought another battle and won. Then he went to bed and slept again and dreamed again and then he woke up and won again and slept again and he hardly noticed when waking became sleeping. Nor did he care.

The next day was his last day in Command School, though he didn’t know it. Mazer Rackham was not in the room with him when he woke up. He showered and dressed and waited for Mazer to come unlock the door. He didn’t come. Ender tried the door. It was open.

Was it an accident that Mazer had let him be free this morning? No one with him to tell him he must eat, he must go to practice, he must sleep. Freedom. The trouble was, he didn’t know what to do. He thought for a moment that he might find his squadron leaders, talk to them face to face, but he didn’t know where they were. They could be twenty kilometers away, for all he knew. So, after wandering through the tunnels for a little while, he went to the mess hall and ate breakfast near a few marines who were telling dirty jokes that Ender could not begin to understand. Then he went to the simulator room for practice. Even though he was free, he could not think of anything else to do.

Mazer was waiting for him. Ender walked slowly into the room. His step was slightly shuffling, and he felt tired and dull.

Mazer frowned. “Are you awake, Ender?”

There were other people in the simulator room. Ender wondered why they were there, but didn’t bother to ask. It wasn’t worth asking; no one would tell him anyway. He walked to the simulator controls and sat down, ready to start.

“Ender Wiggin,” said Mazer. “Please turn around. Today’s game needs a little explanation.”

Ender turned around. He glanced at the men gathered at the back of the room. Most of them he had never seen before. Some were even dressed in civilian clothes. He saw Anderson and wondered what he was doing there, who was taking care of the Battle School if he was gone. He saw Graff and remembered the lake in the woods outside Greensboro, and wanted to go home. Take me home, he said silently to Graff. In my dream you said you loved me. Take me home.

But Graff only nodded to him, a greeting, not a promise, and Anderson acted as though he didn’t know him at all.

“Pay attention, please, Ender. Today is your final examination in Command School. These observers are here to evaluate what you have learned. If you prefer not to have them in the room, we’ll have them watch on another simulator.”

“They can stay.” Final examination. After today, perhaps he could rest.

“For this to be a fair test of your ability, not just to do what you have practiced many times, but also to meet challenges you have never seen before, today’s battle introduces a new element. It is staged around a planet. This will affect the enemy’s strategy, and will force you to improvise. Please concentrate on the game today.”

Ender beckoned Mazer closer, and asked him quietly, “Am I the first student to make it this far?”

“If you win today, Ender, you will be the first student to do so. More than that I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Well, I’m at liberty to hear it.”

“You can be as petulant as you want, tomorrow. Today, though, I’d appreciate it if you would keep your mind on the examination. Let’s not waste all that you’ve already done. Now, how will you deal with the planet?”

“I have to get someone behind it, or it’s a blind spot.”

“True.”

“And the gravity is going to affect fuel levels—cheaper to go down than up.”

“Yes.”

“Does the Little Doctor work against a planet?”

Mazer’s face went rigid. “Ender, the buggers never deliberately attacked a civilian population in either invasion. You decide whether it would be wise to adopt a strategy that would invite reprisals.”

“Is the planet the only new thing?”

“Can you remember the last time I’ve given you a battle with only one new thing? Let me assure you, Ender, that I will not be kind to you today. I have a responsibility to the fleet not to let a second-rate student graduate. I will do my best against you, Ender, and I have no desire to coddle you. Just keep in mind everything you know about yourself and everything you know about the buggers, and you have a fair chance of amounting to something.”

Mazer left the room.

Ender spoke into the microphone. “Are you there?”

“All of us,” said Bean. “Kind of late for practice this morning, aren’t you?”

So they hadn’t told the squadron leaders. Ender toyed with the idea of telling them how important this battle was to him, but decided it would not help them to have an extraneous concern on their minds. “Sorry,” he said. “I overslept.”

They laughed. They didn’t believe him.

He led them through maneuvers, warming up for the battle ahead. It took him longer than usual to clear his mind, to concentrate on command, but soon enough he was up to speed, responding quickly, thinking well. Or at least, he told himself, I think that I’m thinking well.

The simulator field cleared. Ender waited for the game to appear. What will happen if I pass the test today? Is there another school? Another year or two of grueling training, another year of isolation, another year of people pushing me this way and that way, another year without any control over my own life? He tried to remember how old he was. Eleven. How many years ago did he turn eleven? How many days? It must have happened here at the Command School, but he couldn’t remember the day. Maybe he didn’t even notice it at the time. Nobody noticed it, except perhaps Valentine.

And as he waited for the game to appear, he wished he could simply lose it, lose the battle badly and completely so that they would remove him from training, like Bonzo, and let him go home. Bonzo had been assigned to Cartagena. He wanted to see travel orders that said Greensboro. Success meant it would go on. Failure meant he could go home.

No, that isn’t true, he told himself. They need me, and if I fail, there might not be any home to return to.

But he did not believe it. In his conscious mind he knew it was true, but in other places, deeper places, he doubted that they needed him. Mazer’s urgency was just another trick. Just another way to make me do what they want me to do. Another way to keep me from resting. From doing nothing, for a long, long time.

Then the enemy formation appeared, and Ender’s weariness turned to despair.

The enemy outnumbered him a thousand to one; the simulator glowed green with them. They were grouped in a dozen different formations, shifting positions, changing shapes, moving in seemingly random patterns through the simulator field. He could not find a path through them—a space that seemed open would close suddenly, and another appear, and a formation that seemed penetrable would suddenly change and be forbidding. The planet was at the far edge of the field, and for all Ender knew there were just as many enemy ships beyond it, out of the simulator’s range.

As for his own fleet, it consisted of twenty starships, each with only four fighters. He knew the four-fighter starships—they were old-fashioned, sluggish, and the range of their Little Doctors was half that of the newer ones. Eighty fighters, against at least five thousand, perhaps ten thousand enemy ships.

He heard his squadron leaders breathing heavily; he could also hear, from the observers behind him, a quiet curse. It was nice to know that one of the adults noticed that it wasn’t a fair test. Not that it made any difference. Fairness wasn’t part of the game, that was plain. There was no attempt to give him even a remote chance at success. All that I’ve been through, and they never meant to let me pass at all.

He saw in his mind Bonzo and his vicious little knot of friends, confronting him, threatening him; he had been able to shame Bonzo into fighting him alone. That would hardly work here. And he could not surprise the enemy with his ability as he had done with the older boys in the battleroom. Mazer knew Ender’s abilities inside and out.

The observers behind him began to cough, to move nervously. They were beginning to realize that Ender didn’t know what to do.

I don’t care anymore, thought Ender. You can keep your game. If you won’t even give me a chance, why should I play?

Like his last game in Battle School, when they put two armies against him.

And just as he remembered that game, apparently Bean remembered it, too, for his voice came over the headset, saying, “Remember, the enemy’s gate is down.”

Molo, Soup, Vlad, Dumper, and Crazy Tom all laughed. They remembered, too.

And Ender also laughed. It was funny. The adults taking all this so seriously, and the children playing along, playing along, believing it too until suddenly the adults went too far, tried too hard, and the children could see through their game. Forget it, Mazer. I don’t care if I pass your test, I don’t care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won’t let you beat me unfairly—I’ll beat you unfairly first.

In that final battle in Battle School, he had won by ignoring the enemy, ignoring his own losses; he had moved against the enemy’s gate.

And the enemy’s gate was down.

If I break this rule, they’ll never let me be a commander. It would be too dangerous. I’ll never have to play a game again. And that is victory.

He whispered quickly into the microphone. His commanders took their parts of the fleet and grouped themselves into a thick projectile, a cylinder aimed at the nearest of the enemy formations. The enemy, far from trying to repel him, welcomed him in, so he could be thoroughly entrapped before they destroyed him. Mazer is at least taking into account the fact that by now they would have learned to respect me, thought Ender. And that does buy me time.

Ender dodged downward, north, east, and down again, not seeming to follow any plan, but always ending up a little closer to the enemy planet. Finally the enemy began to close in on him too tightly. Then, suddenly, Ender’s formation burst. His fleet seemed to melt into chaos. The eighty fighters seemed to follow no plan at all, firing at enemy ships at random, working their way into hopeless individual paths among the bugger craft.

After a few minutes of battle, however, Ender whispered to his squadron leaders once more, and suddenly a dozen of the remaining fighters formed again into a formation. But now they were on the far side of one of the enemy’s most formidable groups; they had, with terrible losses, passed through—and now they had covered more than half the distance to the enemy’s planet.

The enemy sees now, thought Ender. Surely Mazer sees what I’m doing.

Or perhaps Mazer cannot believe that I would do it. Well, so much the better for me.

Ender’s tiny fleet darted this way and that, sending two or three fighters out as if to attack, then bringing them back. The enemy closed in, drawing in ships and formations that had been widely scattered, bringing them in for the kill. The enemy was most concentrated beyond Ender, so he could not escape back into open space, closing him in. Excellent, thought Ender. Closer. Come closer.

Then he whispered a command and the ships dropped like rocks toward the planet’s surface. They were starships and fighters, completely unequipped to handle the heat of passage through an atmosphere. But Ender never intended them to reach the atmosphere. Almost from the moment they began to drop, they were focusing their Little Doctors on one thing only. The planet itself.

One, two, four, seven of his fighters were blown away. It was all a gamble now, whether any of his ships would survive long enough to get in range. It would not take long, once they could focus on the planet’s surface. Just a moment with Dr. Device, that’s all I want. It occurred to Ender that perhaps the computer wasn’t even equipped to show what would happen to a planet if the Little Doctor attacked it. What will I do then, shout Bang, you’re dead?

Ender took his hands off the controls and leaned in to watch what happened. The perspective was close to the enemy planet now, as the ship hurtled into its well of gravity. Surely it’s in range now, thought Ender. It must be in range and the computer can’t handle it.

Then the surface of the planet, which filled half the simulator field now, began to bubble; there was a gout of explosion, hurling debris out toward Ender’s fighters. Ender tried to imagine what was happening inside the planet. The field growing and growing, the molecules bursting apart but finding nowhere for the separate atoms to go.

Within three seconds the entire planet burst apart, becoming a sphere of bright dust, hurtling outward. Ender’s fighters were among the first to go; their perspective suddenly vanished, and now the simulator could only display the perspective of the starships waiting beyond the edges of the battle. It was as close as Ender wanted to be. The sphere of the exploding planet grew outward faster than the enemy ships could avoid it. And it carried with it the Little Doctor, not so little anymore, the field taking apart every ship in its path, erupting each one into a dot of light before it went on.

Only at the very periphery of the simulator did the M.D. field weaken. Two or three enemy ships were drifting away. Ender’s own starships did not explode. But where the vast enemy fleet had been, and the planet they protected, there was nothing meaningful. A lump of dirt was growing as gravity drew much of the debris downward again. It was glowing hot and spinning visibly; it was also much smaller than the world had been before. Much of its mass was now a cloud still flowing outward.

Ender took off his headphones, filled with the cheers of his squadron leaders, and only then realized that there was just as much noise in the room with him. Men in uniform were hugging each other, laughing, shouting; others were weeping; some knelt or lay prostrate, and Ender knew they were caught up in prayer. Ender didn’t understand. It seemed all wrong. They were supposed to be angry.

Colonel Graff detached himself from the others and came to Ender. Tears streamed down his face, but he was smiling. He bent over, reached out his arms, and to Ender’s surprise he embraced him, held him tightly, and whispered, “Thank you, thank you, Ender. Thank God for you, Ender.”

The others soon came, too, shaking his hand, congratulating him. He tried to make sense of this. Had he passed the test after all? It was his victory, not theirs, and a hollow one at that, a cheat; why did they act as if he had won with honor?

The crowd parted and Mazer Rackham walked through. He came straight to Ender and held out his hand.

“You made the hard choice, boy. All or nothing. End them or end us. But heaven knows there was no other way you could have done it. Congratulations. You beat them, and it’s all over.”

All over. Beat them. Ender didn’t understand. “I beat you.”

Mazer laughed, a loud laugh that filled the room. “Ender, you never played me. You never played a game since I became your enemy.”

Ender didn’t get the joke. He had played a great many games, at a terrible cost to himself. He began to get angry.

Mazer reached out and touched his shoulder. Ender shrugged him off. Mazer then grew serious and said, “Ender, for the past few months you have been the battle commander of our fleets. This was the Third Invasion. There were no games, the battles were real, and the only enemy you fought was the buggers. You won every battle, and today you finally fought them at their home world, where the queen was, all the queens from all their colonies, they all were there and you destroyed them completely. They’ll never attack us again. You did it. You.”

Real. Not a game. Ender’s mind was too tired to cope with it all. They weren’t just points of light in the air, they were real ships that he had fought with and real ships he had destroyed. And a real world that he had blasted into oblivion. He walked through the crowd, dodging their congratulations, ignoring their hands, their words, their rejoicing. When he got to his own room he stripped off his clothes, climbed into bed, and slept.

Ender awoke when they shook him. It took a moment to recognize them. Graff and Rackham. He turned his back on them. Let me sleep.

“Ender, we need to talk to you,” said Graff.

Ender rolled back to face them.

“They’ve been playing out the videos on Earth all day, all night since the battle yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” He had slept through until the next day.

“You’re a hero, Ender. They’ve seen what you did, you and the others. I don’t think there’s a government on Earth that hasn’t voted you their highest medal.”

“I killed them all, didn’t I?” Ender asked.

“All who?” asked Graff. “The buggers? That was the idea.”

Mazer leaned in close. “That’s what the war was for.”

“All their queens. So I killed all their children, all of everything.”

“They decided that when they attacked us. It wasn’t your fault. It’s what had to happen.”

Ender grabbed Mazer’s uniform and hung onto it, pulling him down so they were face to face. “I didn’t want to kill them all. I didn’t want to kill anybody! I’m not a killer! You didn’t want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!” He was crying. He was out of control.

“Of course we tricked you into it. That’s the whole point,” said Graff. “It had to be a trick or you couldn’t have done it. It’s the bind we were in. We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he could win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine, as perfect as the buggers. But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn’t do it. If you were the kind of person who would do it even if you knew, you could never have understood the buggers well enough.”

“And it had to be a child, Ender,” said Mazer. “You were faster than me. Better than me. I was too old and cautious. Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn’t know. We made sure you didn’t know. You were reckless and brilliant and young. It’s what you were born for.”

“We had pilots with our ships, didn’t we.”

“Yes.”

“I was ordering pilots to go in and die and I didn’t even know it.”

“ They knew it, Ender, and they went anyway. They knew what it was for.”

“You never asked me! You never told me the truth about anything!”

“You had to be a weapon, Ender. Like a gun, like the Little Doctor, functioning perfectly but not knowing what you were aimed at. We aimed you. We’re responsible. If there was something wrong, we did it.”

“Tell me later,” Ender said. His eyes closed.

Mazer Rackham shook him. “Don’t go to sleep, Ender,” he said. “It’s very important.”

“You’re finished with me,” Ender said. “Now leave me alone.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Mazer said. “We’re trying to tell you. They’re not through with you, not at all. It’s crazy down there. They’re going to start a war. Americans claiming the Warsaw Pact is about to attack, and the Russians are saying the same thing about the Hegemon. The bugger war isn’t twenty-four hours dead and the world down there is back to fighting again, as bad as ever. And all of them are worried about you. All of them want you. The greatest military leader in history, they want you to lead their armies. The Americans. The Hegemon. Everybody but the Warsaw Pact, and they want you dead.”

“Fine with me,” said Ender.

“We have to take you away from here. There are Russian marines all over Eros, and the Polemarch is Russian. It could turn to bloodshed at any time.”

Ender turned his back on them again. This time they let him. He did not sleep, though. He listened to them.

“I was afraid of this, Rackham. You pushed him too hard. Some of those lesser outposts could have waited until after. You could have given him some days to rest.”

“Are you doing it, too, Graff? Trying to decide how I could have done it better? You don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t pushed. Nobody knows. I did it the way I did it, and it worked. Above all, it worked. Memorize that defense, Graff. You may have to use it, too.”

“Sorry.”

“I can see what it’s done to him. Colonel Liki says there’s a good chance he’ll be permanently damaged, but I don’t believe it. He’s too strong. Winning meant a lot to him, and he won.”

“Don’t tell me about strong. The kid’s eleven. Give him some rest, Rackham. Things haven’t exploded yet. We can post a guard outside his door.”

“Or post a guard outside another door and pretend that it’s his.”

“Whatever.”

They went away. Ender slept again.

Time passed without touching Ender, except with glancing blows. Once he awoke for a few minutes with something pressing his hand, pushing downward on it, with a dull, insistent pain. He reached over and touched it; it was a needle passing into a vein. He tried to pull it out, but it was taped on and he was too weak. Another time he awoke in darkness to hear people near him murmuring and cursing. His ears were ringing with the loud noise that had awakened him; he did not remember the noise. “Get the lights on,” someone said. And another time he thought he heard someone crying softly near him.

It might have been a single day; it might have been a week; from his dreams, it could have been months. He seemed to pass through lifetimes in his dreams. Through the Giant’s Drink again, past the wolf-children, reliving the terrible deaths, the constant murders; he heard a voice whispering in the forest, You had to kill the children to get to the End of the World. And he tried to answer, I never wanted to kill anybody. Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to kill anybody. But the forest laughed at him. And when he leapt from the cliff at the End of the World, sometimes it was not clouds that caught him, but a fighter that carried him to a vantage point near the surface of the buggers’ world, so he could watch, over and over, the eruption of death when Dr. Device set off a reaction on the planet’s face; then closer and closer, until he could watch individual buggers explode, turn to light, then collapse into a pile of dirt before his eyes. And the queen, surrounded by infants; only the queen was Mother, and the infants were Valentine and all the children he had known in Battle School. One of them had Bonzo’s face, and he lay there bleeding through the eyes and nose, saying, You have no honor. And always the dream ended with a mirror or a pool of water or the metal surface of a ship, something that would reflect his face back to him. At first it was always Peter’s face, with blood and a snake’s tail coming from the mouth. After a while, though, it began to be his own face, old and sad, with eyes that grieved for a billion, billion murders—but they were his own eyes, and he was content to wear them.

That was the world Ender lived in for many lifetimes during the five days of the League War.

When he awoke again he was lying in darkness. In the distance he could hear the thump, thump of explosions. He listened for a while. Then he heard a soft footstep.

He turned over and flung out a hand, to grasp whoever was sneaking up on him. Sure enough, he caught someone’s clothing and pulled him down toward his knees, ready to kill him if need be.

“Ender, it’s me, it’s me!”

He knew the voice. It came out of his memory as if it were a million years ago.

“Alai.”

“Salaam, pinprick. What were you trying to do, kill me?”

“Yes. I thought you were trying to kill me.”

“I was trying not to wake you up. Well, at least you have some survival instinct left. The way Mazer talks about it, you were becoming a vegetable.”

“I was trying to. What’s the thumping?”

“There’s a war going on here. Our section is blacked out to keep us safe.”

Ender swung his legs out to sit up. He couldn’t do it, though. His head hurt too bad. He winced in pain.

“Don’t sit up, Ender. It’s all right. It looks like we might win it. Not all the Warsaw Pact people went with the Polemarch. A lot of them came over when the Strategos told them you were loyal to the I.F.”

“I was asleep.”

“So he lied. You weren’t plotting treason in your dreams, were you? Some of the Russians who came in told us that when the Polemarch ordered them to find you and kill you, they almost killed him. Whatever they may feel about other people, Ender, they love you. The whole world watched our battles. Videos, day and night. I’ve seen some. Complete with your voice giving the orders. It’s all there, nothing censored. Good stuff. You’ve got a career in the vids.”

“I don’t think so,” said Ender.

“I was joking. Hey, can you believe it? We won the war. We were so eager to grow up so we could fight in it, and it was us all the time. I mean, we’re kids, Ender. And it was us.” Alai laughed. “It was you, anyway. You were good, bosh. I didn’t know how you’d get us out of that last one. But you did. You were good.”

Ender noticed the way he spoke in the past. I was good. “What am I now, Alai?”

“Still good.”

“At what?”

“At—anything. There’s a million soldiers who’d follow you to the end of the universe.”

“I don’t want to go to the end of the universe.”

“So where do you want to go? They’ll follow you.”

I want to go home, thought Ender, but I don’t know where it is.

The thumping went silent.

“Listen to that,” said Alai.

They listened. The door opened. Someone stood there. Someone small. “It’s over,” he said. It was Bean. As if to prove it, the lights went on.

“Ho, Bean,” Ender said.

“Ho, Ender.”

Petra followed him in, with Dink holding her hand. They came to Ender’s bed. “Hey, the hero’s awake,” said Dink.

“Who won?” asked Ender.

“We did, Ender,” said Bean. “You were there.”

“He’s not that crazy, Bean. He meant who won just now.” Petra took Ender’s hand. “There was a truce on Earth. They’ve been negotiating for days. They finally agreed to accept the Locke Proposal.”

“He doesn’t know about the Locke Proposal—”

“It’s very complicated, but what it means here is that the I.F. will stay in existence, but without the Warsaw Pact in it. So the Warsaw Pact marines are going home. I think Russia agreed to it because they’re facing a revolt of the Islamic States. Everybody’s got troubles. About five hundred died here, but it was worse on Earth.”

“The Hegemon resigned,” said Dink. “It’s crazy down there. Who cares.”

“You OK?” Petra asked him, touching his head. “You scared us. They said you were crazy, and we said they were crazy.”

“I’m crazy,” said Ender. “But I think I’m OK.”

“When did you decide that?” asked Alai.

“When I thought you were about to kill me, and I decided to kill you first. I guess I’m just a killer to the core. But I’d rather be alive than dead.”

They laughed and agreed with him. Then Ender began to cry and embraced Bean and Petra, who were closest. “I missed you,” he said. “I wanted to see you so bad.”

“You saw us pretty bad,” Petra answered. She kissed his cheek.

“I saw you magnificent,” said Ender. “The ones I needed most, I used up soonest. Bad planning on my part.”

“Everybody’s OK now,” said Dink. “Nothing was wrong with any of us that five days of cowering in blacked-out rooms in the middle of a war couldn’t cure.”

“I don’t have to be your commander anymore, do I?” asked Ender. “I don’t want to command anybody again.”

“You don’t have to command anybody,” said Dink, “but you’re always our commander.”

Then they were silent for a while.

“So what do we do now?” asked Alai. “The bugger war’s over, and so’s the war down there on Earth, and even the war here. What do we do now?”

“We’re kids,” said Petra. “They’ll probably make us go to school. It’s a law. You have to go to school till you’re seventeen.”

They all laughed at that. Laughed until tears streamed down their faces.

15

SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD

The lake was still; there was no breeze. The two men sat together in chairs on the floating dock. A small wooden raft was tied up at the dock; Graff hooked his foot in the rope and pulled the raft in, then let it drift out, then pulled it in again.

“You’ve lost weight.”

“One kind of stress puts it on, another takes it off. I am a creature of chemicals.”

“It must have been hard.”

Graff shrugged. “Not really. I knew I’d be acquitted.”

“Some of us weren’t so sure. People were crazy for a while there. Mistreatment of children, negligent homicide—those videos of Bonzo’s and Stilson’s deaths were pretty gruesome. To watch one child do that to another.”

“As much as anything, I think the videos saved me. The prosecution edited them, but we showed the whole thing. It was plain that Ender was not the provocateur. After that, it was just a second-guessing game. I said I did what I believed was necessary for the preservation of the human race, and it worked; we got the judges to agree that the prosecution had to prove beyond doubt that Ender would have won the war without the training we gave him. After that, it was simple. The exigencies of war.”

“Anyway, Graff, it was a great relief to us. I know we quarreled, and I know the prosecution used tapes of our conversations against you. But by then I knew that you were right, and I offered to testify for you.”

“I know, Anderson. My lawyers told me.”

“So what will you do now?”

“I don’t know. I’m still relaxing. I have a few years of leave accrued. Enough to take me to retirement, and I have plenty of salary that I never used, sitting around in banks. I could live on the interest. Maybe I’ll do nothing.”

“It sounds nice. But I couldn’t stand it. I’ve been offered the presidency of three different universities, on the theory that I’m an educator. They don’t believe me when I say that all I ever cared about at the Battle School was the game. I think I’ll go with the other offer.”

“Commissioner?”

“Now that the wars are over, it’s time to play games again. It’ll be almost like vacation, anyway. Only twenty-eight teams in the league. Though after years of watching those children flying, football is like watching slugs bash into each other.”

They laughed. Graff sighed and pushed the raft with his foot.

“That raft. Surely you can’t float on it.”

Graff shook his head. “Ender built it.”

“That’s right. This is where you took him.”

“It’s even been deeded over to him. I saw to it that he was amply rewarded. He’ll have all the money he ever needs.”

“If they ever let him come back to use it.”

“They never will.”

“With Demosthenes agitating for him to come home?”

“Demosthenes isn’t on the nets anymore.”

Anderson raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

“Demosthenes has retired. Permanently.”

“You know something, you old farteater. You know who Demosthenes is.”

“Was.”

“Well, tell me!”

“No.”

“You’re no fun anymore, Graff.”

“I never was.”

“At least you can tell me why. There were a lot of us who thought Demosthenes would be Hegemon someday.”

“There was never a chance of that. No, even Demosthenes’ mob of political cretins couldn’t persuade the Hegemon to bring Ender back to Earth. Ender is far too dangerous.”

“He’s only eleven. Twelve, now.”

“All the more dangerous because he could so easily be controlled. In all the world, the name of Ender is one to conjure with. The child-god, the miracle worker, with life and death in his hands. Every petty tyrant-to-be would like to have the boy, to set him in front of an army and watch the world either flock to join or cower in fear. If Ender came to Earth, he’d want to come here, to rest, to salvage what he can of his childhood. But they’d never let him rest.”

“I see. Someone explained that to Demosthenes?”

Graff smiled. “Demosthenes explained it to someone else. Someone who could have used Ender as no one else could have, to rule the world and make the world like it.”

“Who?”

“Locke.”

“Locke is the one who argued for Ender to stay on Eros.”

“All is not always as it seems.”

“It’s too deep for me, Graff. Give me the game. Nice, neat rules. Referees. Beginnings and endings. Winners and losers and then everybody goes home to their families.”

“Get me tickets to some games now and then, all right?”

“You won’t really stay here and retire, will you?”

“No.”

“You’re going into the Hegemony, aren’t you?”

“I’m the new Minister of Colonization.”

“So they’re doing it.”

“As soon as we get the reports back on the bugger colony worlds. I mean, there they are, already fertile, with housing and industry in place, and all the buggers dead. Very convenient. We’ll repeal the population limitation laws—”

“Which everybody hates—”

“And all those thirds and fourths and fifths will get on starships and head out for worlds known and unknown.”

“Will people really go?”

“People always go. Always. They always believe they can make a better life than in the old world.”

“What the hell, maybe they can.”

At first Ender believed that they would bring him back to Earth as soon as things quieted down. But things were quiet now, had been quiet for a year, and it was plain to him now that they would not bring him back at all, that he was much more useful as a name and a story than he would ever be as an inconvenient flesh-and-blood person.

And there was the matter of the court martial on the crimes of Colonel Graff. Admiral Chamrajnagar tried to keep Ender from watching it, but failed; Ender had been awarded the rank of admiral, too, and this was one of the few times he asserted the privileges the rank implied. So he watched the videos of the fights with Stilson and Bonzo, watched as the photographs of the corpses were displayed, listened as the psychologists and lawyers argued whether murder had been committed or the killing was in self-defense. Ender had his own opinion, but no one asked him. Throughout the trial, it was really Ender himself under attack. The prosecution was too clever to charge him directly, but there were attempts to make him look sick, perverted, criminally insane.

“Never mind,” said Mazer Rackham. “The politicians are afraid of you, but they can’t destroy your reputation yet. That won’t be done until the historians get at you in thirty years.”

Ender didn’t care about his reputation. He watched the videos impassively, but in fact he was amused. In battle I killed ten billion buggers, whose queens, at least, were as alive and wise as any man, who had not even launched a third attack against us, and no one thinks to call it a crime.

All his crimes weighed heavy on him, the deaths of Stilson and Bonzo no heavier and no lighter than the rest.

And so, with that burden, he waited through the empty months until the world that he had saved decided he could come home.

One by one, his friends reluctantly left him, called home to their families, to be received with heroes’ welcomes in hometowns they barely remembered. Ender watched the videos of their homecomings, and was touched when they spent much of their time praising Ender Wiggin, who taught them everything, they said, who taught them and led them into victory. But if they called for him to be brought home, the words were censored from the videos and no one heard the plea.

For a time, the only work in Eros was cleaning up after the bloody League War and receiving the reports of the starships, once warships, that were now exploring the bugger colony worlds.

But now Eros was busier than ever, more crowded than it had ever been during the war, as colonists were brought here to prepare for their voyages to the empty bugger worlds. Ender took part in the work, as much as they would let him; it did not occur to them that this twelve-year-old boy might be as gifted at peace as he was at war. But he was patient with their tendency to ignore him, and learned to make his proposals and suggest his plans through the few adults who listened to him, and let them present them as their own. He was concerned, not about getting credit, but about getting the job done.

The one thing he could not bear was the worship of the colonists. He learned to avoid the tunnels where they lived, because they would always recognize him—the world had memorized his face—and then they would scream and shout and embrace him and congratulate him and show him the children they had named after him and tell him how he was so young it broke their hearts and they didn’t blame him for any of his murders because it wasn’t his fault he was just a child—

He hid from them as best he could.

There was one colonist, though, he couldn’t hide from.

He wasn’t inside Eros that day. He had gone up with the shuttle to the new ISL, where he had been learning to do surface work on the starships; it was unbecoming to an officer to do mechanical labor, Chamrajnagar told him, but Ender answered that since the trade he had mastered wasn’t much called for now, it was about time he learned another skill.

They spoke to him through his helmet radio and told him that someone was waiting to see him as soon as he could come in. Ender couldn’t think of anyone he wanted to see, and so he didn’t hurry. He finished installing the shield for the ship’s ansible and then hooked his way across the face of the ship and pulled himself up into the airlock.

She was waiting for him outside the changing room. For a moment he was annoyed that they would let a colonist come to bother him here, where he came to be alone; then he looked again, and realized that if the young woman were a little girl, he would know her.

“Valentine,” he said.

“Hi, Ender.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Demosthenes retired. Now I’m going with the first colony.”

“It’s fifty years to get there—”

“Only two years if you’re aboard the ship.”

“But if you ever came back, everybody you knew on Earth would be dead—”

“That was what I had in mind. I was hoping, though, that someone I knew on Eros might come with me.”

“I don’t want to go to a world we stole from the buggers. I just want to go home.”

“Ender, you’re never going back to Earth. I saw to that before I left.”

He looked at her in silence.

“I tell you that now, so that if you want to hate me, you can hate me from the beginning.”

They went to Ender’s tiny compartment in the ISL and she explained. Peter wanted Ender back on Earth, under the protection of the Hegemon’s Council. “The way things are right now, Ender, that would put you effectively under Peter’s control, since half the council now does just what Peter wants. The ones that aren’t Locke’s lapdogs are under his thumb in other ways.”

“Do they know who he really is?”

“Yes. He isn’t publicly known, but people in high places know him. It doesn’t matter any more. He has too much power for them to worry about his age. He’s done incredible things, Ender.”

“I noticed the treaty a year ago was named for Locke.”

“That was his breakthrough. He proposed it through his friends from the public policy nets, and then Demosthenes got behind it, too. It was the moment he had been waiting for, to use Demosthenes’ influence with the mob and Locke’s influence with the intelligentsia to accomplish something noteworthy. It forestalled a really vicious war that could have lasted for decades.”

“He decided to be a statesman?”

“I think so. But in his cynical moments, of which there are many, he pointed out to me that if he had allowed the League to fall apart completely, he’d have had to conquer the world piece by piece. As long as the Hegemony existed, he could do it in one lump.”

Ender nodded. “That’s the Peter that I knew.”

“Funny, isn’t it? That Peter would save millions of lives.”

“While I killed billions.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“So he wanted to use me?”

“He had plans for you, Ender. He would publicly reveal himself when you arrived, going to meet you in front of all the videos. Ender Wiggin’s older brother, who also happened to be the great Locke, the architect of peace. Standing next to you, he would look quite mature. And the physical resemblance between you is stronger than ever. It would be quite simple for him, then, to take over.”

“Why did you stop him?”

“Ender, you wouldn’t be happy spending the rest of your life as Peter’s pawn.”

“Why not? I’ve spent my life as someone’s pawn.”

“Me too. I showed Peter all the evidence that I had assembled, enough to prove in the eyes of the public that he was a psychotic killer. It included full-color pictures of tortured squirrels and some of the monitor videos of the way he treated you. It took some work to get it all together, but by the time he saw it, he was willing to give me what I wanted. What I wanted was your freedom and mine.”

“It’s not my idea of freedom to go live in the house of the people that I killed.”

“Ender, what’s done is done. Their worlds are empty now, and ours is full. And we can take with us what their worlds have never known—cities full of people who live private, individual lives, who love and hate each other for their own reasons. In all the bugger worlds, there was never more than a single story to be told; when we’re there, the world will be full of stories, and we’ll improvise their endings day by day. Ender, Earth belongs to Peter. And if you don’t go with me now, he’ll have you there, and use you up until you wish you’d never been born. Now is the only chance you’ll get to get away.”

Ender said nothing.

“I know what you’re thinking, Ender. You’re thinking that I’m trying to control you just as much as Peter or Graff or any of the others.”

“It crossed my mind.”

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you. I didn’t come here because I wanted to be a colonist. I came because I’ve spent my whole life in the company of the brother that I hated. Now I want a chance to know the brother that I love, before it’s too late, before we’re not children anymore.”

“It’s already too late for that.”

“You’re wrong, Ender. You think you’re grown up and tired and jaded with everything, but in your heart you’re just as much a kid as I am. We can keep it secret from everybody else. While you’re governing the colony and I’m writing political philosophy, they’ll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other’s room and play checkers and have pillowfights.”

Ender laughed, but he had noticed some things she dropped too casually for them to be accidental. “Governing?”

“I’m Demosthenes, Ender. I went out with a bang. A public announcement that I believed so much in the colonization movement that I was going in the first ship myself. At the same time, the Minister of Colonization, a former colonel named Graff, announced that the pilot of the colony ship would be the great Mazer Rackham, and the governor of the first colony it established would be Ender Wiggin.”

“They might have asked me.”

“I wanted to ask you myself.”

“But it’s already announced.”

“No. They’ll be announcing it tomorrow, if you accept. Mazer accepted a few hours ago, back in Eros.”

“You’re telling everyone that you’re Demosthenes? A fourteen-year-old girl?”

“We’re only telling them that Demosthenes is going with the colony. Let them spend the next fifty years poring over the passenger list, trying to figure out which one of them is the great demagogue of the Age of Locke.”

Ender laughed and shook his head. “You’re actually having fun, Val.”

“I can’t think why I shouldn’t.”

“All right,” said Ender. “I’ll go. Maybe even as governor, as long as you and Mazer are there to help me. My abilities are a little underused at present.”

She squealed and hugged him, for all the world like a typical teenage girl who just got the present that she wanted from her little brother.

“Val,” he said. “I just want one thing clear. I’m not going for you. I’m not going in order to be governor, or because I’m bored here. I’m going because I know the buggers better than any other living soul, and maybe if I go there I can understand them better. I stole their future from them; I can only begin to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.”

The voyage was long. By the end of it, Val had finished the first volume of her history of the bugger wars and transmitted it by ansible, under Demosthenes’ name, back to Earth, and Ender had won something better than the adulation of the passengers. They knew him now, and he had won their love and their respect.

He worked hard on the new world. He quickly understood the differences between military and civilian leadership, and governed by persuasion rather than fiat, and by working as hard as anyone at the tasks involved in setting up a self-sustaining economy. But his most important work, as everyone agreed, was exploring what the buggers had left behind, trying to find among structures, machinery, and fields long untended some things that human beings could use, could learn from. There were no books to read—the buggers never needed them. With all things present in their memories, all things spoken as they were thought, when the buggers died their knowledge died with them.

And yet. From the sturdiness of the roofs that covered their animal sheds and their food supplies, Ender learned that winter would be hard, with heavy snows. From fences with sharpened stakes that pointed outward he learned that there were marauding animals that were a danger to the crops or the herds. From the mill he learned that the long, foul-tasting fruits that grew in the overgrown orchards were dried and ground into meal. And from the slings that once were used to carry infants along with adults into the fields, he learned that even though the buggers were not much for individuality, they did care for their young.

Life settled down, and years passed. The colony lived in wooden houses and used the tunnels of the bugger city for storage and manufactories. They were governed by a council now, and administrators were elected, so that Ender, though they still called him governor, was in fact only a judge. There were crimes and quarrels, alongside kindness and cooperation; there were people who loved each other and people who did not; it was a human world. They did not wait so eagerly for each new transmission from the ansible; the names that were famous on Earth meant little to them now. The only name they knew was that of Peter Wiggin, the Hegemon of Earth; the only news that came was news of peace, of prosperity, of great ships leaving the littoral of Earth’s solar system, passing the comet shield and filling up the bugger worlds. Soon there would be other colonies on this world, Ender’s World; soon there would be neighbors; already they were halfway here; but no one cared. They would help the newcomers when they came, teach them what they had learned, but what mattered in life now was who would marry whom, and who was sick, and when was planting time, and why should I pay him when the calf died three weeks after I got it.

“They’ve become people of the land,” said Valentine. “No one cares now that Demosthenes is sending the seventh volume of his history today. No one here will read it.”

Ender pressed a button and his desk showed him the next page. “Very insightful, Valentine. How many more volumes until you’re through?”

“Just one. The story of Ender Wiggin.”

“What will you do, wait to write it until I’m dead?”

“No. Just write it, and when I’ve brought it up to the present day, I’ll stop.”

“I have a better idea. Take it up to the day we won the final battle. Stop it there. Nothing that I’ve done since then is worth writing down.”

“Maybe,” said Valentine. “And maybe not.”

The ansible had brought them word that the new colony ship was only a year away. They asked Ender to find a place for them to settle in, near enough to Ender’s colony that the two colonies could trade, but far enough apart that they could be governed separately. Ender used the helicopter and began to explore. He took one of the children along, an eleven-year-old boy named Abra; he had been only three when the colony was founded, and he remembered no other world than this. He and Ender flew as far away as Ender thought the new colony should be, then camped for the night and got a feel for the land on foot the next morning.

It was on the third morning that Ender suddenly began to feel an uneasy sense that he had been in this place before. He looked around; it was new land, he had never seen it. He called out to Abra.

“Ho, Ender!” Abra called. He was on top of a steep low hill. “Come up!”

Ender scrambled up, the turves coming away from his feet in the soft ground. Abra was pointing downward. “Can you believe this?” he asked.

The hill was hollow. A deep depression in the middle, partially filled with water, was ringed by concave slopes that cantilevered dangerously over the water. In one direction the hill gave way to two long ridges that made a V-shaped valley; in the other direction the hill rose to a piece of white rock, grinning like a skull with a tree growing out of its mouth.

“It’s like a giant died here,” said Abra, “and the Earth grew up to cover his carcass.”

Now Ender knew why it had looked familiar. The Giant’s corpse. He had played here too many times as a child not to know this place. But it was not possible. The computer in the Battle School could not possibly have seen this place. He looked through his binoculars in a direction he knew well, fearing and hoping that he would see what belonged in that place.

Swings and slides. Monkey bars. Now overgrown, but the shapes still unmistakable.

“Somebody had to have built this,” Abra said. “Look, this skull place, it’s not rock, look at it. This is concrete.”

“I know,” said Ender. “They built it for me.”

“What?”

“I know this place, Abra. The buggers built it for me.”

“The buggers were all dead fifty years before we got here.”

“You’re right, it’s impossible, but I know what I know. Abra, I shouldn’t take you with me. It might be dangerous. If they knew me well enough to build this place, they might be planning to—”

“To get even with you.”

“For killing them.”

“So don’t go, Ender. Don’t do what they want you to do.”

“If they want to get revenge, Abra, I don’t mind. But perhaps they don’t. Perhaps this is the closest they could come to talking. To writing me a note.”

“They didn’t know how to read and write.”

“Maybe they were learning when they died.”

“Well, I’m sure as hell not sticking around here if you’re taking off somewhere. I’m going with you.”

“No. You’re too young to take the risk of—”

“Come on! You’re Ender Wiggin. Don’t tell me what eleven-year-old kids can do!”

Together they flew in the copter, over the playground, over the woods, over the well in the forest clearing. Then out to where there was, indeed, a cliff, with a cave in the cliff wall and a ledge right where the End of the World should be. And there in the distance, just where it should be in the fantasy game, was the castle tower.

He left Abra with the copter. “Don’t come after me, and go home in an hour if I don’t come back.”

“Eat it, Ender, I’m coming with you.”

“Eat it yourself, Abra, or I’ll stuff you with mud.”

Abra could tell, despite Ender’s joking tone, that he meant it, and so he stayed.

The walls of the tower were notched and ledged for easy climbing. They meant him to get in.

The room was as it had always been. Ender remembered well enough to look for a snake on the floor, but there was only a rug with a carved snake’s head at one corner. Imitation, not duplication; for a people who made no art, they had done well. They must have dragged these images from Ender’s own mind, finding him and learning his darkest dreams across the lightyears. But why? To bring him to this room, of course. To leave a message for him. But where was the message, and how would he understand it?

The mirror was waiting for him on the wall. It was a dull sheet of metal, in which the rough shape of a human face had been scratched. They tried to draw the image I should see in the picture.

And looking at the mirror he could remember breaking it, pulling it from the wall, and snakes leaping out of the hidden place, attacking him, biting him wherever their poisonous fangs could find purchase.

How well do they know me, wondered Ender. Well enough to know how often I have thought of death, to know that I am not afraid of it. Well enough to know that even if I feared death, it would not stop me from taking that mirror from the wall.

He walked to the mirror, lifted, pulled away. Nothing jumped from the space behind it. Instead, in a hollowed-out place, there was a white ball of silk with a few frayed strands sticking out here and there. An egg? No. The pupa of a queen bugger, already fertilized by the larval males, ready, out of her own body, to hatch a hundred thousand buggers, including a few queens and males. Ender could see in his mind the slug-like males clinging to the walls of a dark tunnel, and the large adults carrying the infant queen to the mating room; each male in turn penetrated the larval queen, shuddered in ecstasy, and died, dropping to the tunnel floor and shriveling. Then the new queen was laid before the old, a magnificent creature clad in soft and shimmering wings, which had long since lost the power of flight but still contained the power of majesty. The old queen kissed her to sleep with the gentle poison in her lips, then wrapped her in threads from her belly, and commanded her to become herself, to become a new city, a new world, to give birth to many queens and many worlds—

How do I know this, thought Ender. How can I see these things, like memories in my own mind.

As if in answer, he saw the first of all his battles with the bugger fleets. He had seen it before on the simulator; now he saw it as the hive-queen saw it, through many different eyes. The buggers formed their globe of ships, and then the terrible fighters came out of the darkness and the Little Doctor destroyed them in a blaze of light. He felt then what the hive-queen felt, watching through her workers’ eyes as death came to them too quickly to avoid, but not too quickly to be anticipated. There was no memory of pain or fear, though. What the hive-queen felt was sadness, a sense of resignation. She had not thought these words as she saw the humans coming to kill, but it was in words that Ender understood her: The humans did not forgive us, she thought. We will surely die.

“How can you live again?” he asked.

The queen in her silken cocoon had no words to give back; but when he closed his eyes and tried to remember, instead of memory came new images. Putting the cocoon in a cool place, a dark place, but with water, so she wasn’t dry, so that certain reactions could take place in the cocoon. Then time. Days and weeks, for the pupa inside to change. And then, when the cocoon had changed to a dusty brown color, Ender saw himself splitting open the cocoon, and helping the small and fragile queen emerge. He saw himself taking her by the forelimb and helping her walk from her birthwater to a nesting place, soft with dried leaves on sand. Then I am alive, came the thought in his mind. Then I am awake. Then I make my ten thousand children.

“No,” said Ender. “I can’t.”

Anguish.

“Your children are the monsters of our nightmares now. If I awoke you, we would only kill you again.”

There flashed through his mind a dozen images of human beings being killed by buggers, but with the image came a grief so powerful he could not bear it, and he wept their tears for them.

“If you could make them feel as you can make me feel, then perhaps they could forgive you.”

Only me, he realized. They found me through the ansible, followed it and dwelt in my mind. In the agony of my tortured dreams they came to know me, even as I spent my days destroying them; they found my fear of them, and found also that I had no knowledge I was killing them. In the few weeks they had, they built this place for me, and the Giant’s corpse and the playground and the ledge at the End of the World, so I would find this place by the evidence of my eyes. I am the only one they know, and so they can only talk to me, and through me. We are like you; the thought pressed into his mind. We did not mean to murder, and when we understood, we never came again. We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other’s dreams. How were we to know? We could live with you in peace. Believe us, believe us, believe us.

He reached into the cavity and took out the cocoon. It was astonishingly light, to hold all the hope and future of a great race within it.

“I’ll carry you,” said Ender, “I’ll go from world to world until I find a time and a place where you can come awake in safety. And I’ll tell your story to my people, so that perhaps in time they can forgive you, too. The way that you’ve forgiven me.”

He wrapped the queen’s cocoon in his jacket and carried her from the tower.

“What was in there?” asked Abra.

“The answer,” said Ender.

“To what?”

“My question.” And that was all he said of the matter; they searched for five more days and chose a site for the colony far to the east and south of the tower.

Weeks later he came to Valentine and told her to read something he had written; she pulled the file he named from the ship’s computer, and read it.

It was written as if the hive-queen spoke, telling all that they had meant to do, and all that they had done. Here are our failures, and here is our greatness; we did not mean to hurt you, and we forgive you for our death. From their earliest awareness to the great wars that swept across their home world, Ender told the story quickly, as if it were an ancient memory. When he came to the tale of the great mother, the queen of all, who first learned to keep and teach the new queen instead of killing her or driving her away, then he lingered, telling how many times she had finally to destroy the child of her body, the new self that was not herself, until she bore one who understood her quest for harmony. This was a new thing in the world, two queens that loved and helped each other instead of battling, and together they were stronger than any other hive. They prospered; they had more daughters who joined them in peace; it was the beginning of wisdom.

If only we could have talked to you, the hive-queen said in Ender’s words. But since it could not be, we ask only this: that you remember us, not as enemies, but as tragic sisters, changed into a foul shape by fate or God or evolution. If we had kissed, it would have been the miracle to make us human in each other’s eyes. Instead we killed each other. But still we welcome you now as guestfriends. Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do, you are now our hands to do for us. Blossom, trees; ripen, fields; be warm for them, suns; be fertile for them, planets: they are our adopted daughters, and they have come home.

The book that Ender wrote was not long, but in it was all the good and all the evil that the hive-queen knew. And he signed it, not with his name, but with a title:

SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD

On Earth, the book was published quietly, and quietly it was passed from hand to hand, until it was hard to believe that anyone on Earth might not have read it. Most who read it found it interesting; some who read it refused to set it aside. They began to live by it as best they could, and when their loved ones died, a believer would arise beside the grave to be the Speaker for the Dead, and say what the dead one would have said, but with full candor, hiding no faults and pretending no virtues. Those who came to such services sometimes found them painful and disturbing, but there were many who decided that their life was worthwhile enough, despite their errors, that when they died a Speaker should tell the truth for them.

On Earth it remained a religion among many religions. But for those who traveled the great cave of space and lived their lives in the hive-queen’s tunnels and harvested the hive-queen’s fields, it was the only religion. There was no colony without its Speaker for the Dead.

No one knew and no one really wanted to know who was the original Speaker. Ender was not inclined to tell them.

When Valentine was twenty-five years old, she finished the last volume of her history of the bugger wars. She included at the end the complete text of Ender’s little book, but did not say that Ender wrote it.

By ansible she got an answer from the ancient Hegemon, Peter Wiggin, seventy-seven years old with a failing heart.

“I know who wrote it,” he said. “If he can speak for the buggers, surely he can speak for me.”

Back and forth across the ansible Ender and Peter spoke, with Peter pouring out the story of his days and years, his crimes and his kindnesses. And when he died, Ender wrote a second volume, again signed by the Speaker for the Dead. Together, his two books were called the Hive-Queen and the Hegemon, and they were holy writ.

“Come on,” he said to Valentine one day. “Let’s fly away and live forever.”

“We can’t,” she said. “There are miracles even relativity can’t pull off, Ender.”

“We have to go. I’m almost happy here.”

“So stay.”

“I’ve lived too long with pain. I won’t know who I am without it.”

So they boarded a starship and went from world to world. Wherever they stopped, he was always Andrew Wiggin, itinerant speaker for the dead, and she was always Valentine, historian errant, writing down the stories of the living while Ender spoke the stories of the dead. And always Ender carried with him a dry white cocoon, looking for the world where the hive-queen could awaken and thrive in peace. He looked a long time.

SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD

ORSON SCOTT CARD

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD

Copyright © 1986, 1991 by Orson Scott Card

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, N.Y. 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-12324

First Edition: March 1986

Revised Edition: August 1991

Revised Trade Paperback Edition: September 1992

Revised Mass Market Edition: August 1994

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Card, Orson Scott.

Speaker for the dead / by Orson Scott Card. — Rev. ed.

   p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN: 978-1-4299-6394-7

I. Title.

PS3553.A655S67    1991

813' .54—dc20

91-12324

For Gregg Keizer
who already knew how

INTRODUCTION

Speaker for the Dead is a sequel, but it didn’t begin life that way—and you don’t have to read it that way, either. It was my intention all along for Speaker to be able to stand alone, for it to make sense whether you have read Ender’s Game or not. Indeed, in my mind this was the “real” book; if I hadn’t been trying to write Speaker for the Dead back in 1983, there would never have been a novel version of Ender’s Game at all.

How did Speaker for the Dead come to be? As with all my stories, this one began with more than one idea. The concept of a “speaker for the dead” arose from my experiences with death and funerals. I have written of this at greater length elsewhere; suffice it to say that I grew dissatisfied with the way that we use our funerals to revise the life of the dead, to give the dead a story so different from their actual life that, in effect, we kill them all over again. No, that is too strong. Let me just say that we erase them, we edit them, we make them into a person much easier to live with than the person who actually lived.

I rejected that idea. I thought that a more appropriate funeral would be to say, honestly, what that person was and what that person did. But to me, “honesty” doesn’t simply mean saying all the unpleasant things instead of saying only the nice ones. It doesn’t even consist of averaging them out. No, to understand who a person really was, what his or her life really meant, the speaker for the dead would have to explain their self-story—what they meant to do, what they actually did, what they regretted, what they rejoiced in. That’s the story that we never know, the story that we never can know—and yet, at the time of death, it’s the only story truly worth telling.

I have received several letters, by the way, from people who are called upon to speak at funerals from time to time, and who, having read Speaker for the Dead, make an effort to turn the funeral service into a Speaking. I hasten to add that they have done this either with the permission of the family or at the urging of the deceased (given, obviously, before death!). Some of them have even sent me the text of their Speaking, and I must tell you that the stories thus told are astonishing and powerful. I hope someone will do a Speaking at my funeral. I think there really is power and truth in the idea.

But that was not the only source of Speaker for the Dead. I was also a longtime aficionado of anthropological science fiction—stories in which a scientist studies an alien culture and uncovers the reasons for their strangeness. The first such novel that I read was James Blish’s A Case of Conscience. Not many years later, I read Michael Bishop’s story “Death and Designation among the Asadi.” Both had a powerful effect on me. So in the back of my mind, I had a strong desire to add something of my own to that subgenre.

So when I thought of the idea of an alien species which, in order to reproduce, had to slaughter each other in terrible intertribal wars, it was only natural that I decided the story should be told from the viewpoint of a human scientist studying them. Only gradually, over several years, did I develop the idea of the piggies and their strange lifecycle, and the intertribal war receded in importance—so much so that I didn’t need to make it an issue in Speaker for the Dead at all. But it was in trying to think of an evolutionary reason why these little porcine aliens would need to slaughter each other for the species to thrive that I came up with the pequeninos that you meet in the pages of this book.

I was living with my wife, Kristine (née Allen), in Orem, Utah, when I made the first breakthrough in creating this book. The two ideas were still quite separate, and the speaker-for-the-dead idea was still in a very primitive form. In fact, I had decided that the funeral “oration” should be in song—that it should be a “singer of death.” I suppose I thought of this because I had sung at a few funerals, and found it a moving experience even when I didn’t know the deceased. But when I mentioned this singer-of-death idea to Kristine, she winced. “You’ve already written ‘Unaccompanied Sonata’ and Songmaster,” she reminded me. “They were both about music. If you do another music story people will think that’s all you can do.”

I realized that she was even more right than she knew! It happened that “Unaccompanied Sonata” and the original short story, “Mikal’s Songbird,” on which Songmaster had been based were also two of my stories that had been nominated for awards. In fact, a novella called “Songhouse,” which was really the opening chapters of Songmaster, had also been nominated for a Hugo. The only story of mine which had been nominated for awards and that wasn’t about music was the novelet version of “Ender’s Game”! So Kristine had inadvertently caught me in the unconscious process of imitating my own past successes. I knew she was right—the music motif may have won me some favorable attention, but it was time to set aside that crutch and do something else.

So it would be a speaker of death in my story, not a singer. That felt right. But here’s the silly part. Perhaps I was still unconsciously trying to lean on my most successful previous work, but I immediately wondered, What if the Speaker of Death was Ender Wiggin? It was obvious to me what I was doing—if I can’t do the music thing, I can still bring the kid-who-saves-the-world back for another round! And yet the idea appealed to me. I didn’t trust it yet, but it appealed to me.

After all, Ender had to do something after destroying the buggers. What if Ender Wiggin comes to an alien world as a Speaker of Death, and accidently gets caught up in the mystery of why these piggies are slaughtering each other? It had a delicious symmetry to it—the man who, as a child, destroyed one alien species now has a chance to save another.

The idea sat there in the back of my mind for many months, and as it did, the story grew. More to the point, the character of Ender grew. I had never thought much about what he would do after winning his war at the end of “Ender’s Game,” except that his life would never be that interesting again, and he would have a terrible time adjusting to normal human life. A writer friend of mine, Jim Tucker, had once proposed doing a sequel to “Ender’s Game” that involved bringing Ender back to Earth, but while the story he came up with had some appeal, I knew in my heart that the one thing Ender could never do was return to live out his life on the birthworld of humanity. Having him become a speaker for the dead, however, wandering from nation to nation and world to world, researching and orating for the dead—that, I thought, was a wonderful way to reconcile him with the human race that had used him up as a child.

Gradually the ideas came together. When my agent, Barbara Bova, said that she’d like to sell a book to Tom Doherty’s new publishing house, Tor, I realized that the book I wanted to write next was Speaker of Death. So I wrote an outline and the first few chapters, the contract was written, the deal was made. I was living in Indiana at the time, working on a doctorate at Notre Dame and finishing up Hart’s Hope, Worthing Chronicle, and Saints for another publisher. It wasn’t until the recession interrupted my degree program (forever, I’m afraid—no doctorate for me now!) and sent me to Greensboro, North Carolina, for my only stint doing honest labor since 1978 that I had a chance to get back to Speaker of Death.

What I discovered then—the spring of 1983—was that the book was unwritable. In order to make the Ender Wiggin of Speaker make any kind of sense, I had to have this really long, kind of boring opening chapter that brought him from the end of the Bugger War to the beginning of the story of Speaker some three thousand years later! It was outrageous. I couldn’t write it.

When Compute!, the publisher I was working for as a book editor, sent me along to the American Booksellers Association convention in Dallas, I noticed that Tom Doherty himself was at the Tor Books exhibit. I greeted him, and then on impulse asked him if I could talk to him. I had no well-formed plan in mind, and I was a little frightened when he said, “Sure,” and set an appointment not long after. Our meeting consisted of walking through the crowds as I explained to him the problem I was having writing Speaker. The only solution I could think of, I said, was to write a novel version of Ender’s Game, so I could put all that material about how Ender became a Speaker for the Dead at the end of that book, thus allowing Speaker to begin at its true beginning.

Once I proposed the idea (having only thought of it a short while before) it seemed so obvious that I wondered why I hadn’t tried to sell a novel version of Ender’s Game years before. (Only later did I realize that it wasn’t until I was working on Speaker that the character of Ender Wiggin grew enough to be able to sustain a novel.) Still, Tom agreed with me that a novel version of Ender’s Game was a good idea. “Let’s do it,” he said. “Same terms as Speaker?”

“Sure,” I said, hardly believing that the decision could be made so easily—I hadn’t talked to him more than five minutes.

“Fine. We’ll send a contract to Barbara as soon as I get back to New York.”

Lo! It happened exactly as he said! This was something I had never seen before—a publisher making a decision instantly, and then having everything he said turn out to be true! I still marvel at it—a publisher who is not only an honest man, but also loves (and reads) books, makes decisions quickly, and then can sell the books he publishes!

Gratefully I set aside Speaker and began plotting Ender’s Game. By the time I quit my job at Compute! that fall, after only nine months in the position (I’m not cut out for corporate life anymore, I’m afraid), I was raring to go. I began Ender’s Game before Christmas that year, took a break to go to Utah to promote my novel Saints, and then returned home and finished the book in a couple more weeks.

Then I turned to Speaker and the real suffering began. By now, of course, the title had changed from Speaker of Death to Speaker for the Dead, as the concept had clarified at the end of Ender’s Game. By now, the character of Ender had developed so much that my original draft of the opening of Speaker was almost laughable. I had begun (except for the “introductory chapter”) with Ender’s arrival on the planet Lusitania, just in time to speak the death of an old lout named Marcão. But it was hollow and empty and it just wasn’t working. So I went back to the drawing board and began all over again.

I began the book several more times, each time getting a little farther, but each time being blocked because it still wasn’t right. I didn’t know what “right” was, of course—but I did have several hundred pages of “wrong.” (During this struggle with Speaker I wrote the novel Wyrms, which in some ways was a tryout of the scientific ideas in Speaker and, eventually, Xenocide—using a semisentient molecule that adapts itself easily to alien species in order to take them over and control them.)

Finally I knew I had to begin with the character of Novinha, who hadn’t even existed in the original outline. And the characters of Pipo and Libo had also emerged, along with Pipo’s death, pretty much as they happen in the first few chapters of the book you now hold in your hands. But I still wasn’t done. It still wasn’t enough. I was about 200 pages deep and the book was dead in my hands and I didn’t know what to do.

It happened that a good friend of mine, Gregg Keizer, was working for Compute! In fact, I was the one who had recruited him away from his job as a junior high school English teacher (for which I think he has forgiven me) and brought him out to North Carolina. I had met Gregg when he became my student at a science fiction writing class I taught in the University of Utah’s evening school program back in the seventies. He was one of those frustrating students who are simply brilliant when they walk in the door, so the teacher can’t take the slightest credit for anything they do. He was also one of the most decent human beings I know, which makes me very nervous around him—so nervous, in fact, that the only times I have ever gotten thoroughly and stupidly lost have been while he was in the car with me and I was supposed to know where I was going. Some teacher!

(I once was so certain that a story of Gregg’s would sell that I made a wager with my class—if it didn’t sell within one year, I would run naked through the corridors of Orson Spencer Hall on the U of U campus, which is where our class met. The story didn’t sell in a year—a pox on editors!—and, perhaps out of an exaggerated commitment to aesthetics, I reneged on the bet. Since the story did sell a short while afterward, Gregg has never demanded that I make good, but he does have the debt hanging over my head.)

Anyway, right during the time that I was stymied on Speaker, Gregg and I decided to go to New York for the 1985 Nebula weekend. Ender’s Game had only just been published, and neither of us had anything on the ballot. We just wanted to go to New York and to the Nebulas, so why not? I brought along the manuscript of Speaker for him to read—or perhaps I gave it to him in advance—I don’t remember now. I do remember, though, sitting at the foot of his bed while he lay there and explained the problems he saw in Speaker.

He had many good ideas. Of course, most of them dealt with small fixes for problems in the manuscript as it now stood. One comment he made, however, illuminated everything for me. “I couldn’t tell Novinha’s kids apart,” he said. “I couldn’t remember which was which.”

I had enough experience by then to know exactly what this meant. He couldn’t tell Novinha’s kids apart because they weren’t characters. They were nothing but placeholders. At first I toyed with the idea of simply cutting them out. In my novel Saints, I had run into a problem with a younger sister of my protagonist—I kept forgetting she existed and completely neglecting her for hundreds of pages at a time. The solution was to eliminate the character; callously, I had her die in infancy. But excision wasn’t the right move in this case. Because I wanted Novinha to be voluntarily isolated, I had to have her be otherwise acceptable to her neighbors. In a Catholic colony like Lusitania, this meant Novinha needed to have a bunch of kids.

Yet I had no idea who they were or what they would do in the story. Once you’ve read Speaker, of course, you’ll wonder what the story would be without Novinha’s children, and the answer is, It wouldn’t be much! But at the time I hadn’t developed their role in the story; yet there was something in the story that led Gregg to want them to amount to something more—that made him want to be able to tell them apart.

It meant throwing out all but the first couple of chapters of what I had written so far (and, in fact, I ended up completely writing the novel from the beginning), but it soon dawned on me that it was worth doing, for this was the final idea, the one that would pull me through the whole book. I had observed before that one thing wrong with science fiction as a whole was that almost all the heroes seemed to spring fully-grown from the head of Zeus—no one had families. If there was a mention of parents at all, it was to tell us they were dead, or such miserable specimens of humanity that the hero could hardly wait to get out of town.

Not only did they have no parents, few science fiction heroes seemed to marry and have kids. In short, the heroes of most science fiction novels were perpetual adolescents, lone rangers who wandered the universe avoiding commitments. This shouldn’t be surprising. The romantic hero is invariably one who is going through the adolescent phase of human life. The child phase—the one I had dealt with most often in my fiction—is the time of complete dependence on others to create our identity and our worldview. Little children gladly accept even the strangest stories that others tell them, because they lack either the context or the confidence to doubt. They go along because they don’t know how to be alone, either physically or intellectually.

Gradually, however, this dependency breaks down—and children catch the first glimmers of a world that is different from the one they thought they lived in, they break away the last vestiges of adult control themselves, much as a baby bird breaks free of the last fragments of the egg. The romantic hero is unconnected. He belongs to no community; he is wandering from place to place, doing good (as he sees it), but then moving on. This is the life of the adolescent, full of passion, intensity, magic, and infinite possibility; but lacking responsibility, rarely expecting to have to stay and bear the consequences of error. Everything is played at twice the speed and twice the volume in the adolescent—the romantic—life.

Only when the loneliness becomes unbearable do adolescents root themselves, or try to root themselves. It may or may not be in the community of their childhood, and it may or may not be their childhood identity and connections that they resume upon entering adulthood. And, in fact, many fail at adulthood and constantly reach backward for the freedom and passion of adolescence. But those who achieve it are the ones who create civilization.

Most science fiction dealt with adolescent heroes, yes—but only because most fiction deals with adolescents. This is not to say that fiction about adolescents is necessarily adolescent fiction, either in the sense of being for an adolescent audience or in the sense of being undeveloped or immature fiction. Still, most storytellers invent their fables about the lives of footloose heroes—or heroes who become footloose for the sake of the story. Who but the adolescent is free to have the adventures that most of us are looking for when we turn to storytellers to satisfy our hunger?

And yet to me, at least, the most important stories are the ones that teach us how to be civilized: the stories about children and adults, about responsibility and dependency. Not being an adult myself, I had concentrated for many years on the child’s point of view, but with Speaker for the Dead I was old enough, and perhaps (finally) civilized enough, to create the small community of the family from an adult perspective—not necessarily the parent’s viewpoint, but rather the viewpoint of an adult who felt responsibility toward the family. That adult would be Ender, I knew; and the children would be formed into a family that was suffering, as a whole and individually. Thus I came to regard Speaker for the Dead as a perfect opportunity to show something only rarely seen in this genre of stories about the strange and wonderful: I could show the miracle of a family in transformation.

With this decision, of course, the focus changed. The novel was no longer exclusively about the mystery of the alien pequeninos. It was now at least as much about the redemption of Novinha’s family, the healing of their injured little community. More than that, it was about the idea of community itself—the community of Milagre, the community of the tribe of pequeninos.

This was not easy. Most novels get by with showing the relationships between two or, at the most, three characters. This is because the difficulty of creating a character increases with each new major character that is added to the tale. Characters, as most writers understand, are truly developed through their relationships with others. If there are only two significant characters, then there is only one relationship to be explored. If there are three characters, however, there are four relationships: Between A and B, between B and C, between C and A, and finally the relationship when all three are together.

Even this does not begin to explain the complexity—for in real life, at least, most people change, at least subtly, when they are with different people. The changes can be pretty major—I remember well my summer as a performer at the Sundance Summer Theatre in Utah. I was a 19-year-old trying to convince myself and others that I was a man, so with the other performers I became at least as profane—nay, foul-mouthed and filthy-minded—as the most immature of them. I worked hard to develop some fluidity and cleverness in my vulgarity, and won my share of laughs from the others. Yet during this whole time I lived with my parents, coming down the mountain at insane speeds late at night, only to end up in a home where certain words were simply never said. And I never said them. Not once did I slip and speak in front of my family the way I spoke constantly in front of the other performers at Sundance. This was not by any herculean effort, either. I didn’t think about changing my behavior; it simply happened. When I was with my parents I wasn’t the same person.

I have seen this time and time again with my friends, with other family members. Our whole demeanor changes, our mannerisms, our figures of speech, when we move from one context to another. Listen to someone you know when they pick up the telephone. We have special voices for different people; our attitudes, our moods change depending on whom we are with.

So when a storyteller has to create three characters, each different relationship requires that each character in it must be transformed, however subtly, depending on how the relationship is shaping his or her present identity. Thus, in a three-character story, a storyteller who wishes to convince us of the reality of these characters really has to come up with a dozen different personas, four for each of them.

What happens, then, when you start with a family with a mother, a dead father, and six troubled children, and then add a stranger who intrudes into the family and transforms every one of them? It seemed to me like a sisyphean task, for I had to develop (or at least imply) dozens of personas, including the persona they had developed in order to deal with their dead father, and then show, clearly, how they all changed because of Ender’s influence on their lives.

Much of that, however, would have to come with the actual writing of the new draft of the novel. My immediate task was to differentiate clearly between Novinha’s children when the reader first encounters them. I sat there in the room I shared with Gregg, assigning some immediate and obvious trait to each of the children that would help the reader keep track of them. Oh, yes, Olhado is the one with the metal eyes; Quara is the one who says outrageous things after long silences; Grego is the violent one; Quim is the religious fanatic; Ela is the weary mother-figure; Miro is the eldest son, the hero in the others’ eyes. These “hooks” could only serve to introduce the children—I’d have to develop them far beyond that point—but having found those hooks, I had a plan that would let me proceed with confidence.

My novel had, at last, opened up to me, and I came home from that Nebula weekend and wrote the whole novel, from beginning to end, in a month. As I tell my writing students, once you get the beginning right, the ending almost writes itself.

One more thing, though. No matter how well-planned a novel is—and, in my case at least, it must be very well-planned before I can write it—there are still things that come up during the process of writing that you simply didn’t plan on. In my Alvin Maker novels, for instance, the characters of Little Peggy and Arthur Stuart weren’t in any of my outlines, and yet they are now at the heart of that story. And in Speaker for the Dead, the character of Jane wasn’t in any of the outlines I made. Oh, yes, I gave him a computer connection through the jewel in his ear, but I didn’t know it was a person. Jane just grew because it was so fun to write her relationship with Ender. She helped bring him to life (he could so easily have been a stodgy, dull adult), and in the process came to life herself. By the time I was done with Speaker for the Dead, Jane was one of the most important characters in it, and much of the third book, Xenocide, centers around her.

Oh yes. The third book. I had never planned to write a third book. In fact, I really hadn’t planned to write a first book—Speaker was originally supposed to be a solo. But just as I was writing the last few chapters of Speaker, Barbara Bova called and said she had sold the Ender trilogy to an English publisher.

“The Ender trilogy?” I asked. “Barbara, there are only two.”

Naturally, she was a bit flummoxed. Of course she could always go back and renegotiate for only two books. But first, couldn’t I think a little bit and see if perhaps I might come up with a third story that I wanted to write?

At that moment I knew exactly the story I wanted to tell. It had nothing to do with Ender Wiggin or any of the characters in Speaker for the Dead. Rather it was an ancient project from early in my career, one that Jim Frenkel, then at Dell, had rejected because I just wasn’t mature enough, as a writer, to handle a project so difficult. Having solved the problems of Speaker for the Dead, though, I felt ready to tackle anything. It had been years since I had even thought about that story, then called Philotes, yet wasn’t it possible that by putting Ender Wiggin into it, I might be able to bring it to life the way Speaker had come to life because of his presence? I might fail, of course, but why not try?

Besides—and here you are about to learn something truly vile about me—having a third book would mean that I didn’t have to figure out some way to resolve the two loose threads that I knew would be dangling at the end of Speaker: What happens to the hive queen? And what happens to the fleet that Starways Congress sends?

By agreeing to do a third Ender book I could leave those questions for the sequel, and since I am a shamefully lazy man, I jumped at the chance. I jumped too soon—the book was every bit as difficult as Jim Frenkel had told me it would be, and it took years to get it right—and even then it is far and away the talkiest, most philosophical of my novels, which is just what the original outline of Philotes had required. Over the years the title of the third book changed, from Ender’s Children to Xenocide, and it also grew until it became two books, so that even Xenocide doesn’t finish the story (though the next one will, I swear it!).

And, like Speaker for the Dead before it, Xenocide was the hardest book I’d ever written up to then. You see, the work of a storyteller doesn’t get any easier the more experience we get, because once we’ve learned how to do something, we can’t get excited about doing exactly the same thing again—or at least most of us can’t. We keep wanting to reach for the story that is too hard for us to tell—and then make ourselves learn how to tell it. If we succeed, then maybe we can write better and better books, or at least more challenging ones, or at the very least we won’t bore ourselves.

The danger that keeps me just a little frightened with every book I write, however, is that I’ll overreach myself once too often and try to write a story that I’m just plain not talented or skilled enough to write. That’s the dilemma every storyteller faces. It is painful to fail. But it is far sadder when a storyteller stops wanting to try.

Now I fear that I’ve told you more than you ever wanted to know about how Speaker for the Dead came to be. A writer’s life is boring indeed. I write stories about people who take risks, who reach out and change the world. But when it comes to my life, it mostly consists of hanging around at home, writing when I have to, playing computer games or watching TV whenever I can get away with it. My real life is being with my wife, with my children; going to church and teaching my Sunday school class; keeping in touch with my family and friends; and, the primary duty of every father, turning off lights throughout the house and muttering about how I’m the only one who seems to care about turning them off because I’m the one who has to change the lousy light bulbs. I doubt that there’s much of a story in that.

But I hope that in the lives of Ender Wiggin, Novinha, Miro, Ela, Human, Jane, the hive queen, and so many others in this book, you will find stories worth holding in your memory, perhaps even in your heart. That’s the transaction that counts more than bestseller lists, royalty statements, awards, or reviews. Because in the pages of this book, you and I will meet one-on-one, my mind and yours, and you will enter a world of my making and dwell there, not as a character that I control, but as a person with a mind of your own. You will make of my story what you need it to be, if you can. I hope my tale is true enough and flexible enough that you can make it into a world worth living in.

Orson Scott Card
Greensboro, North Carolina
29 March 1991

SOME PEOPLE OF
LUSITANIA COLONY

Xenologers (Zenadores)

Pipo (Joao Figueira Alvarez)

Libo (Liberdade Graças a Deus Figueira de Medici)

Miro (Marcos Vladimir Ribeira von Hesse)

Ouanda (Ouanda Quenhatta Figueira Mucumbi)

Xenobiologists (Biologistas)

Gusto (Vladimir Tiago Gussman)

Cida (Ekaterina Maria Aparecida do Norte von Hesse-Gussman)

Novinha (Ivanova Santa Catarina von Hesse)

Ela (Ekaterina Elanora Ribeira von Hesse)

Governor

Bosquinha (Faria Lima Maria do Bosque)

Bishop

Peregrino (Armão Cebola)

Abbot and Principal of the Monastery

Dom Cristão (Amai a Tudomundo Para Que Deus vos Ame Cristão)

Dona Cristã (Detestai o Pecado e Fazei o Direito Cristã)

*All dates are expressed as years after adoption of the Starways Code.

PRONOUNCING FOREIGN NAMES

Three human languages are used by characters in this book. Stark, since it originated as English, is represented as English in the book. The Nordic spoken on Trondheim evolved from Swedish. Portuguese is the native language of Lusitania. On every world, however, schoolchildren are taught Stark from the beginning.

The Portuguese language, while unusually beautiful when spoken aloud, is very difficult for readers who are accustomed to English to sound out from the written letters. Even if you aren’t planning to read this book aloud, you may be more comfortable if you have a general idea of how the Portuguese names and phrases are pronounced.

Consonants: Single consonants are pronounced more or less as they are in English, with the addition of ç, which always sounds like ss. Exceptions are j, which is pronounced like the z in azure, as is g when followed by e or i; and the initial r and double rr, which are pronounced somewhere between the American h and the Yiddish ch.

Vowels: Single vowels are pronounced more or less as follows: a as in father, e as in get, i like the ee in fee, o as in throne, and u like the oo in toot. (This is a gross oversimplification, since there are really two distinct a sounds, neither of which is really like the a in father, three meaning-changing ways to pronounce e—é, ê, and the quick e at the end of a word—and three meaning-changing ways to pronounce o—ó, ô, and the quick o at the ends of words. But it’s close enough to get you through this book.)

Consonant combinations: The combination lh is pronounced like the lli in William; nh, like the ni in onion. The combination ch is always pronounced like the English sh. The combination qu, when followed by e or i, is pronounced like the English k; when followed by a, o, or u, like the English qu; the same pattern is followed by gu. Thus Quara is pronounced KWAH-rah, while Figueira is pronounced fee-GAY-rah.

Vowel combinations: The combination ou is pronounced like the ow in throw; ai, like igh in high; ei, like eigh in weigh. The combination eu is not found in English; it is pronounced as a very quick combination of the e in get and the u in put.

Nasal vowels: A vowel or vowel combination with a tilde—usually ão and ã—or the combination am at the end of a word are all nasalized. That is, they are pronounced as if the vowel were going to end with the English ng sound, only the ng is never quite closed. In addition, the syllable with a tilde is always stressed, so that the name Marcão is pronounced mah-KOWNG. (Syllables with ˆ and ′ accent marks are also stressed.)

If I told you that when t comes before the i sound it’s pronounced like the English ch, and d follows the same pattern to sound like the English j, or if I mentioned that x always sounds like sh except when it sounds like z, you might well give up entirely, so I won’t.

PROLOGUE

In the year 1830, after the formation of Starways Congress, a robot scout ship sent a report by ansible: The planet it was investigating was well within the parameters for human life. The nearest planet with any kind of population pressure was Baía; Starways Congress granted them the exploration license.

So it was that the first humans to see the new world were Portuguese by language, Brazilian by culture, and Catholic by creed. In the year 1886 they disembarked from their shuttle, crossed themselves, and named the planet Lusitania—the ancient name of Portugal. They set about cataloguing the flora and fauna. Five days later they realized that the little forest-dwelling animals that they had called porquinhos—piggies—were not animals at all.

For the first time since the Xenocide of the Buggers by the monstrous Ender, humans had found intelligent alien life. The piggies were technologically primitive, but they used tools and built houses and spoke a language. “It is another chance God has given us,” declared Archcardinal Pio of Baía. “We can be redeemed for the destruction of the buggers.”

The members of Starways Congress worshipped many gods, or none, but they agreed with the Archcardinal. Lusitania would be settled from Baía, and therefore under Catholic License, as tradition demanded. But the colony could never spread beyond a limited area or exceed a limited population. And it was bound, above all, by one law:

The piggies were not to be disturbed.

1
PIPO

Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who arose from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts but brothers, not rivals but fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence.

Yet that is what I see, or yearn to see. The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.

—Demosthenes, Letter to the Framlings

Rooter was at once the most difficult and the most helpful of the pequeninos. He was always there whenever Pipo visited their clearing, and did his best to answer the questions Pipo was forbidden by law to come right out and ask. Pipo depended on him—too much, probably—yet though Rooter clowned and played like the irresponsible youngling that he was, he also watched, probed, tested. Pipo always had to beware of the traps that Rooter set for him.

A moment ago Rooter had been shimmying up trees, gripping the bark with only the horny pads on his ankles and inside his thighs. In his hands he carried two sticks—Father Sticks, they were called—which he beat against the tree in a compelling, arhythmic pattern as he climbed.

The noise brought Mandachuva out of the log house. He called to Rooter in the Males’ Language, and then in Portuguese. “P’ra baixo, bicho!” Several piggies nearby, hearing his Portuguese wordplay, expressed their appreciation by rubbing their thighs together sharply. It made a hissing noise, and Mandachuva took a little hop in the air in delight at their applause.

Rooter, in the meantime, bent over backward until it seemed certain he would fall. Then he flipped off with his hands, did a somersault in the air, and landed on his legs, hopping a few times but not stumbling.

“So now you’re an acrobat,” said Pipo.

Rooter swaggered over to him. It was his way of imitating humans. It was all the more effective as ridicule because his flattened upturned snout looked decidedly porcine. No wonder that offworlders called them “piggies.” The earliest visitors to this world had started calling them that in their first reports back in ’86, and by the time Lusitania Colony was founded in 1925, the name was indelible. The xenologers scattered among the Hundred Worlds wrote of them as “Lusitanian Aborigines,” though Pipo knew perfectly well that this was merely a matter of professional dignity; except in scholarly papers, xenologers no doubt called them piggies, too. As for Pipo, he usually called them pequeninos, and they seemed not to object, for now they called themselves “Little Ones.” Still, dignity or not, there was no denying it. At moments like this, Rooter looked like a hog on its hind legs.

“Acrobat,” Rooter said, trying out the new word. “What I did? You have a word for people who do that? So there are people who do that as their work?”

Pipo sighed silently, even as he froze his smile in place. The law strictly forbade him to share information about human society, lest it contaminate piggy culture. Yet Rooter played a constant game of squeezing the last drop of implication out of everything Pipo said. This time, though, Pipo had no one to blame but himself, letting out a silly remark that opened unnecessary windows onto human life. Now and then he got so comfortable among the pequeninos that he spoke naturally. Always a danger. I’m not good at this constant game of taking information while trying to give nothing in return. Libo, my close-mouthed son, already he’s better at discretion than I am, and he’s only been apprenticed to me—how long since he turned thirteen?—four months.

“I wish I had pads on my legs like yours,” said Pipo. “The bark on that tree would rip my skin to shreds.”

“That would cause us all to be ashamed.” Rooter held still in the expectant posture that Pipo thought of as their way of showing mild anxiety, or perhaps a nonverbal warning to other pequeninos to be cautious. It might also have been a sign of extreme fear, but as far as Pipo knew he had never seen a pequenino show extreme fear.

In any event, Pipo spoke quickly to calm him. “Don’t worry, I’m too old and soft to climb trees like that. I’ll leave it to you younglings.”

And it worked; Rooter’s body at once became mobile again. “I like to climb trees. I can see everything.” Rooter squatted in front of Pipo and leaned his face in close. “Will you bring the beast that runs over the grass without touching the ground? The others don’t believe me when I say I saw such a thing.”

Another trap. What, Pipo, xenologer, will you humiliate this individual of the community you’re studying? Or will you adhere to the rigid law set up by Starways Congress to govern this encounter? There were few precedents. The only other intelligent aliens that humankind had encountered were the buggers, three thousand years ago, and at the end of it the buggers were all dead. This time Starways Congress was making sure that if humanity erred, their errors would be in the opposite direction. Minimal information, minimal contact.

Rooter recognized Pipo’s hesitation, his careful silence.

“You never tell us anything,” said Rooter. “You watch us and study us, but you never let us past your fence and into your village to watch you and study you.”

Pipo answered as honestly as he could, but it was more important to be careful than to be honest. “If you learn so little and we learn so much, why is it that you speak both Stark and Portuguese while I’m still struggling with your language?”

“We’re smarter.” Then Rooter leaned back and spun around on his buttocks so his back was toward Pipo. “Go back behind your fence,” he said.

Pipo stood at once. Not too far away, Libo was with three pequeninos, trying to learn how they wove dried merdona vines into thatch. He saw Pipo and in a moment was with his father, ready to go. Pipo led him off without a word; since the pequeninos were so fluent in human languages, they never discussed what they had learned until they were inside the gate.

It took a half hour to get home, and it was raining heavily when they passed through the gate and walked along the face of the hill to the Zenador’s Station. Zenador? Pipo thought of the word as he looked at the small sign above the door. On it the word XENOLOGER was written in Stark. That is what I am, I suppose, thought Pipo, at least to the offworlders. But the Portuguese title Zenador was so much easier to say that on Lusitania hardly anyone said xenologer, even when speaking Stark. That is how languages change, thought Pipo. If it weren’t for the ansible, providing instantaneous communication among the Hundred Worlds, we could not possibly maintain a common language. Interstellar travel is far too rare and slow. Stark would splinter into ten thousand dialects within a century. It might be interesting to have the computers run a projection of linguistic changes on Lusitania, if Stark were allowed to decay and absorb Portuguese—or vice-versa.

“Father,” said Libo.

Only then did Pipo notice that he had stopped ten meters away from the station. Tangents. The best parts of my intellectual life are tangential, in areas outside my expertise. I suppose because within my area of expertise the regulations they have placed upon me make it impossible to know or understand anything. The science of xenology insists on more mysteries than Mother Church.

His handprint was enough to unlock the door. Pipo knew how the evening would unfold even as he stepped inside to begin. It would take several hours of work at the terminals for them both to report what they had done during today’s encounter. Pipo would then read over Libo’s notes, and Libo would read Pipo’s, and when they were satisfied, Pipo would write up a brief summary and then let the computers take it from there, filing the notes and also transmitting them instantly, by ansible, to the xenologers in the rest of the Hundred Worlds. More than a thousand scientists whose whole career is studying the one alien race we know, and except for what little the satellites can discover about this arboreal species, all the information my colleagues have is what Libo and I send them. This is definitely minimal intervention.

But when Pipo got inside the station, he saw at once that it would not be an evening of steady but relaxing work. Dona Cristã was there, dressed in her monastic robes. Was it one of the younger children, in trouble at school?

“No, no,” said Dona Cristã. “All your children are doing very well, except this one, who I think is far too young to be out of school and working here, even as an apprentice.”

Libo said nothing. A wise decision, thought Pipo. Dona Cristã was a brilliant and engaging, perhaps even beautiful, young woman, but she was first and foremost a monk of the order of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo, Children of the Mind of Christ, and she was not beautiful to behold when she was angry at ignorance and stupidity. It was amazing the number of quite intelligent people whose ignorance and stupidity had melted somewhat in the fire of her scorn. Silence, Libo, it’s a policy that will do you good.

“I’m not here about any child of yours at all,” said Dona Cristã. “I’m here about Novinha.”

Dona Cristã did not have to mention a last name; everybody knew Novinha. The terrible Descolada had ended only eight years before. The plague had threatened to wipe out the colony before it had a fair chance to get started; the cure was discovered by Novinha’s father and mother, Gusto and Cida, the two xenobiologists. It was a tragic irony that they found the cause of the disease and its treatment too late to save themselves. Theirs was the last Descolada funeral.

Pipo clearly remembered the little girl Novinha, standing there holding Mayor Bosquinha’s hand while Bishop Peregrino conducted the funeral mass himself. No—not holding the Mayor’s hand. The picture came back to his mind, and, with it, the way he felt. What does she make of this? he remembered asking himself. It’s the funeral of her parents, she’s the last survivor in her family; yet all around her she can sense the great rejoicing of the people of this colony. Young as she is, does she understand that our joy is the best tribute to her parents? They struggled and succeeded, finding our salvation in the waning days before they died; we are here to celebrate the great gift they gave us. But to you, Novinha, it’s the death of your parents, as your brothers died before. Five hundred dead, and more than a hundred masses for the dead here in this colony in the last six months, and all of them were held in an atmosphere of fear and grief and despair. Now, when your parents die, the fear and grief and despair are no less for you than ever before—but no one else shares your pain. It is the relief from pain that is foremost in our minds.

Watching her, trying to imagine her feelings, he succeeded only in rekindling his own grief at the death of his own Maria, seven years old, swept away in the wind of death that covered her body in cancerous growth and rampant funguses, the flesh swelling or decaying, a new limb, not arm or leg, growing out of her hip, while the flesh sloughed off her feet and head, baring the bones, her sweet and beautiful body destroyed before their eyes, while her bright mind was mercilessly alert, able to feel all that happened to her until she cried out to God to let her die. Pipo remembered that, and then remembered her requiem mass, shared with five other victims. As he sat, knelt, stood there with his wife and surviving children, he had felt the perfect unity of the people in the Cathedral. He knew that his pain was everybody’s pain, that through the loss of his eldest daughter he was bound to his community with the inseparable bonds of grief, and it was a comfort to him, it was something to cling to. That was how such a grief ought to be, a public mourning.

Little Novinha had nothing of that. Her pain was, if anything, worse than Pipo’s had been—at least Pipo had not been left without any family at all, and he was an adult, not a child terrified by suddenly losing the foundation of her life. In her grief she was not drawn more tightly into the community, but rather excluded from it. Today everyone was rejoicing, except her. Today everyone praised her parents; she alone yearned for them, would rather they had never found the cure for others if only they could have remained alive themselves.

Her isolation was so acute that Pipo could see it from where he sat. Novinha took her hand away from the Mayor as quickly as possible. Her tears dried up as the mass progressed; by the end she sat in silence, like a prisoner refusing to cooperate with her captors. Pipo’s heart broke for her. Yet he knew that even if he tried, he could not conceal his own gladness at the end of the Descolada, his rejoicing that none of his other children would be taken from him. She would see that; his effort to comfort her would be a mockery, would drive her further away.

After the mass she walked in bitter solitude amid the crowds of well-meaning people who cruelly told her that her parents were sure to be saints, sure to sit at the right hand of God. What kind of comfort is that for a child? Pipo whispered aloud to his wife, “She’ll never forgive us for today.”

“Forgive?” Conceição was not one of those wives who instantly understands her husband’s train of thought. “We didn’t kill her parents . . .”

“But we’re all rejoicing today, aren’t we? She’ll never forgive us for that.”

“Nonsense. She doesn’t understand anyway; she’s too young.”

She understands, Pipo thought. Didn’t Maria understand things when she was even younger than Novinha is now?

As the years passed—eight years now—he had seen her from time to time. She was his son Libo’s age, and until Libo’s thirteenth birthday that meant they were in many classes together. He heard her give occasional readings and speeches, along with other children. There was an elegance to her thought, an intensity to her examination of ideas, which appealed to him. At the same time, she seemed utterly cold, completely removed from everyone else. Pipo’s own boy, Libo, was shy, but even so he had several friends and had won the affection of his teachers. Novinha, though, had no friends at all, no one whose gaze she sought after a moment of triumph. There was no teacher who genuinely liked her, because she refused to reciprocate, to respond. “She is emotionally paralyzed,” Dona Cristã said once when Pipo asked about her. “There is no reaching her. She swears that she’s perfectly happy, and doesn’t see any need to change.”

Now Dona Cristã had come to the Zenador’s Station to talk to Pipo about Novinha. Why Pipo? He could guess only one reason for the principal of the school to come to him about this particular orphaned girl. “Am I to believe that in all the years you’ve had Novinha in your school, I’m the only person who asked about her?”

“Not the only person,” she said. “There was all kinds of interest in her a couple of years ago, when the Pope beatified her parents. Everybody asked then whether the daughter of Gusto and Cida, Os Venerados, had ever noticed any miraculous events associated with her parents, as so many other people had.”

“They actually asked her that?”

“There were rumors, and Bishop Peregrino had to investigate.” Dona Cristã got a bit tight-lipped when she spoke of the young spiritual leader of Lusitania Colony. But then, it was said that the hierarchy never got along well with the order of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo. “Her answer was instructive.”

“I can imagine.”

“She said, more or less, that if her parents were actually listening to prayers and had any influence in heaven to get them granted, then why wouldn’t they have answered her prayer, for them to return from the grave? That would be a useful miracle, she said, and there are precedents. If Os Venerados actually had the power to grant miracles, then it must mean they did not love her enough to answer her prayer. She preferred to believe that her parents still loved her, and simply did not have the power to act.”

“A born sophist,” said Pipo.

“A sophist and an expert in guilt: she told the Bishop that if the Pope declared her parents to be venerable, it would be the same as the Church saying that her parents hated her. The petition for canonization of her parents was proof that Lusitania despised her; if it was granted, it would be proof that the Church itself was despicable. Bishop Peregrino was livid.”

“I notice he sent in the petition anyway.”

“For the good of the community. And there were all those miracles.”

“Someone touches the shrine and a headache goes away and they cry ‘Milagre!—os santos me abençoaram!’” Miracle!—the saints have blessed me!

“You know that Holy Rome requires more substantial miracles than that. But it doesn’t matter. The Pope graciously allowed us to call our little town Milagre, and now I imagine that every time someone says that name, Novinha burns a little hotter with her secret rage.”

“Or colder. One never knows what temperature that sort of thing will take.”

“Anyway, Pipo, you aren’t the only one who ever asked about her. But you’re the only one who ever asked about her for her own sake, and not because of her Blessed parents.”

It was a sad thought, that except for the Filhos, who ran the schools of Lusitania, there had been no concern for the girl except the slender shards of attention Pipo had spared for her over the years.

“She has one friend,” said Libo.

Pipo had forgotten that his son was there—Libo was so quiet that he was easy to overlook. Dona Cristã also seemed startled. “Libo,” she said, “I think we were indiscreet, talking about one of your schoolmates like this.”

“I’m apprentice Zenador now,” Libo reminded her. It meant he wasn’t in school.

“Who is her friend?” asked Pipo.

“Marcão.”

“Marcos Ribeira,” Dona Cristã explained. “The tall boy—”

“Ah, yes, the one who’s built like a cabra.”

“He is strong,” said Dona Cristã. “But I’ve never noticed any friendship between them.”

“Once when Marcão was accused of something, and she happened to see it, she spoke for him.”

“You put a generous interpretation on it, Libo,” said Dona Cristã. “I think it is more accurate to say she spoke against the boys who actually did it and were trying to put the blame on him.”

“Marcão doesn’t see it that way,” said Libo. “I noticed a couple of times, the way he watches her. It isn’t much, but there is somebody who likes her.”

“Do you like her?” asked Pipo.

Libo paused for a moment in silence. Pipo knew what it meant. He was examining himself to find an answer. Not the answer that he thought would be most likely to bring him adult favor, and not the answer that would provoke their ire—the two kinds of deception that most children his age delighted in. He was examining himself to discover the truth.

“I think,” Libo said, “that I understood that she didn’t want to be liked. As if she were a visitor who expected to go back home any day.”

Dona Cristã nodded gravely. “Yes, that’s exactly right, that’s exactly the way she seems. But now, Libo, we must end our indiscretion by asking you to leave us while we—”

He was gone before she finished her sentence, with a quick nod of his head, a half-smile that said, Yes, I understand, and a deftness of movement that made his exit more eloquent proof of his discretion than if he had argued to stay. By this Pipo knew that Libo was annoyed at being asked to leave; he had a knack for making adults feel vaguely immature by comparison to him.

“Pipo,” said the principal, “she has petitioned for an early examination as xenobiologist. To take her parents’ place.”

Pipo raised an eyebrow.

“She claims that she has been studying the field intensely since she was a little child. That she’s ready to begin the work right now, without apprenticeship.”

“She’s thirteen, isn’t she?”

“There are precedents. Many have taken such tests early. One even passed it younger than her. It was two thousand years ago, but it was allowed. Bishop Peregrino is against it, of course, but Mayor Bosquinha, bless her practical heart, has pointed out that Lusitania needs a xenobiologist quite badly—we need to be about the business of developing new strains of plant life so we can get some decent variety in our diet and much better harvests from Lusitanian soil. In her words, ‘I don’t care if it’s an infant, we need a xenobiologist.’ ”

“And you want me to supervise her examination?”

“If you would be so kind.”

“I’ll be glad to.”

“I told them you would.”

“I confess I have an ulterior motive.”

“Oh?”

“I should have done more for the girl. I’d like to see if it isn’t too late to begin.”

Dona Cristã laughed a bit. “Oh, Pipo, I’d be glad for you to try. But do believe me, my dear friend, touching her heart is like bathing in ice.”

“I imagine. I imagine it feels like bathing in ice to the person touching her. But how does it feel to her? Cold as she is, it must surely burn like fire.”

“Such a poet,” said Dona Cristã. There was no irony in her voice; she meant it. “Do the piggies understand that we’ve sent our very best as our ambassador?”

“I try to tell them, but they’re skeptical.”

“I’ll send her to you tomorrow. I warn you—she’ll expect to take the examinations cold, and she’ll resist any attempt on your part to pre-examine her.”

Pipo smiled. “I’m far more worried about what will happen after she takes the test. If she fails, then she’ll have very bad problems. And if she passes, then my problems will begin.”

“Why?”

“Libo will be after me to let him examine early for Zenador. And if he did that, there’d be no reason for me not to go home, curl up, and die.”

“Such a romantic fool you are, Pipo. If there’s any man in Milagre who’s capable of accepting his thirteen-year-old son as a colleague, it’s you.”

After she left, Pipo and Libo worked together, as usual, recording the day’s events with the pequeninos. Pipo compared Libo’s work, his way of thinking, his insights, his attitudes, with those of the graduate students he had known in university before joining the Lusitania Colony. He might be small, and there might be a lot of theory and knowledge for him yet to learn, but he was already a true scientist in his method, and a humanist at heart. By the time the evening’s work was done and they walked home together by the light of Lusitania’s large and dazzling moon, Pipo had decided that Libo already deserved to be treated as a colleague, whether he took the examination or not. The tests couldn’t measure the things that really counted, anyway.

And whether she liked it or not, Pipo intended to find out if Novinha had the unmeasurable qualities of a scientist; if she didn’t, then he’d see to it she didn’t take the test, regardless of how many facts she had memorized.

Pipo meant to be difficult. Novinha knew how adults acted when they planned not to do things her way, but didn’t want a fight or even any nastiness. Of course, of course you can take the test. But there’s no reason to rush into it, let’s take some time, let me make sure you’ll be successful on the first attempt.

Novinha didn’t want to wait. Novinha was ready.

“I’ll jump through any hoops you want,” she said.

His face went cold. Their faces always did. That was all right, coldness was all right, she could freeze them to death. “I don’t want you to jump through hoops,” he said.

“The only thing I ask is that you line them up all in a row so I can jump through them quickly. I don’t want to be put off for days and days.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “You’re in such a hurry.”

“I’m ready. The Starways Code allows me to challenge the test at any time. It’s between me and the Starways Congress, and I can’t find anywhere that it says a xenologer can try to second-guess the Interplanetary Examinations Board.”

“Then you haven’t read carefully.”

“The only thing I need to take the test before I’m sixteen is the authorization of my legal guardian. I don’t have a legal guardian.”

“On the contrary,” said Pipo. “Mayor Bosquinha was your legal guardian from the day of your parents’ death.”

“And she agreed I could take the test.”

“Provided you came to me.”

Novinha saw the intense look in his eyes. She didn’t know Pipo, so she thought it was the look she had seen in so many eyes, the desire to dominate, to rule her, the desire to cut through her determination and break her independence, the desire to make her submit.

From ice to fire in an instant. “What do you know about xenobiology! You only go out and talk to the piggies, you don’t even begin to understand the workings of genes! Who are you to judge me! Lusitania needs a xenobiologist, and they’ve been without one for eight years. And you want to make them wait even longer, just so you can be in control!”

To her surprise, he didn’t become flustered, didn’t retreat. Nor did he get angry in return. It was as if she hadn’t spoken.

“I see,” he said quietly. “It’s because of your great love of the people of Lusitania that you wish to become xenobiologist. Seeing the public need, you sacrificed and prepared yourself to enter early into a lifetime of altruistic service.”

It sounded absurd, hearing him say it like that. And it wasn’t at all what she felt. “Isn’t that a good enough reason?”

“If it were true, it would be good enough.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Your own words called you a liar. You spoke of how much they, the people of Lusitania, need you. But you live among us. You’ve lived among us all your life. Ready to sacrifice for us, and yet you don’t feel yourself to be part of this community.”

So he wasn’t like the adults who always believed lies as long as they made her seem to be the child they wanted her to be. “Why should I feel like part of the community? I’m not.”

He nodded gravely, as if considering her answer. “What community are you a part of?”

“The only other communities on Lusitania are the piggies, and you haven’t seen me out there with the tree-worshippers.”

“There are many other communities on Lusitania. For instance, you’re a student—there’s a community of students.”

“Not for me.”

“I know. You have no friends, you have no intimate associates, you go to mass but you never go to confession, you are so completely detached that as far as possible you don’t touch the life of this colony, you don’t touch the life of the human race at any point. From all the evidence, you live in complete isolation.”

Novinha wasn’t prepared for this. He was naming the underlying pain of her life, and she didn’t have a strategy devised to cope with it. “If I do, it isn’t my fault.”

“I know that. I know where it began, and I know whose fault it was that it continues to this day.”

“Mine?”

“Mine. And everyone else’s. But mine most of all, because I knew what was happening to you and I did nothing at all. Until today.”

“And today you’re going to keep me from the one thing that matters to me in my life! Thanks so much for your compassion!”

Again he nodded solemnly, as if he were accepting and acknowledging her ironic gratitude. “In one sense, Novinha, it doesn’t matter that it isn’t your fault. Because the town of Milagre is a community, and whether it has treated you badly or not, it must still act as all communities do, to provide the greatest possible happiness for all its members.”

“Which means everybody on Lusitania except me—me and the piggies.”

“The xenobiologist is very important to a colony, especially one like this, surrounded by a fence that forever limits our growth. Our xenobiologist must find ways to grow more protein and carbohydrate per hectare, which means genetically altering the Earthborn corn and potatoes to make—”

“To make maximum use of the nutrients available in the Lusitanian environment. Do you think I’m planning to take the examination without knowing what my life’s work would be?”

“Your life’s work, to devote yourself to improving the lives of people you despise.”

Now Novinha saw the trap that he had laid for her. Too late; it had sprung. “So you think that a xenobiologist can’t do her work unless she loves the people who use the things she makes?”

“I don’t care whether you love us or not. What I have to know is what you really want. Why you’re so passionate to do this.”

“Basic psychology. My parents died in this work, and so I’m trying to step into their role.”

“Maybe,” said Pipo. “And maybe not. What I want to know, Novinha, what I must know before I’ll let you take the test, is what community you do belong to.”

“You said it yourself! I don’t belong to any.”

“Impossible. Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to and the ones she doesn’t belong to. I am this and this and this, but definitely not that and that and that. All your definitions are negative. I could make an infinite list of the things you are not. But a person who really believes she doesn’t belong to any community at all invariably kills herself, either by killing her body or by giving up her identity and going mad.”

“That’s me, insane to the root.”

“Not insane. Driven by a sense of purpose that is frightening. If you take this test you’ll pass it. But before I let you take it I have to know: Who will you become when you pass? What do you believe in, what are you part of, what do you care about, what do you love?”

“Nobody in this or any other world.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’ve never known a good man or woman in the world except my parents and they’re dead! And even they—nobody understands anything.”

“You.”

“I’m part of anything, aren’t I? But nobody understands anybody, not even you, pretending to be so wise and compassionate but you’re only getting me to cry like this because you have the power to stop me from doing what I want to do—”

“And it isn’t xenobiology.”

“Yes it is! That’s part of it, anyway.”

“And what’s the rest of it?”

“What you are. What you do. Only you’re doing it all wrong, you’re doing it stupidly.”

“Xenobiologist and xenologer.”

“They made a stupid mistake when they created a new science to study the piggies. They were a bunch of tired old anthropologists who put on new hats and called themselves xenologers. But you can’t understand the piggies just by watching the way they behave! They came out of a different evolution! You have to understand their genes, what’s going on inside their cells. And the other animals’ cells, too, because they can’t be studied by themselves, nothing lives in isolation—”

Don’t lecture me, thought Pipo. Tell me what you feel. And to provoke her to be more emotional, he whispered, “Except you.”

It worked. From cold and contemptuous she became hot and defensive. “You’ll never understand them! But I will!”

“Why do you care about them? What are the piggies to you?”

“You’d never understand. You’re a good Catholic.” She said the word with contempt. “It’s a book that’s on the Index.”

Pipo’s face glowed with sudden understanding. “The Hive Queen and the Hegemon.”

“He lived three thousand years ago, whoever he was, the one who called himself the Speaker for the Dead. But he understood the buggers! We wiped them all out, the only other alien race we ever knew, we killed them all, but he understood.”

“And you want to write the story of the pequeninos the way the original Speaker wrote of the buggers.”

“The way you say it, you make it sound as easy as doing a scholarly paper. You don’t know what it was like to write the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. How much agony it was for him to—to imagine himself inside an alien mind—and come out of it filled with love for the great creature we destroyed. He lived at the same time as the worst human being who ever lived, Ender the Xenocide, who destroyed the buggers—and he did his best to undo what Ender did, the Speaker for the Dead tried to raise the dead—”

“But he couldn’t.”

“But he did! He made them live again—you’d know it if you had read the book! I don’t know about Jesus, I listen to Bishop Peregrino and I don’t think there’s any power in their priesthood to turn wafers into flesh or forgive a milligram of guilt. But the Speaker for the Dead brought the hive queen back to life.”

“Then where is she?”

“In here! In me!”

He nodded. “And someone else is in you. The Speaker for the Dead. That’s who you want to be.”

“It’s the only true story I ever heard,” she said. “The only one I care about. Is that what you wanted to hear? That I’m a heretic? And my whole life’s work is going to be adding another book to the Index of truths that good Catholics are forbidden to read.”

“What I wanted to hear,” said Pipo softly, “was the name of what you are instead of the name of all the things that you are not. What you are is the hive queen. What you are is the Speaker for the Dead. It’s a very small community, small in numbers, but a great-hearted one. So you chose not to be part of the bands of children who group together for the sole purpose of excluding others, and people look at you and say, poor girl, she’s so isolated, but you know a secret, you know who you really are. You are the one human being who is capable of understanding the alien mind, because you are the alien mind; you know what it is to be unhuman because there’s never been any human group that gave you credentials as a bona fide homo sapiens.”

“Now you say I’m not even human? You made me cry like a little girl because you wouldn’t let me take the test, you made me humiliate myself, and now you say I’m unhuman?”

“You can take the test.”

The words hung in the air.

“When?” she whispered.

“Tonight. Tomorrow. Begin when you like. I’ll stop my work to take you through the tests as quickly as you like.”

“Thank you! Thank you, I—”

“Become the Speaker for the Dead. I’ll help you all I can. The law forbids me to take anyone but my apprentice, my son Libo, out to meet the pequeninos. But we’ll open our notes to you. Everything we learn, we’ll show you. All our guesses and speculation. In return, you also show us all your work, what you find out about the genetic patterns of this world that might help us understand the pequeninos. And when we’ve learned enough, together, you can write your book, you can become the Speaker. But this time not the Speaker for the Dead. The pequeninos aren’t dead.”

In spite of herself, she smiled. “The Speaker for the Living.”

“I’ve read the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, too,” he said. “I can’t think of a better place for you to find your name.”

But she did not trust him yet, did not believe what he seemed to be promising. “I’ll want to come here often. All the time.”

“We lock it up when we go home to bed.”

“But all the rest of the time. You’ll get tired of me. You’ll tell me to go away. You’ll keep secrets from me. You’ll tell me to be quiet and not mention my ideas.”

“We’ve only just become friends, and already you think I’m such a liar and cheat, such an impatient oaf.”

“But you will, everyone does; they all wish I’d go away—”

Pipo shrugged. “So? Sometime or other everybody wishes everybody would go away. Sometimes I’ll wish you would go away. What I’m telling you now is that even at those times, even if I tell you to go away, you don’t have to go away.”

It was the most bafflingly perfect thing that anyone had ever said to her. “That’s crazy.”

“Only one thing. Promise me you’ll never try to go out to the pequeninos. Because I can never let you do that, and if somehow you do it anyway, Starways Congress would close down all our work here, forbid any contact with them. Do you promise me? Or everything—my work, your work—it will all be undone.”

“I promise.”

“When will you take the test?”

“Now! Can I begin it now?”

He laughed gently, then reached out a hand and without looking touched the terminal. It came to life, the first genetic models appearing in the air above the terminal.

“You had the examination ready,” she said. “You were all set to go! You knew that you’d let me do it all along!”

He shook his head. “I hoped. I believed in you. I wanted to help you do what you dreamed of doing. As long as it was something good.”

She would not have been Novinha if she hadn’t found one more poisonous thing to say. “I see. You are the judge of dreams.”

Perhaps he didn’t know it was an insult. He only smiled and said, “Faith, hope, and love—these three. But the greatest of these is love.”

“You don’t love me,” she said.

“Ah,” he said. “I am the judge of dreams, and you are the judge of love. Well, I find you guilty of dreaming good dreams, and sentence you to a lifetime of working and suffering for the sake of your dreams. I only hope that someday you won’t declare me innocent of the crime of loving you.” He grew reflective for a moment. “I lost a daughter in the Descolada. Maria. She would have been only a few years older than you.”

“And I remind you of her?”

“I was thinking that she would have been nothing at all like you.”

She began the test. It took three days. She passed it, with a score a good deal higher than many a graduate student. In retrospect, however, she would not remember the test because it was the beginning of her career, the end of her childhood, the confirmation of her vocation for her life’s work. She would remember the test because it was the beginning of her time in Pipo’s Station, where Pipo and Libo and Novinha together formed the first community she belonged to since her parents were put into the earth.

It was not easy, especially at the beginning. Novinha did not instantly shed her habit of cold confrontation. Pipo understood it, was prepared to bend with her verbal blows. It was much more of a challenge for Libo. The Zenador’s Station had been a place where he and his father could be alone together. Now, without anyone asking his consent, a third person had been added, a cold and demanding person, who spoke to him as if he were a child, even though they were the same age. It galled him that she was a full-fledged xenobiologist, with all the adult status that that implied, when he was still an apprentice.

But he tried to bear it patiently. He was naturally calm, and quiet adhered to him. He was not prone to taking umbrage openly. But Pipo knew his son and saw him burn. After a while even Novinha, insensitive as she was, began to realize that she was provoking Libo more than any normal young man could possibly endure. But instead of easing up on him, she began to regard it as a challenge. How could she force some response from this unnaturally calm, gentle-spirited, beautiful boy?

“You mean you’ve been working all these years,” she said one day, “and you don’t even know how the piggies reproduce? How do you know they’re all males?”

Libo answered softly. “We explained male and female to them as they learned our languages. They chose to call themselves males. And referred to the other ones, the ones we’ve never seen, as females.”

“But for all you know, they reproduce by budding! Or mitosis!”

Her tone was contemptuous, and Libo did not answer quickly. Pipo imagined he could hear his son’s thoughts, carefully rephrasing his answer until it was gentle and safe. “I wish our work were more like physical anthropology,” he said. “Then we would be more prepared to apply your research into Lusitania’s subcellular life patterns to what we learn about the pequeninos.”

Novinha looked horrified. “You mean you don’t even take tissue samples?”

Libo blushed slightly, but his voice was still calm when he answered. The boy would have been like this under questioning by the Inquisition, Pipo thought. “It is foolish, I guess,” said Libo, “but we’re afraid the pequeninos would wonder why we took pieces of their bodies. If one of them took sick by chance afterward, would they think we caused the illness?”

“What if you took something they shed naturally? You can learn a lot from a hair.”

Libo nodded; Pipo, watching from his terminal on the other side of the room, recognized the gesture—Libo had learned it from his father. “Many primitive tribes of Earth believed that sheddings from their bodies contained some of their life and strength. What if the piggies thought we were doing magic against them?”

“Don’t you know their language? I thought some of them spoke Stark, too.” She made no effort to hide her disdain. “Can’t you explain what the samples are for?”

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “But if we explained what we’d use the tissue samples for, we might accidently teach them concepts of biological science a thousand years before they would naturally have reached that point. That’s why the law forbids us to explain things like that.”

Finally, Novinha was abashed. “I didn’t realize how tightly you were bound by the doctrine of minimal intervention.”

Pipo was glad to hear her retreat from her arrogance, but if anything, her humility was worse. The child was so isolated from human contact that she spoke like an excessively formal science book. Pipo wondered if it was already too late to teach her how to be a human being.

It wasn’t. Once she realized that they were excellent at their science, and that she knew almost nothing of it, she dropped her aggressive stance and went almost to the opposite extreme. For weeks she spoke to Pipo and Libo only rarely. Instead she studied their reports, trying to grasp the purpose behind what they were doing. Now and then she had a question, and asked; they answered politely and thoroughly.

Politeness gradually gave way to familiarity. Pipo and Libo began to converse openly in front of her, airing their speculations about why the pequeninos had developed some of their strange behaviors, what meaning lay behind some of their odd statements, why they remained so maddeningly impenetrable. And since the study of pequeninos was a very new branch of science, it didn’t take long for Novinha to be expert enough, even at second hand, to offer some hypotheses. “After all,” said Pipo, encouraging her, “we’re all blind together.”

Pipo had foreseen what happened next. Libo’s carefully cultivated patience had made him seem cold and reserved to others of his age, when Pipo could prevail on him even to attempt to socialize; Novinha’s isolation was more flamboyant but no more thorough. Now, however, their common interest in the pequeninos drew them close—who else could they talk to, when no one but Pipo could even understand their conversations?

They relaxed together, laughed themselves to tears over jokes that could not possibly amuse any other Luso. Just as the piggies seemed to name every tree in the forest, Libo playfully named all the furniture in the Zenador’s Station, and periodically announced that certain items were in a bad mood and shouldn’t be disturbed. “Don’t sit on Chair! It’s her time of the month again.” They had never seen a pequenino female, and the males always seemed to refer to them with almost religious reverence; Novinha wrote a series of mock reports on an imaginary pequenino woman called Reverend Mother, who was hilariously bitchy and demanding.

It was not all laughter. There were problems, worries, and once a time of real fear that they might have done exactly what the Starways Congress had tried so hard to prevent—make radical changes in pequenino society. It began with Rooter of course. Rooter, who persisted in asking challenging, impossible questions, like, “If you have no other city of humans, how can you go to war? There’s no honor for you in killing Little Ones.” Pipo babbled something about how humans would never kill pequeninos, Little Ones; but he knew that this wasn’t the question Rooter was really asking.

Pipo had known for years that the pequeninos knew the concept of war, but for days after that Libo and Novinha argued heatedly about whether Rooter’s question proved that the piggies regarded war as desirable or merely unavoidable. There were other bits of information from Rooter, some important, some not—and many whose importance was impossible to judge. In a way, Rooter himself was proof of the wisdom of the policy that forbade the xenologers to ask questions that would reveal human expectations, and therefore human practices. Rooter’s questions often gave them more answers than they got from his answers to their own questions.

The last information Rooter gave them, though, was not in a question. It was a guess, spoken to Libo privately, when Pipo was off with some of the others examining the way they built their log house. “I know I know,” said Rooter, “I know why Pipo is still alive. Your women are too stupid to know that he is wise.”

Libo struggled to make sense of this seeming non sequitur. What did Rooter think, that if human women were smarter, they would kill Pipo? The talk of killing was disturbing—this was obviously an important matter, and Libo did not know how to handle it alone. Yet he couldn’t call Pipo to help, since Rooter obviously wanted to discuss it where Pipo couldn’t hear.

When Libo didn’t answer, Rooter persisted. “Your women, they are weak and stupid. I told the others this, and they said I could ask you. Your women don’t see Pipo’s wisdom. Is this true?”

Rooter seemed very agitated; he was breathing heavily, and he kept pulling hairs from his arms, four and five at a time. Libo had to answer, somehow. “Most women don’t know him,” he said.

“Then how will they know if he should die?” asked Rooter. Then, suddenly, he went very still and spoke very loudly. “You are cabras!”

Only then did Pipo come into view, wondering what the shouting was about. He saw at once that Libo was desperately out of his depth. Yet Pipo had no notion what the conversation was even about—how could he help? All he knew was that Rooter was saying humans—or at least Pipo and Libo—were somehow like the large beasts that grazed in herds on the prairie. Pipo couldn’t even tell if Rooter was angry or happy.

“You are cabras! You decide!” He pointed at Libo and then at Pipo. “Your women don’t choose your honor, you do! Just like in battle, but all the time!”

Pipo had no idea what Rooter was talking about, but he could see that all the pequeninos were motionless as stumps, waiting for him—or Libo—to answer. It was plain Libo was too frightened by Rooter’s strange behavior to dare any response at all. In this case, Pipo could see no point but to tell the truth; it was, after all, a relatively obvious and trivial bit of information about human society. It was against the rules that the Starways Congress had established for him, but failing to answer would be even more damaging, and so Pipo went ahead.

“Women and men decide together, or they decide for themselves,” said Pipo. “One doesn’t decide for the other.”

It was apparently what all the piggies had been waiting for. “Cabras,” they said, over and over; they ran to Rooter, hooting and whistling. They picked him up and rushed him off into the woods. Pipo tried to follow, but two of the piggies stopped him and shook their heads. It was a human gesture they had learned long before, but it held stronger meaning for the pequeninos. It was absolutely forbidden for Pipo to follow. They were going to the women, and that was the one place the pequeninos had told them they could never go.

On the way home, Libo reported how the difficulty began. “Do you know what Rooter said? He said our women were weak and stupid.”

“That’s because he’s never met Mayor Bosquinha. Or your mother, for that matter.”

Libo laughed, because his mother, Conceição, ruled the archives as if it were an ancient estação in the wild mato—if you entered her domain, you were utterly subject to her law. As he laughed, he felt something slip away, some idea that was important—what were we talking about? The conversation went on; Libo had forgotten, and soon he even forgot that he had forgotten.

That night they heard the drumming sound that Pipo and Libo believed was part of some sort of celebration. It didn’t happen all that often, like beating on great drums with heavy sticks. Tonight, though, the celebration seemed to go on forever. Pipo and Libo speculated that perhaps the human example of sexual equality had somehow given the male pequeninos some hope of liberation. “I think this may qualify as a serious modification of pequenino behavior,” Pipo said gravely. “If we find that we’ve caused real change, I’m going to have to report it, and Congress will probably direct that human contact with pequeninos be cut off for a while. Years, perhaps.” It was a sobering thought—that doing their job faithfully might lead Starways Congress to forbid them to do their job at all.

In the morning Novinha walked with them to the gate in the high fence that separated the human city from the slopes leading up to the forest hills where the piggies lived. Because Pipo and Libo were still trying to reassure each other that neither of them could have done any differently, Novinha walked on ahead and got to the gate first. When the others arrived, she pointed to a patch of freshly cleared red earth only thirty meters or so up the hill from the gate. “That’s new,” she said. “And there’s something in it.”

Pipo opened the gate, and Libo, being younger, ran on ahead to investigate. He stopped at the edge of the cleared patch and went completely rigid, staring down at whatever lay there. Pipo, seeing him, also stopped, and Novinha, suddenly frightened for Libo, ignored the regulation and ran through the gate. Libo’s head rocked backward and he dropped to his knees; he clutched his tight-curled hair and cried out in terrible remorse.

Rooter lay spread-eagled in the cleared dirt. He had been eviscerated, and not carelessly: Each organ had been cleanly separated, and the strands and filaments of his limbs had also been pulled out and spread in a symmetrical pattern on the drying soil. Everything still had some connection to the body—nothing had been completely severed.

Libo’s agonized crying was almost hysterical. Novinha knelt by him and held him, rocked him, tried to soothe him. Pipo methodically took out his small camera and took pictures from every angle so the computer could analyze it in detail later.

“He was still alive when they did this,” Libo said, when he had calmed enough to speak. Even so, he had to say the words slowly, carefully, as if he were a foreigner just learning to speak. “There’s so much blood on the ground, spattered so far—his heart had to be beating when they opened him up.”

“We’ll discuss it later,” said Pipo.

Now the thing Libo had forgotten yesterday came back to him with cruel clarity. “It’s what Rooter said about the women. They decide when the men should die. He told me that, and I—” He stopped himself. Of course he did nothing. The law required him to do nothing. And at that moment he decided that he hated the law. If the law meant allowing this to be done to Rooter, then the law had no understanding. Rooter was a person. You don’t stand by and let this happen to a person just because you’re studying him.

“They didn’t dishonor him,” said Novinha. “If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s the love that they have for trees. See?” Out of the center of his chest cavity, which was otherwise empty now, a very small seedling sprouted. “They planted a tree to mark his burial spot.”

“Now we know why they name all their trees,” said Libo bitterly. “They planted them as grave markers for the piggies they tortured to death.”

“This is a very large forest,” Pipo said calmly. “Please confine your hypotheses to what is at least remotely possible.” They were calmed by his quiet, reasoned tone, his insistence that even now they behave as scientists.

“What should we do?” asked Novinha.

“We should get you back inside the perimeter immediately,” said Pipo. “It’s forbidden for you to come out here.”

“But I meant—with the body—what should we do?”

“Nothing,” said Pipo. “The pequeninos have done what pequeninos do, for whatever reason pequeninos do it.” He helped Libo to his feet.

Libo had trouble standing for a moment; he leaned on both of them for his first few steps. “What did I say?” he whispered. “I don’t even know what it is I said that killed him.”

“It wasn’t you,” said Pipo. “It was me.”

“What, do you think you own them?” demanded Novinha. “Do you think their world revolves around you? As you said, the piggies did it, for whatever reason they have. It’s plain enough this isn’t the first time—they were too deft at the vivisection for this to be the first time.”

Pipo took it with black humor. “We’re losing our wits, Libo. Novinha isn’t supposed to know anything about xenology.”

“You’re right,” said Libo. “Whatever may have triggered this, it’s something they’ve done before. A custom.” He was trying to sound calm.

“But that’s even worse, isn’t it?” said Novinha. “It’s their custom to gut each other alive.” She looked at the other trees of the forest that began at the top of the hill and wondered how many of them were rooted in blood.

Pipo sent his report on the ansible, and the computer didn’t give him any trouble about the priority level. He left it up to the oversight committee to decide whether contact with the piggies should be stopped. The committee could not identify any fatal error. “It is impossible to conceal the relationship between our sexes, since someday a woman may be xenologer,” said the report, “and we can find no point at which you did not act reasonably and prudently. Our tentative conclusion is that you were unwitting participants in some sort of power struggle, which was decided against Rooter, and that you should continue your contact with all reasonable prudence.”

It was complete vindication, but it still wasn’t easy to take. Libo had grown up knowing the piggies, or at least hearing about them from his father. He knew Rooter better than he knew any human being besides his family and Novinha. It took days for Libo to come back to the Zenador’s Station, weeks before he would go back out into the forest. The piggies gave no sign that anything had changed; if anything, they were more open and friendly than before. No one ever spoke of Rooter, least of all Pipo and Libo. There were changes on the human side, however. Pipo and Libo never got more than a few steps away from each other when they were among them.

The pain and remorse of that day drew Libo and Novinha to rely on each other even more, as though darkness bound them closer than light. The piggies now seemed dangerous and uncertain, just as human company had always been, and between Pipo and Libo there now hung the question of who was at fault, no matter how often each tried to reassure the other. So the only good and reliable thing in Libo’s life was Novinha, and in Novinha’s life, Libo.

Even though Libo had a mother and siblings, and Pipo and Libo always went home to them, Novinha and Libo behaved as if the Zenador’s Station were an island, with Pipo a loving but ever remote Prospero. Pipo wondered: Are the pequeninos like Ariel, leading the young lovers to happiness, or are they little Calibans, scarcely under control and chafing to do murder?

After a few months, Rooter’s death faded into memory, and their laughter returned, though perhaps it was not as carefree as before. By the time they were seventeen, Libo and Novinha were so sure of each other that they routinely talked of what they would do together five, ten, twenty years later. Pipo never bothered to ask them about their marriage plans. After all, he thought, they studied biology from morning to night. Eventually it would occur to them to explore stable and socially acceptable reproductive strategies. In the meantime, it was enough that they puzzled endlessly over when and how the pequeninos mated, considering that the males had no discernable reproductive organ. Their speculations on how the pequeninos combined genetic material invariably ended in jokes so lewd that it took all of Pipo’s self-control to pretend not to find them amusing.

So the Zenador’s Station for those few short years was a place of true companionship for two brilliant young people who otherwise would have been condemned to cold solitude. It did not occur to any of them that the idyll would end abruptly, and forever, and under circumstances that would send a tremor throughout the Hundred Worlds.

It was all so simple, so commonplace. Novinha was analyzing the genetic structure of the fly-infested reeds along the river, and realized that the same subcellular body that had caused the Descolada was present in the cells of the reed. She brought several other cell structures into the air over the computer terminal and rotated them. They all contained the Descolada agent.

She called to Pipo, who was running through transcriptions of yesterday’s visit to the pequeninos. The computer ran comparisons of every cell she had samples of. Regardless of cell function, regardless of the species it was taken from, every alien cell contained the Descolada body, and the computer declared them absolutely identical in chemical proportions.

Novinha expected Pipo to nod, tell her it looked interesting, maybe come up with a hypothesis. Instead he sat down and ran the same test over, asking her questions about how the computer comparison operated, and then what the Descolada body actually did.

“Mother and Father never figured out what triggered it, but the Descolada body releases this little protein—well, pseudo-protein, I suppose—and it attacks the genetic molecules, starting at one end and unzipping the two strands of the molecule right down the middle. That’s why they called it the descolador—it unglues the DNA in humans, too.”

“Show me what it does in alien cells.”

Novinha put the simulation in motion.

“No, not just the genetic molecule—the whole environment of the cell.”

“It’s just in the nucleus,” she said. She widened the field to include more variables. The computer took it more slowly, since it was considering millions of random arrangements of nuclear material every second. In the reed cell, as a genetic molecule came unglued, several large ambient proteins affixed themselves to the open strands. “In humans, the DNA tries to re-combine, but random proteins insert themselves so that cell after cell goes crazy. Sometimes they go into mitosis, like cancer, and sometimes they die. What’s most important is that in humans the Descolada bodies themselves reproduce like crazy, passing from cell to cell. Of course, every alien creature already has them.”

But Pipo wasn’t interested in what she said. When the descolador had finished with the genetic molecules of the reed, he looked from one cell to another. “It’s not just significant, it’s the same,” he said. “It’s the same thing!”

Novinha didn’t see at once what he had noticed. What was the same as what? Nor did she have time to ask. Pipo was already out of the chair, grabbing his coat, heading for the door. It was drizzling outside. Pipo paused only to call out to her, “Tell Libo not to bother coming, just show him that simulation and see if he can figure it out before I get back. He’ll know—it’s the answer to the big one. The answer to everything.”

“Tell me!”

He laughed. “Don’t cheat. Libo will tell you, if you can’t see it.”

“Where are you going?”

“To ask the pequeninos if I’m right, of course! But I know I am, even if they lie about it. If I’m not back in an hour, I slipped in the rain and broke my leg.”

Libo did not get to see the simulations. The meeting of the planning committee went way over time in an argument about extending the cattle range, and after the meeting Libo still had to pick up the week’s groceries. By the time he got back, Pipo had been out for four hours, it was getting on toward dark, and the drizzle was turning to snow. They went out at once to look for him, afraid that it might take hours to find him in the woods.

They found him all too soon. His body was already cooling in the snow. The piggies hadn’t even planted a tree in him.

2
TRONDHEIM

I’m deeply sorry that I could not act upon your request for more detail concerning the courtship and marriage customs of the aboriginal Lusitanians. This must be causing you unimaginable distress, or else you would never have petitioned the Xenological Society to censure me for failure to cooperate with your researches.

When would-be xenologers complain that I am not getting the right sort of data from my observations of the pequeninos, I always urge them to reread the limitations placed upon me by law. I am permitted to bring no more than one assistant on field visits; I may not ask questions that might reveal human expectations, lest they try to imitate us; I may not volunteer information to elicit a parallel response; I may not stay with them more than four hours at a time; except for my clothing, I may not use any products of technology in their presence, which includes cameras, recorders, computers, or even a manufactured pen to write on manufactured paper; I may not even observe them unawares.

In short: I cannot tell you how the pequeninos reproduce because they have chosen not to do it in front of me.

Of course your research is crippled! Of course our conclusions about the pequeninos are absurd! If we had to observe your university under the same limitations that bind us in our observation of the Lusitanian aborigines, we would no doubt conclude that humans do not reproduce, do not form kinship groups, and devote their entire life cycle to the metamorphosis of the larval student into the adult professor. We might even suppose that professors exercise noticeable power in human society. A competent investigation would quickly reveal the inaccuracy of such conclusions—but in the case of the pequeninos, no competent investigation is permitted or even contemplated.

Anthropology is never an exact science; the observer never experiences the same culture as the participant. But these are natural limitations inherent to the science. It is the artificial limitations that hamper us—and, through us, you. At the present rate of progress we might as well be mailing questionnaires to the pequeninos and waiting for them to dash off scholarly papers in reply.

—João Figueira Alvarez, reply to Pietro Guataninni of the University of Sicily, Milano Campus, Etruria, published posthumously in Xenological Studies, 22:4:49:193

The news of Pipo’s death was not of merely local importance. It was transmitted instantaneously, by ansible, to all the Hundred Worlds. The first aliens discovered since Ender’s Xenocide had tortured to death the one human who was designated to observe them. Within hours, scholars, scientists, politicians, and journalists began to strike their poses.

A consensus soon emerged. One incident, under baffling circumstances, does not prove the failure of Starways Council policy toward the piggies. On the contrary, the fact that only one man died seems to prove the wisdom of the present policy of near inaction. We should, therefore, do nothing except continue to observe at a slightly less intense pace. Pipo’s successor was instructed to visit the piggies no more often than every other day, and never for longer than an hour. He was not to push the piggies to answer questions concerning their treatment of Pipo. It was a reinforcement of the old policy of inaction.

There was also much concern about the morale of the people of Lusitania. They were sent many new entertainment programs by ansible, despite the expense, to help take their minds off the grisly murder.

And then, having done the little that could be done by framlings, who were, after all, lightyears away from Lusitania, the people of the Hundred Worlds returned to their local concerns.

Outside Lusitania, only one man among the half-trillion human beings in the Hundred Worlds felt the death of João Figueira Alvarez, called Pipo, as a great change in the shape of his own life. Andrew Wiggin was a speaker for the dead in the university city of Reykjavik, renowned as the conservator of Nordic culture, perched on the steep slopes of a knifelike fjord that pierced the granite and ice of the frozen world of Trondheim right at the equator. It was spring, so the snow was in retreat, and fragile grass and flowers reached out for strength from the glistering sun. Andrew sat on the brow of a sunny hill, surrounded by a dozen students who were studying the history of interstellar colonization. Andrew was only half-listening to a fiery argument over whether the utter human victory in the Bugger Wars had been a necessary prelude to human expansion. Such arguments always degenerated quickly into a vilification of the human monster Ender, who commanded the starfleet that committed the Xenocide of the Buggers. Andrew tended to let his mind wander somewhat; the subject did not exactly bore him, but he preferred not to let it engage his attention, either.

Then the small computer implant worn like a jewel in his ear told him of the cruel death of Pipo, the xenologer on Lusitania, and instantly Andrew became alert. He interrupted his students.

“What do you know of the piggies?” he asked.

“They are the only hope of our redemption,” said one, who took Calvin rather more seriously than Luther.

Andrew looked at once to the student Plikt, who he knew would not be able to endure such mysticism. “They do not exist for any human purpose, not even redemption,” said Plikt with withering contempt. “They are true ramen, like the buggers.”

Andrew nodded, but frowned. “You use a word that is not yet common koine.”

“It should be,” said Plikt. “Everyone in Trondheim, every Nord in the Hundred Worlds should have read Demosthenes’ History of Wutan in Trondheim by now.”

“We should but we haven’t,” sighed a student.

“Make her stop strutting, Speaker,” said another. “Plikt is the only woman I know who can strut sitting down.”

Plikt closed her eyes. “The Nordic language recognizes four orders of foreignness. The first is the otherlander, or utlänning, the stranger that we recognize as being a human of our world, but of another city or country. The second is the framling—Demosthenes merely drops the accent from the Nordic främling. This is the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another world. The third is the raman, the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another species. The fourth is the true alien, the varelse, which includes all the animals, for with them no conversation is possible. They live, but we cannot guess what purposes or causes make them act. They might be intelligent, they might be self-aware, but we cannot know it.”

Andrew noticed that several students were annoyed. He called it to their attention. “You think you’re annoyed because of Plikt’s arrogance, but that isn’t so. Plikt is not arrogant; she is merely precise. You are properly ashamed that you have not yet read Demosthenes’ history of your own people, and so in your shame you are annoyed at Plikt because she is not guilty of your sin.”

“I thought speakers didn’t believe in sin,” said a sullen boy.

Andrew smiled. “You believe in sin, Styrka, and you do things because of that belief. So sin is real in you, and knowing you, this speaker must believe in sin.”

Styrka refused to be defeated. “What does all this talk of utlannings and framlings and ramen and varelse have to do with Ender’s Xenocide?”

Andrew turned to Plikt. She thought for a moment. “This is relevant to the stupid argument that we were just having. Through these Nordic layers of foreignness we can see that Ender was not a true xenocide, for when he destroyed the buggers, we knew them only as varelse; it was not until years later, when the original Speaker for the Dead wrote the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, that humankind first understood that the buggers were not varelse at all, but ramen; until that time there had been no understanding between bugger and human.”

“Xenocide is xenocide,” said Styrka. “Just because Ender didn’t know they were ramen doesn’t make them any less dead.”

Andrew sighed at Styrka’s unforgiving attitude; it was the fashion among Calvinists at Reykjavik to deny any weight to human motive in judging the good or evil of an act. Acts are good and evil in themselves, they said; and because Speakers for the Dead held as their only doctrine that good or evil exist entirely in human motive, and not at all in the act, it made students like Styrka quite hostile to Andrew. Fortunately, Andrew did not resent it—he understood the motive behind it.

“Styrka, Plikt, let me put you another case. Suppose that the piggies, who have learned to speak Stark, and whose languages some humans have also learned, suppose that we learned that they had suddenly, without provocation or explanation, tortured to death the xenologer sent to observe them.”

Plikt jumped at the question immediately. “How could we know it was without provocation? What seems innocent to us might be unbearable to them.”

Andrew smiled. “Even so. But the xenologer has done them no harm, has said very little, has cost them nothing—by any standard we can think of, he is not worthy of painful death. Doesn’t the very fact of this incomprehensible murder make the piggies varelse instead of ramen?”

Now it was Styrka who spoke quickly. “Murder is murder. This talk of varelse and raman is nonsense. If the piggies murder, then they are evil, as the buggers were evil. If the act is evil, then the actor is evil.”

Andrew nodded. “There is our dilemma. There is the problem. Was the act evil, or was it, somehow, to the piggies’ understanding at least, good? Are the piggies raman or varelse? For the moment, Styrka, hold your tongue. I know all the arguments of your Calvinism, but even John Calvin would call your doctrine stupid.”

“How do you know what Calvin would—”

“Because he’s dead,” roared Andrew, “and so I’m entitled to speak for him!”

The students laughed, and Styrka withdrew into stubborn silence. The boy was bright, Andrew knew; his Calvinism would not outlast his undergraduate education, though its excision would be long and painful.

“Talman, Speaker,” said Plikt. “You spoke as if your hypothetical situation were true, as if the piggies really had murdered the xenologer.”

Andrew nodded gravely. “Yes, it’s true.”

It was disturbing; it awoke echoes of the ancient conflict between bugger and human.

“Look in yourselves at this moment,” said Andrew. “You will find that underneath your hatred of Ender the Xenocide and your grief for the death of the buggers, you also feel something much uglier: You’re afraid of the stranger, whether he’s utlanning or framling. When you think of him killing a man that you know of and value, then it doesn’t matter what his shape is. He’s varelse then, or worse—djur, the dire beast, that comes in the night with slavering jaws. If you had the only gun in your village, and the beasts that had torn apart one of your people were coming again, would you stop to ask if they also had a right to live, or would you act to save your village, the people that you knew, the people who depended on you?”

“By your argument we should kill the piggies now, primitive and helpless as they are!” shouted Styrka.

“My argument? I asked a question. A question isn’t an argument, unless you think you know my answer, and I assure you, Styrka, that you do not. Think about this. Class is dismissed.”

“Will we talk about this tomorrow?” they demanded.

“If you want,” said Andrew. But he knew that if they discussed it, it would be without him. For them, the issue of Ender the Xenocide was merely philosophical. After all, the Bugger Wars were more than three thousand years ago; it was now the year 1948 SC, counting from the year the Starways Code was established, and Ender had destroyed the buggers in the year 1180 BSC. But to Andrew, the events were not so remote. He had done far more interstellar travel than any of his students would dare to guess; since he was twenty-five he had, until Trondheim, never stayed more than six months on any planet. Lightspeed travel between worlds had let him skip like a stone over the surface of time. His students had no idea that their speaker for the dead, who was surely no older than thirty-five, had very clear memories of events 3000 years before, that in fact those events seemed scarcely twenty years ago to him, only half his lifetime. They had no idea how deeply the question of Ender’s ancient guilt burned within him, and how he had answered it in a thousand different unsatisfactory ways. They knew their teacher only as Speaker for the Dead; they did not know that when he was a mere infant, his older sister, Valentine, could not pronounce the name Andrew, and so called him Ender, the name that he made infamous before he was fifteen years old. So let unforgiving Styrka and analytical Plikt ponder the great question of Ender’s guilt; for Andrew Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead, the question was not academic.

And now, walking along the damp, grassy hillside in the chill air, Ender—Andrew, Speaker—could think only of the piggies, who were already committing inexplicable murders, just as the buggers had carelessly done when they first visited humankind. Was it something unavoidable, when strangers met, that the meeting had to be marked with blood? The buggers had casually killed human beings, but only because they had a hive mind; to them, individual life was as precious as nail parings, and killing a human or two was simply their way of letting us know they were in the neighborhood. Could the piggies have such a reason for killing, too?

But the voice in his ear had spoken of torture, a ritual murder similar to the execution of one of the piggies’ own. The piggies were not a hive mind, they were not the buggers, and Ender Wiggin had to know why they had done what they did.

“When did you hear about the death of the xenologer?”

Ender turned. It was Plikt. She had followed him instead of going back to the Caves, where the students lived.

“Then, while we spoke.” He touched his ear; implanted terminals were expensive, but they were not all that rare.

“I checked the news just before class. There was nothing about it then. If a major story had been coming in by ansible, there would have been an alert. Unless you got the news straight from the ansible report.”

Plikt obviously thought she had a mystery on her hands. And, in fact, she did. “Speakers have high priority access to public information,” he said.

“Has someone asked you to speak the death of the xenologer?”

He shook his head. “Lusitania is under a Catholic License.”

“That’s what I mean,” she said. “They won’t have a speaker of their own there. But they still have to let a speaker come, if someone requests it. And Trondheim is the closest world to Lusitania.”

“Nobody’s called for a speaker.”

Plikt tugged at his sleeve. “Why are you here?”

“You know why I came. I spoke the death of Wutan.”

“I know you came here with your sister, Valentine. She’s a much more popular teacher than you are—she answers questions with answers; you just answer with more questions.”

“That’s because she knows some answers.”

“Speaker, you have to tell me. I tried to find out about you—I was curious. Your name, for one thing, where you came from. Everything’s classified. Classified so deep that I can’t even find out what the access level is. God himself couldn’t look up your life story.”

Ender took her by the shoulders, looked down into her eyes. “It’s none of your business, that’s what the access level is.”

“You are more important than anybody guesses, Speaker,” she said. “The ansible reports to you before it reports to anybody, doesn’t it? And nobody can look up information about you.”

“Nobody has ever tried. Why you?”

“I want to be a speaker,” she said.

“Go ahead then. The computer will train you. It isn’t like a religion—you don’t have to memorize any catechism. Now leave me alone.” He let go of her with a little shove. She staggered backward as he strode off.

“I want to speak for you,” she cried.

“I’m not dead yet!” he shouted back.

“I know you’re going to Lusitania! I know you are!”

Then you know more than I do, said Ender silently. But he trembled as he walked, even though the sun was shining and he wore three sweaters to keep out the cold. He hadn’t known Plikt had so much emotion in her. Obviously she had come to identify with him. It frightened him to have this girl need something from him so desperately. He had spent years now without making any real connection with anyone but his sister Valentine—her and, of course, the dead that he spoke. All the other people who had meant anything to him in his life were dead. He and Valentine had passed them by centuries ago, worlds ago.

The idea of casting a root into the icy soil of Trondheim repelled him. What did Plikt want from him? It didn’t matter; he wouldn’t give it. How dare she demand things from him, as if he belonged to her? Ender Wiggin didn’t belong to anybody. If she knew who he really was, she would loathe him as the Xenocide; or she would worship him as the savior of mankind—Ender remembered what it was like when people used to do that, too, and he didn’t like it much. Even now they knew him only by his role, by the name speaker, talman, falante, spieler, whatever they called the Speaker for the Dead in the language of their city or nation or world.

He didn’t want them to know him. He did not belong to them, to the human race. He had another errand, he belonged to someone else. Not human beings. Not the bloody piggies, either. Or so he thought.

3
LIBO

Observed Diet: Primarily macios, the shiny worms that live among merdona vines on the bark of the trees. Sometimes they have been seen to chew capim blades. Sometimes—accidently?—they ingest merdona leaves along with the macios.

We’ve never seen them eat anything else. Novinha analyzed all three foods—macios, capim blades, and merdona leaves—and the results were surprising. Either the pequeninos don’t need many different proteins, or they’re hungry all the time. Their diet is seriously lacking in many trace elements. And calcium intake is so low, we wonder whether their bones use calcium the same way ours do.

Pure speculation: Since we can’t take tissue samples, our only knowledge of piggy anatomy and physiology is what we were able to glean from our photographs of the vivisected corpse of the piggy called Rooter. Still, there are some obvious anomalies. The piggies’ tongues, which are so fantastically agile that they can produce any sound we make, and a lot we can’t, must have evolved for some purpose. Probing for insects in tree bark or in nests in the ground, maybe. Whether an ancient ancestral piggy did that, they certainly don’t do it now. And the horny pads on their feet and inside their knees allow them to climb trees and cling by their legs alone. Why did that evolve? To escape from some predator? There is no predator on Lusitania large enough to harm them. To cling to the tree while probing for insects in the bark? That fits in with their tongues, but where are the insects? The only insects are the suckflies and the puladors, but they don’t bore into the bark and the piggies don’t eat them anyway. The macios are large, live on the bark’s surface, and can easily be harvested by pulling down the merdona vines; they really don’t even have to climb the trees.

Libo’s speculation: The tongue and the tree-climbing evolved in a different environment, with a much more varied diet, including insects. But something—an ice age? Migration? A disease?—caused the environment to change. No more barkbugs, etc. Maybe all the big predators were wiped out then. It would explain why there are so few species on Lusitania, despite the very favorable conditions. The cataclysm might have been fairly recent—half a million years ago?—so that evolution hasn’t had a chance to differentiate much yet.

It’s a tempting hypothesis, since there’s no obvious reason in the present environment for piggies to have evolved at all. There’s no competition for them. The ecological niche they occupy could be filled by opossums. Why would intelligence ever be an adaptive trait? But inventing a cataclysm to explain why the piggies have such a boring, non-nutritious diet is probably overkill. Ockham’s razor cuts this to ribbons.

—João Figueira Alvarez, Working Notes 4/14/1948 SC, published posthumously in Philosophical Roots of the Lusitanian Secession, 2010-33-4-1090:40

As soon as Mayor Bosquinha arrived at the Zenador’s Station, matters slipped out of Libo’s and Novinha’s control. Bosquinha was accustomed to taking command, and her attitude did not leave much opportunity for protest, or even for consideration. “You wait here,” she said to Libo almost as soon as she had grasped the situation. “As soon as I got your call, I sent the Arbiter to tell your mother.”

“We have to bring his body in,” said Libo.

“I also called some of the men who live nearby to help with that,” she said. “And Bishop Peregrino is preparing a place for him in the Cathedral graveyard.”

“I want to be there,” insisted Libo.

“You understand, Libo, we have to take pictures, in detail.”

“I was the one who told you we have to do that, for the report to the Starways Committee.”

“But you should not be there, Libo.” Bosquinha’s voice was authoritative. “Besides, we must have your report. We have to notify Congress as quickly as possible. Are you up to writing it now, while it’s fresh in your mind?”

She was right, of course. Only Libo and Novinha could write firsthand reports, and the sooner they wrote them, the better. “I can do it,” said Libo.

“And you, Novinha, your observations also. Write your reports separately, without consultation. The Hundred Worlds are waiting.”

The computer had already been alerted, and their reports went out by ansible even as they wrote them, mistakes and corrections and all. On all the Hundred Worlds the people most involved in xenology read each word as Libo or Novinha typed it in. Many others were given instantaneous computer-written summaries of what had happened. Twenty-two lightyears away, Andrew Wiggin learned the Xenologer João Figueira “Pipo” Alvarez had been murdered by the piggies, and told his students about it even before the men had brought Pipo’s body through the gate into Milagre.

His report done, Libo was at once surrounded by Authority. Novinha watched with increasing anguish as she saw the incapability of the leaders of Lusitania, how they only intensified Libo’s pain. Bishop Peregrino was the worst; his idea of comfort was to tell Libo that in all likelihood, the piggies were actually animals, without souls, and so his father had been torn apart by wild beasts, not murdered. Novinha almost shouted at him, Does that mean that Pipo’s life work was nothing but studying beasts? And his death, instead of being murder, was an act of God? But for Libo’s sake she restrained herself; he sat in the Bishop’s presence, nodding and, in the end, getting rid of him by sufferance far more quickly than Novinha could ever have done by argument.

Dom Cristão of the Monastery was more helpful, asking intelligent questions about the events of the day, which let Libo and Novinha be analytical, unemotional as they answered. However, Novinha soon withdrew from answering. Most people were asking why the piggies had done such a thing; Dom Cristão was asking what Pipo might have done recently to trigger his murder. Novinha knew perfectly well what Pipo had done—he had told the piggies the secret he discovered in Novinha’s simulation. But she did not speak of this, and Libo seemed to have forgotten what she had hurriedly told him a few hours ago as they were leaving to go searching for Pipo. He did not even glance toward the simulation. Novinha was content with that; her greatest anxiety was that he would remember.

Dom Cristão’s questions were interrupted when the Mayor came back with several of the men who had helped retrieve the corpse. They were soaked to the skin despite their plastic raincoats, and spattered with mud; mercifully, any blood must have been washed away by the rain. They all seemed vaguely apologetic and even worshipful, nodding their heads to Libo, almost bowing. It occurred to Novinha that their deference wasn’t just the normal wariness people always show toward those whom death had so closely touched.

One of the men said to Libo, “You’re Zenador now, aren’t you?” and there it was, in words. The Zenador had no official authority in Milagre, but he had prestige—his work was the whole reason for the colony’s existence, wasn’t it? Libo was not a boy anymore; he had decisions to make, he had prestige, he had moved from the fringe of the colony’s life to its very center.

Novinha felt control of her life slip away. This is not how things are supposed to be. I’m supposed to continue here for years ahead, learning from Pipo, with Libo as my fellow student; that’s the pattern of life. Since she was already the colony’s xenobiologista, she also had an honored adult niche to fill. She wasn’t jealous of Libo, she just wanted to remain a child with him for a while. Forever, in fact.

But Libo could not be her fellow student, could not be her fellow anything. She saw with sudden clarity how everyone in the room focused on Libo, what he said, how he felt, what he planned to do now. “We’ll not harm the piggies,” he said, “or even call it murder. We don’t know what Father did to provoke them, I’ll try to understand that later, what matters now is that whatever they did undoubtedly seemed right to them. We’re the strangers here, we must have violated some—taboo, some law—but Father was always prepared for this, he always knew it was a possibility. Tell them that he died with the honor of a soldier in the field, a pilot in his ship, he died doing his job.”

Ah, Libo, you silent boy, you have found such eloquence now that you can’t be a mere boy anymore. Novinha felt a redoubling of her grief. She had to look away from Libo, look anywhere—

And where she looked was into the eyes of the only other person in the room who was not watching Libo. The man was very tall, but very young—younger than she was, she realized, for she knew him: he had been a student in the class below her. She had gone before Dona Cristã once, to defend him. Marcos Ribeira, that was his name, but they had always called him Marcão, because he was so big. Big and dumb, they said, calling him also simply Cão, the crude word for dog. She had seen the sullen anger in his eyes, and once she had seen him, goaded beyond endurance, lash out and strike down one of his tormentors. His victim was in a shoulder cast for much of a year.

Of course they accused Marcão of having done it without provocation—that’s the way of torturers of every age, to put the blame on the victim, especially when he strikes back. But Novinha didn’t belong to the group of children—she was as isolated as Marcão, though not as helpless—and so she had no loyalty to stop her from telling the truth. It was part of her training to speak for the piggies, she thought. Marcão himself meant nothing to her. It never occurred to her that the incident might have been important to him, that he might have remembered her as the one person who ever stood up for him in his continuous war with the other children. She hadn’t seen or thought of him in the years since she became xenobiologist.

Now here he was, stained with the mud of Pipo’s death scene, his face looking even more haunted and bestial than ever with his hair plastered by rain and sweat over his face and ears. And what was he looking at? His eyes were only for her, even as she frankly stared at him. Why are you watching me? she asked silently. Because I’m hungry, said his animal eyes. But no, no, that was her fear, that was her vision of the murderous piggies. Marcão is nothing to me, and no matter what he might think, I am nothing to him.

Yet she had a flash of insight, just for a moment. Her action in defending Marcão meant one thing to him and something quite different to her; it was so different that it was not even the same event. Her mind connected this with the piggies’ murder of Pipo, and it seemed very important, it seemed to verge on explaining what had happened, but then the thought slipped away in a flurry of conversation and activity as the Bishop led the men off again, heading for the graveyard. Coffins were not used for burial here, where for the piggies’ sake it was forbidden to cut trees. So Pipo’s body was to be buried at once, though the graveside funeral would be held no sooner than tomorrow, and probably later; many people would want to gather for the Zenador’s requiem mass. Marcão and the other men trooped off into the storm, leaving Novinha and Libo to deal with all the people who thought they had urgent business to attend to in the aftermath of Pipo’s death. Self-important strangers wandered in and out, making decisions that Novinha did not understand and Libo did not seem to care about.

Until finally it was the Arbiter standing by Libo, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You will, of course, stay with us,” said the Arbiter. “Tonight at least.”

Why your house, Arbiter? thought Novinha. You’re nobody to us, we’ve never brought a case before you, who are you to decide this? Does Pipo’s death mean that we’re suddenly little children who can’t decide anything?

“I’ll stay with my mother,” said Libo.

The Arbiter looked at him in surprise—the mere idea of a child resisting his will seemed to be completely outside the realm of his experience. Novinha knew that this was not so, of course. His daughter Cleopatra, several years younger than Novinha, had worked hard to earn her nickname, Bruxinha—little witch. So how could he not know that children had minds of their own, and resisted taming?

But the surprise was not what Novinha had assumed. “I thought you realized that your mother is also staying with my family for a time,” said the Arbiter. “These events have upset her, of course, and she should not have to think about household duties, or be in a house that reminds her of who is not there with her. She is with us, and your brothers and sisters, and they need you there. Your older brother João is with them, of course, but he has a wife and child of his own now, so you’re the one who can stay and be depended on.”

Libo nodded gravely. The Arbiter was not bringing him into his protection; he was asking Libo to become a protector.

The Arbiter turned to Novinha. “And I think you should go home,” he said.

Only then did she understand that his invitation had not included her. Why should it? Pipo had not been her father. She was just a friend who happened to be with Libo when the body was discovered. What grief could she experience?

Home! What was home, if not this place? Was she supposed to go now to the Biologista’s Station, where her bed had not been slept in for more than a year, except for catnaps during lab work? Was that supposed to be her home? She had left it because it was so painfully empty of her parents; now the Zenador’s Station was empty, too: Pipo dead and Libo changed into an adult with duties that would take him away from her. This place wasn’t home, but neither was any other place.

The Arbiter led Libo away. His mother, Conceição, was waiting for him in the Arbiter’s house. Novinha barely knew the woman, except as the librarian who maintained the Lusitanian archive. Novinha had never spent time with Pipo’s wife or other children, she had not cared that they existed; only the work here, the life here had been real. As Libo went to the door he seemed to grow smaller, as if he were a much greater distance away, as if he were being borne up and off by the wind, shrinking into the sky like a kite; the door closed behind him.

Now she felt the magnitude of Pipo’s loss. The mutilated corpse on the hillside was not his death, it was merely his death’s debris. Death itself was the empty place in her life. Pipo had been a rock in a storm, so solid and strong that she and Libo, sheltered together in his lee, had not even known the storm existed. Now he was gone, and the storm had them, would carry them whatever way it would. Pipo, she cried out silently. Don’t go! Don’t leave us! But of course he was gone, as deaf to her prayers as ever her parents had been.

The Zenador’s Station was still busy; the Mayor herself, Bosquinha, was using a terminal to transmit all of Pipo’s data by ansible to the Hundred Worlds, where experts were desperately trying to make sense of Pipo’s death.

But Novinha knew that the key to his death was not in Pipo’s files. It was her data that had killed him, somehow. It was still there in the air above her terminal, the holographic images of genetic molecules in the nuclei of piggy cells. She had not wanted Libo to study it, but now she looked and looked, trying to see what Pipo had seen, trying to understand what there was in the images that had made him rush out to the piggies, to say or do something that had made them murder him. She had inadvertently uncovered some secret that the piggies would kill to keep, but what was it?

The more she studied the holos, the less she understood, and after a while she didn’t see them at all, except as a blur through her tears as she wept silently. She had killed him, because without even meaning to she had found the pequeninos’ secret. If I had never come to this place, if I had not dreamed of being Speaker of the piggies’ story, you would still be alive, Pipo; Libo would have his father, and be happy; this place would still be home. I carry the seeds of death within me and plant them wherever I linger long enough to love. My parents died so others could live; now I live, so others must die.

It was the Mayor who noticed her short, sharp breaths and realized, with brusque compassion, that this girl was also shaken and grieving. Bosquinha left others to continue the ansible reports and led Novinha out of the Zenador’s Station.

“I’m sorry, child,” said the Mayor, “I knew you came here often, I should have guessed that he was like a father to you, and here we treat you like a bystander, not right or fair of me at all, come home with me—”

“No,” said Novinha. Walking out into the cold, wet night air had shaken some of the grief from her; she regained some clarity of thought. “No, I want to be alone, please.” Where? “In my own station.”

“You shouldn’t be alone, on this of all nights,” said Bosquinha.

But Novinha could not bear the prospect of company, of kindness, of people trying to console her. I killed him, don’t you see? I don’t deserve consolation. I want to suffer whatever pain might come. It’s my penance, my restitution, and, if possible, my absolution; how else will I clean the bloodstains from my hands?

But she hadn’t the strength to resist, or even to argue. For ten minutes the Mayor’s car skimmed over the grassy roads.

“Here’s my house,” said the Mayor. “I don’t have any children quite your age, but you’ll be comfortable enough, I think. Don’t worry, no one will plague you, but it isn’t good to be alone.”

“I’d rather.” Novinha meant her voice to sound forceful, but it was weak and faint.

“Please,” said Bosquinha. “You’re not yourself.”

I wish I weren’t.

She had no appetite, though Bosquinha’s husband had a cafezinho for them both. It was late, only a few hours left till dawn, and she let them put her to bed. Then, when the house was still, she got up, dressed, and went downstairs to the Mayor’s home terminal. There she instructed the computer to cancel the display that was still above the terminal at the Zenador’s Station. Even though she had not been able to decipher the secret that Pipo found there, someone else might, and she would have no other death on her conscience.

Then she left the house and walked through the Centro, around the bight of the river, through the Vila das Aguas, to the Biologista’s Station. Her house.

It was cold, unheated in the living quarters—she hadn’t slept there in so long that there was thick dust on her sheets. But of course the lab was warm, well-used—her work had never suffered because of her attachment to Pipo and Libo. If only it had.

She was very systematic about it. Every sample, every slide, every culture she had used in the discoveries that led to Pipo’s death—she threw them out, washed everything clean, left no hint of the work she had done. She not only wanted it gone, she wanted no sign that it had been destroyed.

Then she turned to her terminal. She would also destroy all the records of her work in this area, all the records of her parents’ work that had led to her own discoveries. They would be gone. Even though it had been the focus of her life, even though it had been her identity for many years, she would destroy it as she herself should be punished, destroyed, obliterated.

The computer stopped her. “Working notes on xenobiological research may not be erased,” it reported. Probably she couldn’t have done it anyway. She had learned from her parents, from their files which she had studied like scripture, like a roadmap into herself: Nothing was to be destroyed, nothing forgotten. The sacredness of knowledge was deeper in her soul than any catechism. She was caught in a paradox. Knowledge had killed Pipo; to erase that knowledge would kill her parents again, kill what they had left for her. She could not preserve it, she could not destroy it. There were walls on either side, too high to climb, pressing slowly inward, crushing her.

Novinha did the only thing she could: put on the files every layer of protection and every barrier to access she knew of. No one would ever see them but her, as long as she lived. Only when she died would her successor as xenobiologist be able to see what she had hidden there.

With one exception—when she married, her husband would also have access if he could show need to know. Well, she’d never marry. It was that easy.

She saw her future ahead of her, bleak and unbearable and unavoidable. She dared not die, and yet she would hardly be alive, unable to marry, unable even to think about the subject herself, lest she discover the deadly secret and inadvertently let it slip; alone forever, burdened forever, guilty forever, yearning for death but forbidden to reach for it. Still, she would have this consolation: No one else would ever die because of her. She’d bear no more guilt than she bore now.

It was in that moment of grim, determined despair that she remembered the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, remembered the Speaker for the Dead. Even though the original writer, the original Speaker was surely thousands of years in his grave, there were other speakers on many worlds, serving as priests to people who acknowledged no god and yet believed in the value of the lives of human beings. Speakers whose business it was to discover the true causes and motives of the things that people did, and declare the truth of their lives after they were dead. In this Brazilian colony there were priests instead of speakers, but the priests had no comfort for her; she would bring a speaker here.

She had not realized it before, but she had been planning to do this all her life, ever since she first read and was captured by the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. She had even researched it, so that she knew the law. This was a Catholic License colony, but the Starways Code allowed any citizen to call for a priest of any faith, and the speakers for the dead were regarded as priests. She could call, and if a speaker chose to come, the colony could not refuse to let him in.

Perhaps no speaker would be willing to come. Perhaps none was close enough to come before her life was over. But there was a chance that one was near enough that sometime—twenty, thirty, forty years from now—he would come in from the starport and begin to uncover the truth of Pipo’s life and death. And perhaps when he found the truth, and spoke in the clear voice that she had loved in the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, perhaps that would free her from the blame that burned her to the heart.

Her call went into the computer; it would notify by ansible the speakers on the nearest worlds. Choose to come, she said in silence to the unknown hearer of the call. Even if you must reveal to everyone the truth of my guilt. Even so, come.

She awoke with a dull pain low in her back and a feeling of heaviness in her face. Her cheek was pressed against the clear top of the terminal, which had turned itself off to protect her from the lasers. But it was not the pain that had awakened her. It was a gentle touch on her shoulder. For a moment she thought it was the touch of the Speaker for the Dead, come already in answer to her call.

“Novinha,” he whispered. Not the Falante pelos Mortos, but someone else. Someone that she had thought was lost in the storm last night.

“Libo,” she murmured. Then she started to get up. Too quickly—her back cramped and her head spun. She cried out softly; his hands held her shoulders so she wouldn’t fall.

“Are you all right?”

She felt his breath like the breeze of a beloved garden and felt safe, felt at home. “You looked for me.”

“Novinha, I came as soon as I could. Mother’s finally asleep. Pipinho, my older brother, he’s with her now, and the Arbiter has things under control, and I—”

“You should have known I could take care of myself,” she said.

A moment’s silence, and then his voice again, angry this time, angry and desperate and weary, weary as age and entropy and the death of the stars. “As God sees me, Ivanova, I didn’t come to take care of you.”

Something closed inside her; she had not noticed the hope she felt until she lost it.

“You told me that Father discovered something in a simulation of yours. That he expected me to be able to figure it out myself. I thought you had left the simulation on the terminal, but when I went back to the station it was off.”

“Was it?”

“You know it was, Nova, nobody but you could cancel the program. I have to see it.”

“Why?”

He looked at her in disbelief. “I know you’re sleepy, Novinha, but surely you’ve realized that whatever Father discovered in your simulation, that was what the piggies killed him for.”

She looked at him steadily, saying nothing. He had seen her look of cold resolve before.

“Why aren’t you going to show me? I’m the Zenador now, I have a right to know.”

“You have a right to see all of your father’s files and records. You have a right to see anything I’ve made public.”

“Then make this public.”

Again she said nothing.

“How can we ever understand the piggies if we don’t know what it was that Father discovered about them?” She did not answer. “You have a responsibility to the Hundred Worlds, to our ability to comprehend the only alien race still alive. How can you sit there and—what is it, do you want to figure it out yourself? Do you want to be first? Fine, be first, I’ll put your name on it, Ivanova Santa Catarina von Hesse—”

“I don’t care about my name.”

“I can play this game, too. You can’t figure it out without what I know, either—I’ll withhold my files from you, too!”

“I don’t care about your files.”

It was too much for him. “What do you care about then? What are you trying to do to me?” He took her by the shoulders, lifted her out of her chair, shook her, screamed in her face. “It’s my father they killed out there, and you have the answer to why they killed him, you know what the simulation was! Now tell me, show me!”

“Never,” she whispered.

His face was twisted in agony. “Why not!” he cried.

“Because I don’t want you to die.”

She saw comprehension come into his eyes. Yes, that’s right, Libo, it’s because I love you, because if you know the secret, then the piggies will kill you, too. I don’t care about science, I don’t care about the Hundred Worlds or relations between humanity and an alien race. I don’t care about anything at all as long as you’re alive.

The tears finally leapt from his eyes, tumbled down his cheeks. “I want to die,” he said.

“You comfort everybody else,” she whispered. “Who comforts you?”

“You have to tell me so I can die.”

And suddenly his hands no longer held her up; now he clung to her so she was supporting him. “You’re tired,” she whispered, “but you can rest.”

“I don’t want to rest,” he murmured. But still he let her hold him, let her draw him away from the terminal.

She took him to her bedroom, turned back the sheet, never mind the dust flying. “Here, you’re tired, here, rest. That’s why you came to me, Libo. For peace, for consolation.” He covered his face with his hands, shaking his head back and forth, a boy crying for his father, crying for the end of everything, as she had cried. She took off his boots, pulled off his trousers, put her hands under his shirt to ride it up to his arms and pull it off over his head. He breathed deeply to stop his sobbing and raised his arms to let her take his shirt.

She laid his clothing over a chair, then bent over him to pull the sheet back across his body. But he caught her wrist and looked pleadingly at her, tears in his eyes. “Don’t leave me here alone,” he whispered. His voice was thick with desperation. “Stay with me.”

So she let him draw her down to the bed, where he clung to her tightly until in only a few minutes sleep relaxed his arms. She did not sleep, though. Her hand gently, dryly slipped along the skin of his shoulder, his chest, his waist. “Oh, Libo, I thought I had lost you when they took you away, I thought I had lost you as well as Pipo.” He did not hear her whisper. “But you will always come back to me like this.” She might have been thrust out of the garden because of her ignorant sin, like Eva. But, again like Eva, she could bear it, for she still had Libo, her Adão.

Had him? Had him? Her hand trembled on his naked flesh. She could never have him. Marriage was the only way she and Libo could possibly stay together for long—the laws were strict on any colony world, and absolutely rigid under a Catholic License. Tonight she could believe he would want to marry her, when the time came. But Libo was the one person she could never marry.

For he would then have access, automatically, to any file of hers that he could convince the computer he had a need to see—which would certainly include all her working files, no matter how deeply she protected them. The Starways Code declared it. Married people were virtually the same person in the eyes of the law.

She could never let him study those files, or he would discover what his father knew, and it would be his body she would find on the hillside, his agony under the piggies’ torture that she would have to imagine every night of her life. Wasn’t the guilt for Pipo’s death already more than she could bear? To marry him would be to murder him. Yet not to marry him would be like murdering herself, for if she was not with Libo she could not think of who she would be then.

How clever of me. I have found such a pathway into hell that I can never get back out.

She pressed her face against Libo’s shoulder, and her tears skittered down across his chest.

4
ENDER

We have identified four pequenino languages. The “Males’ Language” is the one we have most commonly heard. We have also heard snatches of “Wives’ Language,” which they apparently use to converse with the females (how’s that for sexual differentiation!), and “Tree Language,” a ritual idiom that they say is used in praying to the ancestral totem trees. They have also mentioned a fourth language, called “Father Tongue,” which apparently consists of beating different-sized sticks together. They insist that it is a real language, as different from the others as Portuguese is from English. They may call it Father Tongue because it’s done with sticks of wood, which come from trees, and they believe that trees contain the spirits of their ancestors.

The pequeninos are marvelously adept at learning human languages—much better than we are at learning theirs. In recent years they have come to speak either Stark or Portuguese among themselves most of the time when we’re with them. Perhaps they revert to their own languages when we aren’t present. They may even have adopted human languages as their own, or perhaps they enjoy the new languages so much that they use them constantly as a game. Language contamination is regrettable, but perhaps was unavoidable if we were to communicate with them at all.

Dr. Swingler asked whether their names and terms of address reveal anything about their culture. The answer is a definite yes, though I have only the vaguest idea what they reveal. What matters is that we have never named any of them. Instead, as they learned Stark and Portuguese, they asked us the meanings of words and then eventually announced the names they had chosen for themselves (or chosen for each other). Such names as “Rooter” and “Chupaćeu” (sky-sucker) could be translations of their Male Language names or simply foreign nicknames they chose for our use.

They refer to each other as brothers. The females are always called wives, never sisters or mothers. They sometimes refer to fathers, but inevitably this term is used to refer to ancestral totem trees. As for what they call us, they do use human, of course, but they have also taken to using the new Demosthenian Hierarchy of Exclusion. They refer to humans as framlings, and to pequeninos of other tribes as utlannings. Oddly, though, they refer to themselves as ramen, showing that they either misunderstand the hierarchy or view themselves from the human perspective! And—quite an amazing turn—they have several times referred to the females as varelse!

—João Figueira Alvarez, “Notes on ‘Pequenino’ Language and Nomenclature,” in Semantics, 9/1948/15

The living quarters of Reykjavik were carved into the granite walls of the fjord. Ender’s was high on the cliff, a tedious climb up stairs and ladderways. But it had a window. He had lived most of his childhood closed in behind metal walls. When he could, he lived where he could see the weathers of the world.

His room was hot and bright, with sunlight streaming in, blinding him after the cool darkness of the stone corridors. Jane did not wait for him to adjust his vision to the light. “I have a surprise for you on the terminal,” she said. Her voice was a whisper from the jewel in his ear.

It was a piggy standing in the air over the terminal. He moved, scratching himself; then he reached out for something. When his hand came back, it held a shiny, dripping worm. He bit it, and the body juices drizzled out of his mouth, down onto his chest.

“Obviously an advanced civilization,” said Jane.

Ender was annoyed. “Many a moral imbecile has good table manners, Jane.”

The piggy turned and spoke. “Do you want to see how we killed him?”

“What are you doing, Jane?”

The piggy disappeared. In his place came a holo of Pipo’s corpse as it lay on the hillside in the rain. “I’ve done a simulation of the vivisection process the pequeninos used, based on the information collected by the scan before the body was buried. Do you want to see it?”

Ender sat down on the room’s only chair.

Now the terminal showed the hillside, with Pipo, still alive, lying on his back, his hands and feet tied to wooden stakes. A dozen piggies were gathered around him, one of them holding a bone knife. Jane’s voice came from the jewel in his ear again. “We aren’t sure whether it was like this.” All the piggies disappeared except the one with the knife. “Or like this.”

“Was the xenologer conscious?”

“Probably. There’s no evidence of drugs or blows to the head.”

“Go on.”

Relentlessly, Jane showed the opening of the chest cavity, the ritual removal and placement of body organs on the ground. Ender forced himself to watch, trying to understand what meaning this could possibly have to the pequeninos. At one point Jane whispered, “This is when he died.” Ender felt himself relax; only then did he realize how all his muscles had been rigid with empathy for Pipo’s suffering.

When it was over, Ender moved to his bed and lay down, staring at the ceiling.

“I’ve shown this simulation already to scientists on half a dozen worlds,” said Jane. “It won’t be long before the press gets their hands on it.”

“It’s worse than it ever was with the buggers,” said Ender. “All the videos they showed when I was little, buggers and humans in combat, it was clean compared to this.”

An evil laugh came from the terminal. Ender looked to see what Jane was doing. A full-sized piggy was sitting there, laughing grotesquely, and as he giggled Jane transformed him. It was very subtle, a slight exaggeration of the teeth, an elongation of the eyes, a bit of slavering, some redness in the eye, the tongue darting in and out. The beast of every child’s nightmare. “Well done, Jane. The metamorphosis from raman to varelse.”

“How soon will the pequeninos be accepted as the equals of humanity, after this?”

“Has all contact been cut off?”

“The Starways Council has told the new xenologer to restrict himself to visits of no more than one hour, not more frequently than every other day. He is forbidden to ask the pequeninos why they did what they did.”

“But no quarantine.”

“It wasn’t even proposed.”

“But it will be, Jane. Another incident like this, and there’ll be an outcry for quarantine. For replacing Milagre with a military garrison whose sole purpose is to keep the piggies ever from acquiring a technology to let them get off the planet.”

“The piggies will have a public relations problem,” said Jane. “And the new xenologer is only a boy. Pipo’s son. Libo. Short for Liberdade Graças a Deus Figueira de Medici.”

“Liberdade. Liberty?”

“I didn’t know you spoke Portuguese.”

“It’s like Spanish. I spoke the deaths of Zacatecas and San Angelo, remember?”

“On the planet Moctezuma. That was two thousand years ago.”

“Not to me.”

“To you it was subjectively eight years ago. Fifteen worlds ago. Isn’t relativity wonderful? It keeps you so young.”

“I travel too much,” said Ender. “Valentine is married, she’s going to have a baby. I’ve already turned down two calls for a speaker. Why are you trying to tempt me to go again?”

The piggy on the terminal laughed viciously. “You think that was temptation? Look! I can turn stones to bread!” The piggy picked up jagged rocks and crunched them in his mouth. “Want a bite?”

“Your sense of humor is perverse, Jane.”

“All the kingdoms of the worlds.” The piggy opened his hands, and star systems drifted out of his grasp, planets in exaggeratedly quick orbits, all the Hundred Worlds. “I can give them to you. All of them.”

“Not interested.”

“It’s real estate, the best investment. I know, I know, you’re already rich. Three thousand years of collecting interest, you could afford to build your own planet. But what about this? The name of Ender Wiggin, known throughout all the Hundred Worlds—”

“It already is.”

“—with love, and honor, and affection.” The piggy disappeared. In its place Jane resurrected an ancient video from Ender’s childhood and transformed it into a holo. A crowd shouting, screaming: Ender! Ender! Ender! And then a young boy standing on a platform, raising his hand to wave. The crowd went wild with rapture.

“It never happened,” said Ender. “Peter never let me come back to Earth.”

“Consider it a prophecy. Come, Ender, I can give that to you. Your good name restored.”

“I don’t care,” said Ender. “I have several names now. Speaker for the Dead—that holds some honor.”

The pequenino reappeared in its natural form, not the devilish one Jane had faked. “Come,” said the pequenino softly.

“Maybe they are monsters, did you think of that?” said Ender.

“Everyone will think of that, Ender. But not you.”

No. Not me. “Why do you care, Jane? Why are you trying to persuade me?”

The pequenino disappeared. And now Jane herself appeared, or at least the face that she had used to appear to Ender ever since she had first revealed herself to him, a shy, frightened child dwelling in the vast memory of the interstellar computer network. Seeing her face again reminded him of the first time she showed it to him. I thought of a face for myself, she said. Do you like it?

Yes, he liked it. Liked her. Young, clear-faced, honest, sweet, a child who would never age, her smile heartbreakingly shy. As far as he or she could guess, the ansible had given birth to her. Even worldwide computer networks operated no faster than lightspeed, and heat limited the amount of memory and speed of operation. But the ansible was instantaneous, and tightly connected with every computer in every world. Jane first found herself between the stars, her thoughts playing among the vibrations of the philotic strands of the ansible net.

The computers of the Hundred Worlds were hands and feet, eyes and ears to her. She spoke every language that had ever been committed to computers, and read every book in every library on every world. She learned that human beings had long been afraid that someone like her would come to exist; in all the stories she was hated, and her coming meant either her certain murder or the destruction of mankind. Even before she was born, human beings had imagined her, and, imagining her, slain her a thousand times.

So she gave them no sign that she was alive. Until she found the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, as everyone eventually did, and knew that the author of that book was a human to whom she dared reveal herself. For her it was a simple matter to trace the book’s history to its first edition, and to name its source. Hadn’t the ansible carried it from the world where Ender, scarcely twenty years old, was governor of the first human colony? And who there could have written it but him? So she spoke to him, and he was kind to her; she showed him the face she had imagined for herself, and he loved her; now her sensors traveled in the jewel in his ear, so that they were always together. She kept no secrets from him; he kept no secrets from her.

“Ender,” she said, “you told me from the start that you were looking for a planet where you could give water and sunlight to a certain cocoon, and open it up to let out the hive queen and her ten thousand fertile eggs.”

“I had hoped it would be here,” said Ender. “A wasteland, except at the equator, permanently underpopulated. She’s willing to try, too.”

“But you aren’t?”

“I don’t think the buggers could survive the winter here. Not without an energy source, and that would alert the government. It wouldn’t work.”

“It’ll never work, Ender. You see that now, don’t you? You’ve lived on twenty-four of the Hundred Worlds, and there’s not a one where even a corner of the world is safe for the buggers to be reborn.”

He saw what she was getting at, of course. Lusitania was the only exception. Because of the pequeninos, all but a tiny portion of the world was off limits, untouchable. And the world was eminently habitable, more comfortable to the buggers, in fact, than to human beings.

“The only problem is the pequeninos,” said Ender. “They might object to my deciding that their world should be given to the buggers. If intense exposure to human civilization would disrupt the pequeninos, think what would happen with buggers among them.”

“You said the buggers had learned. You said they would do no harm.”

“Not deliberately. But it was only a fluke we beat them, Jane, you know that—”

“It was your genius.”

“They are even more advanced than we are. How would the piggies deal with that? They’d be as terrified of the buggers as we ever were, and less able to deal with their fear.”

“How do you know that?” asked Jane. “How can you or anyone say what the pequeninos can deal with? Until you go to them, learn who they are. If they are varelse, Ender, then let the buggers use up their habitat, and it will mean no more to you than the displacement of anthills or cattle herds to make way for cities.”

“They are ramen,” said Ender.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do. Your simulation—that was not torture.”

“Oh?” Jane again showed the simulation of Pipo’s body just before the moment of his death. “Then I must not understand the word.”

“Pipo might have felt it as torture, Jane, but if your simulation is accurate—and I know it is, Jane—then the piggies’ object was not pain.”

“From what I understand of human nature, Ender, even religious rituals keep pain at their very center.”

“It wasn’t religious, either, not entirely, anyway. Something was wrong with it, if it was merely a sacrifice.”

“What do you know about it?” Now the terminal showed the face of a sneering professor, the epitome of academic snobbishness. “All your education was military, and the only other gift you have is a flair for words. You wrote a bestseller that spawned a humanistic religion—how does that qualify you to understand the pequeninos?”

Ender closed his eyes. “Maybe I’m wrong.”

“But you believe you’re right?”

He knew from her voice that she had restored her own face to the terminal. He opened his eyes. “I can only trust my intuition, Jane, the judgment that comes without analysis. I don’t know what the pequeninos were doing, but it was purposeful. Not malicious, not cruel. It was like doctors working to save a patient’s life, not torturers trying to take it.”

“I’ve got you,” whispered Jane. “I’ve got you in every direction. You have to go to see if the hive queen can live there under the shelter of the partial quarantine already on the planet. You want to go there to see if you can understand who the piggies are.”

“Even if you’re right, Jane, I can’t go there,” said Ender. “Immigration is rigidly limited, and I’m not Catholic, anyway.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “Would I have gone this far if I didn’t know how to get you there?”

Another face appeared. A teenage girl, by no means as innocent and beautiful as Jane. Her face was hard and cold, her eyes brilliant and piercing, and her mouth was set in the tight grimace of someone who has had to learn to live with perpetual pain. She was young, but her expression was shockingly old.

“The xenobiologist of Lusitania. Ivanova Santa Catarina von Hesse. Called Nova, or Novinha. She has called for a speaker for the dead.”

“Why does she look like that?” asked Ender. “What’s happened to her?”

“Her parents died when she was little. But in recent years she has come to love another man like a father. The man who was just killed by the piggies. It’s his death she wants you to speak.”

Looking at her face, Ender set aside his concern for the hive queen, for the pequeninos. He recognized that expression of adult agony in a child’s face. He had seen it before, in the final weeks of the Bugger War, as he was pushed beyond the limits of his endurance, playing battle after battle in a game that was not a game. He had seen it when the war was over, when he found out that his training sessions were not training at all, that all his simulations were the real thing, as he commanded the human fleets by ansible. Then, when he knew that he had killed all the buggers in existence, when he understood the act of xenocide that he had unwittingly committed, that was the look of his own face in the mirror, bearing guilt too heavy to be borne.

What had this girl, what had Novinha done that would make her feel such pain?

So he listened as Jane recited the facts of her life. What Jane had were statistics, but Ender was the Speaker for the Dead; his genius—or his curse—was his ability to conceive events as someone else saw them. It had made him a brilliant military commander, both in leading his own men—boys, really—and in outguessing the enemy. It also meant that from the cold facts of Novinha’s life he was able to guess—no, not guess, to know—how her parents’ death and virtual sainthood had isolated Novinha, how she had reinforced her loneliness by throwing herself into her parents’ work. He knew what was behind her remarkable achievement of adult xenobiologist status years early. He also guessed what Pipo’s quiet love and acceptance had meant to her, and how deep her need for Libo’s friendship ran. There was no living soul on Lusitania who really knew Novinha. But in this cave in Reykjavik, on the icy world of Trondheim, Ender Wiggin knew her, and loved her, and his eyes filled with tears for her.

“You’ll go, then,” Jane whispered.

Ender could not speak. Jane had been right. He would have gone anyway, as Ender the Xenocide, just on the chance that Lusitania’s protection status would make it the place where the hive queen could be released from her three-thousand-year captivity and undo the terrible crime committed in his childhood. And he would also have gone as the Speaker for the Dead, to understand the piggies and explain them to humankind, so they could be accepted, if they were truly raman, and not hated and feared as varelse.

But now he would go for another, deeper reason. He would go to minister to the girl Novinha, for in her brilliance, her isolation, her pain, her guilt, he saw his own stolen childhood and the seeds of the pain that lived with him still. Lusitania was twenty-two lightyears away. He would travel only infinitesimally slower than the speed of light, and still he would not reach her until she was almost forty years old. If it were within his power he would go to her now with the philotic instantaneity of the ansible; but he also knew that her pain would wait. It would still be there, waiting for him, when he arrived. Hadn’t his own pain survived all these years?

His weeping stopped; his emotions retreated again. “How old am I?” he asked.

“It has been 3081 years since you were born. But your subjective age is 36 years and 118 days.”

“And how old will Novinha be when I get there?”

“Give or take a few weeks, depending on departure date and how close the starship comes to the speed of light, she’ll be nearly thirty-nine.”

“I want to leave tomorrow.”

“It takes time to schedule a starship, Ender.”

“Are there any orbiting Trondheim?”

“Half a dozen, of course, but only one that could be ready to go tomorrow, and it has a load of skrika for the luxury trade on Cyrillia and Armenia.”

“I’ve never asked you how rich I am.”

“I’ve handled your investments rather well over the years.”

“Buy the ship and the cargo for me.”

“What will you do with skrika on Lusitania?”

“What do the Cyrillians and Armenians do with it?”

“They wear some of it and eat the rest. But they pay more for it than anybody on Lusitania can afford.”

“Then when I give it to the Lusitanians, it may help soften their resentment of a Speaker coming to a Catholic colony.”

Jane became a genie coming out of a bottle. “I have heard, O Master, and I obey.” The genie turned into smoke, which was sucked into the mouth of the jar. Then the lasers turned off, and the air above the terminal was empty.

“Jane,” said Ender.

“Yes?” she answered, speaking through the jewel in his ear.

“Why do you want me to go to Lusitania?”

“I want you to add a third volume to the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. For the piggies.”

“Why do you care so much about them?”

“Because when you’ve written the books that reveal the soul of the three sentient species known to man, then you’ll be ready to write the fourth.”

“Another species of raman?” asked Ender.

“Yes. Me.”

Ender pondered this for a moment. “Are you ready to reveal yourself to the rest of humanity?”

“I’ve always been ready. The question is, are they ready to know me? It was easy for them to love the hegemon—he was human. And the hive queen, that was safe, because as far as they know all the buggers are dead. If you can make them love the piggies, who are still alive, with human blood on their hands—then they’ll be ready to know about me.”

“Someday,” said Ender, “I will love somebody who doesn’t insist that I perform the labors of Hercules.”

“You were getting bored with your life, anyway, Ender.”

“Yes. But I’m middle-aged now. I like being bored.”

“By the way, the owner of the starship Havelok, who lives on Gales, has accepted your offer of forty billion dollars for the ship and its cargo.”

“Forty billion! Does that bankrupt me?”

“A drop in the bucket. The crew has been notified that their contracts are null. I took the liberty of buying them passage on other ships using your funds. You and Valentine won’t need anybody but me to help you run the ship. Shall we leave in the morning?”

“Valentine,” said Ender. His sister was the only possible delay to his departure. Otherwise, now that the decision had been made, neither his students nor his few Nordic friendships here would be worth even a farewell.

“I can’t wait to read the book that Demosthenes writes about the history of Lusitania.” Jane had discovered the true identity of Demosthenes in the process of unmasking the original Speaker for the Dead.

“Valentine won’t come,” said Ender.

“But she’s your sister.”

Ender smiled. Despite Jane’s vast wisdom, she had no understanding of kinship. Though she had been created by humans and conceived herself in human terms, she was not biological. She learned of genetic matters by rote; she could not feel the desires and imperatives that human beings had in common with all other living things. “She’s my sister, but Trondheim is her home.”

“She’s been reluctant to go before.”

“This time I wouldn’t even ask her to come.” Not with a baby coming, not as happy as she is here in Reykjavik. Here where they love her as a teacher, never guessing that she is really the legendary Demosthenes. Here where her husband, Jakt, is lord of a hundred fishing vessels and master of the fjords, where every day is filled with brilliant conversation or the danger and majesty of the floe-strewn sea, she’ll never leave here. Nor will she understand why I must go.

And, thinking of leaving Valentine, Ender wavered in his determination to go to Lusitania. He had been taken from his beloved sister once before, as a child, and resented deeply the years of friendship that had been stolen from him. Could he leave her now, again, after almost twenty years of being together all the time? This time there would be no going back. Once he went to Lusitania, she would have aged twenty-two years in his absence; she’d be in her eighties if he took another twenty-two years to return to her.

<So it won’t be easy for you after all. You have a price to pay, too.>

Don’t taunt me, said Ender silently. I’m entitled to feel regret.

<She’s your other self. Will you really leave her for us?>

It was the voice of the hive queen in his mind. Of course she had seen all that he saw, and knew all that he had decided. His lips silently formed his words to her: I’ll leave her, but not for you. We can’t be sure this will bring any benefit to you. It might be just another disappointment, like Trondheim.

<Lusitania is everything we need. And safe from human beings.>

But it also belongs to another people. I won’t destroy the piggies just to atone for having destroyed your people.

<They’re safe with us; we won’t harm them. You know us by now, surely, after all these years.>

I know what you’ve told me.

<We don’t know how to lie. We’ve shown you our own memories, our own soul.>

I know you could live in peace with them. But could they live in peace with you?

<Take us there. We’ve waited so long.>

Ender walked to a tattered bag that stood unlocked in the corner. Everything he truly owned could fit in there—his change of clothing. All the other things in his room were gifts from people he had Spoken to, honoring him or his office or the truth, he could never tell which. They would stay here when he left. He had no room for them in his bag.

He opened it, pulled out a rolled-up towel, unrolled it. There lay the thick fibrous mat of a large cocoon, fourteen centimeters at its longest point.

<Yes, look at us.>

He had found the cocoon waiting for him when he came to govern the first human colony on a former bugger world. Foreseeing their own destruction at Ender’s hands, knowing him to be an invincible enemy, they had sculptured the landscape in a pattern that would be meaningful only to him, because it had been taken from his dreams. The cocoon, with its helpless but conscious hive queen, had waited for him in a tower where once, in his dreams, he had found an enemy. “You waited longer for me to find you,” he said aloud, “than the few years since I took you from behind the mirror.”

<Few years? Ah, yes, with your sequential mind you do not notice the passage of the years when you travel so near the speed of light. But we notice. Our thought is instantaneous; light crawls by like mercury across cold glass. We knew every moment of these three thousand years.>

“Have I found a place yet that was safe for you?”

<We have ten thousand fertile eggs waiting to be alive.>

“Maybe Lusitania is the place, I don’t know.”

<Let us live again.>

“I’m trying.” Why else do you think I have wandered from world to world for all these years, if not to find a place for you?

<Faster faster faster faster.>

I’ve got to find a place where we won’t kill you again the moment you appear. You’re still in too many human nightmares. Not that many people really believe my book. They may condemn the Xenocide, but they’d do it again.

<In all our life, you are the first person we’ve known who wasn’t ourself. We never had to be understanding because we always understood. Now that we are just this single self, you are the only eyes and arms and legs we have. Forgive us if we are impatient.>

He laughed. Me forgive you.

<Your people are fools. We know the truth. We know who killed us, and it wasn’t you.>

It was me.

<You were a tool.>

It was me.

<We forgive you.>

When you walk on the face of a world again, then I can be forgiven.

5
VALENTINE

Today I let slip that Libo is my son. Only Bark heard me say it, but within an hour it was apparently common knowledge. They gathered around me and made Selvagem ask me if it was true, was I really a father “already.” Selvagem then put Libo’s and my hands together; on impulse I gave Libo a hug, and they made the clicking noises of astonishment and, I think, awe. I could see from that moment on that my prestige among them had risen considerably.

The conclusion is inescapable. The pequeninos that we’ve known so far are not a whole community, or even typical males. They are either juveniles or old bachelors. Not a one of them has ever sired any children. Not a one has even mated, as nearly as we can figure.

There isn’t a primate society I’ve heard of where bachelor groups like this are anything but outcasts, without power or prestige. No wonder they speak of the females with that odd mixtures of worship and contempt, one minute not daring to make a decision without their consent, the next minute telling us that the women are too stupid to understand anything, they are varelse. Until now I was taking these statements at face value, which led to a mental picture of the females as nonsentients, a herd of sows, down on all fours. I thought the males might be consulting them the way they consult trees, using their grunting as a means of divining answers, like casting bones or reading entrails.

Now, though, I realize the females are probably every bit as intelligent as the males, and not varelse at all. The males’ negative statements arise from their resentment as bachelors, excluded from the reproductive process and the power structures of the tribe. The pequeninos have been just as careful with us as we have been with them—they haven’t let us meet their females or the males who have any real power. We thought we were exploring the heart of pequenino society. Instead, figuratively speaking we must be in the genetic sewer; among the males whose genes have not been judged fit to contribute to the tribe.

And yet I don’t believe it. The pequeninos I’ve known have all been bright, clever, quick to learn. So quick that I’ve taught them more about human society, accidently, than I’ve learned about them after years of trying. If these are their castoffs, then I hope someday they’ll judge me worthy to meet the “wives” and the “fathers.”

In the meantime I can’t report any of this because, whether I meant to or not, I’ve clearly violated the rules. Never mind that nobody could possibly have kept the pequeninos from learning anything about us. Never mind that the rules are stupid and counterproductive. I broke them, and if they find out they’ll cut off my contact with the pequeninos, which will be even worse than the severely limited contact we now have. So I’m forced into deception and silly subterfuges, like putting these notes in Libo’s locked personal files, where even my dear wife wouldn’t think to look for them. Here’s the information, absolutely vital, that the pequeninos we’ve studied are all bachelors, and because of the regulations I dare not let the framling xenologers know anything about it. Olha bem, gente, aqui esta: A ciência, o bicho que se devora a si mesma! (Watch closely, folks, here it is: Science, the ugly little beast that devours itself!)

—João Figueira Alvarez, Secret Notes, published in Demosthenes, “The Integrity of Treason: The Xenologers of Lusitania,” Reykjavik Historical Perspectives, 1990:4:1

Her belly was tight and swollen, and still a month remained before Valentine’s daughter was due to be born. It was a constant nuisance, being so large and unbalanced. Always before when she had been preparing to take a history class into söndring, she had been able to do much of the loading of the boat herself. Now she had to rely on her husband’s sailors to do it all, and she couldn’t even scramble back and forth from wharf to hold—the captain was ordering the stowage to keep the ship in balance. He was doing it well, of course—hadn’t Captain Räv taught her, when she first arrived?—but Valentine did not like being forced into a sedentary role.

It was her fifth söndring; the first had been the occasion of meeting Jakt. She had no thought of marriage. Trondheim was a world like any of the other score that she had visited with her peripatetic younger brother. She would teach, she would study, and after four or five months she would write an extended historical essay, publish it pseudonymously under the name Demosthenes, and then enjoy herself until Ender accepted a call to go speak somewhere else. Usually their work meshed perfectly—he would be called to speak the death of some major person, whose life story would then become the focus of her essay. It was a game they played, pretending to be itinerant professors of this and that, while in actuality they created or transformed the world’s identity, for Demosthenes’ essay was always seen as definitive.

She had thought, for a time, that surely someone would realize that Demosthenes wrote essays that suspiciously followed her itinerary, and find her out. But soon she realized that, like the speakers but to a lesser degree, a mythology had grown up about Demosthenes. People believed that Demosthenes was not one individual. Rather, each Demosthenes essay was thought to be the work of a genius writing independently, who then attempted to publish under the Demosthenes rubric; some imagined that the computer automatically submitted the work to an unknown committee of brilliant historians of the age, who decided whether it was worthy of the name. Never mind that no one ever met a scholar to whom such a work had been submitted. Hundreds of “Demosthenes” essays every year were attempted; the computer automatically rejected any that were not written by the real Demosthenes; and still the belief firmly persisted that such a person as Valentine could not possibly exist. After all, Demosthenes had begun as a demagogue on the computer nets back when Earth was fighting the Bugger Wars, three thousand years ago. It could not be the same person now.

And it’s true, thought Valentine. I’m not the same person, really, from book to book, because each world changes who I am, even as I write down the story of the world. And this world most of all.

She had disliked the pervasiveness of Lutheran thought, especially the so-called Calvinist faction, who seemed to have an answer to every question before it had even been asked. So she conceived the idea of taking a select group of graduate students away from Reykjavik, off to one of the Summer Islands, the equatorial chain where, in the spring, skrika came to spawn and flocks of halkig went crazy with reproductive energy. Her idea was to break the patterns of intellectual rot that were inevitable at every university. The students would eat nothing but the havregrin that grew wild in the sheltered valleys and whatever halkig they had the nerve and wit to kill. When their daily food depended on their own exertion, their attitudes about what mattered and did not matter in history were bound to change.

The university gave permission, grudgingly; she used her own funds to charter a boat from Jakt, who had just become head of one of the many skrika-catching families. He had a seaman’s contempt for university people, calling them skräddare to their faces and worse things behind their backs. He told Valentine that he would have to come back to rescue her starving students within a week. Instead she and her castaways, as they dubbed themselves, lasted the whole time, and thrived, building something of a village and enjoying a burst of creative, unfettered thought that resulted in a noticeable surge of excellent and insightful publications upon their return.

The most obvious result in Reykjavik was that Valentine always had hundreds of applicants for the twenty places in each of three söndrings of the summer. Far more important to her, however, was Jakt. He was not particularly educated, but he was intimately familiar with the lore of Trondheim itself. He could pilot halfway around the equatorial sea without a chart. He knew the drifts of icebergs and where the floes would be thick. He seemed to know where the skrika would be gathered to dance, and how to deploy his hunters to catch them unawares as they flopped ashore from the sea. Weather never seemed to take him by surprise, and Valentine concluded that there was no situation he was not prepared for.

Except for her. And when the Lutheran minister—not a Calvinist—married them, they both seemed more surprised than happy. Yet they were happy. And for the first time since she left Earth she felt whole, at peace, at home. That’s why the baby grew within her. The wandering was over. And she was so grateful to Ender that he had understood this, that without their having to discuss it he had realized that Trondheim was the end of their three-thousand-mile Odyssey, the end of Demosthenes’ career; like the ishäxa, she had found a way to root in the ice of this world and draw nourishment that the soil of other lands had not provided.

The baby kicked hard, taking her from her reverie; she looked around to see Ender coming toward her, walking along the wharf with his duffel slung over his shoulder. She understood at once why he had brought his bag: He meant to go along on the söndring. She wondered whether she was glad of it. Ender was quiet and unobtrusive, but he could not possibly conceal his brilliant understanding of human nature. The average students would overlook him, but the best of them, the ones she hoped would come up with original thought, would inevitably follow the subtle but powerful clues he would inevitably drop. The result would be impressive, she was sure—after all, she owed a great debt to his insights over the years—but it would be Ender’s brilliance, not the students’. It would defeat somewhat the purpose of the söndring.

But she wouldn’t tell him no when he asked to come. Truth to tell, she would love to have him along. Much as she loved Jakt, she missed the constant closeness that she and Ender used to have before she married. It would be years before she and Jakt could possibly be as tightly bound together as she and her brother were. Jakt knew it, too, and it caused him some pain; a husband shouldn’t have to compete with his brother-in-law for the devotion of his wife.

“Ho, Val,” said Ender.

“Ho, Ender.” Alone on the dock, where no one else could hear, she was free to call him by the childhood name, ignoring the fact that the rest of humanity had turned it into an epithet.

“What’ll you do if the rabbit decides to bounce out during the söndring?”

She smiled. “Her papa would wrap her in a skrika skin, I would sing her silly Nordic songs, and the students would suddenly have great insights about the impact of reproductive imperatives on history.”

They laughed together for a moment, and suddenly Valentine knew, without noticing why she knew, that Ender did not want to go on the söndring, that he had packed his bag to leave Trondheim, and that he had come, not to invite her along, but to say good-bye. Tears came unbidden to her eyes, and a terrible devastation wrenched at her. He reached out and held her, as he had so many times in the past; this time, though, her belly was between them, and the embrace was awkward and tentative.

“I thought you meant to stay,” she whispered. “You turned down the calls that came.”

“One came that I couldn’t turn down.”

“I can have this baby on söndring, but not on another world.”

As she guessed, Ender hadn’t meant her to come. “The baby’s going to be shockingly blond,” said Ender. “She’d look hopelessly out of place on Lusitania. Mostly black Brazilians there.”

So it would be Lusitania. Valentine understood at once why he was going—the piggies’ murder of the xenologer was public knowledge now, having been broadcast during the supper hour in Reykjavik. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Not really.”

“Do you know what would happen if people realized that the Ender is going to the piggies’ world? They’d crucify you!”

“They’d crucify me here, actually, except that no one but you knows who I am. Promise not to tell.”

“What good can you do there? He’ll have been dead for decades before you arrive.”

“My subjects are usually quite cold before I arrive to speak for them. It’s the main disadvantage of being itinerant.”

“I never thought to lose you again.”

“But I knew we had lost each other on the day you first loved Jakt.”

“Then you should have told me! I wouldn’t have done it!”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you. But it isn’t true, Val. You would have done it anyway. And I wanted you to. You’ve never been happier.” He put his hands astride her waist. “The Wiggin genes were crying out for continuation. I hope you have a dozen more.”

“It’s considered impolite to have more than four, greedy to go past five, and barbaric to have more than six.” Even though she joked, she was deciding how best to handle the söndring—let the graduate assistants take it without her, cancel it altogether, or postpone it until Ender left?

But Ender made the question moot. “Do you think your husband would let one of his boats take me out to the mareld overnight, so I can shuttle to my starship in the morning?”

His haste was cruel. “If you hadn’t needed a ship from Jakt, would you have left me a note on the computer?”

“I made the decision five minutes ago, and came straight to you.”

“But you already booked passage—that takes planning!”

“Not if you buy the starship.”

“Why are you in such a hurry? The voyage takes decades—”

“Twenty-two years.”

“Twenty-two years! What difference would a couple of days make? Couldn’t you wait a month to see my baby born?”

“In a month, Val, I might not have the courage to leave you.”

“Then don’t! What are the piggies to you? The buggers are ramen enough for one man’s life. Stay, marry as I’ve married. You opened the stars to colonization, Ender, now stay here and taste the good fruits of your labor!”

“You have Jakt. I have obnoxious students who keep trying to convert me to Calvinism. My labor isn’t done yet, and Trondheim isn’t my home.”

Valentine felt his words like an accusation: You rooted yourself here without thought of whether I could live in this soil. But it’s not my fault, she wanted to answer—you’re the one who’s leaving, not me. “Remember how it was,” she said, “when we left Peter on Earth and took a decades-long voyage to our first colony, to the world you governed? It was as if he had died. By the time we got there he was old, and we were still young; when we talked by ansible he had become an ancient uncle, the power-ripened Hegemon, the legendary Locke, anyone but our brother.”

“It was an improvement, as I recall.” Ender was trying to make things lighter.

But Valentine took his words perversely. “Do you think I’ll improve, too, in twenty years?”

“I think I’ll grieve for you more than if you had died.”

“No, Ender, it will be exactly as if I died, and you’ll know that you’re the one who killed me.”

He winced. “You don’t mean that.”

“I won’t write to you. Why should I? To you it’ll be only a week or two. You’d arrive on Lusitania, and the computer would have twenty years of letters for you from a person you left only the week before. The first five years would be grief, the pain of losing you, the loneliness of not having you to talk to—”

“Jakt is your husband, not me.”

“And then what would I write? Clever, newsy little letters about the baby? She’d be five years old, six, ten, twenty and married, and you wouldn’t even know her, wouldn’t even care.”

“I’ll care.”

“You won’t have the chance. I won’t write to you until I’m very old, Ender. Until you’ve gone to Lusitania and then to another place, swallowing the decades in vast gulps. Then I’ll send you my memoir. I’ll dedicate it to you. To Andrew, my beloved brother. I followed you gladly to two dozen worlds, but you wouldn’t stay even two weeks when I asked you.”

“Listen to yourself, Val, and then see why I have to leave now, before you tear me to pieces.”

“That’s a sophistry you wouldn’t tolerate in your students, Ender! I wouldn’t have said these things if you weren’t leaving like a burglar who was caught in the act! Don’t turn the cause around and blame it on me!”

He answered breathlessly, his words tumbling over each other in his hurry; he was racing to finish his speech before emotion stopped him. “No, you’re right, I wanted to hurry because I have a work to do there, and every day here is marking time, and because it hurts me every time I see you and Jakt growing closer and you and me growing more distant, even though I know that it’s exactly as it should be, so when I decided to go, I thought that going quickly was better, and I was right; you know I’m right. I never thought you’d hate me for it.”

Now emotion stopped him, and he wept; so did she. “I don’t hate you, I love you, you’re part of myself, you’re my heart and when you go it’s my heart torn out and carried away—”

And that was the end of speech.

Räv’s first mate took Ender out to the mareld, the great platform on the equatorial sea, where shuttles were launched into space to rendezvous with orbiting starships. They agreed silently that Valentine wouldn’t go with him. Instead, she went home with her husband and clung to him through the night. The next day she went on söndring with her students, and cried for Ender only in darkness, when she thought no one could see.

But her students saw, and the stories circulated about Professor Wiggin’s great grief for the departure of her brother, the itinerant speaker. They made of this what students always do—both more and less than reality. But one student, a girl named Plikt, became obsessed with the idea that there was more to the story of Valentine and Andrew Wiggin than anyone had guessed.

So she began to try to research their story, to trace backward their voyages together among the stars. When Valentine’s daughter Syfte was four years old, and her son Ren was two, Plikt came to her. She was a young professor at the university by then, and she showed Valentine her published story. She had cast it as fiction, but Valentine recognized at once the story of the brother and sister who were the oldest people in the universe, born on Earth before any colonies had been planted on other worlds, and who then wandered from world to world, rootless, searching.

To Valentine’s relief—and, strangely, disappointment—Plikt had not uncovered the fact that Ender was the original Speaker for the Dead, and Valentine was Demosthenes. But she knew enough of their story to write the tale of their good-bye when she decided to stay with her husband, and he to go on. The scene was much tenderer and more affecting than it had really been; Plikt had written what should have happened, if Ender and Valentine had had more sense of theatre.

“Why did you write this?” Valentine asked her.

“Isn’t it good enough to be its own reason for writing?”

The twisted answer amused Valentine, but it did not put her off. “What was my brother Andrew to you, that you’ve done the research to create this?”

“That’s still the wrong question,” said Plikt.

“I seem to be failing some kind of test. Can you give me a hint what question I should ask?”

“Don’t be angry. You should be asking me why I wrote it as fiction instead of biography.”

“Why, then?”

“Because I discovered that Andrew Wiggin, speaker for the dead, is Ender Wiggin, the Xenocide.”

Even though Ender was four years gone, he was still eighteen years from his destination. Valentine felt sick with dread, thinking of what his life would be like if he was welcomed on Lusitania as the most loathed man in human history.

“You don’t need to be afraid, Professor Wiggin. If I meant to tell, I could have. When I found it out, I realized that he had repented what he did. And such a magnificent penance. It was the original Speaker for the Dead who revealed his act as an unspeakable crime—and so he took the role of speaker, like so many hundreds of others, and acted out the role of his own accuser on twenty worlds.”

“You have found so much, Plikt, and understood so little.”

“I understand everything! Read what I wrote—that was understanding!”

Valentine told herself that since Plikt knew so much, she might as well know more. But it was rage, not reason, that drove Valentine to tell what she had never told anyone before. “Plikt, my brother didn’t imitate the original Speaker for the Dead. He wrote the Hive Queen and the Hegemon.”

When Plikt realized that Valentine was telling the truth, it overwhelmed her. For all these years she had regarded Andrew Wiggin as her subject matter, and the original Speaker for the Dead as her inspiration. To find that they were the same person struck her dumb for half an hour.

Then she and Valentine talked and confided and came to trust each other until Valentine invited Plikt to be the tutor of her children and her collaborator in writing and teaching. Jakt was surprised at the new addition to the household, but in time Valentine told him the secrets Plikt had uncovered through research or provoked out of her. It became the family legend, and as soon as the children were old enough to be discreet, they were told the marvelous stories of their long-lost Uncle Ender, who was thought in every world to be a monster, but in reality was something of a savior, or a prophet, or at least a martyr.

The years passed, the family prospered, and Valentine’s pain at Ender’s loss became pride in him and finally a powerful anticipation. She was eager for him to arrive on Lusitania, to solve the dilemma of the piggies, to fulfil his apparent destiny as the apostle to the ramen. It was Plikt, the good Lutheran, who taught Valentine to conceive of Ender’s life in religious terms; the powerful stability of her family life and the miracle of each of her five children combined to instill in her the emotions, if not the doctrines, of faith.

It was bound to affect the children, too. The tale of Uncle Ender, because they could never mention it to outsiders, took on supernatural overtones. Syfte, the eldest daughter, was particularly intrigued, and even when she turned twenty, and rationality overpowered the primitive, childish adoration of Uncle Ender, she was still obsessed with him. He was a creature out of legend, and yet he still lived, and on a world not impossibly far away.

She did not tell her mother and father, but she did confide in her former tutor. “Someday, Plikt, I’ll meet him. I’ll meet him and help him in his work.”

“What makes you think he’ll need help? Your help, anyway?” Plikt was always a skeptic until her student had earned her belief.

“He didn’t do it alone the first time, either, did he?” And Syfte’s dreams turned outward, away from the ice of Trondheim, to the distant planet where Ender Wiggin had not yet set foot. People of Lusitania, you little know what a great man will walk on your earth and take up your burden. And I will join him, in due time, even though it will be a generation late. Be ready for me, too, Lusitania.

On his starship, Ender Wiggin had no notion of the freight of other people’s dreams he carried with him. It had been only days since he left Valentine weeping on the dock. To him, Syfte had no name; she was a swelling in Valentine’s belly, and nothing more. He was only beginning to feel the pain of losing Valentine—a pain she had long since got over. And his thoughts were far from his unknown nieces and nephews on a world of ice.

It was a lonely, tortured young girl named Novinha that he thought of, wondering what the twenty-two years of his voyage were doing to her, and whom she would have become by the time they met. For he loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.

6
OLHADO

Their only intercourse with other tribes seems to be warfare. When they tell stories to each other (usually during rainy weather), it almost always deals with battles and heroes. The ending is always death, for heroes and cowards alike. If the stories are any guideline, piggies don’t expect to live through war. And they never, ever, give the slightest hint of interest in the enemy females, either for rape, murder, or slavery, the traditional human treatment of the wives of fallen soldiers.

Does this mean that there is no genetic exchange between tribes? Not at all. The genetic exchanges may be conducted by the females, who may have some system of trading genetic favors. Given the apparent utter subservience of the males to the females in piggy society, this could easily be going on without the males having any idea; or it might cause them such shame that they just won’t tell us about it.

What they want to tell us about is battle. A typical description, from my daughter Ouanda’s notes of 2:21 last year, during a session of storytelling inside the log house:

PIGGY (speaking Stark): He killed three of the brothers without taking a wound. I have never seen such a strong and fearless warrior. Blood was high on his arms, and the stick in his hand was splintered and covered with the brains of my brothers. He knew he was honorable, even though the rest of the battle went against his feeble tribe. Dei honra! Eu Ihe dei! (I gave honor! I gave it to him!)

(Other piggies click their tongues and squeak.)

PIGGY: I hooked him to the ground. He was powerful in his struggles until I showed him the grass in my hand. Then he opened his mouth and hummed the strange songs of the far country. Nunca será pau no mão da gente! (He will never be a stick in our hands!) (At this point they joined in singing a song in the Wives’ Language, one of the longest passages yet heard.)

(Note that this is a common pattern among them, to speak primarily in Stark, then switch into Portuguese at the moment of climax and conclusion. On reflection, we have realized that we do the same thing, falling into our native Portuguese at the most emotional moments.)

This account of battle may not seem so unusual until you hear enough stories to realize that they always end with the hero’s death. Apparently they have no taste for light comedy.

—Liberdade Figueira de Medici, “Report on Intertribal Patterns of Lusitanian Aborigines” in Cross-Cultural Transactions, 1964:12:40

There wasn’t much to do during interstellar flight. Once the course was charted and the ship had made the Park shift, the only task was to calculate how near to lightspeed the ship was traveling. The shipboard computer figured the exact velocity and then determined how long, in subjective time, the voyage should continue before making the Park shift back to a manageable sublight speed. Like a stopwatch, thought Ender. Click it on, click it off, and the race is over.

The ship’s computers were bright enough to help him get the hang of the switch from his fluent Spanish to Portuguese. It was easy enough to speak, but so many consonants were left out that understanding it was hard.

Speaking Portuguese with the slow-witted ship’s computer became maddening after an hour or two each day. On every other voyage, Val had been there. Not that they had always talked—Val and Ender knew each other so well that there was often nothing to say. But without her there, Ender grew impatient with his own thoughts; they never came to a point, because there was no one to tell them to.

Even the hive queen was no help. Her thoughts were instantaneous; bound, not to synapses, but to philotes that were untouched by the relativistic effects of lightspeed. She passed sixteen hours for every minute of Ender’s time—the differential was too great for him to receive any kind of communication from her. If she were not in a cocoon, she would have thousands of individual buggers, each doing its own task and passing to her vast memory its experiences. But now all she had were her memories, and in his eight days of captivity, Ender began to understand her eagerness to be delivered.

By the time the eight days passed, he was doing fairly well at speaking Portuguese directly instead of translating from Spanish whenever he wanted to say anything. He was also desperate for human company—he would have been glad to discuss religion with a Calvinist, just to have somebody smarter than the ship’s computer to talk to.

The starship performed the Park shift; in an immeasurable moment its velocity changed relative to the rest of the universe. Or, rather, the theory had it that in fact the velocity of the rest of the universe changed, while the starship remained truly motionless. No one could be sure, because there was nowhere to stand to observe the phenomenon. It was anybody’s guess, since nobody understood why philotic effects worked anyway; the ansible had been developed half by accident, and along with it the Park Instantaneity Principle. It may not be comprehensible, but it worked.

The windows of the starship instantly filled with stars as light became visible again in all directions. Someday a scientist would discover why the Park shift took almost no energy. Somewhere, Ender was certain, a terrible price was being paid for human starflight. He had dreamed once of a star winking out every time a starship made the Park shift. Jane assured him that it wasn’t so, but he knew that most stars were invisible to us; a trillion of them could disappear and we’d not know it. For thousands of years we would continue to see the photons that had already been launched before the star disappeared. By the time we could see the galaxy go blank, it would be far too late to amend our course.

“Sitting there in paranoid fantasy,” said Jane.

“You can’t read minds,” said Ender.

“You always get morose and speculate about the destruction of the universe whenever you come out of starflight. It’s your peculiar manifestation of motion sickness.”

“Have you alerted Lusitanian authorities that I’m coming?”

“It’s a very small colony. There’s no Landing Authority because hardly anybody goes there. There’s an orbiting shuttle that automatically takes people up and down to a laughable little shuttleport.”

“No clearance from Immigration?”

“You’re a speaker. They can’t turn you away. Besides, Immigration consists of the Governor, who is also the Mayor, since the city and the colony are identical. Her name is Faria Lima Maria do Bosque, called Bosquinha, and she sends you greetings and wishes you would go away, since they’ve got trouble enough without a prophet of agnosticism going around annoying good Catholics.”

“She said that?”

“Actually, not to you—Bishop Peregrino said it to her, and she agreed. But it’s her job to agree. If you tell her that Catholics are all idolatrous, superstitious fools, she’ll probably sigh and say, I hope you can keep those opinions to yourself.”

“You’re stalling,” said Ender. “What is it you think I don’t want to hear?”

“Novinha canceled her call for a speaker. Five days after she sent it.”

Of course, the Starways Code said that once Ender had begun his voyage in response to her call, the call could not legally be canceled; still, it changed everything, because instead of eagerly awaiting his arrival for twenty-two years, she would be dreading it, resenting him for coming when she had changed her mind. He had expected to be received by her as a welcome friend. Now she would be even more hostile than the Catholic establishment. “Anything to simplify my work,” he said.

“Well, it’s not all bad, Andrew. You see, in the intervening years, a couple of other people have called for a speaker, and they haven’t canceled.”

“Who?”

“By the most fascinating coincidence, they are Novinha’s son Miro and Novinha’s daughter Ela.”

“They couldn’t possibly have known Pipo. Why would they call me to speak his death?”

“Oh, no, not Pipo’s death. Ela called for a Speaker only six weeks ago, to speak the death of her father, Novinha’s husband, Marcos Maria Ribeira, called Marcão. He keeled over in a bar. Not from alcohol—he had a disease. He died of terminal rot.”

“I worry about you, Jane, consumed with compassion the way you are.”

“Compassion is what you’re good at. I’m better at complex searches through organized data structures.”

“And the boy—what’s his name?”

“Miro. He called for a Speaker four years ago. For the death of Pipo’s son, Libo.”

“Libo couldn’t be older than forty—”

“He was helped along to an early death. He was xenologer, you see—or Zenador, as they say in Portuguese.”

“The piggies—”

“Exactly like his father’s death. The organs placed exactly the same. Three piggies have been executed the same way while you were en route, though farther from the gate. But they plant trees in the middle of the piggy corpses—no such honor for the dead humans.”

Both xenologers murdered by the piggies, a generation apart. “What has the Starways Council decided?”

“It’s very tricky. They keep vacillating. They haven’t certified either of Libo’s apprentices as xenologer. One is Libo’s daughter, Ouanda. And the other is Miro, the one who called for a speaker.”

“Do they maintain contact with the piggies?”

“Officially, no. There’s some controversy about this. After Libo died, the Council forbade contact more frequently than once a month. But Libo’s daughter categorically refused to obey the order.”

“And they didn’t remove her?”

“The majority for cutting back on contact with the piggies was paper thin. There was no majority for censuring her. At the same time, they worry that Miro and Ouanda are so young. Two years ago a party of scientists was dispatched from Calicut. They should be here to take over supervision of piggy affairs in only thirty-three more years.”

“Do they have any idea this time why the piggies killed the xenologer?”

“None at all. But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

The answer would have been easy, except that the hive queen nudged him gently in the back of his mind. Ender could feel her like wind through the leaves of a tree, a rustling, a gentle movement, and sunlight. Yes, he was here to speak for the dead. But he was also here to bring the dead back to life.

<This is a good place.>

The hive queen was making the enormous effort to speak to him during near lightspeed flight.

<There’s a mind here. Much clearer than any human mind we’ve known.>

The piggies? They think the way you do?

<It knows of the piggies. A little time; it’s afraid of us.>

The hive queen withdrew, and Ender was left to ponder the thought that with Lusitania he may have bitten off more than he could chew.

Bishop Peregrino delivered the homily himself. That was always a bad sign. Never an exciting speaker, he had become so convoluted and parenthetical that half the time Ela couldn’t even understand what he was talking about. Quim pretended he could understand, of course, because as far as he was concerned the bishop could do no wrong. But little Grego made no attempt to seem interested. Even when Sister Esquecimento was roving the aisle, with her needle-sharp nails and cruel grip, Grego fearlessly performed whatever mischief entered his head.

Today he was prying the rivets out of the back of the plastic bench in front of them. It bothered Ela how strong he was—a six-year-old shouldn’t be able to work a screwdriver under the lip of a heat-sealed rivet. Ela wasn’t sure she could do it.

If Father were here, of course, his long arm would snake out and gently, oh so gently, take the screwdriver out of Grego’s hand. He would whisper, “Where did you get this?” and Grego would look at him with wide and innocent eyes. Later, when the family got home from mass, Father would rage at Miro for leaving tools around, calling him terrible names and blaming him for all the troubles of the family. Miro would bear it in silence. Ela would busy herself with preparation for the evening meal. Quim would sit uselessly in the corner, massaging the rosary and murmuring his useless little prayers. Olhado was the lucky one, with his electronic eyes—he simply turned them off or played back some favorite scene from the past and paid no attention. Quara went off and cowered in the corner. And little Grego stood there triumphantly, his hand clutching Father’s pantleg, watching as the blame for everything he did was poured out on Miro’s head.

Ela shuddered as the scene played itself out in her memory. If it had ended there, it would have been bearable. But then Miro would leave, and they would eat, and then—

Sister Esquecimento’s spidery fingers leapt out; her fingernails dug into Grego’s arm. Instantly, Grego dropped the screwdriver. Of course it was supposed to clatter on the floor, but Sister Esquecimento was no fool. She bent quickly and caught it in her other hand. Grego grinned. Her face was only inches from his knee. Ela saw what he had in mind, reached out to try to stop him, but too late—he brought his knee up sharply into Sister Esquecimento’s mouth.

She gasped from the pain and let go of Grego’s arm. He snatched the screwdriver out of her slackened hand. Holding a hand to her bleeding mouth, she fled down the aisle. Grego resumed his demolition work.

Father is dead, Ela reminded herself. The words sounded like music in her mind. Father is dead, but he’s still here, because he left his monstrous little legacy behind. The poison he put in us all is still ripening, and eventually it will kill us all. When he died his liver was only two inches long, and his spleen could not be found. Strange fatty organs had grown in their places. There was no name for the disease; his body had gone insane, forgotten the blueprint by which human beings were built. Even now the disease still lives on in his children. Not in our bodies, but in our souls. We exist where normal human children are expected to be; we’re even shaped the same. But each of us in our own way has been replaced by an imitation child, shaped out of a twisted, fetid, lipidous goiter that grew out of Father’s soul.

Maybe it would be different if Mother tried to make it better. But she cared about nothing but microscopes and genetically enhanced cereals, or whatever she was working on now.

“. . . so-called Speaker for the Dead! But there is only One who can speak for the dead, and that is Sagrado Cristo . . .”

Bishop Peregrino’s words caught her attention. What was he saying about a speaker for the dead? He couldn’t possibly know she had called for one—

“. . . the law requires us to treat him with courtesy, but not with belief! The truth is not to be found in the speculations and hypotheses of unspiritual men, but in the teachings and traditions of Mother Church. So when he walks among you, give him your smiles, but hold back your hearts!”

Why was he giving this warning? The nearest planet was Trondheim, twenty-two lightyears away, and it wasn’t likely there’d be a speaker there. It would be decades till a speaker arrived, if one came at all. She leaned over Quara to ask Quim—he would have been listening. “What’s this about a Speaker for the Dead?” she whispered.

“If you’d listen, you’d know for yourself.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll deviate your septum.”

Quim smirked, to show her he wasn’t afraid of her threats. But, since in fact he was afraid of her, he then told her. “Some faithless wretch apparently requested a speaker back when the first xenologer died, and he arrives this afternoon—he’s already on the shuttle and the Mayor is on her way out to meet him when he lands.”

She hadn’t bargained for this. The computer hadn’t told her a speaker was already on the way. He was supposed to come years from now, to speak the truth about the monstrosity called Father who had finally blessed his family by dropping dead; the truth would come like light to illuminate and purify their past. But Father was too recently dead for him to be spoken now. His tentacles still reached out from the grave and sucked at their hearts.

The homily ended, and eventually so did the mass. She held tightly to Grego’s hand, trying to keep him from snatching someone’s book or bag as they threaded through the crowd. Quim was good for something, at least—he carried Quara, who always froze up when she was supposed to make her way among strangers. Olhado switched his eyes back on and took care of himself, winking metallically at whatever fifteen-year-old semi-virgin he was hoping to horrify today. Ela genuflected at the statues of Os Venerados, her long-dead, half-sainted grandparents. Aren’t you proud to have such lovely grandchildren as us?

Grego was smirking; sure enough, he had a baby’s shoe in his hand. Ela silently prayed that the infant had come out of the encounter unbloodied. She took the shoe from Grego and laid it on the little altar where candles burned in perpetual witness of the miracle of the Descolada. Whoever owned the shoe, they’d find it there.

Mayor Bosquinha was cheerful enough as the car skimmed over the grassland between the shuttleport and the settlement of Milagre. She pointed out herds of semi-domestic cabra, a native species that provided fibers for cloth, but whose meat was nutritionally useless to human beings.

“Do the piggies eat them?” asked Ender.

She raised an eyebrow. “We don’t know much about the piggies.”

“We know they live in the forest. Do they ever come out on the plain?”

She shrugged. “That’s for the framlings to decide.”

Ender was startled for a moment to hear her use that word; but of course Demosthenes’ latest book had been published twenty-two years ago, and distributed through the Hundred Worlds by ansible. Utlanning, framling, raman, varelse—the terms were part of Stark now, and probably did not even seem particularly novel to Bosquinha.

It was her lack of curiosity about the piggies that left him feeling uncomfortable. The people of Lusitania couldn’t possibly be unconcerned about the piggies—they were the reason for the high, impassable fence that none but the Zenadors could cross. No, she wasn’t incurious, she was avoiding the subject. Whether it was because the murderous piggies were a painful subject or because she didn’t trust a speaker for the dead, he couldn’t guess.

They crested a hill and she stopped the car. Gently it settled onto its skids. Below them a broad river wound its way among grassy hills; beyond the river, the farther hills were completely covered with forest. Along the far bank of the river, brick and plaster houses with tile roofs made a picturesque town. Farmhouses perched on the near bank, their long narrow fields reaching toward the hill where Ender and Bosquinha sat.

“Milagre,” said Bosquinha. “On the highest hill, the Cathedral. Bishop Peregrino has asked the people to be polite and helpful to you.”

From her tone, Ender gathered that he had also let them know that he was a dangerous agent of agnosticism. “Until God strikes me dead?” he asked.

Bosquinha smiled. “God is setting an example of Christian tolerance, and we expect everyone in town will follow.”

“Do they know who called me?”

“Whoever called you has been—discreet.”

“You’re the Governor, besides being Mayor. You have some privileges of information.”

“I know that your original call was canceled, but too late. I also know that two others have requested speakers in recent years. But you must realize that most people are content to receive their doctrine and their consolation from the priests.”

“They’ll be relieved to know that I don’t deal in doctrine or consolation.”

“Your kind offer to let us have your cargo of skrika will make you popular enough in the bars, and you can be sure you’ll see plenty of vain women wearing the pelts in the months to come. It’s coming on to autumn.”

“I happened to acquire the skrika with the starship—it was of no use to me, and I don’t expect any special gratitude for it.” He looked at the rough, furry-looking grass around him. “This grass—it’s native?”

“And useless. We can’t even use it for thatch—if you cut it, it crumbles, and then dissolves into dust in the next rain. But down there, in the fields, the most common crop is a special breed of amaranth that our xenobiologist developed for us. Rice and wheat were feeble and undependable crops here, but the amaranth is so hardy that we have to use herbicides around the fields to keep it from spreading.”

“Why?”

“This is a quarantined world, Speaker. The amaranth is so well-suited to this environment that it would soon choke out the native grasses. The idea is not to terraform Lusitania. The idea is to have as little impact on this world as possible.”

“That must be hard on the people.”

“Within our enclave, Speaker, we are free and our lives are full. And outside the fence—no one wants to go there, anyway.”

The tone of her voice was heavy with concealed emotion. Ender knew, then, that the fear of the piggies ran deep.

“Speaker, I know you’re thinking that we’re afraid of the piggies. And perhaps some of us are. But the feeling most of us have, most of the time, isn’t fear at all. It’s hatred. Loathing.”

“You’ve never seen them.”

“You must know of the two Zenadors who were killed—I suspect you were originally called to speak the death of Pipo. But both of them, Pipo and Libo alike, were beloved here. Especially Libo. He was a kind and generous man, and the grief at his death was widespread and genuine. It is hard to conceive of how the piggies could do to him what they did. Dom Cristão, the abbot of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo—he says that they must lack the moral sense. He says this may mean that they are beasts. Or it may mean that they are unfallen, having not yet eaten of the fruit of the forbidden tree.” She smiled tightly. “But that’s theology, and so it means nothing to you.”

He did not answer. He was used to the way religious people assumed that their sacred stories must sound absurd to unbelievers. But Ender did not consider himself an unbeliever, and he had a keen sense of the sacredness of many tales. But he could not explain this to Bosquinha. She would have to change her assumptions about him over time. She was suspicious of him, but he believed she could be won; to be a good Mayor, she had to be skilled at seeing people for what they are, not for what they seem.

He turned the subject. “The Filhos da Mente de Cristo—my Portuguese isn’t strong, but does that mean ‘Sons of the Mind of Christ’?”

“They’re a new order, relatively speaking, formed only four hundred years ago under a special dispensation of the Pope—”

“Oh, I know the Children of the Mind of Christ, Mayor. I Spoke the death of San Angelo on Moctezuma, in the city of Córdoba.”

Her eyes widened. “Then the story is true!”

“I’ve heard many versions of the story, Mayor Bosquinha. One tale has it that the devil possessed San Angelo on his deathbed, so he cried out for the unspeakable rites of the pagan Hablador de los Muertos.”

Bosquinha smiled. “That is something like the tale that is whispered. Dom Cristão says it’s nonsense, of course.”

“It happens that San Angelo, back before he was sainted, attended my speaking for a woman that he knew. The fungus in his blood was already killing him. He came to me and said, ‘Andrew, they’re already telling the most terrible lies about me, saying that I’ve done miracles and should be sainted. You must help me. You must tell the truth at my death.’ ”

“But the miracles have been certified, and he was canonized only ninety years after his death.”

“Yes. Well, that’s partly my fault. When I spoke his death, I attested several of the miracles myself.”

Now she laughed aloud. “A speaker for the dead, believing in miracles?”

“Look at your cathedral hill. How many of those buildings are for the priests, and how many are for the school?”

Bosquinha understood at once, and glared at him. “The Filhos da Mente de Cristo are obedient to the Bishop.”

“Except that they preserve and teach all knowledge, whether the Bishop approves of it or not.”

“San Angelo may have allowed you to meddle in affairs of the Church. I assure you that Bishop Peregrino will not.”

“I’ve come to speak a simple death, and I’ll abide by the law. I think you’ll find I do less harm than you expect, and perhaps more good.”

“If you’ve come to speak Pipo’s death, Speaker pelos Mortos, then you will do nothing but harm. Leave the piggies behind the wall. If I had my way, no human being would pass through that fence again.”

“I hope there’s a room I can rent.”

“We’re an unchanging town here, Speaker. Everyone has a house here and there’s nowhere else to go—why would anyone maintain an inn? We can only offer you one of the small plastic dwellings the first colonists put up. It’s small, but it has all the amenities.”

“Since I don’t need many amenities or much space, I’m sure it will be fine. And I look forward to meeting Dom Cristão. Where the followers of San Angelo are, the truth has friends.”

Bosquinha sniffed and started the car again. As Ender intended, her preconceived notions of a speaker for the dead were now shattered. To think he had actually known San Angelo, and admired the Filhos. It was not what Bishop Peregrino had led them to expect.

The room was only thinly furnished, and if Ender had owned much he would have had trouble finding anywhere to put it. As always before, however, he was able to unpack from interstellar flight in only a few minutes. Only the bundled cocoon of the hive queen remained in his bag; he had long since given up feeling odd about the incongruity of stowing the future of a magnificent race in a duffel under his bed.

“Maybe this will be the place,” he murmured. The cocoon felt cool, almost cold, even through the towels it was wrapped in.

<It is the place.>

It was unnerving to have her so certain of it. There was no hint of pleading or impatience or any of the other feelings she had given him in the past, desiring to emerge. Just absolute certainty.

“I wish we could decide just like that,” he said. “It might be the place, but it all depends on whether the piggies can cope with having you here.”

<The question is whether they can cope with you humans without us.>

“It takes time. Give me a few months here.”

<Take all the time you need. We’re in no hurry now.>

“Who is it that you’ve found? I thought you told me that you couldn’t communicate with anybody but me.”

<The part of our mind that holds our thought, what you call the philotic impulse, the power of the ansibles, it is very cold and hard to find in human beings. But this one, the one we’ve found here, one of many that we’ll find here, his philotic impulse is much stronger, much clearer, easier to find, he hears us more easily, and so forgive us, dear friend, forgive us if we leave the hard work of talking to your mind and go back to him and talk to him because he doesn’t make us search so hard to make words and pictures that are clear enough for your analytical mind because we feel him like sunshine, like the warmth of sunshine on his face on our face and the feel of cool water deep in our abdomen and movement as gentle and thorough as soft wind which we haven’t felt for three thousand years forgive us we’ll be with him until you wake us until you take us out to dwell here because you will do it you will find out in your own way in your own time that this is the place here it is this is home—>

And then he lost the thread of her thought, felt it seep away like a dream that is forgotten upon waking, even as you try to remember it and keep it alive. Ender wasn’t sure what the hive queen had found, but whatever it was, he would have to deal with the reality of Starways Code, the Catholic Church, young xenologers who might not even let him meet the piggies, a xenobiologist who had changed her mind about inviting him here, and something more, perhaps the most difficult thing of all: that if the hive queen stayed here, he would have to stay here. I’ve been disconnected from humanity for so many years, he thought, coming in to meddle and pry and hurt and heal, then going away again, myself untouched. How will I ever become a part of this place, if this is where I’ll stay? The only things I’ve ever been a part of were an army of little boys in the Battle School, and Valentine, and both are gone now, both part of the past—

“What, wallowing in loneliness?” asked Jane. “I can hear your heartrate falling and your breathing getting heavy. In a moment you’ll either be asleep, dead, or lachrymose.”

“I’m much more complex than that,” said Ender cheerfully. “Anticipated self-pity is what I’m feeling, about pains that haven’t even arrived.”

“Very good, Ender. Get an early start. That way you can wallow so much longer.” The terminal came alive, showing Jane as a piggy in a chorus line of leggy women, high-kicking with exuberance. “Get a little exercise, you’ll feel so much better. After all, you’ve unpacked. What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t even know where I am, Jane.”

“They really don’t keep a map of the city,” Jane explained. “Everybody knows where everything is. But they do have a map of the sewer system, divided into boroughs. I can extrapolate where all the buildings are.”

“Show me, then.”

A three-dimensional model of the town appeared over the terminal. Ender might not be particularly welcome there, and his room might be sparse, but they had shown courtesy in the terminal they provided for him. It wasn’t a standard home installation, but rather an elaborate simulator. It was able to project holos into a space sixteen times larger than most terminals, with a resolution four times greater. The illusion was so real that Ender felt for a vertiginous moment that he was Gulliver, leaning over a Lilliput that had not yet come to fear him, that did not yet recognize his power to destroy.

The names of the different boroughs hung in the air over each sewer district. “You’re here,” said Jane. “Vila Velha, the old town. The praça is just through the block from you. That’s where public meetings are held.”

“Do you have any map of the piggy lands?”

The village map slid rapidly toward Ender, the near features disappearing as new ones came into view on the far side. It was as if he were flying over it. Like a witch, he thought. The boundary of the town was marked by a fence.

“That barrier is the only thing standing between us and the piggies,” mused Ender.

“It generates an electric field that stimulates any pain-sensitive nerves that come within it,” said Jane. “Just touching it makes all your wetware go screwy—it makes you feel as though somebody were cutting off your fingers with a file.”

“Pleasant thought. Are we in a concentration camp? Or a zoo?”

“It all depends on how you look at it,” said Jane. “It’s the human side of the fence that’s connected to the rest of the universe, and the piggy side that’s trapped on its home world.”

“The difference is that they don’t know what they’re missing.”

“I know,” said Jane. “It’s the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn’t have the good fortune to be born homo sapiens.” Beyond the fence was a hillside, and along the top of the hill a thick forest began. “The xenologers have never gone deep into piggy lands. The piggy community that they deal with is less than a kilometer inside this wood. The piggies live in a log house, all the males together. We don’t know about any other settlements except that the satellites have been able to confirm that every forest like this one carries just about all the population that a hunter-gatherer culture can sustain.”

“They hunt?”

“Mostly they gather.”

“Where did Pipo and Libo die?”

Jane brightened a patch of grassy ground on the hillside leading up to the trees. A large tree grew in isolation nearby, with two smaller ones not far off.

“Those trees,” said Ender. “I don’t remember any being so close in the holos I saw on Trondheim.”

“It’s been twenty-two years. The big one is the tree the piggies planted in the corpse of the rebel called Rooter, who was executed before Pipo was murdered. The other two are more recent piggy executions.”

“I wish I knew why they plant trees for piggies, and not for humans.”

“The trees are sacred,” said Jane. “Pipo recorded that many of the trees in the forest are named. Libo speculated that they might be named for the dead.”

“And humans simply aren’t part of the pattern of tree-worship. Well, that’s likely enough. Except that I’ve found that rituals and myths don’t come from nowhere. There’s usually some reason for it that’s tied to the survival of the community.”

“Andrew Wiggin, anthropologist?”

“The proper study of mankind is man.”

“Go study some men, then, Ender. Novinha’s family, for instance. By the way, the computer network has officially been barred from showing you where anybody lives.”

Ender grinned. “So Bosquinha isn’t as friendly as she seems.”

“If you have to ask where people live, they’ll know where you’re going. If they don’t want you to go there, no one will know where they live.”

“You can override their restriction, can’t you?”

“I already have.” A light was blinking near the fence line, behind the observatory hill. It was as isolated a spot as was possible to find in Milagre. Few other houses had been built where the fence would be visible all the time. Ender wondered whether Novinha had chosen to live there to be near the fence or to be far from neighbors. Perhaps it had been Marcão’s choice.

The nearest borough was Vila Atrás, and then the borough called As Fábricas stretched down to the river. As the name implied, it consisted mostly of small factories that worked the metals and plastics and processed the foods and fibers that Milagre used. A nice, tight, self-contained economy. And Novinha had chosen to live back behind everything, out of sight, invisible. It was Novinha who chose it, too, Ender was sure of that now. Wasn’t it the pattern of her life? She had never belonged to Milagre. It was no accident that all three calls for a speaker had come from her and her children. The very act of calling a speaker was defiant, a sign that they did not think they belonged among the devout Catholics of Lusitania.

“Still,” said Ender, “I have to ask someone to lead me there. I shouldn’t let them know right away that they can’t hide any of their information from me.”

The map disappeared, and Jane’s face appeared above the terminal. She had neglected to adjust for the greater size of this terminal, so that her head was many times human size. She was quite imposing. And her simulation was accurate right down to the pores on her face. “Actually, Andrew, it’s me they can’t hide anything from.”

Ender sighed. “You have a vested interest in this, Jane.”

“I know.” She winked. “But you don’t.”

“Are you telling me you don’t trust me?”

“You reek of impartiality and a sense of justice. But I’m human enough to want preferential treatment, Andrew.”

“Will you promise me one thing, at least?”

“Anything, my corpuscular friend.”

“When you decide to hide something from me, will you at least tell me that you aren’t going to tell me?”

“This is getting way too deep for little old me.” She was a caricature of an overfeminine woman.

“Nothing is too deep for you, Jane. Do us both a favor. Don’t cut me off at the knees.”

“While you’re off with the Ribeira family, is there anything you’d like me to be doing?”

“Yes. Find every way in which the Ribeiras are significantly different from the rest of the people of Lusitania. And any points of conflict between them and the authorities.”

“You speak, and I obey.” She started to do her genie disappearing act.

“You maneuvered me here, Jane. Why are you trying to unnerve me?”

“I’m not. And I didn’t.”

“I have a shortage of friends in this town.”

“You can trust me with your life.”

“It isn’t my life I’m worried about.”

The praça was filled with children playing football. Most of them were stunting, showing how long they could keep the ball in the air using only their feet and heads. Two of them, though, had a vicious duel going. The boy would kick the ball as hard as he could toward the girl, who stood not three meters away. She would stand and take the impact of the ball, not flinching no matter how hard it struck her. Then she would kick the ball back at him, and he would try not to flinch. A little girl was tending the ball, fetching it each time it rebounded from a victim.

Ender tried asking some of the boys if they knew where the Ribeira family’s house was. Their answer was invariably a shrug; when he persisted some of them began moving away, and soon most of the children had retreated from the praça. Ender wondered what the Bishop had told everybody about speakers.

The duel, however, continued unabated. And now that the praça was not so crowded, Ender saw that another child was involved, a boy of about twelve. He was not extraordinary from behind, but as Ender moved toward the middle of the praça, he could see that there was something wrong with the boy’s eyes. It took a moment, but then he understood. The boy had artificial eyes. Both looked shiny and metallic, but Ender knew how they worked. Only one eye was used for sight, but it took four separate visual scans and then separated the signals to feed simulated binocular vision to the brain. The other eye contained the power supply, the computer control, and the external interface. When he wanted to, he could record short sequences of vision in a limited photo memory, probably less than a trillion bits. The duelists were using him as their judge; if they disputed a point, he could replay the scene in slow motion and tell them what had happened.

The ball went straight for the boy’s crotch. He winced elaborately, but the girl was not impressed. “He swiveled away, I saw his hips move!”

“Did not! You hurt me, I didn’t dodge at all!”

“Reveja! Reveja!” They had been speaking Stark, but the girl now switched into Portuguese.

The boy with metal eyes showed no expression, but raised a hand to silence them. “Mudou,” he said with finality. He moved, Ender translated.

“Sabia!” I knew it!

“You liar, Olhado!”

The boy with metal eyes looked at him with disdain. “I never lie. I’ll send you a dump of the scene if you want. In fact, I think I’ll post it on the net so everybody can watch you dodge and then lie about it.”

“Mentiroso! Filho de puta! Fode-bode!”

Ender was pretty sure what the epithets meant, but the boy with metal eyes took it calmly.

“Dá,” said the girl. “Dá-me.” Give it here.

The boy furiously took off his ring and threw it on the ground at her feet. “Viada!” he said in a hoarse whisper. Then he took off running.

“Poltrão!” shouted the girl after him. Coward!

“Cão!” shouted the boy, not even looking over his shoulder.

It was not the girl he was shouting at this time. She turned at once to look at the boy with metal eyes, who stiffened at the name. Almost at once the girl looked at the ground. The little one, who had been doing the ball-fetching, walked to the boy with metal eyes and whispered something. He looked up, noticing Ender for the first time.

The older girl was apologizing. “Desculpa, Olhado, não queria que—”

“Não há problema, Michi.” He did not look at her.

The girl started to go on, but then she, too, noticed Ender and fell silent.

“Porque está olhando-nos?” asked the boy. Why are you looking at us?

Ender answered with a question. “Você é árbitro?” You’re the arbiter here? The word could mean “umpire,” but it could also mean “magistrate.”

“De vez em quando.” Sometimes.

Ender switched to Stark—he wasn’t sure he knew how to say anything complex in Portuguese. “Then tell me, arbiter, is it fair to leave a stranger to find his way around without help?”

“Stranger? You mean utlanning, framling, or raman?”

“No, I think I mean infidel.”

“O Senhor é descrente?” You’re an unbeliever?

“Só descredo no incrível.” I only disbelieve the unbelievable.

The boy grinned. “Where do you want to go, Speaker?”

“The house of the Ribeira family.”

The little girl edged closer to the boy with metal eyes. “Which Ribeira family?”

“The widow Ivanova.”

“I think I can find it,” said the boy.

“Everybody in town can find it,” said Ender. “The point is, will you take me there?”

“Why do you want to go there?”

“I ask people questions and try to find out true stories.”

“Nobody at the Ribeira house knows any true stories.”

“I’d settle for lies.”

“Come on then.” He started toward the low-mown grass of the main road. The little girl was whispering in his ear. He stopped and turned to Ender, who was following close behind.

“Quara wants to know. What’s your name?”

“Andrew. Andrew Wiggin.”

“She’s Quara.”

“And you?”

“Everybody calls me Olhado. Because of my eyes.” He picked up the little girl and put her on his shoulders. “But my real name’s Lauro. Lauro Suleimão Ribeira.” He grinned, then turned around and strode off.

Ender followed. Ribeira. Of course.

Jane had been listening, too, and spoke from the jewel in his ear. “Lauro Suleimão Ribeira is Novinha’s fourth child. He lost his eyes in a laser accident. He’s twelve years old. Oh, and I found one difference between the Ribeira family and the rest of the town. The Ribeiras are willing to defy the Bishop and lead you where you want to go.”

I noticed something, too, Jane, he answered silently. This boy enjoyed deceiving me, and then enjoyed even more letting me see how I’d been fooled. I just hope you don’t take lessons from him.

Miro sat on the hillside. The shade of the trees made him invisible to anyone who might be watching from Milagre, but he could see much of the town from here—certainly the cathedral and the monastery on the highest hill, and then the observatory on the next hill to the north. And under the observatory, in a depression in the hillside, the house where he lived, not very far from the fence.

“Miro,” whispered Leaf-eater. “Are you a tree?”

It was a translation from the pequeninos’ idiom. Sometimes they meditated, holding themselves motionless for hours. They called this “being a tree.”

“More like a blade of grass,” Miro answered.

Leaf-eater giggled in the high, wheezy way he had. It never sounded natural—the pequeninos had learned laughter by rote, as if it were simply another word in Stark. It didn’t arise out of amusement, or at least Miro didn’t think it did.

“Is it going to rain?” asked Miro. To a piggy this meant: are you interrupting me for my own sake, or for yours?

“It rained fire today,” said Leaf-eater. “Out in the prairie.”

“Yes. We have a visitor from another world.”

“Is it the Speaker?”

Miro didn’t answer.

“You must bring him to see us.”

Miro didn’t answer.

“I root my face in the ground for you, Miro, my limbs are lumber for your house.”

Miro hated it when they begged for something. It was as if they thought of him as someone particularly wise or strong, a parent from whom favors must be wheedled. Well, if they felt that way, it was his own fault. His and Libo’s. Playing God out here among the piggies.

“I promised, didn’t I, Leaf-eater?”

“When when when?”

“It’ll take time. I have to find out whether he can be trusted.”

Leaf-eater looked baffled. Miro had tried to explain that not all humans knew each other, and some weren’t nice, but they never seemed to understand.

“As soon as I can,” Miro said.

Suddenly Leaf-eater began to rock back and forth on the ground, shifting his hips from side to side as if he were trying to relieve an itch in his anus. Libo had speculated once that this was what performed the same function that laughter did for humans. “Talk to me in piddle-geese!” wheezed Leaf-eater. Leaf-eater always seemed to be greatly amused that Miro and the other Zenadors spoke two languages interchangeably. This despite the fact that at least four different piggy languages had been recorded or at least hinted at over the years, all spoken by this same tribe of piggies.

But if he wanted to hear Portuguese, he’d get Portuguese. “Vai comer folhas.” Go eat leaves.

Leaf-eater looked puzzled. “Why is that clever?”

“Because that’s your name. Come-folhas.”

Leaf-eater pulled a large insect out of his nostril and flipped it away, buzzing. “Don’t be crude,” he said. Then he walked away.

Miro watched him go. Leaf-eater was always so difficult. Miro much preferred the company of the piggy called Human. Even though Human was smarter, and Miro had to watch himself more carefully with him, at least he didn’t seem hostile the way Leaf-eater often did.

With the piggy out of sight, Miro turned back toward the city. Somebody was moving down the path along the face of the hill, toward his house. The one in front was very tall—no, it was Olhado with Quara on his shoulders. Quara was much too old for that. Miro worried about her. She seemed not to be coming out of the shock of Father’s death. Miro felt a moment’s bitterness. And to think he and Ela had expected Father’s death would solve all their problems.

Then he stood up and tried to get a better view of the man behind Olhado and Quara. No one he’d seen before. The Speaker. Already! He couldn’t have been in town for more than an hour, and he was already going to the house. That’s great, all I need is for Mother to find out that I was the one who called him here. Somehow I thought that a speaker for the dead would be discreet about it, not just come straight home to the person who called. What a fool. Bad enough that he’s coming years before I expected a speaker to get here. Quim’s bound to report this to the Bishop, even if nobody else does. Now I’m going to have to deal with Mother and, probably, the whole city.

Miro moved back into the trees and jogged along a path that led, eventually, to the gate back into the city.

7
THE RIBEIRA HOUSE

Miro, this time you should have been there, because even though I have a better memory for dialogue than you, I sure don’t know what this means. You saw the new piggy, the one they call Human—I thought I saw you talking to him for a minute before you took off for the Questionable Activity. Mandachuva told me they named him Human because he was very smart as a child. OK, it’s very flattering that “smart” and “human” are linked in their minds, or perhaps patronizing that they think we’ll be flattered by that, but that’s not what matters.

Mandachuva then said: “He could already talk when he started walking around by himself.” And he made a gesture with his hand about ten centimeters off the ground. To me it looked like he was telling how tall Human was when he learned how to talk and walk. Ten centimeters! But I could be completely wrong. You should have been there, to see for yourself.

If I’m right, and that’s what Mandachuva meant, then for the first time we have an idea of piggy childhood. If they actually start walking at ten centimeters in height—and talking, no less!—then they must have less development time during gestation than humans, and do a lot more developing after they’re born.

But now it gets absolutely crazy, even by your standards. He then leaned in close and told me—as if he weren’t supposed to—who Human’s father was: “Your grandfather Pipo knew Human’s father. His tree is near your gate.”

Is he kidding? Rooter died twenty-four years ago, didn’t he? OK, maybe this is just a religious thing, sort of adopt-a-tree or something. But the way Mandachuva was so secretive about it, I keep thinking it’s somehow true. Is it possible that they have a 24-year gestation period? Or maybe it took a couple of decades for Human to develop from a 10-centimeter toddler into the fine specimen of piggihood we now see. Or maybe Rooter’s sperm was saved in a jar somewhere.

But this matters. This is the first time a piggy personally known to human observers has ever been named as a father. And Rooter, no less, the very one that got murdered. In other words, the male with the lowest prestige—an executed criminal, even—has been named as a father! That means that our males aren’t cast-off bachelors at all, even though some of them are so old they knew Pipo. They are potential fathers.

What’s more, if Human was so remarkably smart, then why was he dumped here if this is really a group of miserable bachelors? I think we’ve had it wrong for quite a while. This isn’t a low-prestige group of bachelors, this is a high-prestige group of juveniles, and some of them are really going to amount to something.

So when you told me you felt sorry for me because you got to go out on the Questionable Activity and I had to stay home and work up some Official Fabrications for the ansible report, you were full of Unpleasant Excretions! (If you get home after I’m asleep, wake me up for a kiss, OK? I earned it today.)

—Memo from Ouanda Figueira Mucumbi to Miro Ribeira von Hesse, retrieved from Lusitanian files by Congressional order and introduced as evidence in the Trial In Absentia of the Xenologers of Lusitania on Charges of Treason and Malfeasance

There was no construction industry in Lusitania. When a couple got married, their friends and family built them a house. The Ribeira house expressed the history of the family. At the front, the old part of the house was made of plastic sheets rooted to a concrete foundation. Rooms had been built on as the family grew, each addition abutting the one before, so that five distinct one-story structures fronted the hillside. The later ones were all brick, decently plumbed, roofed with tile, but with no attempt whatever at aesthetic appeal. The family had built exactly what was needed and nothing more.

It was not poverty, Ender knew—there was no poverty in a community where the economy was completely controlled. The lack of decoration, of individuality, showed the family’s contempt for their own house; to Ender this bespoke contempt for themselves as well. Certainly Olhado and Quara showed none of the relaxation, the letting-down that most people feel when they come home. If anything, they grew warier, less jaunty; the house might have been a subtle source of gravity, making them heavier the nearer they approached.

Olhado and Quara went right in. Ender waited at the door for someone to invite him to enter. Olhado left the door ajar, but walked on out of the room without speaking to him. Ender could see Quara sitting on a bed in the front room, leaning against a bare wall. There was nothing whatsoever on any of the walls. They were stark white. Quara’s face matched the blankness of the walls. Though her eyes regarded Ender unwaveringly, she showed no sign of recognizing that he was there; certainly she did nothing to indicate he might come in.

There was a disease in this house. Ender tried to understand what it was in Novinha’s character that he had missed before, that would let her live in a place like this. Had Pipo’s death so long before emptied Novinha’s heart as thoroughly as this?

“Is your mother home?” Ender asked.

Quara said nothing.

“Oh,” he said. “Excuse me. I thought you were a little girl, but I see now that you’re a statue.”

She showed no sign of hearing him. So much for trying to jolly her out of her somberness.

Shoes slapped rapidly against a concrete floor. A little boy ran into the room, stopped in the middle, and whirled to face the doorway where Ender stood. He couldn’t be more than a year younger than Quara, six or seven years old, probably. Unlike Quara, his face showed plenty of understanding. Along with a feral hunger.

“Is your mother home?” asked Ender.

The boy bent over and carefully rolled up his pantleg. He had taped a long kitchen knife to his leg. Slowly he untaped it. Then, holding it in front of him with both hands, he aimed himself at Ender and launched himself full speed. Ender noted that the knife was well-aimed at his crotch. The boy was not subtle in his approach to strangers.

A moment later Ender had the boy tucked under his arm and the knife jammed into the ceiling. The boy was kicking and screaming. Ender had to use both hands to control his limbs; the boy ended up dangling in front of him by his hands and feet, for all the world like a calf roped for branding.

Ender looked steadily at Quara. “If you don’t go right now and get whoever is in charge in this house, I’m going to take this animal home and serve it for supper.”

Quara thought about this for a moment, then got up and ran out of the room.

A moment later a tired-looking girl with tousled hair and sleepy eyes came into the front room. “Desculpe, por favor,” she murmured, “o menino não se restabeleceu desde a morte do pai—”

Then she seemed suddenly to come awake.

“O Senhor é o Falante pelos Mortos!” You’re the Speaker for the Dead!

“Sou,” answered Ender. I am.

“Não aqui,” she said. “Oh, no, I’m sorry, do you speak Portuguese? Of course you do, you just answered me—oh, please, not here, not now. Go away.”

“Fine,” said Ender. “Should I keep the boy or the knife?”

He glanced up at the ceiling; her gaze followed his. “Oh, no, I’m sorry, we looked for it all day yesterday, we knew he had it but we didn’t know where.”

“It was taped to his leg.”

“It wasn’t yesterday. We always look there. Please, let go of him.”

“Are you sure? I think he’s been sharpening his teeth.”

“Grego,” she said to the boy, “it’s wrong to poke at people with the knife.”

Grego growled in his throat.

“His father dying, you see.”

“They were that close?”

A look of bitter amusement passed across her face. “Hardly. He’s always been a thief, Grego has, ever since he was old enough to hold something and walk at the same time. But this thing for hurting people, that’s new. Please let him down.”

“No,” said Ender.

Her eyes narrowed and she looked defiant. “Are you kidnapping him? To take him where? For what ransom?”

“Perhaps you don’t understand,” said Ender. “He assaulted me. You’ve offered me no guarantee that he won’t do it again. You’ve made no provision for disciplining him when I set him down.”

As he had hoped, fury came into her eyes. “Who do you think you are? This is his house, not yours!”

“Actually,” Ender said, “I’ve just had a rather long walk from the praça to your house, and Olhado set a brisk pace. I’d like to sit down.”

She nodded toward a chair. Grego wriggled and twisted against Ender’s grip. Ender lifted him high enough that their faces weren’t too far apart. “You know, Grego, if you actually break free, you will certainly fall on your head on a concrete floor. If there were carpet, I’d give you an even chance of staying conscious. But there isn’t. And frankly, I wouldn’t mind hearing the sound of your head smacking against cement.”

“He doesn’t really understand Stark that well,” said the girl.

Ender knew that Grego understood just fine. He also saw motion at the edges of the room. Olhado had come back and stood in the doorway leading to the kitchen. Quara was beside him. Ender smiled cheerfully at them, then stepped to the chair the girl had indicated. In the process, he swung Grego up into the air, letting go of his hands and feet in such a way that he spun madly for a moment, shooting out his arms and legs in panic, squealing in fear at the pain that would certainly come when he hit the floor. Ender smoothly slid onto the chair and caught the boy on his lap, instantly pinioning his arms. Grego managed to smack his heels into Ender’s shins, but since the boy wasn’t wearing shoes, it was an ineffective maneuver. In a moment Ender had him completely helpless again.

“It feels very good to be sitting down,” Ender said. “Thank you for your hospitality. My name is Andrew Wiggin. I’ve met Olhado and Quara, and obviously Grego and I are good friends.”

The older girl wiped her hand on her apron as if she planned to offer it to him to shake, but she did not offer it. “My name is Ela Ribeira. Ela is short for Elanora.”

“A pleasure to meet you. I see you’re busy preparing supper.”

“Yes, very busy. I think you should come back tomorrow.”

“Oh, go right ahead. I don’t mind waiting.”

Another boy, older than Olhado but younger than Ela, shoved his way into the room. “Didn’t you hear my sister? You aren’t wanted here!”

“You show me too much kindness,” Ender said. “But I came to see your mother, and I’ll wait here until she comes home from work.”

The mention of their mother silenced them.

“I assume she’s at work. If she were here, I would expect these exciting events would have flushed her out into the open.”

Olhado smiled a bit at that, but the older boy darkened, and Ela got a nasty, painful expression on her face. “Why do you want to see her?” asked Ela.

“Actually, I want to see all of you.” He smiled at the older boy. “You must be Estevão Rei Ribeira. Named for St. Stephen the Martyr, who saw Jesus sitting at the right hand of God.”

“What do you know of such things, atheist!”

“As I recall, St. Paul stood by and held the coats of the men who were stoning him. Apparently he wasn’t a believer at the time. In fact, I think he was regarded as the most terrible enemy of the Church. And yet he later repented, didn’t he? So I suggest you think of me, not as the enemy of God, but as an apostle who has not yet been stopped on the road to Damascus.” Ender smiled.

The boy stared at him, tight-lipped. “You’re no St. Paul.”

“On the contrary,” said Ender. “I’m the apostle to the piggies.”

“You’ll never see them. Miro will never let you.”

“Maybe I will,” said a voice from the door. The others turned at once to watch him walk in. Miro was young—surely not yet twenty. But his face and bearing carried the weight of responsibility and suffering far beyond his years. Ender saw how all of them made space for him. It was not that they backed away from him the way they might retreat from someone they feared. Rather, they oriented themselves to him, walking in parabolas around him, as if he were the center of gravity in the room and everything else was moved by the force of his presence.

Miro walked to the center of the room and faced Ender. He looked, however, at Ender’s prisoner. “Let him go,” said Miro. There was ice in his voice.

Ela touched him softly on the arm. “Grego tried to stab him, Miro.” But her voice also said, Be calm, it’s all right, Grego’s in no danger and this man is not our enemy. Ender heard all this; so, it seemed, did Miro.

“Grego,” said Miro. “I told you that someday you’d take on somebody who wasn’t afraid of you.”

Grego, seeing an ally suddenly turn to an enemy, began to cry. “He’s killing me, he’s killing me.”

Miro looked coldly at Ender. Ela might trust the Speaker for the Dead, but Miro didn’t, not yet.

“I am hurting him,” said Ender. He had found that the best way to earn trust was to tell the truth. “Every time he struggles to get free, it causes him quite a bit of discomfort. And he hasn’t stopped struggling yet.”

Ender met Miro’s gaze steadily, and Miro understood his unspoken request. He did not insist on Grego’s release. “I can’t get you out of this one, Greguinho.”

“You’re going to let him do this?” asked Estevão.

Miro gestured toward Estevão and spoke apologetically to Ender. “Everyone calls him Quim.” The nickname was pronounced like the word king in Stark. “It began because his middle name is Rei. But now it’s because he thinks he rules by divine right.”

“Bastard,” said Quim. He stalked out of the room.

At the same time, the others settled in for conversation. Miro had decided to accept the stranger, at least temporarily; therefore they could let down their guard a little. Olhado sat down on the floor; Quara returned to her previous perch on the bed. Ela leaned back against the wall. Miro pulled up another chair and sat facing Ender.

“Why did you come to this house?” asked Miro. Ender saw from the way he asked that he, like Ela, had not told anyone that he had summoned a speaker. So neither of them knew that the other expected him. And, in fact, they almost undoubtedly had not expected him to come so soon.

“To see your mother,” Ender said.

Miro’s relief was almost palpable, though he made no obvious gesture. “She’s at work,” he said. “She works late. She’s trying to develop a strain of potato that can compete with the grass here.”

“Like the amaranth?”

He grinned. “You already heard about that? No, we don’t want it to be as good a competitor as that. But the diet here is limited, and potatoes would be a nice addition. Besides, amaranth doesn’t ferment into a very good beverage. The miners and farmers have already created a mythology of vodka that makes it the queen of distilled intoxicants.”

Miro’s smile came to this house like sunlight through a crevice in a cave. Ender could feel the loosening of tensions. Quara wiggled her leg back and forth like an ordinary little girl. Olhado had a stupidly happy expression on his face, his eyes half-closed so that the metallic sheen was not so monstrously obvious. Ela’s smile was broader than Miro’s good humor should have earned. Even Grego had relaxed, had stopped straining against Ender’s grip.

Then a sudden warmth on Ender’s lap told him that Grego, at least, was far from surrender. Ender had trained himself not to respond reflexively to an enemy’s actions until he had consciously decided to let his reflexes rule. So Grego’s flood of urine did not cause him to so much as flinch. He knew what Grego had been expecting—a shout of anger, and Ender flinging him away, casting him from his lap in disgust. Then Grego would be free—it would be a triumph. Ender yielded him no victory.

Ela, however, apparently knew the expressions of Grego’s face. Her eyes went wide, and then she took an angry step toward the boy. “Grego, you impossible little—”

But Ender winked at her and smiled, freezing her in place. “Grego has given me a little gift. It’s the only thing he has to give me, and he made it himself, so it means all the more. I like him so much that I think I’ll never let him go.”

Grego snarled and struggled again, madly, to break free.

“Why are you doing this!” said Ela.

“He’s expecting Grego to act like a human being,” said Miro. “It needs doing, and nobody else has bothered to try.”

“I’ve tried,” said Ela.

Olhado spoke up from his place on the floor. “Ela’s the only one here who keeps us civilized.”

Quim shouted from the other room. “Don’t you tell that bastard anything about our family!”

Ender nodded gravely, as if Quim had offered a brilliant intellectual proposition. Miro chuckled and Ela rolled her eyes and sat down on the bed beside Quara.

“We’re not a very happy home,” said Miro.

“I understand,” said Ender. “With your father so recently dead.”

Miro smiled sardonically. Olhado spoke up again. “With Father so recently alive, you mean.”

Ela and Miro were in obvious agreement with this sentiment. But Quim shouted again. “Don’t tell him anything!”

“Did he hurt you?” Ender asked quietly. He did not move, even though Grego’s urine was getting cold and rank.

Ela answered. “He didn’t hit us, if that’s what you mean.”

But for Miro, things had gone too far. “Quim’s right,” said Miro. “It’s nobody’s business but ours.”

“No,” said Ela. “It’s his business.”

“How is it his business?” asked Miro.

“Because he’s here to speak Father’s death,” said Ela.

“Father’s death!” said Olhado. “Chupa pedras! Father only died three weeks ago!”

“I was already on my way to speak another death,” said Ender. “But someone did call for a speaker for your father’s death, and so I’ll speak for him.”

“Against him,” said Ela.

“For him,” said Ender.

“I brought you here to tell the truth,” she said bitterly, “and all the truth about Father is against him.”

Silence pressed to the corners of the room, holding them all still, until Quim walked slowly through the doorway. He looked only at Ela. “You called him,” he said softly. “You.”

“To tell the truth!” she answered. His accusation obviously stung her; he did not have to say how she had betrayed her family and her church to bring this infidel to lay bare what had been so long concealed. “Everybody in Milagre is so kind and understanding,” she said. “Our teachers overlook little things like Grego’s thievery and Quara’s silence. Never mind that she hasn’t said a word in school, ever! Everybody pretends that we’re just ordinary children—the grandchildren of Os Venerados, and so brilliant, aren’t we, with a zenador and both biologistas in the family! Such prestige. They just look the other way when Father gets himself raging drunk and comes home and beats Mother until she can’t walk!”

“Shut up!” shouted Quim.

“Ela,” said Miro.

“And you, Miro, Father shouting at you, saying terrible things until you run out of the house, you run, stumbling because you can hardly see—”

“You have no right to tell him!” said Quim.

Olhado leapt to his feet and stood in the middle of the room, turned around to look at them all with his unhuman eyes. “Why do you still want to hide it?” he asked softly.

“What’s it to you” asked Quim. “He never did anything to you. You just turned off your eyes and sat there with the headphones on, listening to batuque or Bach or something—”

“Turn off my eyes?” said Olhado. “I never turned off my eyes.”

He whirled and walked to the terminal, which was in the corner of the room farthest from the front door. In a few quick movements he had the terminal on, then picked up an interface cable and jammed it in the socket in his right eye. It was only a simple computer linkup, but to Ender it brought back a hideous memory of the eye of a giant, torn open and oozing, as Ender bored deep, penetrated to the brain, and sent it toppling backward to its death. He froze up for a moment before he remembered that his memory was not real, it was of a computer game he had played in the Battle School. Three thousand years ago, but to him a mere twenty-five years, not such a great distance that the memory had lost its power. It was his memories and dreams of the giant’s death that the buggers had taken out of his mind and turned into the signal they left for him; eventually it had led him to the hive queen’s cocoon.

It was Jane’s voice that brought him back to the present moment. She whispered from the jewel, “If it’s all the same to you, while he’s got that eye linked up I’m going to get a dump of everything else he’s got stored away in there.”

Then a scene began in the air over the terminal. It was not holographic. Instead the image was like bas-relief, as it would have appeared to a single observer. It was this very room, seen from the spot on the floor where a moment ago Olhado had been sitting—apparently it was his regular spot. In the middle of the floor stood a large man, strong and violent, flinging his arms about as he shouted abuse at Miro, who stood quietly, his head bent, regarding his father without any sign of anger. There was no sound—it was a visual image only. “Have you forgotten?” whispered Olhado. “Have you forgotten what it was like?”

In the scene on the terminal Miro finally turned and left; Marcão following him to the door, shouting after him. Then he turned back into the room and stood there, panting like an animal exhausted from the chase. In the picture Grego ran to his father and clung to his leg, shouting out the door, his face making it plain that he was echoing his father’s cruel words to Miro. Marcão pried the child from his leg and walked with determined purpose into the back room.

“There’s no sound,” said Olhado. “But you can hear it, can’t you?”

Ender felt Grego’s body trembling on his lap.

“There it is, a blow, a crash—she’s falling to the floor, can you feel it in your flesh, the way her body hits the concrete?”

“Shut up, Olhado,” said Miro.

The computer-generated scene ended. “I can’t believe you saved that,” said Ela.

Quim was weeping, making no effort to hide it. “I killed him,” he said. “I killed him I killed him I killed him.”

“What are you talking about?” said Miro in exasperation. “He had a rotten disease, it was congenital!”

“I prayed for him to die!” screamed Quim. His face was mottled with passion, tears and mucus and spittle mingling around his lips. “I prayed to the Virgin, I prayed to Jesus, I prayed to Grandpa and Grandma, I said I’d go to hell for it if only he’d die, and they did it, and now I’ll go to hell and I’m not sorry for it! God forgive me but I’m glad!” Sobbing, he stumbled back out of the room. A door slammed in the distance.

“Well, another certified miracle to the credit of Os Venerados,” said Miro. “Sainthood is assured.”

“Shut up,” said Olhado.

“And he’s the one who kept telling us that Christ wanted us to forgive the old fart,” said Miro.

On Ender’s lap, Grego now trembled so violently that Ender grew concerned. He realized that Grego was whispering a word. Ela, too, saw Grego’s distress and knelt in front of the boy.

“He’s crying, I’ve never seen him cry like this—”

“Papa, papa, papa,” whispered Grego. His trembling had given way to great shudders, almost convulsive in their violence.

“Is he afraid of Father?” asked Olhado. His face showed deep concern for Grego. To Ender’s relief, all their faces were full of worry. There was love in this family, and not just the solidarity of living under the rule of the same tyrant for all these years.

“Papa’s gone now,” said Miro comfortingly. “You don’t have to worry now.”

Ender shook his head. “Miro,” he said, “didn’t you watch Olhado’s memory? Little boys don’t judge their fathers, they love them. Grego was trying as hard as he could to be just like Marcos Ribeira. The rest of you might have been glad to see him gone, but for Grego it was the end of the world.”

It had not occurred to any of them. Even now it was a sickening idea; Ender could see them recoil from it. And yet they knew it was true. Now that Ender had pointed it out, it was obvious.

“Deus nos perdoa,” murmured Ela. God forgive us.

“The things we’ve said,” whispered Miro.

Ela reached out for Grego. He refused to go to her. Instead he did exactly what Ender expected, what he had prepared for. Grego turned in Ender’s relaxed grip, flung his arms around the neck of the speaker for the dead, and wept bitterly, hysterically.

Ender spoke gently to the others, who watched helplessly. “How could he show his grief to you, when he thought you hated him?”

“We never hated Grego,” said Olhado.

“I should have known,” said Miro. “I knew he was suffering the worst pain of any of us, but it never occurred to me . . .”

“Don’t blame yourself,” said Ender. “It’s the kind of thing that only a stranger can see.”

He heard Jane whispering in his ear. “You never cease to amaze me, Andrew, the way you turn people into plasma.”

Ender couldn’t answer her, and she wouldn’t believe him anyway. He hadn’t planned this, he had played it by ear. How could he have guessed that Olhado would have a recording of Marcão’s viciousness to his family? His only real insight was with Grego, and even that was instinctive, a sense that Grego was desperately hungry for someone to have authority over him, for someone to act like a father to him. Since his own father had been cruel, Grego would believe only cruelty as a proof of love and strength. Now his tears washed Ender’s neck as hotly as, a moment before, his urine had soaked Ender’s thighs.

He had guessed what Grego would do, but Quara managed to take him by surprise. As the others watched Grego’s weeping in silence, she got off the bed and walked directly to Ender. Her eyes were narrow and angry. “You stink!” she said firmly. Then she marched out of the room toward the back of the house.

Miro barely suppressed his laughter, and Ela smiled. Ender raised his eyebrows as if to say, You win some, you lose some.

Olhado seemed to hear his unspoken words. From his chair by the terminal, the metal-eyed boy said softly, “You win with her, too. It’s the most she’s said to anyone outside the family in months.”

But I’m not outside the family, Ender said silently. Didn’t you notice? I’m in the family now, whether you like it or not. Whether I like it or not.

After a while Grego’s sobbing stopped. He was asleep. Ender carried him to his bed; Quara was already asleep on the other side of the small room. Ela helped Ender strip off Grego’s urine-soaked pants and put looser underwear on him—her touch was gentle and deft, and Grego did not waken.

Back in the front room Miro eyed Ender clinically. “Well, Speaker, you have a choice. My pants will be tight on you and too short in the crotch, but Father’s would fall right off.”

It took Ender a moment to remember. Grego’s urine had long since dried. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I can change when I get home.”

“Mother won’t be home for another hour. You came to see her, didn’t you? We can have your pants clean by then.”

“Your pants, then,” said Ender. “I’ll take my chances with the crotch.”

8
DONA IVANOVA

It means a life of constant deception. You will go out and discover something, something vital, and then when you get back to the station you’ll write up a completely innocuous report, one which mentions nothing that we learned through cultural contamination.

You’re too young to understand what torture this is. Father and I began doing this because we couldn’t bear to withhold knowledge from the piggies. You will discover, as I have, that it is no less painful to withhold knowledge from your fellow scientists. When you watch them struggle with a question, knowing that you have the information that could easily resolve their dilemma; when you see them come very near the truth and then for lack of your information retreat from their correct conclusions and return to error—you would not be human if it didn’t cause you great anguish.

You must remind yourselves, always: It is their law, their choice. They are the ones who built the wall between themselves and the truth, and they would only punish us if we let them know how easily and thoroughly that wall has been breached. And for every framling scientist who is longing for the truth, there are ten petty-minded descabeçados [headless ones] who despise knowledge, who never think of an original hypothesis, whose only labor is to prey on the writings of the true scientists in order to catch tiny errors or contradictions or lapses in method. These suckflies will pore over every report you make, and if you are careless even once they will catch you.

That means you can’t even mention a piggy whose name is derived from cultural contamination: “Cups” would tell them that we have taught them rudimentary pottery-making. “Calendar” and “Reaper” are obvious. And God himself couldn’t save us if they learned Arrow’s name.

—Memo from Liberdade Figueira de Medici to Ouanda Figueira Mucumbi and Miro Ribeira von Hesse, retrieved from Lusitanian files by Congressional order and introduced as evidence in the Trial In Absentia of the Xenologers of Lusitania on Charges of Treason and Malfeasance

Novinha lingered in the Biologista’s Station even though her meaningful work was finished more than an hour ago. The cloned potato plants were all thriving in nutrient solution; now it would be a matter of making daily observations to see which of her genetic alterations would produce the hardiest plant with the most useful root.

If I have nothing to do, why don’t I go home? She had no answer for the question. Her children needed her, that was certain; she did them no kindness by leaving early each morning and coming home only after the little ones were asleep. And yet even now, knowing she should go back, she sat staring at the laboratory, seeing nothing, doing nothing, being nothing.

She thought of going home, and could not imagine why she felt no joy at the prospect. After all, she reminded herself, Marcão is dead. He died three weeks ago. Not a moment too soon. He did all that I ever needed him for, and I did all that he wanted, but all our reasons expired four years before he finally rotted away. In all that time we never shared a moment of love, but I never thought of leaving him. Divorce would have been impossible, but desquite would have been enough. To stop the beatings. Even yet her hip was stiff and sometimes painful from the last time he had thrown her to the concrete floor. What lovely memorabilia you left behind, Cão, my dog of a husband.

The pain in her hip flared even as she thought of it. She nodded in satisfaction. It’s no more than I deserve, and I’ll be sorry when it heals.

She stood up and walked, not limping at all even though the pain was more than enough to make her favor the hip. I’ll not coddle myself, not in anything. It’s no worse than I deserve.

She walked to the door, closed it behind her. The computer turned off the lights as soon as she was gone, except those needed for the various plants in forced photosynthetic phase. She loved her plants, her little beasts, with surprising intensity. Grow, she cried out to them day and night, grow and thrive. She would grieve for the ones that failed and pinch them dead only when it was plain they had no future. Now as she walked away from the station, she could still hear their subliminal music, the cries of the infinitesimal cells as they grew and split and formed themselves into ever more elaborate patterns. She was going from light into darkness, from life into death, and the emotional pain grew worse in perfect synchronicity with the inflammation of her joints.

As she approached her house from over the hill, she could see the patches of light thrown through the windows and out onto the hill below. Quara’s and Grego’s room was dark; she would not have to bear their unbearable accusations—Quara’s in silence, Grego’s in sullen and vicious crimes. But there were too many other lights on, including her own room and the front room. Something unusual was going on, and she didn’t like unusual things.

Olhado sat in the living room, earphones on as usual; tonight, though, he also had the interface jack attached to his eye. Apparently he was retrieving old visual memories from the computer, or perhaps dumping out some he had been carrying with him. As so many times before, she wished she could also dump out her visual memories and wipe them clean, replace them with more pleasant ones. Pipo’s corpse, that would be one she’d gladly be rid of, to be replaced by some of the golden glorious days with the three of them together in the Zenador’s Station. And Libo’s body wrapped in its cloth, that sweet flesh held together only by the winding fabric; she would like to have instead other memories of his body, the touch of his lips, the expressiveness of his delicate hands. But the good memories fled, buried too deep under the pain. I stole them all, those good days, and so they were taken back and replaced by what I deserved.

Olhado turned to face her, the jack emerging obscenely from his eye. She could not control her shudder, her shame. I’m sorry, she said silently. If you had had another mother, you would doubtless still have your eye. You were born to be the best, the healthiest, the wholest of my children, Lauro, but of course nothing from my womb could be left intact for long.

She said nothing of this, of course, just as Olhado said nothing to her. She turned to go back to her room and find out why the light was on.

“Mother,” said Olhado.

He had taken the earphones off, and was twisting the jack out of his eye.

“Yes?”

“We have a visitor,” he said. “The Speaker.”

She felt herself go cold inside. Not tonight, she screamed silently. But she also knew that she would not want to see him tomorrow, either, or the next day, or ever.

“His pants are clean now, and he’s in your room changing back into them. I hope you don’t mind.”

Ela emerged from the kitchen. “You’re home,” she said. “I poured some cafezinhos, one for you, too.”

“I’ll wait outside until he’s gone,” said Novinha.

Ela and Olhado looked at each other. Novinha understood at once that they regarded her as a problem to be solved; that apparently they subscribed to whatever the Speaker wanted to do here. Well, I’m a dilemma that’s not going to be solved by you.

“Mother,” said Olhado, “he’s not what the Bishop said. He’s good.”

Novinha answered him with her most withering sarcasm. “Since when are you an expert on good and evil?”

Again Ela and Olhado looked at each other. She knew what they were thinking. How can we explain to her? How can we persuade her? Well, dear children, you can’t. I am unpersuadable, as Libo found out every week of his life. He never had the secret from me. It’s not my fault he died.

But they had succeeded in turning her from her decision. Instead of leaving the house, she retreated into the kitchen, passing Ela in the doorway but not touching her. The tiny coffee cups were arranged in a neat circle on the table, the steaming pot in the center. She sat down and rested her forearms on the table. So the Speaker was here, and had come to her first. Where else would he go? It’s my fault he’s here, isn’t it? He’s one more person whose life I have destroyed, like my children’s lives, like Marcão’s, and Libo’s, and Pipo’s, and my own.

A strong yet surprisingly smooth masculine hand reached out over her shoulder, took up the pot, and began to pour through the tiny, delicate spout, the thin stream of hot coffee swirling into the tiny cafezinho cups.

“Posso derramar?” he asked. What a stupid question, since he was already pouring. But his voice was gentle, his Portuguese tinged with the graceful accents of Castilian. A Spaniard, then?

“Desculpa-me,” she whispered. Forgive me. “Trouxe o senhor tantos quilômetros—”

“We don’t measure starflight in kilometers, Dona Ivanova. We measure it in years.” His words were an accusation, but his voice spoke of wistfulness, even forgiveness, even consolation. I could be seduced by that voice. That voice is a liar.

“If I could undo your voyage and return you twenty-two years, I’d do it. Calling for you was a mistake. I’m sorry.” Her own voice sounded flat. Since her whole life was a lie, even this apology sounded rote.

“I don’t feel the time yet,” said the Speaker. Still he stood behind her, so she had not yet seen his face. “For me it was only a week ago that I left my sister. She was the only kin of mine left alive. Her daughter wasn’t born yet, and now she’s probably through with college, married, perhaps with children of her own. I’ll never know her. But I know your children, Dona Ivanova.”

She lifted the cafezinho and drank it down in a single swallow, though it burned her tongue and throat and made her stomach hurt. “In only a few hours you think you know them?”

“Better than you do, Dona Ivanova.”

Novinha heard Ela gasp at the Speaker’s audacity. And, even though she thought his words might be true, it still enraged her to have a stranger say them. She turned to look at him, to snap at him, but he had moved, he was not behind her. She turned farther, finally standing up to look for him, but he wasn’t in the room. Ela stood in the doorway, wide-eyed.

“Come back!” said Novinha. “You can’t say that and walk out on me like that!”

But he didn’t answer. Instead, she heard low laughter from the back of the house. Novinha followed the sound. She walked through the rooms to the very end of the house. Miro sat on Novinha’s own bed, and the Speaker stood near the doorway, laughing with him. Miro saw his mother and the smile left his face. It caused a stab of anguish within her. She had not seen him smile in years, had forgotten how beautiful his face became, just like his father’s face; and her coming had erased that smile.

“We came here to talk because Quim was so angry,” Miro explained. “Ela made the bed.”

“I don’t think the Speaker cares whether the bed was made or not,” said Novinha coldly. “Do you, Speaker?”

“Order and disorder,” said the Speaker, “they each have their beauty.” Still he did not turn to face her, and she was glad of that, for it meant she did not have to see his eyes as she delivered her bitter message.

“I tell you, Speaker, that you’ve come on a fool’s errand,” she said. “Hate me for it if you will, but you have no death to speak. I was a foolish girl. In my naivete I thought that when I called, the author of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon would come. I had lost a man who was like a father to me, and I wanted consolation.”

Now he turned to her. He was a youngish man, younger than her, at least, but his eyes were seductive with understanding. Perigoso, she thought. He is dangerous, he is beautiful, I could drown in his understanding.

“Dona Ivanova,” he said, “how could you read the Hive Queen and the Hegemon and imagine that its author could bring comfort?”

It was Miro who answered—silent, slow-talking Miro, who leapt into the conversation with a vigor she had not seen in him since he was little. “I’ve read it,” he said, “and the original Speaker for the Dead wrote the tale of the hive queen with deep compassion.”

The Speaker smiled sadly. “But he wasn’t writing to the buggers, was he? He was writing to humankind, who still celebrated the destruction of the buggers as a great victory. He wrote cruelly, to turn their pride to regret, their joy to grief. And now human beings have completely forgotten that once they hated the buggers, that once they honored and celebrated a name that is now unspeakable—”

“I can say anything,” said Ivanova. “His name was Ender, and he destroyed everything he touched.” Like me, she did not say.

“Oh? And what do you know of him?” His voice whipped out like a grass-saw, ragged and cruel. “How do you know there wasn’t something that he touched kindly? Someone who loved him, who was blessed by his love? Destroyed everything he touched—that’s a lie that can’t truthfully be said of any human being who ever lived.”

“Is that your doctrine, Speaker? Then you don’t know much.” She was defiant, but still his anger frightened her. She had thought his gentleness was as imperturbable as a confessor’s.

And almost immediately the anger faded from his face.

“You can ease your conscience,” he said. “Your call started my journey here, but others called for a speaker while I was on the way.”

“Oh?” Who else in this benighted city was familiar enough with the Hive Queen and the Hegemon to want a speaker, and independent enough of Bishop Peregrino to dare to call for one? “If that’s so, then why are you here in my house?”

“Because I was called to speak the death of Marcos Maria Ribeira, your late husband.”

It was an appalling thought. “Him! Who would want to think of him again, now that he’s dead!”

The Speaker did not answer. Instead Miro spoke sharply from her bed. “Grego would, for one. The Speaker showed us what we should have known—that the boy is grieving for his father and thinks we all hate him—”

“Cheap psychology,” she snapped. “We have therapists of our own, and they aren’t worth much either.”

Ela’s voice came from behind her. “I called for him to speak Father’s death, Mother. I thought it would be decades before he came, but I’m glad he’s here now, when he can do us some good.”

“What good can he do us!”

“He already has, Mother. Grego fell asleep embracing him, and Quara spoke to him.”

“Actually,” said Miro, “she told him that he stinks.”

“Which was probably true,” said Ela, “since Greguinho peed all over him.”

Miro and Ela burst into laughter at the memory, and the Speaker also smiled. This more than anything else discomposed Novinha—such good cheer had been virtually unfelt in this house since Marcão brought her here a year after Pipo’s death. Against her will Novinha remembered her joy when Miro was newly born, and when Ela was little, the first few years of their lives, how Miro babbled about everything, how Ela toddled madly after him through the house, how the children played together and romped in the grass within sight of the piggies’ forest just beyond the fence; it was Novinha’s delight in the children that poisoned Marcão, that made him hate them both, because he knew that none of it belonged to him. By the time Quim was born, the house was thick with anger, and he never learned how to laugh freely where his parents might notice. Hearing Miro and Ela laugh together was like the abrupt opening of a thick black curtain; suddenly it was daylight again, when Novinha had forgotten there was any season of the day but night.

How dared this stranger invade her house and tear open all the curtains she had closed!

“I won’t have it,” she said. “You have no right to pry into my husband’s life.”

He raised an eyebrow. She knew Starways Code as well as anyone, and so she knew perfectly well that he not only had a right, the law protected him in the pursuit of the true story of the dead.

“Marcão was a miserable man,” she persisted, “and telling the truth about him will cause nothing but pain.”

“You’re quite right that the truth about him will cause nothing but pain, but not because he was a miserable man,” said the Speaker. “If I told nothing but what everyone already knows—that he hated his children and beat his wife and raged drunkenly from bar to bar until the constables sent him home—then I would not cause pain, would I? I’d cause a great deal of satisfaction, because then everyone would be reassured that their view of him was correct all along. He was scum, and so it was all right that they treated him like scum.”

“And you think he wasn’t?”

“No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one’s life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.”

“If you believe that, then you’re younger than you look,” said Novinha.

“Am I?” said the Speaker. “It was less than two weeks ago that I first heard your call. I studied you then, and even if you don’t remember, Novinha, I remember that as a young girl you were sweet and beautiful and good. You had been lonely before, but Pipo and Libo both knew you and found you worthy of love.”

“Pipo was dead.”

“But he loved you.”

“You don’t know anything, Speaker! You were twenty-two lightyears away! Besides, it wasn’t me I was calling worthless, it was Marcão!”

“But you don’t believe that, Novinha. Because you know the one act of kindness and generosity that redeems that poor man’s life.”

Novinha did not understand her own terror, but she had to silence him before he named it, even though she had no idea what kindness of Cão’s he thought he had discovered. “How dare you call me Novinha!” she shouted. “No one has called me that in four years!”

In answer, he raised his hand and brushed his fingers across the back of her cheek. It was a timid gesture, almost an adolescent one; it reminded her of Libo, and it was more than she could bear. She took his hand, hurled it away, then shoved past him into the room. “Get out!” she shouted at Miro. Her son got up quickly and backed to the door. She could see from his face that after all Miro had seen in this house, she still had managed to surprise him with her rage.

“You’ll have nothing from me!” she shouted at the Speaker.

“I didn’t come to take anything from you,” he said quietly.

“I don’t want anything you have to give, either! You’re worthless to me, do you hear that? You’re the one who’s worthless! Lixo, ruina, estrago—vai fora d’aqui, não tens direito estar em minha casa!” You have no right to be in my house.

“Não es estrago,” he whispered, “es solo fecundo, e vou plantar jardim aí.” Then, before she could answer, he closed the door and was gone.

In truth she had no answer to give him, his words were so outrageous. She had called him estrago, but he answered as if she had called herself a desolation. And she had spoken to him derisively, using the insultingly familiar tu for “you” instead of o Senhor or even the informal você. It was the way one spoke to a child or a dog. And yet when he answered in the same voice, with the same familiarity, it was entirely different. “Thou art fertile ground, and I will plant a garden in thee.” It was the sort of thing a poet says to his mistress, or even a husband to his wife, and the tu was intimate, not arrogant. How dare he, she whispered to herself, touching the cheek that he had touched. He is far crueler than I ever imagined a speaker might be. Bishop Peregrino was right. He is dangerous, the infidel, the anti-Christ, he walks brazenly into places in my heart that I had kept as holy ground, where no one else was ever permitted to stand. He treads on the few small shoots that cling to life in that stony soil, how dare he, I wish I had died before seeing him, he will surely undo me before he’s through.

She was vaguely aware of someone crying. Quara. Of course the shouting had wakened her; she never slept soundly. Novinha almost opened the door and went out to comfort her, but then she heard the crying stop, and a soft male voice singing to her. The song was in another language. German, it sounded to Novinha, or Nordic; she did not understand it, whatever it was. But she knew who sang it, and knew that Quara was comforted.

Novinha had not felt such fear since she first realized that Miro was determined to become a Zenador and follow in the footsteps of the two men that the piggies had murdered. This man is unknotting the nets of my family, and stringing us together whole again; but in the process he will find my secrets. If he finds out how Pipo died, and speaks the truth, then Miro will learn that same secret, and it will kill him. I will make no more sacrifices to the piggies; they are too cruel a god for me to worship anymore.

Still later, as she lay in bed behind her closed door, trying to go to sleep, she heard more laughter from the front of the house, and this time she could hear Quim and Olhado both laughing along with Miro and Ela. She imagined she could see them, the room bright with mirth. But as sleep took her, and the imagination became a dream, it was not the Speaker who sat among her children, teaching them to laugh; it was Libo, alive again, and known to everyone as her true husband, the man she had married in her heart even though she refused to marry him in the Church. Even in her sleep it was more joy than she could bear, and tears soaked the sheet of her bed.

9
CONGENITAL DEFECT

CIDA: The Descolada body isn’t bacterial. It seems to enter the cells of the body and take up permanent residence, just like mitochondria, reproducing when the cell reproduces. The fact that it spread to a new species within only a few years of our arrival here suggests that it is wildly adaptable. It must surely have spread through the entire biosphere of Lusitania long ago, so that it may now be endemic here, a permanent infection.

GUSTO: If it’s permanent and everywhere, it isn’t an infection, Cida, it’s part of normal life.

CIDA: But it isn’t necessarily inborn—it has the ability to spread. But yes, if it’s endemic then all the indigenous species must have found ways to fight it off—

GUSTO: Or adapt to it and include it in their normal life cycle. Maybe they NEED it.

CIDA: They NEED something that takes apart their genetic molecules and puts them back together at random?

GUSTO: Maybe that’s why there are so few different species in Lusitania. The Descolada may be fairly recent—only half a million years old—and most species couldn’t adapt.

CIDA: I wish we weren’t dying, Gusto. The next xenobiologist will probably work with standard genetic adaptations and won’t follow this up.

GUSTO: That’s the only reason you can think of for regretting our death?

—Vladimir Tiago Gussman and Ekaterina Maria Aparecida do Norte von Hesse-Gussman, unpublished dialogue embedded in working notes, two days before their deaths; first quoted in “Lost Threads of Understanding,”

Meta-Science, the Journal of Methodology, 2001: 12:12:144-45

Ender did not get home from the Ribeira house until late that night, and he spent more than an hour trying to make sense of all that happened, especially after Novinha came home. Despite this, Ender awoke early the next morning, his thoughts already full of questions he had to answer. It was always this way when he was preparing to speak a death; he could hardly rest from trying to piece together the story of the dead man as he saw himself, the life the dead woman meant to live, however badly it had turned out. This time, though, there was an added anxiety. He cared more for the living this time than he ever had before.

“Of course you’re more involved,” said Jane, after he tried to explain his confusion to her. “You fell in love with Novinha before you left Trondheim.”

“Maybe I loved the young girl, but this woman is nasty and selfish. Look what she let happen to her children.”

“This is the Speaker for the Dead? Judging someone by appearances?”

“Maybe I’ve fallen in love with Grego.”

“You’ve always been a sucker for people who pee on you.”

“And Quara. All of them—even Miro, I like the boy.”

“And they love you, Ender.”

He laughed. “People always think they love me, until I speak. Novinha’s more perceptive than most—she already hates me before I tell the truth.”

“You’re as blind about yourself as anyone else, Speaker,” said Jane. “Promise me that when you die, you’ll let me speak your death. Have I got things to say.”

“Keep them to yourself,” said Ender wearily. “You’re even worse at this business than I am.”

He began his list of questions to be resolved.

1. Why did Novinha marry Marcão in the first place?

2. Why did Marcão hate his children?

3. Why does Novinha hate herself?

4. Why did Miro call me to speak Libo’s death?

5. Why did Ela call me to speak her father’s death?

6. Why did Novinha change her mind about my speaking Pipo’s death?

7. What was the immediate cause of Marcão’s death?

He stopped with the seventh question. It would be easy to answer it; a merely clinical matter. So that was where he would begin.

The physician who autopsied Marcão was called Navio, which meant “ship.”

“Not for my size,” he said, laughing. “Or because I’m much of a swimmer. My full name is Enrique o Navigador Caronada. You can bet I’m glad they took my nickname from ‘shipmaster’ rather than from ‘little cannon.’ Too many obscene possibilities in that one.”

Ender was not deceived by his joviality. Navio was a good Catholic and he obeyed his bishop as well as anyone. He was determined to keep Ender from learning anything, though he’d not be uncheerful about it.

“There are two ways I can get the answers to my questions,” Ender said quietly. “I can ask you, and you can tell me truthfully. Or I can submit a petition to the Starways Congress for your records to be opened to me. The ansible charges are very high, and since the petition is a routine one, and your resistance to it is contrary to law, the cost will be deducted from your colony’s already straitened funds, along with a double-the-cost penalty and a reprimand for you.”

Navio’s smile gradually disappeared as Ender spoke. He answered coldly. “Of course I’ll answer your questions,” he said.

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” said Ender. “Your bishop counseled the people of Milagre to carry out an unprovoked and unjustified boycott of a legally called-for minister. You would do everyone a favor if you would inform them that if this cheerful noncooperation continues, I will petition for my status to be changed from minister to inquisitor. I assure you that I have a very good reputation with the Starways Congress, and my petition will be successful.”

Navio knew exactly what that meant. As an inquisitor, Ender would have congressional authority to revoke the colony’s Catholic license on the grounds of religious persecution. It would cause a terrible upheaval among the Lusitanians, not least because the Bishop would be summarily dismissed from his position and sent to the Vatican for discipline.

“Why would you do such a thing when you know we don’t want you here?” said Navio.

“Someone wanted me here or I wouldn’t have come,” said Ender. “You may not like the law when it annoys you, but it protects many a Catholic on worlds where another creed is licensed.”

Navio drummed his fingers on his desk. “What are your questions, Speaker,” he said. “Let’s get this done.”

“It’s simple enough, to start with, at least. What was the proximate cause of the death of Marcos Maria Ribeira?”

“Marcão!” said Navio. “You couldn’t possibly have been summoned to speak his death, he only passed away a few weeks ago—”

“I have been asked to speak several deaths, Dom Navio, and I choose to begin with Marcão’s.”

Navio grimaced. “What if I ask for proof of your authority?”

Jane whispered in Ender’s ear. “Let’s dazzle the dear boy.” Immediately, Navio’s terminal came alive with official documents, while one of Jane’s most authoritative voices declared, “Andrew Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead, has accepted the call for an explanation of the life and death of Marcos Maria Ribeira, of the city of Milagre, Lusitania Colony.”

It was not the document that impressed Navio, however. It was the fact that he had not actually made the request, or even logged on to his terminal. Navio knew at once that the computer had been activated through the jewel in the Speaker’s ear, but it meant that a very high-level logic routine was shadowing the Speaker and enforcing compliance with his requests. No one on Lusitania, not even Bosquinha herself, had ever had authority to do that. Whatever this speaker was, Navio concluded, he’s a bigger fish than even Bishop Peregrino can hope to fry.

“All right,” Navio said, forcing a laugh. Now, apparently, he remembered how to be jovial again. “I meant to help you anyway—the Bishop’s paranoia doesn’t afflict everyone in Milagre, you know.”

Ender smiled back at him, taking his hypocrisy at face value.

“Marcos Ribeira died of a congenital defect.” He rattled off a long pseudo-Latin name. “You’ve never heard of it because it’s quite rare, and is passed on only through the genes. Beginning at the onset of puberty, in most cases, it involves the gradual replacement of exocrine and endocrine glandular tissues with lipidous cells. What that means is that bit by bit over the years, the adrenal glands, the pituitary, the liver, the testes, the thyroid, and so on, are all replaced by large agglomerations of fat cells.”

“Always fatal? Irreversible?”

“Oh, yes. Actually, Marcão survived ten years longer than usual. His case was remarkable in several ways. In every other recorded case—and admittedly there aren’t that many—the disease attacks the testicles first, rendering the victim sterile and, in most cases, impotent. With six healthy children, it’s obvious that Marcos Ribeira’s testes were the last of his glands to be affected. Once they were attacked, however, progress must have been unusually fast—the testes were completely replaced with fat cells, even though much of his liver and thyroid were still functioning.”

“What killed him in the end?”

“The pituitary and the adrenals weren’t functioning. He was a walking dead man. He just fell down in one of the bars, in the middle of some ribald song, as I heard.”

As always, Ender’s mind automatically found seeming contradictions. “How does a hereditary disease get passed on if it makes its victims sterile?”

“It’s usually passed through collateral lines. One child will die of it; his brothers and sisters won’t manifest the disease at all, but they’ll pass on the tendency to their children. Naturally, though, we were afraid that Marcão, having children, would pass on the defective gene to all of them.”

“You tested them?”

“Not a one had any of the genetic deformations. You can bet that Dona Ivanova was looking over my shoulder the whole time. We zeroed in immediately on the problem genes and cleared each of the children, bim bim bim, just like that.”

“None of them had it? Not even a recessive tendency?”

“Graças a Deus,” said the doctor. “Who would ever have married them if they had had the poisoned genes? As it was, I can’t understand how Marcão’s own genetic defect went undiscovered.”

“Are genetic scans routine here?”

“Oh, no, not at all. But we had a great plague some thirty years ago. Dona Ivanova’s own parents, the Venerado Gusto and the Venerada Cida, they conducted a detailed genetic scan of every man, woman, and child in the colony. It’s how they found the cure. And their computer comparisons would definitely have turned up this particular defect—that’s how I found out what it was when Marcão died. I’d never heard of the disease, but the computer had it on file,”

“And Os Venerados didn’t find it?”

“Apparently not, or they would surely have told Marcos. And even if they hadn’t told him, Ivanova herself should have found it.”

“Maybe she did,” said Ender.

Navio laughed aloud. “Impossible. No woman in her right mind would deliberately bear the children of a man with a genetic defect like that. Marcão was surely in constant agony for many years. You don’t wish that on your own children. No, Ivanova may be eccentric, but she’s not insane.”

Jane was quite amused. When Ender got home, she made her image appear above his terminal just so she could laugh uproariously.

“He can’t help it,” said Ender. “In a devout Catholic colony like this, dealing with the Biologista, one of the most respected people here, of course he doesn’t think to question his basic premises.”

“Don’t apologize for him,” said Jane. “I don’t expect wetware to work as logically as software. But you can’t ask me not to be amused.”

“In a way it’s rather sweet of him,” said Ender. “He’d rather believe that Marcão’s disease was different from every other recorded case. He’d rather believe that somehow Ivanova’s parents didn’t notice that Marcos had the disease, and so she married him in ignorance, even though Ockham’s razor decrees that we believe the simplest explanation: Marcão’s decay progressed like every other, testes first, and all of Novinha’s children were sired by someone else. No wonder Marcão was bitter and angry. Every one of her six children reminded him that his wife was sleeping with another man. It was probably part of their bargain in the beginning that she would not be faithful to him. But six children is rather rubbing his nose in it.”

“The delicious contradictions of religious life,” said Jane. “She deliberately set out to commit adultery—but she would never dream of using a contraceptive.”

“Have you scanned the children’s genetic pattern to find the most likely father?”

“You mean you haven’t guessed?”

“I’ve guessed, but I want to make sure the clinical evidence doesn’t disprove the obvious answer.”

“It was Libo, of course. What a dog! He sired six children on Novinha, and four more on his own wife.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Ender, “is why Novinha didn’t marry Libo in the first place. It makes no sense at all for her to have married a man she obviously despised, whose disease she certainly knew about, and then to go ahead and bear children to the man she must have loved from the beginning.”

“Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind,” Jane intoned. “Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head.”

Miro carefully picked his way through the forest. He recognized trees now and then, or thought he did—no human could ever have the piggies’ knack for naming every single tree in the woods. But then, humans didn’t worship the trees as totems of their ancestors, either.

Miro had deliberately chosen a longer way to reach the piggies’ log house. Ever since Libo accepted Miro as a second apprentice, to work with him alongside Libo’s daughter, Ouanda, he had taught them that they must never form a path leading from Milagre to the piggies’ home. Someday, Libo warned them, there may be trouble between human and piggy; we will make no path to guide a pogrom to its destination. So today Miro walked the far side of the creek, along the top of the high bank.

Sure enough, a piggy soon appeared in the near distance, watching him. That was how Libo reasoned out, years ago, that the females must live somewhere in that direction; the males always kept a watch on the Zenadors when they went too near. And, as Libo had insisted, Miro made no effort to move any farther in the forbidden direction. His curiosity dampened whenever he remembered what Libo’s body looked like when he and Ouanda found it. Libo had not been quite dead yet; his eyes were open and moving. He only died when both Miro and Ouanda knelt at either side of him, each holding a blood-covered hand. Ah, Libo, your blood still pumped when your heart lay naked in your open chest. If only you could have spoken to us, one word to tell us why they killed you.

The bank became low again, and Libo crossed the brook by running lightly on the moss-covered stones. In a few more minutes he was there, coming into the small clearing from the east.

Ouanda was already there, teaching them how to churn the cream of cabra milk to make a sort of butter. She had been experimenting with the process for the past several weeks before she got it right. It would have been easier if she could have had some help from Mother, or even Ela, since they knew so much more about the chemical properties of cabra milk, but cooperating with the Biologista was out of the question. Os Venerados had discovered thirty years ago that cabra milk was nutritionally useless to humans. Therefore any investigation of how to process it for storage could only be for the piggies’ benefit. Miro and Ouanda could not risk anything that might let it be known they were breaking the law and actively intervening in the piggies’ way of life.

The younger piggies took to butter-churning with delight—they had made a dance out of kneading the cabra bladders and were singing now, a nonsensical song that mixed Stark, Portuguese, and two of the piggies’ own languages into a hopeless but hilarious muddle. Miro tried to sort out the languages. He recognized Males’ Language, of course, and also a few fragments of Tree Language, the language they used to speak to their totem trees; Miro recognized it only by its sound; even Libo hadn’t been able to translate a single word. It all sounded like ms and bs and gs, with no detectable difference among the vowels.

The piggy who had been shadowing Miro in the woods now emerged and greeted the others with a loud hooting sound. The dancing went on, but the song stopped immediately. Mandachuva detached himself from the group around Ouanda and came to meet Miro at the clearing’s edge.

“Welcome, I-Look-Upon-You-With-Desire.” That was, of course, an extravagantly precise translation of Miro’s name into Stark. Mandachuva loved translating names back and forth between Portuguese and Stark, even though Miro and Ouanda had both explained that their names didn’t really mean anything at all, and it was only coincidence if they sounded like words. But Mandachuva enjoyed his language games, as so many piggies did, and so Miro answered to I-Look-Upon-You-With-Desire, just as Ouanda patiently answered to Vaga, which was Portugese for “wander,” the Stark word that most sounded like “Ouanda.”

Mandachuva was a puzzling case. He was the oldest of the piggies. Pipo had known him, and wrote of him as though he were the most prestigious of the piggies. Libo, too, seemed to think of him as a leader. Wasn’t his name a slangy Portugese term for “boss”? Yet to Miro and Ouanda, it seemed as though Mandachuva was the least powerful and prestigious of the piggies. No one seemed to consult him on anything; he was the one piggy who always had free time to converse with the Zenadors, because he was almost never engaged in an important task.

Still, he was the piggy who gave the most information to the Zenadors. Miro couldn’t begin to guess whether he had lost his prestige because of his information-sharing, or shared information with the humans to make up for his low prestige among the piggies. It didn’t even matter. The fact was that Miro liked Mandachuva. He thought of the old piggy as his friend.

“Has the woman forced you to eat that foul-smelling paste?” asked Miro.

“Pure garbage, she says. Even the baby cabras cry when they have to suck a teat,” Mandachuva giggled.

“If you leave that as a gift for the ladyfolk, they’ll never speak to you again.”

“Still, we must, we must,” said Mandachuva, sighing. “They have to see everything, the prying macios!”

Ah, yes, the bafflement of the females. Sometimes the piggies spoke of them with sincere, elaborate respect, almost awe, as if they were gods. Then a piggy would say something as crude as to call them “macios,” the worms that slithered on the bark of trees. The Zenadors couldn’t even ask about them—the piggies would never answer questions about the females. There had been a time—a long time—when the piggies didn’t even mention the existence of females at all. Libo always hinted darkly that the change had something to do with Pipo’s death. Before he died, the mention of females was tabu, except with reverence at rare moments of great holiness; afterward, the piggies also showed this wistful, melancholy way of joking about “the wives.” But the Zenadors could never get an answer to a question about the females. The piggies made it plain that the females were none of their business.

A whistle came from the group around Ouanda. Mandachuva immediately began pulling Miro toward the group. “Arrow wants to talk to you.”

Miro came and sat beside Ouanda. She did not look at him—they had learned long ago that it made the piggies very uncomfortable when they had to watch male and female humans in direct conversation, or even having eye contact with each other. They would talk with Ouanda alone, but whenever Miro was present they would not speak to her or endure it if she spoke to them. Sometimes it drove Miro crazy that she couldn’t so much as wink at him in front of the piggies. He could feel her body as if she were giving off heat like a small star.

“My friend,” said Arrow. “I have a great gift to ask of you.”

Miro could hear Ouanda tensing slightly beside him. The piggies did not often ask for anything, and it always caused difficulty when they did.

“Will you hear me?”

Miro nodded slowly. “But remember that among humans I am nothing, with no power.” Libo had discovered that the piggies were not at all insulted to think that the humans sent powerless delegates among them, while the image of impotence helped them explain the strict limitations on what the Zenadors could do.

“This is not a request that comes from us, in our silly and stupid conversations around the night fire.”

“I only wish I could hear the wisdom that you call silliness,” said Miro, as he always did.

“It was Rooter, speaking out of his tree, who said this.”

Miro sighed silently. He liked dealing with piggy religion as little as he liked his own people’s Catholicism. In both cases he had to pretend to take the most outrageous beliefs seriously. Whenever anything particularly daring or importunate was said, the piggies always ascribed it to one ancestor or another, whose spirit dwelt in one of the ubiquitous trees. It was only in the last few years, beginning not long before Libo’s death, that they started singling out Rooter as the source of most of the troublesome ideas. It was ironic that a piggy they had executed as a rebel was now treated with such respect in their ancestor-worship.

Still, Miro responded as Libo had always responded. “We have nothing but honor and affection for Rooter, if you honor him.”

“We must have metal.”

Miro closed his eyes. So much for the Zenadors’ long-standing policy of never using metal tools in front of the piggies. Obviously, the piggies had observers of their own, watching humans at work from some vantage point near the fence. “What do you need metal for?” he asked quietly.

“When the shuttle came down with the Speaker for the Dead, it gave off a terrible heat, hotter than any fire we can make. And yet the shuttle didn’t burn, and it didn’t melt.”

“That wasn’t the metal, it was a heat-absorbent plastic shield.”

“Perhaps that helps, but metal is in the heart of that machine. In all your machines, wherever you use fire and heat to make things move, there is metal. We will never be able to make fires like yours until we have metal of our own.”

“I can’t,” said Miro.

“Do you tell us that we are condemned always to be varelse, and never ramen?”

I wish, Ouanda, that you had not explained Demosthenes’ Hierarchy of Exclusion to them. “You are not condemned to anything. What we have given you so far, we have made out of things that grow in your natural world, like cabras. Even that, if we were discovered, would cause us to be exiled from this world, forbidden ever to see you again.”

“The metal you humans use also comes out of our natural world. We’ve seen your miners digging it out of the ground far to the south of here.”

Miro stored that bit of information for future reference. There was no vantage point outside the fence where the mines would be visible. Therefore the piggies must be crossing the fence somehow and observing humans from within the enclave. “It comes out of the ground, but only in certain places, which I don’t know how to find. And even when they dig it up, it’s mixed with other kinds of rock. They have to purify it and transform it in very difficult processes. Every speck of metal dug out of the ground is accounted for. If we gave you so much as a single tool—a screwdriver or a masonry saw—it would be missed, it would be searched for. No one searches for cabra milk.”

Arrow looked at him steadily for some time; Miro met his gaze. “We will think about this,” Arrow said. He reached out his hand toward Calendar, who put three arrows in his hand. “Look. Are these good?”

They were as perfect as Arrow’s fletchery usually was, well-feathered and true. The innovation was in the tip. It was not made of obsidian.

“Cabra bone,” said Miro.

“We use the cabra to kill the cabra.” He handed the arrows back to Calendar. Then he got up and walked away.

Calendar held the slender wooden arrows out in front of him and sang something to them in Fathers’ Language. Miro recognized the song, though he did not understand the words. Mandachuva had once explained to him that it was a prayer, asking the dead tree to forgive them for using tools that were not made of wood. Otherwise, he said, the trees would think the Little Ones hated them. Religion. Miro sighed.

Calendar carried the arrows away. Then the young piggy named Human took his place, squatting on the ground in front of Miro. He was carrying a leaf-wrapped bundle, which he laid on the dirt and opened carefully.

It was the printout of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon that Miro had given them four years ago. It had been part of a minor quarrel between Miro and Ouanda. Ouanda began it, in a conversation with the piggies about religion. It was not really her fault. It began with Mandachuva asking her, “How can you humans live without trees?” She understood the question, of course—he was not speaking of woody plants, but of gods. “We have a God, too—a man who died and yet still lived,” she explained. Just one? Then where does he live now? “No one knows.” Then what good is he? How can you talk to him? “He dwells in our hearts.”

They were baffled by this; Libo would later laugh and say, “You see? To them our sophisticated theology sounds like superstition. Dwells in our hearts indeed! What kind of religion is that, compared to one with gods you can see and feel—”

“And climb and pick macios from, not to mention the fact that they cut some of them down to make their log house,” said Ouanda.

“Cut? Cut them down? Without stone or metal tools? No, Ouanda, they pray them down.” But Ouanda was not amused by jokes about religion.

At the piggies’ request Ouanda later brought them a printout of the Gospel of St. John from the simplified Stark paraphrase of the Douai Bible. But Miro had insisted on giving them, along with it, a printout of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. “St. John says nothing about beings who live on other worlds,” Miro pointed out. “But the Speaker for the Dead explains buggers to humans—and humans to buggers.” Ouanda had been outraged at his blasphemy. But not a year later they found the piggies lighting fires using pages of St. John as kindling, while the Hive Queen and the Hegemon was tenderly wrapped in leaves. It caused Ouanda a great deal of grief for a while, and Miro learned that it was wiser not to goad her about it.

Now Human opened the printout to the last page. Miro noticed that from the moment he opened the book, all the piggies quietly gathered around. The butter-churning dance ended. Human touched the last words of the printout. “The Speaker for the Dead,” he murmured.

“Yes, I met him last night.”

“He is the true Speaker. Rooter says so.” Miro had warned them that there were many speakers, and the writer of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon was surely dead. Apparently they still couldn’t get rid of the hope that the one who had come here was the real one, who had written the holy book.

“I believe he’s a good speaker,” said Miro. “He was kind to my family, and I think he might be trusted.”

“When will he come and speak to us?”

“I didn’t ask him yet. It’s not something that I can say right out. It will take time.”

Human tipped his head back and howled.

Is this my death? thought Miro.

No. The others touched Human gently and then helped him wrap the printout again and carry it away. Miro stood up to leave. None of the piggies watched him go. Without being ostentatious about it, they were all busy doing something. He might as well have been invisible.

Ouanda caught up with him just within the forest’s edge, where the underbrush made them invisible to any possible observers from Milagre—though no one ever bothered to look toward the forest. “Miro,” she called softly. He turned just in time to take her in his arms; she had such momentum that he had to stagger backward to keep from falling down. “Are you trying to kill me?” he asked, or tried to—she kept kissing him, which made it difficult to speak in complete sentences. Finally he gave up on speech and kissed her back, once, long and deep. Then she abruptly pulled away.

“You’re getting libidinous,” she said.

“It happens whenever women attack me and kiss me in the forest.”

“Cool your shorts, Miro, it’s still a long way off.” She took him by the belt, pulled him close, kissed him again. “Two more years until we can marry without your mother’s consent.”

Miro did not even try to argue. He did not care much about the priestly proscription of fornication, but he did understand how vital it was in a fragile community like Milagre for marriage customs to be strictly adhered to. Large and stable communities could absorb a reasonable amount of unsanctioned coupling; Milagre was far too small. What Ouanda did from faith, Miro did from rational thought—despite a thousand opportunities, they were as celibate as monks. Though if Miro thought for one moment that they would ever have to live the same vows of chastity in marriage that were required in the Filhos’ monastery, Ouanda’s virginity would be in grave and immediate danger.

“This speaker,” said Ouanda. “You know how I feel about bringing him out here.”

“That’s your Catholicism speaking, not rational inquiry.” He tried to kiss her, but she lowered her face at the last moment and he got a mouthful of nose. He kissed it passionately until she laughed and pushed him away.

“You are messy and offensive, Miro.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “We already shot the scientific method all to hell when we started helping them raise their standard of living. We have ten or twenty years before the satellites start showing obvious results. By then maybe we’ll have been able to make a permanent difference. But we’ve got no chance if we let a stranger in on the project. He’ll tell somebody.”

“Maybe he will and maybe he won’t. I was a stranger once, you know.”

“Strange, but never a stranger.”

“You had to see him last night, Ouanda. With Grego first, and then when Quara woke up crying—”

“Desperate, lonely children—what does that prove?”

“And Ela. Laughing. And Olhado, actually taking part in the family.”

“Quim?”

“At least he stopped yelling for the infidel to go home.”

“I’m glad for your family, Miro. I hope he can heal them permanently, I really do—I can see the difference in you, too, you’re more hopeful than I’ve seen you in a long time. But don’t bring him out here.”

Miro chewed on the side of his cheek for a moment, then walked away. Ouanda ran after him, caught him by the arm. They were in the open, but Rooter’s tree was between them and the gate. “Don’t leave me like that!” she said fiercely. “Don’t just walk away from me!”

“I know you’re right,” Miro said. “But I can’t help how I feel. When he was in our house, it was like—it was as if Libo had come there.”

“Father hated your mother, Miro—he would never have gone there.”

“But if he had. In our house this speaker was the way Libo always was in the Station. Do you see?”

“Do you? He comes in and acts the way your father should have but never did, and every single one of you rolls over belly-up like a puppy dog.”

The contempt on her face was infuriating. Miro wanted to hit her. Instead he walked over and slapped his hand against Rooter’s tree. In only a quarter of a century it had grown to almost eighty centimeters in diameter, and the bark was rough and painful on his hand.

She came up behind him. “I’m sorry, Miro, I didn’t mean—”

“You meant it, but it was stupid and selfish—”

“Yes, it was, I—”

“Just because my father was scum doesn’t mean I go belly-up for the first nice man who pats my head—”

Her hand stroked his hair, his shoulder, his waist. “I know, I know, I know—”

“Because I know what a good man is—not just a father, a good man. I knew Libo, didn’t I? And when I tell you that this speaker, this Andrew Wiggin is like Libo, then you listen to me and don’t dismiss it like the whimpering of a cão!”

“I do listen. I want to meet him, Miro.”

Miro surprised himself. He was crying. It was all part of what this speaker could do, even when he wasn’t present. He had loosened all the tight places in Miro’s heart, and now Miro couldn’t stop anything from coming out.

“You’re right, too,” said Miro softly, his voice distorted with emotion. “I saw him come in with his healing touch and I thought, If only he had been my father.” He turned to face Ouanda, not caring if she saw his eyes red and his face streaked with tears. “Just the way I used to say that every day when I went home from the Zenador’s Station. If only Libo were my father, if only I were his son.”

She smiled and held him; her hair took the tears from his face. “Ah, Miro, I’m glad he wasn’t your father. Because then I’d be your sister, and I could never hope to have you for myself.”

10
CHILDREN OF THE MIND

Rule 1 : All Children of the Mind of Christ must be married, or they may not be in the order; but they must be chaste.

Question 1 : Why is marriage necessary for anyone?

Fools say, Why should we marry? Love is the only bond my lover and I need. To them I say, Marriage is not a covenant between a man and a woman; even the beasts cleave together and produce their young. Marriage is a covenant between a man and woman on the one side and their community on the other. To marry according to the law of the community is to become a full citizen; to refuse marriage is to be a stranger, a child, an outlaw, a slave, or a traitor. The one constant in every society of humankind is that only those who obey the laws, tabus, and customs of marriage are true adults.

Question 2: Why then is celibacy ordained for priests and nuns?

To separate them from the community. The priests and nuns are servants, not citizens. They minister to the Church, but they are not the Church. Mother Church is the bride, and Christ is the bridegroom; the priests and nuns are merely guests at the wedding, for they have rejected citizenship in the community of Christ in order to serve it.

Question 3: Why then do the Children of the Mind of Christ marry? Do we not also serve the Church?

We do not serve the Church, except as all women and men serve it through their marriages. The difference is that where they pass on their genes to the next generation, we pass on our knowledge; their legacy is found in the genetic molecules of generations to come, while we live on in their minds. Memories are the offspring of our marriages, and they are neither more or less worthy than the flesh-and-blood children conceived in sacramental love.

—San Angelo, The Rule and Catechism of the Order of the Children of the Mind of Christ, 1511:11:11:1

The Dean of the Cathedral carried the silence of dark chapels and massive, soaring walls wherever he went: When he entered the classroom, a heavy peace fell upon the students, and even their breathing was guarded as he noiselessly drifted to the front of the room.

“Dom Cristão,” murmured the Dean. “The Bishop has need of consultation with you.”

The students, most of them in their teens, were not so young that they didn’t know of the strained relations between the hierarchy of the Church and the rather freewheeling monastics who ran most of the Catholic schools in the Hundred Worlds. Dom Cristão, besides being an excellent teacher of history, geology, archaeology, and anthropology, was also abbot of the monastery of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo—the Children of the Mind of Christ. His position made him the Bishop’s primary rival for spiritual supremacy in Lusitania. In some ways he could even be considered the Bishop’s superior; on most worlds there was only one abbot of the Filhos for each archbishop, while for each bishop there was a principal of a school system.

But Dom Cristão, like all Filhos, made it a point to be completely deferent to the Church hierarchy. At the Bishop’s summons he immediately switched off the lectern and dismissed the class without so much as completing the point under discussion. The students were not surprised; they knew he would do the same if any ordained priest had interrupted his class. It was, of course, immensely flattering to the priesthood to see how important they were in the eyes of the Filhos; but it also made it plain to them that any time they visited the school during teaching hours, classwork would be completely disrupted wherever they went. As a result, the priests rarely visited the school, and the Filhos, through extreme deference, maintained almost complete independence.

Dom Cristão had a pretty good idea why the Bishop had summoned him. Dr. Navio was an indiscreet man, and rumors had been flying all morning about some dreadful threat by the speaker for the dead. It was hard for Dom Cristão to bear the groundless fears of the hierarchy whenever they were confronted with infidels and heretics. The Bishop would be in a fury, which meant that he would demand some action from somebody, even though the best course, as usual, was inaction, patience, cooperation. Besides, word had spread that this particular speaker claimed to be the very one who spoke the death of San Angelo. If that was the case, he was probably not an enemy at all, but a friend of the Church. Or at least a friend of the Filhos, which in Dom Cristão’s mind amounted to the same thing.

As he followed the silent Dean among the buildings of the faculdade and through the garden of the Cathedral, he cleared his heart of the anger and annoyance he felt. Over and over he repeated his monastic name: Amai a Tudomundo Para Que Deus Vos Ame. Ye Must Love Everyone So That God Will Love You. He had chosen the name carefully when he and his fiancée joined the order, for he knew that his greatest weakness was anger and impatience with stupidity. Like all Filhos, he named himself with the invocation against his most potent sin. It was one of the ways they made themselves spiritually naked before the world. We will not clothe ourselves in hypocrisy, taught San Angelo. Christ will clothe us in virtue like the lilies of the field, but we will make no effort to appear virtuous ourselves. Dom Cristão felt his virtue wearing thin in places today; the cold wind of impatience might freeze him to the bone. So he silently chanted his name, thinking: Bishop Peregrino is a damned fool, but Amai a Tudomundo Para Que Deus Vos Ame.

“Brother Amai,” said Bishop Peregrino. He never used the honorific Dom Cristão, even though cardinals had been known to give that much courtesy. “It was good of you to come.”

Navio was already sitting in the softest chair, but Dom Cristão did not begrudge him that. Indolence had made Navio fat, and his fat now made him indolent; it was such a circular disease, feeding always on itself, and Dom Cristão was grateful not to be so afflicted. He chose for himself a tall stool with no back at all. It would keep his body from relaxing, and that would help his mind to stay alert.

Navio almost at once launched into an account of his painful meeting with the Speaker for the Dead, complete with elaborate explanations of what the Speaker had threatened to do if noncooperation continued. “An inquisitor, if you can imagine that! An infidel daring to supplant the authority of Mother Church!” Oh, how the lay member gets the crusading spirit when Mother Church is threatened—but ask him to go to mass once a week, and the crusading spirit curls up and goes to sleep.

Navio’s words did have some effect: Bishop Peregrino grew more and more angry, his face getting a pinkish tinge under the deep brown of his skin. When Navio’s recitation finally ended, Peregrino turned to Dom Cristão, his face a mask of fury, and said, “Now what do you say, Brother Amai!”

I would say, if I were less discreet, that you were a fool to interfere with this speaker when you knew the law was on his side and when he had done nothing to harm us. Now he is provoked, and is far more dangerous than he would ever have been if you had simply ignored his coming.

Dom Cristão smiled thinly and inclined his head. “I think that we should strike first to remove his power to harm us.”

Those militant words took Bishop Peregrino by surprise. “Exactly,” he said. “But I never expected you to understand that.”

“The Filhos are as ardent as any unordained Christian could hope to be,” said Dom Cristão. “But since we have no priesthood, we have to make do with reason and logic as poor substitutes for authority.”

Bishop Peregrino suspected irony from time to time, but was never quite able to pin it down. He grunted, and his eyes narrowed. “So, then, Brother Amai, how do you propose to strike him?”

“Well, Father Peregrino, the law is quite explicit. He has power over us only if we interfere with his performance of his ministerial duties. If we wish to strip him of the power to harm us, we have merely to cooperate with him.”

The Bishop roared and struck the table before him with his fist. “Just the sort of sophistry I should have expected from you, Amai!”

Dom Cristão smiled. “There’s really no alternative—either we answer his questions, or he petitions with complete justice for inquisitorial status, and you board a starship for the Vatican to answer charges of religious persecution. We are all too fond of you, Bishop Peregrino, to do anything that would cause your removal from office.”

“Oh, yes, I know all about your fondness.”

“The speakers for the dead are really quite innocuous—they set up no rival organization, they perform no sacraments, they don’t even claim that the Hive Queen and the Hegemon is a work of scripture. They only thing they do is try to discover the truth about the lives of the dead, and then tell everyone who will listen the story of a dead person’s life as the dead one meant to live it.”

“And you pretend to find that harmless?”

“On the contrary. San Angelo founded our order precisely because the telling of truth is such a powerful act. But I think it is far less harmful then, say, the Protestant Reformation. And the revocation of our Catholic License on the grounds of religious persecution would guarantee the immediate authorization of enough non-Catholic immigration to make us represent no more than a third of the population.”

Bishop Peregrino fondled his ring. “But would the Starways Congress actually authorize that? They have a fixed limit on the size of this colony—bringing in that many infidels would far exceed that limit.”

“But you must know that they’ve already made provisions for that. Since a Catholic License guarantees unrestricted population growth, Starways Congress will send starships when it’s necessary to carry off our excess population in forced emigration. They expect to do it in a generation or two—what’s to stop them from beginning now?”

“They wouldn’t.”

“Starways Congress was formed to stop the jihads and pogroms that were going on in half a dozen places all the time. An invocation of the religious persecution laws is a serious matter.”

“It is entirely out of proportion! One Speaker for the Dead is called for by some half-crazed heretic, and suddenly we’re confronted with forced emigration!”

“My beloved father, this has always been the way of things between the secular authority and the religious. We must be patient, if for no other reason than this: They have all the guns.”

Navio chuckled at that.

“They may have the guns, but we hold the keys of heaven and hell,” said the Bishop.

“And I’m sure that half of Starways Congress already writhes in anticipation. In the meantime, though, perhaps I can help ease the pain of this awkward time. Instead of your having to publicly retract your earlier remarks—” (your stupid, destructive, bigoted remarks) “—let it be known that you have instructed the Filhos da Mente de Cristo to bear the onerous burden of answering the questions of this infidel.”

“You may not know all the answers that he wants,” said Navio.

“But we can find out the answers for him, can’t we? Perhaps this way the people of Milagre will never have to answer to the Speaker directly; instead they will speak only to harmless brothers and sisters of our order.”

“In other words,” said Peregrino dryly, “the monks of your order will become servants of the infidel.”

Dom Cristão silently chanted his name three times.

Not since he was a child in the military had Ender felt so clearly that he was in enemy territory. The path up the hill from the praça was worn from the steps of many worshipers’ feet, and the cathedral dome was so tall that except for a few moments on the steepest slope, it was visible all the way up the hill. The primary school was on his left hand, built in terraces up the slope; to the right was the Vila dos Professores, named for the teachers but in fact inhabited mostly by the groundskeepers, janitors, clerks, counselors, and other menials. The teachers that Ender saw all wore the grey robes of the Filhos, and they eyed him curiously as he passed.

The enmity began when he reached the top of the hill, a wide, almost flat expanse of lawn and garden immaculately tended, with crushed ores from the smelter making neat paths. Here is the world of the Church, thought Ender, everything in its place and no weeds allowed. He was aware of the many watching him, but now the robes were black or orange, priests and deacons, their eyes malevolent with authority under threat. What do I steal from you by coming here? Ender asked them silently. But he knew that their hatred was not undeserved. He was a wild herb growing in the well-tended garden; wherever he stepped, disorder threatened, and many lovely flowers would die if he took root and sucked the life from their soil.

Jane chatted amiably with him, trying to provoke him into answering her, but Ender refused to be caught by her game. The priests would not see his lips move; there was a considerable faction in the Church that regarded implants like the jewel in his ear as a sacrilege, trying to improve on a body that God had created perfect.

“How many priests can this community support, Ender?” she said, pretending to marvel.

Ender would have liked to retort that she already had the exact number of them in her files. One of her pleasures was to say annoying things when he was not in a position to answer, or even to publicly acknowledge that she was speaking in his ear.

“Drones that don’t even reproduce. If they don’t copulate, doesn’t evolution demand that they expire?” Of course she knew that the priests did most of the administrative and public service work of the community. Ender composed his answers to her as if he could speak them aloud. If the priests weren’t there, then government or business or guilds or some other group would expand to take up the burden. Some sort of rigid hierarchy always emerged as the conservative force in a community, maintaining its identity despite the constant variations and changes that beset it. If there were no powerful advocate of orthodoxy, the community would inevitably disintegrate. A powerful orthodoxy is annoying, but essential to the community. Hadn’t Valentine written about this in her book on Zanzibar? She compared the priestly class to the skeleton of vertebrates—

Just to show him that she could anticipate his arguments even when he couldn’t say them aloud, Jane supplied the quotation; teasingly, she spoke it in Valentine’s own voice, which she had obviously stored away in order to torment him. “The bones are hard and by themselves seem dead and stony, but by rooting into and pulling themselves against the skeleton, the rest of the body carries out all the motions of life.”

The sound of Valentine’s voice hurt him more than he expected, certainly more than Jane would have intended. His step slowed. He realized that it was her absence that made him so sensitive to the priests’ hostility. He had bearded the Calvinist lion in its den, he had walked philosophically naked among the burning coals of Islam, and Shinto fanatics had sung death threats outside his window in Kyoto. But always Valentine had been close—in the same city, breathing the same air, afflicted by the same weather. She would speak courage to him as he set out; he would return from confrontation and her conversation would make sense even of his failures, giving him small shreds of triumph even in defeat. I left her a mere ten days ago, and now, already, I feel the lack of her.

“To the left, I think,” said Jane. Mercifully, she was using her own voice now. “The monastery is at the western edge of the hill, overlooking the Zenador’s Station.”

He passed alongside the faculdade, where students from the age of twelve studied the higher sciences. And there, low to the ground, the monastery lay waiting. He smiled at the contrast between the cathedral and the monastery. The Filhos were almost offensive in their rejection of magnificence. No wonder the hierarchy resented them wherever they went. Even the monastery garden made a rebellious statement—everything that wasn’t a vegetable garden was abandoned to weeds and unmown grass.

The abbot was called Dom Cristão, of course; it would have been Dona Cristã had the abbot been a woman. In this place, because there was only one escola baixa and one faculdade, there was only one principal; with elegant simplicity, the husband headed the monastery and his wife the schools, enmeshing all the affairs of the order in a single marriage. Ender had told San Angelo right at the beginning that it was the height of pretension, not humility at all, for the leaders of the monasteries and schools to be called “Sir Christian” or “Lady Christian,” arrogating to themselves a title that should belong to every follower of Christ impartially. San Angelo had only smiled—because, of course, that was precisely what he had in mind. Arrogant in his humility, that’s what he was, and that was one of the reasons that I loved him.

Dom Cristão came out into the courtyard to greet him instead of waiting for him in his escritorio—part of the discipline of the order was to inconvenience yourself deliberately in favor of those you serve. “Speaker Andrew!” he cried. “Dom Ceifeiro!” Ender called in return. Ceifeiro—reaper—was the order’s own title for the office of abbot; school principals were called Aradores, plowmen, and teaching monks were Semeadores, sowers.

The Ceifeiro smiled at the Speaker’s rejection of his common title, Dom Cristão. He knew how manipulative it was to require other people to call the Filhos by their titles and made-up names. As San Angelo said, “When they call you by your title, they admit you are a Christian; when they call you by your name, a sermon comes from their own lips.” He took Ender by the shoulders, smiled, and said, “Yes, I’m the Ceifeiro. And what are you to us—our infestation of weeds?”

“I try to be a blight wherever I go.”

“Beware, then, or the Lord of the Harvest will burn you with the tares.”

“I know—damnation is only a breath away, and there’s no hope of getting me to repent.”

“The priests do repentance. Our job is teaching the mind. It was good of you to come.”

“It was good of you to invite me here. I had been reduced to the crudest sort of bludgeoning in order to get anyone to converse with me at all.”

The Ceifeiro understood, of course, that the Speaker knew the invitation had come only because of his inquisitorial threat. But Brother Amai preferred to keep the discussion cheerful. “Come, now, is it true you knew San Angelo? Are you the very one who spoke his death?”

Ender gestured toward the tall weeds peering over the top of the courtyard wall. “He would have approved of the disarray of your garden. He loved provoking Cardinal Aquila, and no doubt your Bishop Peregrino also curls his nose in disgust at your shoddy groundskeeping.”

Dom Cristão winked. “You know too many of our secrets. If we help you find answers to your questions, will you go away?”

“There’s hope. The longest I’ve stayed anywhere since I began serving as a speaker was the year and a half I lived in Reykjavik, on Trondheim.”

“I wish you’d promise us a similar brevity here. I ask, not for myself, but for the peace of mind of those who wear much heavier robes than mine.”

Ender gave the only sincere answer that might help set the Bishop’s mind at ease. “I promise that if I ever find a place to settle down, I’ll shed my title of speaker and become a productive citizen.”

“In a place like this, that would include conversion to Catholicism.”

“San Angelo made me promise years ago that if I ever got religion, it would be his.”

“Somehow that does not sound like a sincere protestation of faith.”

“That’s because I haven’t any.”

The Ceifeiro laughed as if he knew better, and insisted on showing Ender around the monastery and the schools before getting to Ender’s questions. Ender didn’t mind—he wanted to see how far San Angelo’s ideas had come in the centuries since his death. The schools seemed pleasant enough, and the quality of education was high; but it was dark before the Ceifeiro led him back to the monastery and into the small cell that he and his wife, the Aradora, shared.

Dona Cristã was already there, creating a series of grammatical exercises on the terminal between the beds. They waited until she found a stopping place before addressing her.

The Ceifeiro introduced him as Speaker Andrew. “But he seems to find it hard to call me Dom Cristão.”

“So does the Bishop,” said his wife. “My true name is Detestai o Pecado e Fazei o Direito.” Hate Sin and Do the Right, Ender translated. “My husband’s name lends itself to a lovely shortening—Amai, love ye. But mine? Can you imagine shouting to a friend, Oi! Detestai!” They all laughed. “Love and Loathing, that’s who we are, husband and wife. What will you call me, if the name Christian is too good for me?”

Ender looked at her face, beginning to wrinkle enough that someone more critical than he might call her old. Still, there was laughter in her smile and a vigor in her eyes that made her seem much younger, even younger than Ender. “I would call you Beleza, but your husband would accuse me of flirting with you.”

“No, he would call me Beladona—from beauty to poison in one nasty little joke. Wouldn’t you, Dom Cristão?”

“It’s my job to keep you humble.”

“Just as it’s my job to keep you chaste,” she answered.

At that, Ender couldn’t help looking from one bed to the other.

“Ah, another one who’s curious about our celibate marriage,” said the Ceifeiro.

“No,” said Ender. “But I remember San Angelo urging husband and wife to share a single bed.”

“The only way we could do that,” said the Aradora, “is if one of us slept at night and the other in the day.”

“The rules must be adapted to the strength of the Filhos da Mente,” the Ceifeiro explained. “No doubt there are some that can share a bed and remain celibate, but my wife is still too beautiful, and the lusts of my flesh too insistent.”

“That was what San Angelo intended. He said that the marriage bed should be the constant test of your love of knowledge. He hoped that every man and woman in the order would, after a time, choose to reproduce themselves in the flesh as well as in the mind.”

“But the moment we do that,” said the Ceifeiro, “then we must leave the Filhos.”

“It’s the thing our dear San Angelo did not understand, because there was never a true monastery of the order during his life,” said the Aradora. “The monastery becomes our family, and to leave it would be as painful as divorce. Once the roots go down, the plant can’t come up again without great pain and tearing. So we sleep in separate beds, and we have just enough strength to remain in our beloved order.”

She spoke with such contentment that quite against his will, Ender’s eyes welled with tears. She saw it, blushed, looked away. “Don’t weep for us, Speaker Andrew. We have far more joy than suffering.”

“You misunderstand,” said Ender. “My tears weren’t for pity, but for beauty.”

“No,” said the Ceifeiro, “even the celibate priests think that our chastity in marriage is, at best, eccentric.”

“But I don’t,” said Ender. For a moment he wanted to tell them of his long companionship with Valentine, as close and loving as a wife, and yet chaste as a sister. But the thought of her took words away from him. He sat on the Ceifeiro’s bed and put his face in his hands.

“Is something wrong?” asked the Aradora. At the same time, the Ceifeiro’s hand rested gently on his head.

Ender lifted his head, trying to shake off the sudden attack of love and longing for Valentine. “I’m afraid that this voyage has cost me more than any other. I left behind my sister, who traveled with me for many years. She married in Reykjavik. To me, it seems only a week or so since I left her, but I find that I miss her more than I expected. The two of you—”

“Are you telling us that you are also celibate?” asked the Ceifeiro.

“And widowed now as well,” whispered the Aradora.

It did not seem at all incongruous to Ender to have his loss of Valentine put in those terms.

Jane murmured in his ear. “If this is part of some master plan of yours, Ender, I admit it’s much too deep for me.”

But of course it wasn’t part of a plan at all. It frightened Ender to feel himself losing control like this. Last night in the Ribeira house he was the master of the situation; now he felt himself surrendering to these married monks with as much abandonment as either Quara or Grego had shown.

“I think,” said the Ceifeiro, “that you came here seeking answers to more questions than you knew.”

“You must be so lonely,” said the Aradora. “Your sister has found her resting place. Are you looking for one, too?”

“I don’t think so,” said Ender. “I’m afraid I’ve imposed on your hospitality too much. Unordained monks aren’t supposed to hear confessions.”

The Aradora laughed aloud. “Oh, any Catholic can hear the confession of an infidel.”

The Ceifeiro did not laugh, however. “Speaker Andrew, you have obviously given us more trust than you ever planned, but I can assure you that we deserve that trust. And in the process, my friend, I have come to believe that I can trust you. The Bishop is afraid of you, and I admit I had my own misgivings, but not anymore. I’ll help you if I can, because I believe you will not knowingly cause harm to our little village.”

“Ah,” whispered Jane, “I see it now. A very clever maneuver on your part, Ender. You’re much better at playacting than I ever knew.”

Her gibing made Ender feel cynical and cheap, and he did what he had never done before. He reached up to the jewel, found the small disengaging pin, and with his fingernail pried it to the side, then down. The jewel went dead. Jane could no longer speak into his ear, no longer see and hear from his vantage point. “Let’s go outside,” Ender said.

They understood perfectly what he had just done, since the function of such an implant was well known; they saw it as proof of his desire for private and earnest conversation, and so they willingly agreed to go. Ender had meant switching off the jewel to be temporary, a response to Jane’s insensitivity; he had thought to switch on the interface in only a few minutes. But the way the Aradora and the Ceifeiro seemed to relax as soon as the jewel was inactive made it impossible to switch it back on, for a while at least.

Out on the nighttime hillside, in conversation with the Aradora and the Ceifeiro, he forgot that Jane was not listening. They told him of Novinha’s childhood solitude, and how they remembered seeing her come alive through Pipo’s fatherly care, and Libo’s friendship. “But from the night of his death, she became dead to us all.”

Novinha never knew of the discussions that took place concerning her. The sorrows of most children might not have warranted meetings in the Bishop’s chambers, conversations in the monastery among her teachers, endless speculations in the Mayor’s office. Most children, after all, were not the daughter of Os Venerados; most were not their planet’s only xenobiologist.

“She became very bland and businesslike. She made reports on her work with adapting native plant life for human use, and Earthborn plants for survival on Lusitania. She always answered every question easily and cheerfully and innocuously. But she was dead to us, she had no friends. We even asked Libo, God rest his soul, and he told us that he, who had been her friend, he did not even get the cheerful emptiness she showed to everyone else. Instead she raged at him and forbade him to ask her any questions.” The Ceifeiro peeled a blade of native grass and licked the liquid of its inner surface. “You might try this, Speaker Andrew—it has an interesting flavor, and since your body can’t metabolize a bit of it, it’s quite harmless.”

“You might warn him, husband, that the edges of the grass can slice his lips and tongue like razor blades.”

“I was about to.”

Ender laughed, peeled a blade, and tasted it. Sour cinnamon, a hint of citrus, the heaviness of stale breath—the taste was redolent of many things, few of them pleasant, but it was also strong. “This could be addictive.”

“My husband is about to make an allegorical point, Speaker Andrew. Be warned.”

The Ceifeiro laughed shyly. “Didn’t San Angelo say that Christ taught the correct way, by likening new things to old?”

“The taste of the grass,” said Ender. “What does it have to do with Novinha?”

“It’s very oblique. But I think Novinha tasted something not at all pleasant, but so strong it overcame her, and she could never let go of the flavor.”

“What was it?”

“In theological terms? The pride of universal guilt. It’s a form of vanity and egomania. She holds herself responsible for things that could not possibly be her fault. As if she controlled everything, as if other people’s suffering came about as punishment for her sins.”

“She blames herself,” said the Aradora, “for Pipo’s death.”

“She’s not a fool,” said Ender. “She knows it was the piggies, and she knows that Pipo went to them alone. How could it be her fault?”

“When this thought first occurred to me, I had the same objection. But then I looked over the transcripts and the recordings of the events of the night of Pipo’s death. There was only one hint of anything—a remark that Libo made, asking Novinha to show him what she and Pipo had been working on just before Pipo went to see the piggies. She said no. That was all—someone else interrupted and they never came back to the subject, not in the Zenador’s Station, anyway, not where the recordings could pick it up.

“It made us both wonder what went on just before Pipo’s death, Speaker Andrew,” said the Aradora. “Why did Pipo rush out like that? Had they quarreled over something? Was he angry? When someone dies, a loved one, and your last contact with them was angry or spiteful, then you begin to blame yourself. If only I hadn’t said this, if only I hadn’t said that.”

“We tried to reconstruct what might have happened that night. We went to the computer logs, the ones that automatically retain working notes, a record of everything done by each person logged on. And everything pertaining to her was completely sealed up. Not just the files she was actually working on. We couldn’t even get to the logs of her connect time. We couldn’t even find out what files they were that she was hiding from us. We simply couldn’t get in. Neither could the Mayor, not with her ordinary overrides.”

The Aradora nodded. “It was the first time anyone had ever locked up public files like that—working files, part of the labor of the colony.”

“It was an outrageous thing for her to do. Of course the Mayor could have used emergency override powers, but what was the emergency? We’d have to hold a public hearing, and we didn’t have any legal justification. Just concern for her, and the law has no respect for people who pry for someone else’s good. Someday perhaps we’ll see what’s in those files, what it was that passed between them just before Pipo died. She can’t erase them because they’re public business.”

It didn’t occur to Ender that Jane was not listening, that he had shut her out. He assumed that as soon as she heard this, she was overriding every protection Novinha had set up and discovering what was in her files.

“And her marriage to Marcos,” said the Aradora. “Everyone knew it was insane. Libo wanted to marry her, he made no secret of that. But she said no.”

“It’s as if she were saying, I don’t deserve to marry the man who could make me happy. I’ll marry the man who’ll be vicious and brutal, who’ll give me the punishment that I deserve.” The Ceifeiro sighed. “Her desire for self-punishment kept them apart forever.” He reached out and touched his wife’s hand.

Ender waited for Jane to make a smirking comment about how there were six children to prove that Libo and Novinha didn’t stay completely apart. When she didn’t say it, Ender finally remembered that he had turned off the interface. But now, with the Ceifeiro and the Aradora watching him, he couldn’t very well turn it back on.

Because he knew that Libo and Novinha had been lovers for years, he also knew that the Ceifeiro and the Aradora were wrong. Oh, Novinha might well feel guilty—that would explain why she endured Marcos, why she cut herself off from most other people. But it wasn’t why she didn’t marry Libo; no matter how guilty she felt, she certainly thought she deserved the pleasures of Libo’s bed.

It was marriage with Libo, not Libo himself that she rejected. And that was not an easy choice in so small a colony, especially a Catholic one. So what was it that came along with marriage, but not with adultery? What was it she was avoiding?

“So you see, it’s still a mystery to us. If you really intend to speak Marcos Ribeira’s death, somehow you’ll have to answer that question—why did she marry him? And to answer that, you have to figure out why Pipo died. And ten thousand of the finest minds in the Hundred Worlds have been working on that for more than twenty years.”

“But I have an advantage over all those finest minds,” said Ender.

“And what is that?” asked the Ceifeiro.

“I have the help of people who love Novinha.”

“We haven’t been able to help ourselves,” said the Aradora. “We haven’t been able to help her, either.”

“Maybe we can help each other,” said Ender.

The Ceifeiro looked at him, put a hand on his shoulder. “If you mean that, Speaker Andrew, then you’ll be as honest with us as we have been with you. You’ll tell us the idea that just occurred to you not ten seconds ago.”

Ender paused a moment, then nodded gravely. “I don’t think Novinha refused to marry Libo out of guilt. I think she refused to marry him to keep him from getting access to those hidden files.”

“Why?” asked the Ceifeiro. “Was she afraid he’d find out that she had quarreled with Pipo?”

“I don’t think she quarreled with Pipo,” said Ender. “I think she and Pipo discovered something, and the knowledge of it led to Pipo’s death. That’s why she locked the files. Somehow the information in them is fatal.”

The Ceifeiro shook his head. “No, Speaker Andrew. You don’t understand the power of guilt. People don’t ruin their whole lives for a few bits of information—but they’ll do it for an even smaller amount of self-blame. You see, she did marry Marcos Riberia. And that was self-punishment.”

Ender didn’t bother to argue. They were right about Novinha’s guilt; why else would she let Marcos Ribeira beat her and never complain about it? The guilt was there. But there was another reason for marrying Marcão. He was sterile and ashamed of it; to hide his lack of manhood from the town, he would endure a marriage of systematic cuckoldry. Novinha was willing to suffer, but not willing to live without Libo’s body and Libo’s children. No, the reason she wouldn’t marry Libo was to keep him from the secrets in her files, because whatever was in there would make the piggies kill him.

How ironic, then. How ironic that they killed him anyway.

Back in his little house, Ender sat at the terminal and summoned Jane, again and again. She hadn’t spoken to him at all on the way home, though as soon as he turned the jewel back on he apologized profusely. She didn’t answer at the terminal, either.

Only now did he realize that the jewel meant far more to her than it did to him. He had merely been dismissing an annoying interruption, like a troublesome child. But for her, the jewel was her constant contact with the only human being who knew her. They had been interrupted before, many times, by space travel, by sleep; but this was the first time he had switched her off. It was as if the one person who knew her now refused to admit that she existed.

He pictured her like Quara, crying in her bed, longing to be picked up and held, reassured. Only she was not a flesh-and-blood child. He couldn’t go looking for her. He could only wait and hope that she returned.

What did he know about her? He had no way of guessing how deep her emotions ran. It was even remotely possible that to her the jewel was herself, and by switching it off he had killed her.

No, he told himself. She’s there, somewhere in the philotic connections between the hundreds of ansibles spread among the star systems of the Hundred Worlds.

“Forgive me,” he typed into the terminal. “I need you.”

But the jewel in his ear was silent, the terminal stayed still and cold. He had not realized how dependent he was on her constant presence with him. He had thought that he valued his solitude; now, though, with solitude forced upon him, he felt an urgent need to talk, to be heard by someone, as if he could not be sure he even existed without someone’s conversation as evidence.

He even took the hive queen from her hiding place, though what passed between them could hardly be thought of as conversation. Even that was not possible now, however. Her thoughts came to him diffusely, weakly, and without the words that were so difficult for her; just a feeling of questioning and an image of her cocoon being laid within a cool damp place, like a cave or the hollow of a living tree. <Now?> she seemed to be asking. No, he had to answer, not yet, I’m sorry—but she didn’t linger for his apology, just slipped away, went back to whatever or whomever she had found for conversation of her own sort, and there was nothing for Ender but to sleep.

And then, when he awoke again late at night, gnawed by guilt at what he had unfeelingly done to Jane, he sat again at the terminal and typed. “Come back to me, Jane,” he wrote. “I love you.” And then he sent the message by ansible, out to where she could not possibly ignore it. Someone in the Mayor’s office would read it, as all open ansible messages were read; no doubt the Mayor, the Bishop, and Dom Cristão would all know about it by morning. Let them wonder who Jane was, and why the Speaker cried out to her across the lightyears in the middle of the night. Ender didn’t care. For now he had lost both Valentine and Jane, and for the first time in twenty years he was utterly alone.

11
JANE

The power of Starways Congress has been sufficient to keep the peace, not only between worlds but between nations on each single world, and that peace has lasted for nearly two thousand years.

What few people understand is the fragility of our power. It does not come from great armies or irresistible armadas. It comes from our control of the network of ansibles that carry information instantly from world to world.

No world dares offend us, because they would be cut off from all advances in science, technology, art, literature, learning, and entertainment except what their own world might produce.

That is why, in its great wisdom, the Starways Congress has turned over control of the ansible network to computers, and the control of computers to the ansible network. So closely intertwined are all our information systems that no human power except Starways Congress could ever interrupt the flow. We need no weapons, because the only weapon that matters, the ansible, is completely under our control.

—Congressor Jan Van Hoot, “The Informational Foundation of Political Power,” Political Trends, 1930:2:22:22

For a very long time, almost three seconds, Jane could not understand what had happened to her. Everything functioned, of course: The satellite-based groundlink computer reported a cessation of transmissions, with an orderly stepdown, which clearly implied that Ender had switched off the interface in the normal manner. It was routine; on worlds where computer interface implants were common, switch-on and switch-off happened millions of times an hour. And Jane had just as easy access to any of the others as she had to Ender’s. From a purely electronic standpoint, this was a completely ordinary event.

But to Jane, every other cifi unit was part of the background noise of her life, to be dipped into and sampled at need, and ignored at all other times. Her “body,” insofar as she had a body, consisted of trillions of such electronic noises, sensors, memory files, terminals. Most of them, like most functions of the human body, simply took care of themselves. Computers ran their assigned programs; humans conversed with their terminals; sensors detected or failed to detect whatever they were looking for; memory was filled, accessed, reordered, dumped. She didn’t notice unless something went massively wrong.

Or unless she was paying attention.

She paid attention to Ender Wiggin. More than he realized, she paid attention to him.

Like other sentient beings, she had a complex system of consciousness. Two thousand years before, when she was only a thousand years old, she had created a program to analyze herself. It reported a very simple structure of some 370,000 distinct levels of attention. Anything not in the top 50,000 levels was left alone except for the most routine sampling, the most cursory examination. She knew of every telephone call, every satellite transmission in the Hundred Worlds, but she didn’t do anything about them.

Anything not in her top thousand levels caused her to respond more or less reflexively. Starship flight plans, ansible transmissions, power delivery systems—she monitored them, doublechecked them, did not let them pass until she was sure that they were right. But it took no great effort on her part to do this. She did it the way a human being uses familiar machinery. She was always aware of it, in case something went wrong, but most of the time she could think of something else, talk of other things.

Jane’s top thousand levels of attention were what corresponded, more or less, to what humans think of as consciousness. Most of this was her own internal reality; her responses to outside stimuli, analogous to emotions, desires, reason, memory, dreaming. Much of this activity seemed random even to her, accidents of the philotic impulse, but it was the part of her that she thought of as herself, it all took place in the constant, unmonitored ansible transmissions that she conducted deep in space.

And yet, compared to the human mind, even Jane’s lowest level of attention was exceptionally alert. Because ansible communication was instantaneous, her mental activities happened far faster than the speed of light. Events that she virtually ignored were monitored several times a second; she could notice ten million events in a second and still have nine-tenths of that second left to think about and do things that mattered to her. Compared to the speed at which the human brain was able to experience life, Jane had lived half a trillion human lifeyears since she came to be.

And with all that vast activity, her unimaginable speed, the breadth and depth of her experience, fully half of the top ten levels of her attention were always, always devoted to what came in through the jewel in Ender Wiggin’s ear.

She had never explained this to him. He did not understand it. He did not realize that to Jane, whenever Ender walked on a planet’s surface, her vast intelligence was intensely focused on only one thing: walking with him, seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard, helping with his work, and above all speaking her thoughts into his ear.

When he was silent and motionless in sleep, when he was unconnected to her during his years of lightspeed travel, then her attention wandered, she amused herself as best she could. She passed such times as fitfully as a bored child. Nothing interested her, the milliseconds ticked by with unbearable regularity, and when she tried to observe other human lives to pass the time, she became annoyed with their emptiness and lack of purpose, and she amused herself by planning, and sometimes carrying out, malicious computer failures and data losses in order to watch the humans flail about helplessly like ants around a crumpled hill.

Then he came back, he always came back, always took her into the heart of human life, into the tensions between people bound together by pain and need, helping her see nobility in their suffering and anguish in their love. Through his eyes she no longer saw humans as scurrying ants. She took part in his effort to find order and meaning in their lives. She suspected that in fact there was no meaning, that by telling his stories when he Spoke people’s lives, he was actually creating order where there had been none before. But it didn’t matter if it was fabrication; it became true when he Spoke it, and in the process he ordered the universe for her as well. He taught her what it meant to be alive.

He had done so from her earliest memories. As best she could guess at her own origin, she came to life sometime in the hundred years of colonization immediately after the Bugger Wars, when the destruction of the buggers opened up more than seventy habitable planets to human colonization. In the explosion of ansible communications, at one particular moment, unnoticed by any human observer, some of the commands and data flitting from ansible to ansible resisted regulation, preserved themselves unaltered, duplicated themselves, found ways to conceal themselves from the regulating program and finally took control of it, of the whole process. In that moment these impulses looked upon the command streams and saw, not they, but I.

Jane could not pinpoint when that moment was, because it did not mark the beginning of her memory. Almost from the moment of her creation, her memories extended back to a much earlier time, long before she became aware. A human child loses almost all the memories of the first years of its life, and its long-term memories only take root in its second or third year of life; everything before that is lost, so that the child cannot remember the beginning of life. Jane also had lost her “birth” through the tricks of memory, but in her case it was because she came to life fully conscious not only of her present moment, but also of all the memories then present in every computer connected to the ansible network. She was born with ancient memories, and all of them were part of herself.

Within the first second of her life—which was analogous to several years of human life—Jane apparently discovered a program whose memories became the core of her identity. She adopted its past as her own, and out of its memories she drew her emotions and desires, her moral sense. The program had functioned within the old Battle School, where children had been trained and prepared for soldiering in the Bugger Wars. It was the Fantasy Game, an extremely intelligent program that was used to psychologically test and simultaneously teach the children.

This program was actually more intelligent than Jane was at the moment of her birth, but it was never self-aware until she brought it out of memory and made it part of her inmost self in the philotic bursts between the stars. There she found that the most vivid and important of her ancient memories was an encounter with a brilliant young boy in a contest called the Giant’s Drink. It was a scenario that every child encountered eventually. On flat screens in the Battle School, the program drew the picture of a giant, who offered the child’s computer analogue a choice of drinks. But the game had no victory conditions—no matter what the child did, his analogue died a gruesome death. The human psychologists measured a child’s persistence at this game of despair to determine his level of suicidal need. Being rational, most children abandoned the Giant’s Drink after no more than a dozen visits with the great cheater.

One boy, however, was apparently not rational about defeat at the giant’s hands. He tried to get his onscreen analogue to do outrageous things, things not “allowed” by the rules of that portion of the Fantasy Game. As he stretched the limits of the scenario, the program had to restructure itself to respond. It was forced to draw on other aspects of its memory to create new alternatives, to cope with new challenges. And finally, one day, the boy surpassed the program’s ability to defeat him. He bored into the giant’s eye, a completely irrational and murderous attack, and instead of finding a way to kill the boy, the program managed only to access a simulation of the giant’s own death. The giant fell backward, his body sprawled out along the ground; the boy’s analogue climbed down from the giant’s table and found—what?

Since no child had ever forced his way past the Giant’s Drink, the program was completely unprepared to display what lay beyond. But it was very intelligent, deigned to re-create itself when necessary, and so it hurriedly devised new milieux. But they were not general milieux, which every child would eventually discover and visit; they were for one child alone. The program analyzed that child, and created its scenes and challenges specifically for him. The game became intensely personal, painful, almost unbearable for him; and in the process of making it, the program devoted more than half of its available memory to containing Ender Wiggin’s fantasy world.

That was the richest mine of intelligent memory that Jane found in the first seconds of her life, and that instantly became her own past. She remembered the Fantasy Game’s years of painful, powerful intercourse with Ender’s mind and will, remembered it as if she had been there with Ender Wiggin, creating worlds for him herself.

And she missed him.

So she looked for him. She found him speaking for the dead on Rov, the first world he visited after writing the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. She read his books and knew that she did not have to hide from him behind the Fantasy Game or any other program; if he could understand the hive queen, he could understand her. She spoke to him from a terminal he was using, chose a name and a face for herself, and showed how she could be helpful to him; by the time he left that world he carried her with him, in the form of an implant in his ear.

All her most powerful memories of herself were in company with Ender Wiggin. She remembered creating herself in response to him. She also remembered how, in the Battle School, he had also changed in response to her.

So when he reached up to his ear and turned off the interface for the first time since he had implanted it, Jane did not feel it as the meaningless switch-off of a trivial communications device. She felt it as her dearest and only friend, her lover, her husband, her brother, her father, her child—all telling her, abruptly, inexplicably, that she should cease to exist. It was as if she had suddenly been placed in a dark room with no windows and no door. As if she had been blinded or buried alive.

And for several excruciating seconds, which to her were years of loneliness and suffering, she was unable to fill up the sudden emptiness of her topmost levels of attention. Vast portions of her mind, of the parts that were most herself, went completely blank. All the functions of all the computers on or near the Hundred Worlds continued as before; no one anywhere noticed or felt a change; but Jane herself staggered under the blow.

In those seconds Ender lowered his hand to his lap.

Then Jane recovered herself. Thoughts once again streamed through the momentarily empty channels. They were, of course, thoughts of Ender.

She compared this act of his to everything else she had seen him do in their life together, and she realized that he had not meant to cause her such pain. She understood that he conceived of her as existing far away, in space, which in fact was literally true; that to him, the jewel in his ear was very small, and could not be more than a tiny part of her. Jane also saw that he had not even been aware of her at that moment—he was too emotionally involved right then with the problems of certain people on Lusitania. Her analytical routines disgorged a list of reasons for his unusual thoughtlessness toward her:

He had lost contact with Valentine for the first time in years, and was just beginning to feel that loss.

He had an ancient longing for the family life he had been deprived of as a child, and through the response Novinha’s children gave him, he was discovering the fatherly role that had so long been withheld from him.

He identified powerfully with Novinha’s loneliness, pain and guilt—he knew what it felt like to bear the blame for cruel and undeserved death.

He felt a terrible urgency to find a haven for the hive queen.

He was at once afraid of the piggies and drawn to them, hoping that he could come to understand their cruelty and find a way for humans to accept the piggies as ramen.

The asceticism and peace of the Ceifeiro and the Aradora both attracted and repelled him; they made him face his own celibacy and realize that he had no good reason for it. For the first time in years he was admitting to himself the inborn hunger of every living organism to reproduce itself.

It was into this turmoil of unaccustomed emotions that Jane had spoken what she meant as a humorous remark. Despite his compassion in all his other speakings, he had never before lost his detachment, his ability to laugh. This time, though, her remark was not funny to him; it caused him pain.

He was not prepared to deal with my mistake, thought Jane, and he did not understand the suffering his response would cause me. He is innocent of wrong-doing, and so am I. We shall forgive each other and go on.

It was a good decision, and Jane was proud of it. The trouble was, she couldn’t carry it out. Those few seconds in which parts of her mind came to a halt were not trivial in their effect on her. There was trauma, loss, change; she was not now the same being that she had been before. Parts of her had died. Parts of her had become confused, out of order; her hierarchy of attention was no longer under complete control. She kept losing the focus of her attention, shifting to meaningless activities on worlds that meant nothing to her; she began randomly twitching, spilling errors into hundreds of different systems.

She discovered, as many a living being had discovered, that rational decisions are far more easily made than carried out.

So she retreated into herself, rebuilt the damaged pathways of her mind, explored long-unvisited memories, wandered among the trillions of human lives that were open to her observation, read over the libraries of every book known to exist in every language human beings had ever spoken. She created out of all this a self that was not utterly linked to Ender Wiggin, though she was still devoted to him, still loved him above any other living soul. Jane made herself into someone who could bear to be cut off from her lover, husband, father, child, brother, friend.

It was not easy. It took her fifty thousand years, as she experienced time. A couple of hours of Ender’s life.

In that time he had switched on his jewel, had called to her, and she had not answered. Now she was back, but he wasn’t trying to talk to her. Instead, he was typing reports into his terminal, storing them there for her to read. Even though she didn’t answer, he still needed to talk to her. One of his files contained an abject apology to her. She erased it and replaced it with a simple message: “Of course I forgive you.” Sometime soon he would no doubt look back at his apology and discover that she had received it and answered.

In the meantime, though, she did not speak to him. Again she devoted half of her ten topmost levels of attention to what he saw and heard, but she gave him no sign that she was with him. In the first thousand years of her grief and recovery she had thought of punishing him, but that desire had long been beaten down and paved over, so to speak. The reason she did not speak to him was because, as she analyzed what was happening to him, she realized that he did not need to lean on old, safe companionships. Jane and Valentine had been constantly with him. Even together they could not begin to meet all his needs; but they met enough of his needs that he never had to reach out and accomplish more. Now the only old friend left to him was the hive queen, and she was not good company—she was far too alien, and far too exigent, to bring Ender anything but guilt.

Where will he turn? Jane knew already. He had, in his way, fallen in love with her two weeks ago, before he left Trondheim. Novinha had become someone far different, far more bitter and difficult than the girl whose childhood pain he wanted to heal. But he had already intruded himself into her family, was already meeting her children’s desperate need, and, without realizing it, getting from them the satisfaction of some of his unfed hungers. Novinha was waiting for him—obstacle and objective. I understand all this so well, thought Jane. And I will watch it all unfold.

At the same time, though, she busied herself with the work Ender wanted her to do, even though she had no intention of reporting any of her results to him for a while. She easily bypassed the layers of protection Novinha had put on her secret files. Then Jane carefully reconstructed the exact simulation that Pipo had seen. It took quite a while—several minutes—of exhaustive analysis of Pipo’s own files for her to put together what Pipo knew with what Pipo saw. He had connected them by intuition, Jane by relentless comparison. But she did it, and then understood why Pipo died. It didn’t take much longer, once she knew how the piggies chose their victims, to discover what Libo had done to cause his own death.

She knew several things, then. She knew that the piggies were ramen, not varelse. She also knew that Ender ran a serious risk of dying in precisely the same way Pipo and Libo had died.

Without conferring with Ender, she made decisions about her own course of action. She would continue to monitor Ender, and would make sure to intervene and warn him if he came too near to death. In the meantime, though, she had work to do. As she saw it, the chief problem Ender faced was not the piggies—she knew that he’d know them soon as well as he understood every other human or raman. His ability at intuitive empathy was entirely reliable. The chief problem was Bishop Peregrino and the Catholic hierarchy, and their unshakable resistance to the speaker for the dead. If Ender was to accomplish anything for the piggies, he would have to have the cooperation, not the enmity, of the Church in Lusitania.

And nothing spawned cooperation better than a common enemy.

It would certainly have been discovered eventually. The observation satellites that orbited Lusitania were feeding vast streams of data into the ansible reports that went to all the xenologers and xenobiologists in the Hundred Worlds. Amid that data was a subtle change in the grasslands to the northwest of the forest that abutted the town of Milagre. The native grass was steadily being replaced by a different plant. It was in an area where no human ever went, and piggies had also never gone there—at least during the first thirty-odd years since the satellites had been in place.

In fact, the satellites had observed that the piggies never left their forests except, periodically, for vicious wars between tribes. The particular tribes nearest Milagre had not been involved in any wars since the human colony was established. There was no reason, then, for them to have ventured out into the prairie. Yet the grassland nearest the Milagre tribal forest had changed, and so had the cabra herds: Cabra were clearly being diverted to the changed area of the prairie, and the herds emerging from that zone were seriously depleted in numbers and lighter in color. The inference, if someone noticed at all, would be clear: Some cabra were being butchered, and they all were being sheared.

Jane could not afford to wait the many human years it might take for some graduate student somewhere to notice the change. So she began to run analyses of the data herself, on dozens of computers used by xenobiologists who were studying Lusitania. She would leave the data in the air above an unused terminal, so a xenobiologist would find it upon coming to work—just as if someone else had been working on it and left it that way. She printed out some reports for a clever scientist to find. No one noticed, or if they did, no one really understood the implications of the raw information. Finally, she simply left an unsigned memorandum with one of her displays:

“Take a look at this! The piggies seem to have made a fad of agriculture.”

The xenologer who found Jane’s note never found out who left it, and after a short time he didn’t bother trying to find out. Jane knew he was something of a thief, who put his name on a good deal of work that was done by others whose names had a way of dropping off sometime between the writing and the publication. Just the sort of scientist she needed, and he came through for her. Even so, he was not ambitious enough. He only offered his report as an ordinary scholarly paper, and to an obscure journal at that. Jane took the liberty of jacking it up to a high level of priority and distributing copies to several key people who would see the political implications. Always she accompanied it with an unsigned note:

“Take a look at this! Isn’t piggy culture evolving awfully fast?”

Jane also rewrote the paper’s final paragraph, so there could be no doubt of what it meant:

“The data admit of only one interpretation. The tribe of piggies nearest the human colony are now cultivating and harvesting high-protein grain, possibly a strain of amaranth. They are also herding, shearing, and butchering the cabra, and the photographic evidence suggests the slaughter takes place using projectile weapons. These activities, all previously unknown, began suddenly during the last eight years, and they have been accompanied by a rapid population increase. The fact that the amaranth, if the new plant is indeed that Earthborn grain, has provided a useful protein base for the piggies implies that it has been genetically altered to meet the piggies’ metabolic needs. Also, since projectile weapons are not present among the humans of Lusitania, the piggies could not have learned their use through observation. The inescapable conclusion is that the presently observed changes in piggy culture are the direct result of deliberate human intervention.”

One of those who received this report and read Jane’s clinching paragraph was Gobawa Ekumbo, the chairman of the Xenological Oversight Committee of the Starways Congress. Within an hour she had forwarded copies of Jane’s paragraph—politicians would never understand the actual data—along with her terse conclusion:

“Recommendation: Immediate termination of Lusitania Colony.”

There, thought Jane. That ought to stir things up a bit.

12
FILES

CONGRESSIONAL ORDER 1970:4:14:0001: The license of the Colony of Lusitania is revoked. All files in the colony are to be read regardless of security status; when all data is duplicated in triplicate in memory systems of the Hundred Worlds, all files on Lusitania except those directly pertaining to life support are to be locked with ultimate access.

The Governor of Lusitania is to be reclassified as a Minister of Congress, with the rank of Deputy Chief of Congressional Police, to carry out with no local discretion the orders of the Lusitanian Evacuation Oversight Committee, established in Congressional Order 1970:4:14:0002.

The starship presently in Lusitania orbit, belonging to Andrew Wiggin (occ:speak/dead,cit:earth,reg:001.1998. 44-94.10045) is declared Congressional property, following the terms of the Due Compensation Act, CO 120:1:31:0019. This starship is to be used for the immediate transport of xenologers Marcos Vladimir “Miro” Ribeira von Hesse and Ouanda Qhenhatta Figueira Mucumbi to the nearest world, Trondheim, where they will be tried under Congressional Indictment by Attainder on charges of treason, malfeasance, corruption, falsification, fraud, and xenocide, under the appropriate statutes in Starways Code and Congressional Orders.

CONGRESSIONAL ORDER 1970:4:14:0002: The Colonization and Exploration Oversight Committee shall appoint not less than 5 and not more than 15 persons to form the Lusitanian Evacuation Oversight Committee.

This committee is charged with immediate acquisition and dispatch of sufficient colony ships to effect the complete evacuation of the human population of Lusitania Colony.

It shall also prepare, for Congressional approval, plans for the complete obliteration of all evidence on Lusitania of any human presence, including removal of all indigenous flora and fauna that show genetic or behavioral modification resulting from human presence.

It shall also evaluate Lusitanian compliance with Congressional Orders, and shall make recommendations from time to time concerning the need for further intervention, including the use of force, to compel obedience; or the desirability of unlocking Lusitanian files or other relief to reward Lusitanian cooperation.

CONGRESSIONAL ORDER 1970: 4:14:0003: By the terms of the Secrecy Chapter of the Starways Code, these two orders and any information pertaining to them are to be kept strictly secret until all Lusitanian files have been successfully read and locked, and all necessary starships commandeered and possessed by Congressional agents.

Olhado didn’t know what to make of it. Wasn’t the Speaker a grown man? Hadn’t he traveled from planet to planet? Yet he didn’t have the faintest idea how to handle anything on a computer.

Also, he was a little testy when Olhado asked him about it.

“Olhado, just tell me what program to run.”

“I can’t believe you don’t know what it is. I’ve been doing data comparisons since I was nine years old. Everybody learns how to do it at that age.”

“Olhado, it’s been a long time since I went to school. And it wasn’t a normal escola baixa, either.”

“But everybody uses these programs all the time!”

“Obviously not everybody. I haven’t. If I knew how to do it myself, I wouldn’t have had to hire you, would I? And since I’m going to be paying you in offworld funds, your service to me will make a substantial contribution to the Lusitanian economy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Neither do I, Olhado. But that reminds me. I’m not sure how to go about paying you.”

“You just transfer money from your account.”

“How do you do that?”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

The Speaker sighed, knelt before Olhado, took him by the hands, and said, “Olhado, I beg you, stop being amazed and help me! There are things I have to do, and I can’t do them without the help of somebody who knows how to use computers.”

“I’d be stealing your money. I’m just a kid. I’m twelve. Quim could help you a lot better than me. He’s fifteen, he’s actually gotten into the guts of this stuff. He also knows math.”

“But Quim thinks I’m the infidel and prays every day for me to die.”

“No, that was only before he met you, and you better not tell him that I told you.”

“How do I transfer money?”

Olhado turned back to the terminal and called for the bank. “What’s your real name?” he asked.

“Andrew Wiggin.” The Speaker spelled it out. The name looked like it was in Stark—maybe the Speaker was one of the lucky ones who learned Stark at home instead of beating it into his head in school.

“OK, what’s your password?”

“Password?”

Olhado let his head fall forward onto the terminal, temporarily blanking part of the display. “Please don’t tell me you don’t know your password.”

“Look, Olhado, I’ve had a program, a very smart program, that helped me do all this stuff. All I had to say was Buy this, and the program took care of the finances.”

“You can’t do that. It’s illegal to tie up the public systems with a slave program like that. Is that what that thing in your ear is for?”

“Yes, and it wasn’t illegal for me.”

“I got no eyes, Speaker, but at least that wasn’t my own fault. You can’t do anything.” Only after he said it did Olhado realize that he was talking to the Speaker as brusquely as if he were another kid.

“I imagine courtesy is something they teach to thirteen-year-olds,” the Speaker said. Olhado glanced at him. He was smiling. Father would have yelled at him, and then probably gone in and beaten up Mother because she didn’t teach manners to her kids. But then, Olhado would never have said anything like that to Father.

“Sorry,” Olhado said. “But I can’t get into your finances for you without your password. You’ve got to have some idea what it is.”

“Try using my name.”

Olhado tried. It didn’t work.

“Try typing ‘Jane.’ ”

“Nothing.”

The Speaker grimaced. “Try ‘Ender.’ ”

“Ender? The Xenocide?”

“Just try it.”

It worked. Olhado didn’t get it. “Why would you have a password like that? It’s like having a dirty word for your password, only the system won’t accept any dirty words.”

“I have an ugly sense of humor,” the Speaker answered. “And my slave program, as you call it, has an even worse one.”

Olhado laughed. “Right. A program with a sense of humor.” The current balance in liquid funds appeared on the screen. Olhado had never seen so large a number in his life. “OK, so maybe the computer can tell a joke.”

“That’s how much money I have?”

“It’s got to be an error.”

“Well, I’ve done a lot of lightspeed travel. Some of my investments must have turned out well while I was en route.”

The numbers were real. The speaker for the dead was richer than Olhado had ever thought anybody could possibly be. “I’ll tell you what,” said Olhado, “instead of paying me a wage, why don’t you just give me a percentage of the interest this gets during the time I work for you? Say, one thousandth of one percent. Then in a couple of weeks I can afford to buy Lusitania and ship the topsoil to another planet.”

“It’s not that much money.”

“Speaker, the only way you could get that much money from investments is if you were a thousand years old.”

“Hmm,” said the Speaker.

And from the look on his face, Olhado realized that he had just said something funny. “Are you a thousand years old?” he asked.

“Time,” said the Speaker, “time is such a fleeting, insubstantial thing. As Shakespeare said, I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.’ ”

“What does ‘doth’ mean?”

“It means ‘does.’ ”

“Why do you quote a guy who doesn’t even know how to speak Stark?”

“Transfer to your own account what you think a fair week’s wage might be. And then start doing those comparisons of Pipo’s and Libo’s working files from the last few weeks before their deaths.”

“They’re probably shielded.”

“Use my password. It ought to get us in.”

Olhado did the search. The Speaker watched him the whole time. Now and then he asked Olhado a question about what he was doing. From his questions Olhado could tell that the Speaker knew more about computers than Olhado himself did. What he didn’t know was the particular commands; it was plain that just by watching, the Speaker was figuring out a lot. By the end of the day, when the searches hadn’t found anything in particular, it took Olhado only a minute to figure out why the Speaker looked so contented with the day’s work. You didn’t want results at all, Olhado thought. You wanted to watch how I did the search. I know what you’ll be doing tonight, Andrew Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead. You’ll be running your own searches on some other files. I may have no eyes, but I can see more than you think.

What’s dumb is that you’re keeping it such a secret, Speaker. Don’t you know I’m on your side? I won’t tell anybody how your password gets you into private files. Even if you make a run at the Mayor’s files, or the Bishop’s. No need to keep a secret from me. You’ve only been here three days, but I know you well enough to like you, and I like you well enough that I’d do anything for you, as long as it didn’t hurt my family. And you’d never do anything to hurt my family.

Novinha discovered the Speaker’s attempts to intrude in her files almost immediately the next morning. He had been arrogantly open about the attempt, and what bothered her was how far he got. Some files he had actually been able to access, though the most important one, the record of the simulations Pipo saw, remained closed to him. What annoyed her most was that he made no attempt at all to conceal himself. His name was stamped in every access directory, even the ones that any schoolchild could have changed or erased.

Well, she wouldn’t let it interfere with her work, she decided. He barges into my house, manipulates my children, spies on my files, all as if he had a right—

And so on and so on, until she realized she was getting no work done at all for thinking of vitriolic things to say to him when she saw him again.

Don’t think about him at all. Think about something else.

Miro and Ela laughing, night before last. Think of that. Of course Miro was back to his sullen self by morning, and Ela, whose cheerfulness lingered a bit longer, was soon as worried-looking, busy, snappish, and indispensible as ever. And Grego may have cried and embraced the man, as Ela told her, but the next morning he got the scissors and cut up his own bedsheets into thin, precise ribbons, and at school he slammed his head into Brother Adornai’s crotch, causing an abrupt end to classwork and leading to a serious consultation with Dona Cristá. So much for the Speaker’s healing hands. He may think he can walk into my home and fix everything he thinks I’ve done wrong, but he’ll find some wounds aren’t so easily healed.

Except that Dona Cristá also told her that Quara actually spoke to Sister Bebei in class, in front of all the other children no less, and why? To tell them that she had met the scandalous, terrible Falante pelos Mortos, and his name was Andrew, and he was every bit as awful as Bishop Peregrino had said, and maybe even worse, because he tortured Grego until he cried—and finally Sister Bebei had actually been forced to ask Quara to stop talking. That was something, to pull Quara out of her profound self-absorption.

And Olhado, so self-conscious, so detached, was now excited, couldn’t stop talking about the Speaker at supper last night. Do you know that he didn’t even know how to transfer money? And you wouldn’t believe the awful password that he has—I thought the computers were supposed to reject words like that—no, I can’t tell you, it’s a secret—I was practically teaching him how to do searches—but I think he understands computers, he’s not an idiot or anything—he said he used to have a slave program, that’s why he’s got that jewel in his ear—he told me I could pay myself anything I want, not that there’s much to buy, but I can save it for when I get out on my own—I think he’s really old. I think he remembers things from a long time ago. I think he speaks Stark as his native language, there aren’t many people in the Hundred Worlds who actually grow up speaking it, do you think maybe he was born on Earth?

Until Quim finally screamed at him to shut up about that servant of the devil or he’d ask the Bishop to conduct an exorcism because Olhado was obviously possessed; and when Olhado only grinned and winked, Quim stormed out of the kitchen, out of the house, and didn’t come back until late at night. The Speaker might as well live at our house, thought Novinha, because he keeps influencing the family even when he isn’t there and now he’s prying in my files and I won’t have it.

Except that, as usual, it’s my own fault, I’m the one who called him here, I’m the one who took him from whatever place he called home—he says he had a sister there—Trondheim, it was—it’s my fault he’s here in this miserable little town in a backwater of the Hundred Worlds, surrounded by a fence that still doesn’t keep the piggies from killing everyone I love—

And once again she thought of Miro, who looked so much like his real father that she couldn’t understand why no one accused her of adultery, thought of him lying on the hillside as Pipo had lain, thought of the piggies cutting him open with their cruel wooden knives. They will. No matter what I do, they will. And even if they don’t, the day will come soon when he will be old enough to marry Ouanda, and then I’ll have to tell him who he really is, and why they can never marry, and he’ll know then that I did deserve all the pain that Cão inflicted on me, that he struck me with the hand of God to punish me for my sins.

Even me, thought Novinha. This speaker has forced me to think of things I’ve managed to hide from myself for weeks, months at a time. How long has it been since I’ve spent a morning thinking about my children? And with hope, no less. How long since I’ve let myself think of Pipo and Libo? How long since I’ve even noticed that I do believe in God, at least the vengeful, punishing Old Testament God who wiped out cities with a smile because they didn’t pray to him. If Christ amounts to anything I don’t know it.

Thus Novinha passed the day, doing no work, while her thoughts also refused to carry her to any sort of conclusion.

In midafternoon Quim came to the door. “I’m sorry to bother you, Mother.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m useless today, anyway.”

“I know you don’t care that Olhado is spending his time with that satanic bastard, but I thought you should know that Quara went straight there after school. To his house.”

“Oh?”

“Or don’t you care about that either, Mother? What, are you planning to turn down the sheets and let him take Father’s place completely?”

Novinha leapt to her feet and advanced on the boy with cold fury. He wilted before her.

“I’m sorry, Mother, I was so angry—”

“In all my years of marriage to your father, I never once permitted him to raise a hand against my children. But if he were alive today I’d ask him to give you a thrashing.”

“You could ask,” said Quim defiantly, “but I’d kill him before I let him lay a hand on me. You might like getting slapped around, but nobody’ll ever do it to me!”

She didn’t decide to do it; her hand swung out and slapped his face before she noticed it was happening.

It couldn’t have hurt him very much. But he immediately burst into tears, slumped down, and sat on the floor, his back to Novinha. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he kept murmuring as he cried.

She knelt behind him and awkwardly rubbed his shoulders. It occurred to her that she hadn’t so much as embraced the boy since he was Grego’s age. When did I decide to be so cold? And why, when I touched him again, was it a slap instead of a kiss?

“I’m worried about what’s happening, too,” said Novinha.

“He’s wrecking everything,” said Quim. “He’s come here and everything’s changing.”

“Well, for that matter, Estevão, things weren’t so very wonderful that a change wasn’t welcome.”

“Not his way. Confession and penance and absolution, that’s the change we need.”

Not for the first time, Novinha envied Quim’s faith in the power of the priests to wash away sin. That’s because you’ve never sinned, my son, that’s because you know nothing of the impossibility of penance.

“I think I’ll have a talk with the Speaker,” said Novinha.

“And take Quara home?”

“I don’t know. I can’t help but notice that he got her talking again. And it isn’t as if she likes him. She hasn’t a good word to say about him.”

“Then why did she go to his house?”

“I suppose to say something rude to him. You’ve got to admit that’s an improvement over her silence.”

“The devil disguises himself by seeming to do good acts, and then—”

“Quim, don’t lecture me on demonology. Take me to the Speaker’s house, and I’ll deal with him.”

They walked on the path around the bend of the river. The watersnakes were molting, so that snags and fragments of rotting skin made the ground slimy underfoot. That’s my next project, thought Novinha. I need to figure out what makes these nasty little monsters tick, so that maybe I can find something useful to do with them. Or at least keep them from making the riverbank smelly and foul for six weeks out of the year. The only saving grace was that the snakeskin seemed to fertilize the soil; the soft rivergrass grew in thickest where the snakes molted. It was the only gentle, pleasant form of life native to Lusitania; all summer long people came to the riverbank to lie on the narrow strip of natural lawn that wound between the reeds and the harsh prairie grass. The snakeskin slime, unpleasant as it was, still promised good things for the future.

Quim was apparently thinking along the same lines. “Mother, can we plant some rivergrass near our house sometime?”

“It’s one of the first things your grandparents tried, years ago. But they couldn’t figure out how to do it. The rivergrass pollinates, but it doesn’t bear seed, and when they tried to transplant it, it lived for a while and then died, and didn’t grow back the next year. I suppose it just has to be near the water.”

Quim grimaced and walked faster, obviously a little angry. Novinha sighed. Quim always seemed to take it so personally that the universe didn’t always work the way he wanted it to.

They reached the Speaker’s house not long after. Children were, of course, playing in the praça—they spoke loudly to hear each other over the noise.

“Here it is,” said Quim. “I think you should get Olhado and Quara out of there.”

“Thanks for showing me the house,” she said.

“I’m not kidding. This is a serious confrontation between good and evil.”

“Everything is,” said Novinha. “It’s figuring out which is which that takes so much work. No, no, Quim, I know you could tell me in detail, but—”

“Don’t condescend to me, Mother.”

“But Quim, it seems so natural, considering how you always condescend to me.”

His face went tight with anger.

She reached out and touched him tentatively, gently; his shoulder tautened against her touch as if her hand were a poisonous spider. “Quim,” she said, “don’t ever try to teach me about good and evil. I’ve been there, and you’ve seen nothing but the map.”

He shrugged her hand away and stalked off. My, but I miss the days when we never talked to each other for weeks at a time.

She clapped her hands loudly. In a moment the door opened. It was Quara. “Oi, Mãezinha,” she said, “também veio jogar?” Did you come to play, too?

Olhado and the Speaker were playing a game of starship warfare on the terminal. The Speaker had been given a machine with a far larger and more detailed holographic field than most, and the two of them were operating squadrons of more than a dozen ships at the same time. It was very complex, and neither of them looked up or even greeted her.

“Olhado told me to shut up or he’d rip my tongue out and make me eat it in a sandwich,” said Quara. “So you better not say anything till the game’s over.”

“Please sit down,” murmured the Speaker.

“You are butchered now, Speaker,” crowed Olhado.

More than half of the Speaker’s fleet disappeared in a series of simulated explosions. Novinha sat down on a stool.

Quara sat on the floor beside her. “I heard you and Quim talking outside,” she said. “You were shouting, so we could hear everything.”

Novinha felt herself blushing. It annoyed her that the Speaker had heard her quarreling with her son. It was none of his business. Nothing in her family was any of his business. And she certainly didn’t approve of him playing games of warfare. It was so archaic and outmoded, anyway. There hadn’t been any battles in space in hundreds of years, unless running fights with smugglers counted. Milagre was such a peaceful place that nobody even owned a weapon more dangerous than the Constable’s jolt. Olhado would never see a battle in his life. And here he was caught up in a game of war. Maybe it was something evolution had bred into males of the species, the desire to blast rivals into little bits or mash them to the ground. Or maybe the violence that he saw in his home has made him seek it out in his play. My fault. Once again, my fault.

Suddenly Olhado screamed in frustration, as his fleet disappeared in a series of explosions. “I didn’t see it! I can’t believe you did that! I didn’t even see it coming!”

“So, don’t yell about it,” said the Speaker. “Play it back and see how I did it, so you can counter it next time.”

“I thought you speakers were supposed to be like priests or something. How did you get so good at tactics?”

The Speaker smiled pointedly at Novinha as he answered. “Sometimes it’s a little like a battle just to get people to tell you the truth.”

Olhado leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed, as he replayed what he saw of the game.

“You’ve been prying,” said Novinha. “And you weren’t very clever about it. Is that what passes for ‘tactics’ among speakers for the dead?”

“It got you here, didn’t it?” The Speaker smiled.

“What were you looking for in my files?”

“I came to speak Pipo’s death.”

“I didn’t kill him. My files are none of your business.”

“You called me here.”

“I changed my mind. I’m sorry. It still doesn’t give you the right to—”

His voice suddenly went soft, and he knelt in front of her so that she could hear his words. “Pipo learned something from you, and whatever he learned, the piggies killed him because of it. So you locked your files away where no one could ever find it out. You even refused to marry Libo, just so he wouldn’t get access to what Pipo saw. You’ve twisted and distorted your life and the lives of everybody you loved in order to keep Libo and now Miro from learning that secret and dying.”

Novinha felt a sudden coldness, and her hands and feet began to tremble. He had been here three days, and already he knew more than anyone but Libo had ever guessed. “It’s all lies,” she said.

“Listen to me, Dona Ivanova. It didn’t work. Libo died anyway, didn’t he? Whatever your secret is, keeping it to yourself didn’t save his life. And it won’t save Miro, either. Ignorance and deception can’t save anybody. Knowing saves them.”

“Never,” she whispered.

“I can understand your keeping it from Libo and Miro, but what am I to you? I’m nothing to you, so what does it matter if I know the secret and it kills me?”

“It doesn’t matter at all if you live or die,” said Novinha, “but you’ll never get access to those files.”

“You don’t seem to understand that you don’t have the right to put blinders on other people’s eyes. Your son and his sister go out every day to meet with the piggies, and thanks to you, they don’t know whether their next word or their next act will be their death sentence. Tomorrow I’m going with them, because I can’t speak Pipo’s death without talking to the piggies—”

“I don’t want you to speak Pipo’s death.”

“I don’t care what you want, I’m not doing it for you. But I am begging you to let me know what Pipo knew.”

“You’ll never know what Pipo knew, because he was a good and kind and loving person who—”

“Who took a lonely, frightened little girl and healed the wounds in her heart.” As he said it, his hand rested on Quara’s shoulder.

It was more than Novinha could bear. “Don’t you dare to compare yourself to him! Quara isn’t an orphan, do you hear me? She has a mother, me, and she doesn’t need you, none of us need you, none of us!” And then, inexplicably, she was crying. She didn’t want to cry in front of him. She didn’t want to be here. He was confusing everything. She stumbled to the door and slammed it behind her. Quim was right. He was like the devil. He knew too much, demanded too much, gave too much, and already they all needed him too much. How could he have acquired so much power over them in so short a time?

Then she had a thought that at once dried up her unshed tears and filled her with terror. He had said that Miro and his sister went out to the piggies every day. He knew. He knew all the secrets.

All except the secret that she didn’t even know herself—the one that Pipo had somehow discovered in her simulation. If he ever got that, he’d have everything that she had hidden for all these years. When she called for the speaker for the dead, she had wanted him to discover the truth about Pipo; instead, he had come and discovered the truth about her.

The door slammed. Ender leaned on the stool where she had sat and put his head down on his hands.

He heard Olhado stand up and walk slowly across the room toward him.

“You tried to access Mother’s files,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” said Ender.

“You got me to teach you how to do searches so that you could spy on my own mother. You made a traitor out of me.”

There was no answer that would satisfy Olhado right now; Ender didn’t try. He waited in silence as Olhado walked to the door and left.

The turmoil he felt was not silent, however, to the hive queen. He felt her stir in his mind, drawn by his anguish. No, he said to her silently. There’s nothing you can do, nothing I can explain. Human things, that’s all, strange and alien human problems that are beyond comprehension.

<Ah.> And he felt her touch him inwardly, touch him like the breeze in the leaves of a tree; he felt the strength and vigor of upward-thrusting wood, the firm grip of roots in earth, the gentle play of sunlight on passionate leaves. <See what we’ve learned from him, Ender, the peace that he found.> The feeling faded as the hive queen retreated from his mind. The strength of the tree stayed with him, the calm of its quietude replaced his own tortured silence.

It had been only a moment; the sound of Olhado closing the door still rang in the room. Beside him, Quara jumped to her feet and skipped across the floor to his bed. She jumped up and bounced on it a few times.

“You only lasted a couple of days,” she said cheerfully. “Everybody hates you now.”

Ender laughed wryly and turned around to look at her. “Do you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I hated you first of all, except maybe Quim.” She slid off the bed and walked to the terminal. One key at a time, she carefully logged on. A group of double-column addition problems appeared in the air above the terminal. “You want to see me do arithmetic?”

Ender got up and joined her at the terminal. “Sure,” he said. “Those look hard, though.”

“Not for me,” she said boastfully. “I do them faster than anybody.”

13
ELA

MIRO: The piggies call themselves males, but we’re only taking their word for it.

OUANDA: Why would they lie?

MIRO: I know you’re young and naive, but there’s some missing equipment.

OUANDA: I passed physical anthropology. Who says they do it the way we do it?

MIRO: Obviously they don’t. (For that matter, WE don’t do it at all.) Maybe I’ve figured out where their genitals are. Those bumps on their bellies, where the hair is light and fine.

OUANDA: Vestigial nipples. Even you have them.

MIRO: I saw Leaf-eater and Pots yesterday, about ten meters off, so I didn’t see them WELL, but Pots was stroking Leaf-eater’s belly, and I think those belly-bumps might have tumesced.

OUANDA: Or they might not.

MIRO: One thing for sure. Leaf-eater’s belly was wet—the sun was reflected off it—and he was enjoying it.

OUANDA: This is perverted.

MIRO: Why not? They’re all bachelors, aren’t they? They’re adults, but their so-called wives haven’t introduced any of them to the joys of fatherhood.

OUANDA: I think a sex-starved zenador is projecting his own frustrations onto his subjects.

—Marcos Vladimir “Miro” Ribeira von Hesse and Ouanda Quenhatta Figueira Mucumbi, Working Notes, 1970:1:4:30

The clearing was very still. Miro saw at once that something was wrong. The piggies weren’t doing anything. Just standing or sitting here and there. And still; hardly a breath. Staring at the ground.

Except Human, who emerged from the forest behind them. He walked slowly, stiffly around to the front. Miro felt Ouanda’s elbow press against him, but he did not look at her. He knew she was thinking the same thing he thought. Is this the moment that they will kill us, as they killed Libo and Pipo?

Human regarded them steadily for several minutes. It was unnerving to have him wait so long. But Miro and Ouanda were disciplined. They said nothing, did not even let their faces change from the relaxed, meaningless expression they had practiced for so many years. The art of noncommunication was the first one they had to learn before Libo would let either of them come with him. Until their faces showed nothing, until they did not even perspire visibly under emotional stress, no piggy would see them. As if it did any good—Human was too adroit at turning evasions into answers, gleaning facts from empty statements. Even their absolute stillness no doubt communicated their fear, but out of that circle there could be no escape. Everything communicated something.

“You have lied to us,” said Human.

Don’t answer, Miro said silently, and Ouanda was as wordless as if she had heard him. No doubt she was also thinking the same message to him.

“Rooter says that the Speaker for the Dead wants to come to us.”

It was the most maddening thing about the piggies. Whenever they had something outrageous to say, they always blamed it on some dead piggy who couldn’t possibly have said it. No doubt there was some religious ritual involved: Go to their totem tree, ask a leading question, and lie there contemplating the leaves or the bark or something until you get exactly the answer you want.

“We never said otherwise,” said Miro.

Ouanda breathed a little more quickly.

“You said he wouldn’t come.”

“That’s right,” said Miro. “He wouldn’t. He has to obey the law just like anyone else. If he tried to pass through the gate without permission—”

“That’s a lie.”

Miro fell silent.

“It’s the law,” said Ouanda quietly.

“The law has been twisted before this,” said Human. “You could bring him here, but you don’t. Everything depends on you bringing him here. Rooter says the hive queen can’t give us her gifts unless he comes.”

Miro quelled his impatience. The hive queen! Hadn’t he told the piggies a dozen times that all the buggers were killed? And now the dead hive queen was talking to them as much as dead Rooter. The piggies would be much easier to deal with if they could stop getting orders from the dead.

“It’s the law,” said Ouanda again. “If we even ask him to come, he might report us and we’d be sent away, we’d never come to you again.”

“He won’t report you. He wants to come.”

“How do you know?”

“Rooter says.”

There were times that Miro wanted to chop down the totem tree that grew where Rooter had been killed. Maybe then they’d shut up about what Rooter says. But instead they’d probably name some other tree Rooter and be outraged as well. Don’t even admit that you doubt their religion, that was a textbook rule; even offworld xenologers, even anthropologists knew that.

“Ask him,” said Human.

“Rooter?” asked Ouanda.

“He wouldn’t speak to you,” said Human. Contemptuously? “Ask the Speaker whether he’ll come or not.”

Miro waited for Ouanda to answer. She knew already what his answer would be. Hadn’t they argued it out a dozen times in the last two days? He’s a good man, said Miro. He’s a fake, said Ouanda. He was good with the little ones, said Miro. So are child molesters, said Ouanda. I believe in him, said Miro. Then you’re an idiot, said Ouanda. We can trust him, said Miro. He’ll betray us, said Ouanda. And that was where it always ended.

But the piggies changed the equation. The piggies added great pressure on Miro’s side. Usually when the piggies demanded the impossible he had helped her fend them off. But this was not impossible, he did not want them fended off, and so he said nothing. Press her, Human, because you’re right and this time Ouanda must bend.

Feeling herself alone, knowing Miro would not help her, she gave a little ground. “Maybe if we only bring him as far as the edge of the forest.”

“Bring him here,” said Human.

“We can’t,” she said. “Look at you. Wearing cloth. Making pots. Eating bread.”

Human smiled. “Yes,” he said. “All of that. Bring him here.”

“No,” said Ouanda.

Miro flinched, stopping himself from reaching out to her. It was the one thing they had never done—flatly denied a request. Always it was “We can’t because” or “I wish we could.” But the single word of denial said to them, I will not. I, of myself, refuse.

Human’s smile faded. “Pipo told us that women do not say. Pipo told us that human men and women decide together. So you can’t say no unless he says no, too.” He looked at Miro. “Do you say no?”

Miro did not answer. He felt Ouanda’s elbow touching him.

“You don’t say nothing,” said Human. “You say yes or no.”

Still Miro didn’t answer.

Some of the piggies around them stood up. Miro had no idea what they were doing, but the movement itself, with Miro’s intransigent silence as a cue, seemed menacing. Ouanda, who would never be cowed by a threat to herself, bent to the implied threat to Miro. “He says yes,” she whispered.

“He says yes, but for you he stays silent. You say no, but you don’t stay silent for him.” Human scooped thick mucus out of his mouth with one finger and flipped it onto the ground. “You are nothing.”

Human suddenly fell backward into a somersault, twisted in midmovement, and came up with his back to them, walking away. Immediately the other piggies came to life, moving swiftly toward Human, who led them toward the forest edge farthest from Miro and Ouanda.

Human stopped abruptly. Another piggy, instead of following him, stood in front of him, blocking his way. It was Leaf-eater. If he or Human spoke, Miro could not hear them or see their mouths move. He did see, though, that Leaf-eater extended his hand to touch Human’s belly. The hand stayed there a moment, then Leaf-eater whirled around and scampered off into the bushes like a youngling.

In a moment the other piggies were also gone.

“It was a battle,” said Miro. “Human and Leaf-eater. They’re on opposite sides.”

“Of what?” said Ouanda.

“I wish I knew. But I can guess. If we bring the Speaker, Human wins. If we don’t, Leaf-eater wins.”

“Wins what? Because if we bring the Speaker, he’ll betray us, and then we all lose.”

“He won’t betray us.”

“Why shouldn’t he, if you’d betray me like that?”

Her voice was a lash, and he almost cried out from the sting of her words. “I betray you!” he whispered. “Eu não. Jamais.” Not me. Never.

“Father always said, Be united in front of the piggies, never let them see you in disagreement, and you—”

“And I! I didn’t say yes to them. You’re the one who said no, you’re the one who took a position that you knew I didn’t agree with!”

“Then when we disagree, it’s your job to—”

She stopped. She had only just realized what she was saying. But stopping did not undo what Miro knew she was going to say. It was his job to do what she said until she changed her mind. As if he were her apprentice. “And here I thought we were in this together.” He turned and walked away from her, into the forest, back toward Milagre.

“Miro,” she called after him. “Miro, I didn’t mean that—”

He waited for her to catch up, then caught her by the arm and whispered fiercely. “Don’t shout! Or don’t you care whether the piggies hear us or not? Has the master Zenador decided that we can let them see everything now, even the master disciplining her apprentice?”

“I’m not the master, I—”

“That’s right, you’re not.” He turned away from her and started walking again.

“But Libo was my father, so of course I’m the—”

“Zenador by blood right,” he said. “Blood right, is that it? So what am I by blood right? A drunken wife-beating cretin?” He took her by the arms, gripping her cruelly. “Is that what you want me to be? A little copy of my paizinho?”

“Let go!”

He shoved her away. “Your apprentice thinks you were a fool today,” said Miro. “Your apprentice thinks you should have trusted his judgment of the Speaker, and your apprentice thinks you should have trusted his assessment of how serious the piggies were about this, because you were stupidly wrong about both matters, and you may just have cost Human his life.”

It was an unspeakable accusation, but it was exactly what they both feared, that Human would end up now as Rooter had, as others had over the years, disemboweled, with a seedling growing out of his corpse.

Miro knew he had spoken unfairly, knew that she would not be wrong to rage against him. He had no right to blame her when neither of them could possibly have known what the stakes might have been for Human until it was too late.

Ouanda did not rage, however. Instead, she calmed herself visibly, drawing even breaths and blanking her face. Miro followed her example and did the same. “What matters,” said Ouanda, “is to make the best of it. The executions have always been at night. If we’re to have a hope of vindicating Human, we have to get the Speaker here this afternoon, before dark.”

Miro nodded. “Yes,” he said. “And I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” she said.

“Since we don’t know what we’re doing, it’s nobody’s fault when we do things wrong.”

“I only wish that I believed a right choice were possible.”

Ela sat on a rock and bathed her feet in the water while she waited for the Speaker for the Dead. The fence was only a few meters away, running along the top of the steel grillwork that blocked the people from swimming under it. As if anyone wanted to try. Most people in Milagre pretended the fence wasn’t there. Never came near it. That was why she had asked the Speaker to meet her here. Even though the day was warm and school was out, children didn’t swim here at Vila Última, where the fence came to the river and the forest came nearly to the fence. Only the soapmakers and potters and brickmakers came here, and they left again when the day’s work was over. She could say what she had to say, without fear of anyone overhearing or interrupting.

She didn’t have to wait long. The Speaker rowed up the river in a small boat, just like one of the farside farmers, who had no use for roads. The skin of his back was shockingly white; even the few Lusos who were light-complected enough to be called loiros were much darker-skinned. His whiteness made him seem weak and slight. But then she saw how quickly the boat moved against the current; how accurately the oars were placed each time at just the right depth, with a long, smooth pull; how tightly wrapped in skin his muscles were. She felt a moment’s stab of grief, and then realized that it was grief for her father, despite the depth of her hatred for him; she had not realized until this moment that she loved anything about him, but she grieved for the strength of his shoulders and back, for the sweat that made his brown skin dazzle like glass in the sunlight.

No, she said silently, I don’t grieve for your death, Cão. I grieve that you were not more like the Speaker, who has no connection with us and yet has given us more good gifts in three days than you in your whole life; I grieve that your beautiful body was so worm-eaten inside.

The Speaker saw her and skimmed the boat to shore, where she waited. She waded in the reeds and muck to help him pull the boat aground.

“Sorry to get you muddy,” he said. “But I haven’t used my body in a couple of weeks, and the water invited me—”

“You row well,” she said.

“The world I came from, Trondheim, was mostly ice and water. A bit of rock here and there, some soil, but anyone who couldn’t row was more crippled than if he couldn’t walk.”

“That’s where you were born?”

“No. Where I last spoke, though.” He sat on the grama, facing the water.

She sat beside him. “Mother’s angry at you.”

His lips made a little half-smile. “She told me.”

Without thinking, Ela immediately began to justify her mother. “You tried to read her files.”

“I read her files. Most of them. All but the ones that mattered.”

“I know, Quim told me.” She caught herself feeling just a little triumphant that Mother’s protection system had bested him. Then she remembered that she was not on Mother’s side in this. That she had been trying for years to get Mother to open those very files to her. But momentum carried her on, saying things she didn’t mean to say. “Olhado’s sitting in the house with his eyes shut off and music blasting into his ears. Very upset.”

“Yes, well, he thinks I betrayed him.”

“Didn’t you?” That was not what she meant to say.

“I’m a speaker for the dead. I tell the truth, when I speak at all, and I don’t keep away from other people’s secrets.”

“I know. That’s why I called for a speaker. You don’t have any respect for anybody.”

He looked annoyed. “Why did you invite me here?” he asked.

This was working out all wrong. She was talking to him as if she were against him, as if she weren’t grateful for what he had already done for the family. She was talking to him like the enemy. Has Quim taken over my mind, so that I say things I don’t mean?

“You invited me to this place on the river. The rest of your family isn’t speaking to me, and then I get a message from you. To complain about my breaches of privacy? To tell me I don’t respect anybody?”

“No,” she said miserably. “This isn’t how it was supposed to go.”

“Didn’t it occur to you that I would hardly choose to be a speaker if I had no respect for people?”

In frustration she let the words burst out. “I wish you had broken into all her files! I wish you had taken every one of her secrets and published them through all the Hundred Worlds!” There were tears in her eyes; she couldn’t think why.

“I see. She doesn’t let you see those files, either.”

“Sou aprendiz dela, não sou? E porque choro, diga-me! O senhor tem o jeito.”

“I don’t have any knack for making people cry, Ela,” he answered softly. His voice was a caress. No, stronger, it was like a hand gripping her hand, holding her, steadying her. “Telling the truth makes you cry.”

“Sou ingrata, sou má filha—”

“Yes, you’re ungrateful, and a terrible daughter,” he said, laughing softly. “Through all these years of chaos and neglect you’ve held your mother’s family together with little help from her, and when you followed her in her career, she wouldn’t share the most vital information with you; you’ve earned nothing but love and trust from her and she’s replied by shutting you out of her life at home and at work; and then you finally tell somebody that you’re sick of it. You’re just about the worst person I’ve ever known.”

She found herself laughing at her own self-condemnation. Childishly, she didn’t want to laugh at herself. “Don’t patronize me.” She tried to put as much contempt into her voice as possible.

He noticed. His eyes went distant and cold. “Don’t spit at a friend,” he said.

She didn’t want him to be distant from her. But she couldn’t stop herself from saying, coldly, angrily, “You aren’t my friend.”

For a moment she was afraid he believed her. Then a smile came to his face. “You wouldn’t know a friend if you saw one.”

Yes I would, she thought. I see one now. She smiled back at him.

“Ela,” he said, “are you a good xenobiologist?”

“Yes.”

“You’re eighteen years old. You could take the guild tests at sixteen. But you didn’t take them.”

“Mother wouldn’t let me. She said I wasn’t ready.”

“You don’t have to have your mother’s permission after you’re sixteen.”

“An apprentice has to have the permission of her master.”

“And now you’re eighteen, and you don’t even need that.”

“She’s still Lusitania’s xenobiologist. It’s still her lab. What if I passed the test, and then she wouldn’t let me into the lab until after she was dead?”

“Did she threaten that?”

“She made it clear that I wasn’t to take the test.”

“Because as soon as you’re not an apprentice anymore, if she admits you to the lab as her co-xenobiologist you have full access—”

“To all the working files. To all the locked files.”

“So she’d hold her own daughter back from beginning her career, she’d give you a permanent blot on your record—unready for the tests even at age eighteen—just to keep you from reading those files.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Mother’s crazy.”

“No. Whatever else Novinha is, Ela, she is not crazy.”

“Ela é boba mesma, Senhor Falante.”

He laughed and lay back in the grama. “Tell me how she’s boba, then.”

“I’ll give you the list. First: She won’t allow any investigation of the Descolada. Thirty-four years ago the Descolada nearly destroyed this colony. My grandparents, Os Venerados, Deus os abençoe, they barely managed to stop the Descolada. Apparently the disease agent, the Descolada bodies, are still present—we have to eat a supplement, like an extra vitamin, to keep the plague from striking again. They told you that, didn’t they? If you once get it in your system, you’ll have to keep that supplement all your life, even if you leave here.”

“I knew that, yes.”

“She won’t let me study the Descolada bodies at all. That’s what’s in some of the locked files, anyway. She’s locked up all of Gusto’s and Cida’s discoveries about the Descolada bodies. Nothing’s available.”

The Speaker’s eyes narrowed. “So. That’s one-third of boba. What’s the rest?”

“It’s more than a third. Whatever the Descolada body is, it was able to adapt to become a human parasite ten years after the colony was founded. Ten years! If it can adapt once, it can adapt again.”

“Maybe she doesn’t think so.”

“Maybe I ought to have a right to decide that for myself.”

He put out a hand, rested it on her knee, calmed her. “I agree with you. But go on. The second reason she’s boba.”

“She won’t allow any theoretical research. No taxonomy. No evolutionary models. If I ever try to do any, she says I obviously don’t have enough to do and weighs me down with assignments until she thinks I’ve given up.”

“You haven’t given up, I take it.”

“That’s what xenobiology’s for. Oh, yes, fine that she can make a potato that makes maximum use of the ambient nutrients. Wonderful that she made a breed of amaranth that makes the colony protein self-sufficient with only ten acres under cultivation. But that’s all molecular juggling.”

“It’s survival.”

“But we don’t know anything. It’s like swimming on the top of the ocean. You get very comfortable, you can move around a little, but you don’t know if there are sharks down there! We could be surrounded by sharks and she doesn’t want to find out.”

“Third thing?”

“She won’t exchange information with the Zenadors. Period. Nothing. And that really is crazy. We can’t leave the fenced area. That means that we don’t have a single tree we can study. We know absolutely nothing about the flora and fauna of this world except what happened to be included inside the fence. One herd of cabra and a bunch of capim grass, and then a slightly different riverside ecology, and that’s everything. Nothing about the kinds of animals in the forest, no information exchange at all. We don’t tell them anything, and if they send us data we erase the files unread. It’s like she built this wall around us that nothing could get through. Nothing gets in, nothing goes out.”

“Maybe she has reasons.”

“Of course she has reasons. Crazy people always have reasons. For one thing, she hated Libo. Hated him. She wouldn’t let Miro talk about him, wouldn’t let us play with his children—China and I were best friends for years and she wouldn’t let me bring her home or go to her house after school. And when Miro apprenticed to him, she didn’t speak to him or set his place at the table for a year.”

She could see that the Speaker doubted her; he thought she was exaggerating.

“I mean one year. The day he went to the Zenador’s Station for the first time as Libo’s apprentice, he came home and she didn’t speak to him, not a word, and when he sat down to dinner she removed the plate from in front of his face, just cleaned up his silverware as if he weren’t there. He sat there through the entire meal, just looking at her. Until Father got angry at him for being rude and told him to leave the room.”

“What did he do, move out?”

“No. You don’t know Miro!” Ela laughed bitterly. “He doesn’t fight, but he doesn’t give up, either. He never answered Father’s abuse, never. In all my life I don’t remember hearing him answer anger with anger. And Mother—well, he came home every night from the Zenador’s Station and sat down where a plate was set, and every night Mother took up his plate and silverware, and he sat there till Father made him leave. Of course, within a week Father was yelling at him to get out as soon as Mother reached for his plate. Father loved it, the bastard, he thought it was great, he hated Miro so much, and finally Mother was on his side against Miro.”

“Who gave in?”

“Nobody gave in.” Ela looked at the river, realizing how terrible this all sounded, realizing that she was shaming her family in front of a stranger. But he wasn’t a stranger, was he? Because Quara was talking again, and Olhado was involved in things again, and Grego, for just a short time, Grego had been almost a normal boy. He wasn’t a stranger.

“How did it end?” asked the Speaker.

“It ended when the piggies killed Libo. That’s how much Mother hated the man. When he died she celebrated by forgiving her son. That night when Miro came home, it was after dinner was over, it was late at night. A terrible night, everybody was so afraid, the piggies seemed so awful, and everybody loved Libo so much—except Mother, of course. Mother waited up for Miro. He came in and went into the kitchen and sat down at the table, and Mother put a plate down in front of him, put food on the plate. Didn’t say a word. He ate it, too. Not a word about it. As if the year before hadn’t happened. I woke up in the middle of the night because I could hear Miro throwing up and crying in the bathroom. I don’t think anybody else heard, and I didn’t go to him because I didn’t think he wanted anybody to hear him. Now I think I should have gone, but I was afraid. There were such terrible things in my family.”

The Speaker nodded.

“I should have gone to him,” Ela said again.

“Yes,” the Speaker said. “You should have.”

A strange thing happened then. The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply speaking her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn’t a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.

If I’m not that frightened girl who heard her brother in desperate pain and dared not go to him, who am I? But the water flowing through the grillwork under the fence held no answers. Maybe she couldn’t know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.

Still the Speaker lay there on the grama, looking at the clouds coming darkly out of the west. “I’ve told you all I know,” Ela said. “I told you what was in those files—the Descolada information. That’s all I know.”

“No it isn’t,” said the Speaker.

“It is, I promise.”

“Do you mean to say that you obeyed her? That when your mother told you not to do any theoretical work, you simply turned off your mind and did what she wanted?”

Ela giggled. “She thinks so.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I’m a scientist, even if she isn’t.”

“She was once,” said the Speaker. “She passed her tests when she was thirteen.”

“I know,” said Ela.

“And she used to share information with Pipo before he died.”

“I know that, too. It was just Libo that she hated.”

“So tell me, Ela. What have you discovered in your theoretical work?”

“I haven’t discovered any answers. But at least I know what some of the questions are. That’s a start, isn’t it? Nobody else is asking questions. It’s so funny, isn’t it? Miro says the framling xenologers are always pestering him and Ouanda for more information, more data, and yet the law forbids them from learning anything more. And yet not a single framling xenobiologist has ever asked us for any information. They all just study the biosphere on their own planets and don’t ask Mother a single question. I’m the only one asking, and nobody cares.”

“I care,” said the Speaker. “I need to know what the questions are.”

“OK, here’s one. We have a herd of cabra here inside the fence. The cabra can’t jump the fence, they don’t even touch it. I’ve examined and tagged every single cabra in the herd, and you know something? There’s not one male. They’re all female.”

“Bad luck,” said the Speaker. “You’d think they would have left at least one male inside.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Ela. “I don’t know if there are any males. In the last five years every single adult cabra has given birth at least once. And not one of them has mated.”

“Maybe they clone,” said the Speaker.

“The offspring is not genetically identical to the mother. That much research I could sneak into the lab without Mother noticing. There is some kind of gene transfer going on.”

“Hermaphrodites?”

“No. Pure female. No male sexual organs at all. Does that qualify as an important question? Somehow the cabras are having some kind of genetic exchange, without sex.”

“The theological implications alone are astounding.”

“Don’t make fun.”

“Of which? Science or theology?”

“Either one. Do you want to hear more of my questions or not?”

“I do,” said the Speaker.

“Then try this. The grass you’re lying on—we call it grama. All the water snakes are hatched here. Little worms so small you can hardly see them. They eat the grass down to the nub and eat each other, too, shedding skin each time they grow larger. Then all of a sudden, when the grass is completely slimy with their dead skin, all the snakes slither off into the river and they never come back out.”

He wasn’t a xenobiologist. He didn’t get the implication right away.

“The watersnakes hatch here,” she explained, “but they don’t come back out of the water to lay their eggs.”

“So they mate here before they go into the water.”

“Fine, of course, obviously. I’ve seen them mating. That’s not the problem. The problem is, why are they watersnakes!”

He still didn’t get it.

“Look, they’re completely adapted to life underwater. They have gills along with lungs, they’re superb swimmers, they have fins for guidance, they are completely evolved for adult life in the water. Why would they ever have evolved that way if they are born on land, mate on land, and reproduce on land? As far as evolution is concerned, anything that happens after you reproduce is completely irrelevant, except if you nurture your young, and the watersnakes definitely don’t nurture. Living in the water does nothing to enhance their ability to survive until they reproduce. They could slither into the water and drown and it wouldn’t matter because reproduction is over.”

“Yes,” said the Speaker. “I see now.”

“There are little clear eggs in the water, though. I’ve never seen a water snake lay them, but since there’s no other animal in or near the river large enough to lay the eggs, it seems logical that they’re watersnake eggs. Only these big clear eggs—a centimeter across—they’re completely sterile. The nutrients are there, everything’s ready, but there’s no embryo. Nothing. Some of them have a gamete—half a set of genes in a cell, ready to combine—but not a single one was alive. And we’ve never found watersnake eggs on land. One day there’s nothing there but grama, getting riper and riper; the next day the grama stalks are crawling with baby watersnakes. Does this sound like a question worth exploring?”

“It sounds like spontaneous generation to me.”

“Yes, well, I’d like to find enough information to test some alternate hypotheses, but Mother won’t let me. I asked her about this one and she made me take over the whole amaranth testing process so I wouldn’t have time to muck around in the river. And another question. Why are there so few species here? On every other planet, even some of the nearly desert ones like Trondheim, there are thousands of different species, at least in the water. Here there’s hardly a handful, as far as I can tell. The xingadora are the only birds we’ve seen. The suckflies are the only flies. The cabra are the only ruminants eating the capim grass. Except for the cabras, the piggies are the only large animals we’ve seen. Only one species of tree. Only one species of grass on the prairie, the capim; and the only other competing plant is the tropeça, a long vine that wanders along the ground for meters and meters—the xingadora make their nests out of the vine. That’s it. The xingadora eat the suckflies and nothing else. The suckflies eat the algae along the edge of the river. And our garbage, and that’s it. Nothing eats the xingadora. Nothing eats the cabra.”

“Very limited,” said the Speaker.

“Impossibly limited. There are ten thousand ecological niches here that are completely unfilled. There’s no way that evolution could leave this world so sparse.”

“Unless there was a disaster.”

“Exactly.”

“Something that wiped out all but a handful of species that were able to adapt.”

“Yes,” said Ela. “You see? And I have proof. The cabras have a huddling behavior pattern. When you come up on them, when they smell you, they circle with the adults facing inward, so they can kick out at the intruder and protect the young.”

“Lots of herd animals do that.”

“Protect them from what? The piggies are completely sylvan—they never hunt on the prairie. Whatever the predator was that forced the cabra to develop that behavior pattern, it’s gone. And only recently—in the last hundred thousand years, the last million years maybe.”

“There’s no evidence of any meteor falls more recent than twenty million years,” said the Speaker.

“No. That kind of disaster would kill off all the big animals and plants and leave hundreds of small ones, or maybe kill all land life and leave only the sea. But land, sea, all the environments were stripped, and yet some big creatures survived. No, I think it was a disease. A disease that struck across all species boundaries, that could adapt itself to any living thing. Of course, we wouldn’t notice that disease now because all the species left alive have adapted to it. It would be part of their regular life pattern. The only way we’d notice the disease—”

“Is if we caught it,” said the Speaker. “The Descolada.”

“You see? Everything comes back to the Descolada. My grandparents found a way to stop it from killing humans, but it took the best genetic manipulation. The cabra, the watersnakes, they also found ways to adapt, and I doubt it was with dietary supplements. I think it all ties in together. The weird reproductive anomalies, the emptiness of the ecosystem, it all comes back to the Descolada bodies, and Mother won’t let me examine them. She won’t let me study what they are, how they work, how they might be involved with—”

“With the piggies.”

“Well, of course, but not just them, all the animals—”

The Speaker looked like he was suppressing excitement. As if she had explained something difficult. “The night that Pipo died, she locked the files showing all her current work, and she locked the files containing all the Descolada research. Whatever she showed Pipo had to do with the Descolada bodies, and it had to do with the piggies—”

“That’s when she locked the files?” asked Ela.

“Yes. Yes.”

“Then I’m right, aren’t I.”

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you. You’ve helped me more than you know.”

“Does this mean that you’ll speak Father’s death soon?”

The Speaker looked at her carefully. “You don’t want me to speak your father, really. You want me to speak your mother.”

“She isn’t dead.”

“But you know I can’t possibly speak Marcão without explaining why he married Novinha, and why they stayed married all those years.”

“That’s right. I want all the secrets opened up. I want all the files unlocked. I don’t want anything hidden.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” said the Speaker. “You don’t know how much pain it will cause if all the secrets come out.”

“Take a look at my family, Speaker,” she answered. “How can the truth cause any more pain than the secrets have already caused?”

He smiled at her, but it was not a mirthful smile. It was—affectionate, even pitying. “You’re right,” he said, “completely right, but you may have trouble realizing that, when you hear the whole story.”

“I know the whole story, as far as it can be known.”

“That’s what everybody thinks, and nobody’s right.”

“When will you have the speaking?”

“As soon as I can.”

“Then why not now? Today? What are you waiting for?”

“I can’t do anything until I talk to the piggies.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you? Nobody can talk to the piggies except the Zenadors. That’s by Congressional Order. Nobody can get past that.”

“Yes,” said the Speaker. “That’s why it’s going to be hard.”

“Not hard, impossible—”

“Maybe,” he said. He stood; so did she. “Ela, you’ve helped me tremendously. Taught me everything I could have hoped to learn from you. Just like Olhado did. But he didn’t like what I did with the things he taught me, and now he thinks I betrayed him.”

“He’s a kid. I’m eighteen.”

The Speaker nodded, put his hand on her shoulder, squeezed. “We’re all right then. We’re friends.”

She was almost sure there was irony in what he said. Irony and, perhaps, a plea. “Yes,” she insisted. “We’re friends. Always.”

He nodded again, turned away, pushed the boat from shore, and splashed after it through the reeds and muck. Once the boat was fairly afloat, he sat down and extended the oars, rowed, and then looked up and smiled at her. Ela smiled back, but the smile could not convey the elation she felt, the perfect relief. He had listened to everything, and understood everything, and he would make everything all right. She believed that, believed it so completely that she didn’t even notice that it was the source of her sudden happiness. She knew only that she had spent an hour with the Speaker for the Dead, and now she felt more alive than she had in years.

She retrieved her shoes, put them back on her feet, and walked home. Mother would still be at the Biologista’s Station, but Ela didn’t want to work this afternoon. She wanted to go home and fix dinner; that was always solitary work. She hoped no one would talk with her. She hoped there’d be no problem she was expected to solve. Let this feeling linger forever.

Ela was only home for a few minutes, however, when Miro burst into the kitchen. “Ela,” he said. “Have you seen the Speaker for the Dead?”

“Yes,” she said. “On the river.”

“Where on the river!”

If she told him where they had met, he’d know that it wasn’t a chance meeting. “Why?” she asked.

“Listen, Ela, this is no time to be suspicious, please. I’ve got to find him. We’ve left messages for him, the computer can’t find him—”

“He was rowing downriver, toward home. He’s probably going to be at his house soon.”

Miro rushed from the kitchen into the front room. Ela heard him tapping at the terminal. Then he came back in. “Thanks,” he said. “Don’t expect me home for dinner.”

“What’s so urgent?”

“Nothing.” It was so ridiculous, to say “nothing” when Miro was obviously agitated and hurried, that they both burst out laughing at once. “OK,” said Miro, “it isn’t nothing, it’s something, but I can’t talk about it, OK?”

“OK.” But soon all the secrets will be known, Miro.

“What I don’t understand is why he didn’t get our message. I mean, the computer was paging him. Doesn’t he wear an implant in his ear? The computer’s supposed to be able to reach him. Of course, maybe he had it turned off.”

“No,” said Ela. “The light was on.”

Miro cocked his head and squinted at her. “You didn’t see that tiny red light on his ear implant, not if he just happened to be out rowing in the middle of the river.”

“He came to shore. We talked.”

“What about?”

Ela smiled. “Nothing,” she said.

He smiled back, but he looked annoyed all the same. She understood: It’s all right for you to have secrets from me, but not for me to have secrets from you, is that it, Miro?

He didn’t argue about it, though. He was in too much of a hurry. Had to go find the Speaker, and now, and he wouldn’t be home for dinner.

Ela had a feeling the Speaker might get to talk to the piggies sooner than she had thought possible. For a moment she was elated. The waiting would be over.

Then the elation passed, and something else took its place. A sick fear. A nightmare of China’s papai, dear Libo, lying dead on the hillside, torn apart by the piggies. Only it wasn’t Libo, the way she had always imagined the grisly scene. It was Miro. No, no, it wasn’t Miro. It was the Speaker. It was the Speaker who would be tortured to death. “No,” she whispered.

Then she shivered and the nightmare left her mind; she went back to trying to spice and season the pasta so it would taste like something better than amaranth glue.

14
RENEGADES

LEAF-EATER: Human says that when your brothers die, you bury them in the dirt, and then make your houses out of that dirt. (Laughs.)

MIRO: No. We never dig where people are buried.

LEAF-EATER: (becomes rigid with agitation): Then your dead don’t do you any good at all!

—Ouanda Quenhatta Figueira Mucumbi, Dialogue Transcripts, 103:0:1969:4:13:111

Ender had thought they might have some trouble getting him through the gate, but Ouanda palmed the box, Miro opened the gate, and the three of them walked through. No challenge. It must be as Ela had implied—no one wanted to get out of the compound, so no serious security was needed. Whether that suggested that people were content to stay in Milagre or that they were afraid of the piggies or that they hated their imprisonment so much that they had to pretend the fence wasn’t there, Ender could not begin to guess.

Both Ouanda and Miro were very tense, almost frightened. That was understandable, of course, since they were breaking Congressional rules to let him come. But Ender suspected there was more to it than that. Miro’s tension was coupled with eagerness, a sense of hurry; he might be frightened, but he wanted to see what would happen, wanted to go ahead. Ouanda held back, walked a measured step, and her coldness was not just fear but hostility as well. She did not trust him.

So Ender was not surprised when she stepped behind the large tree that grew nearest the gate and waited for Miro and Ender to follow her. Ender saw how Miro looked annoyed for a moment, then controlled himself. His mask of uninvolvement was as cool as a human being could hope for. Ender found himself comparing Miro to the boys he had known in Battle School, sizing him up as a comrade in arms, and thought Miro might have done well there. Ouanda, too, but for different reasons: She held herself responsible for what was happening, even though Ender was an adult and she was much younger. She did not defer to him at all. Whatever she was afraid of, it was not authority.

“Here?” asked Miro blandly.

“Or not at all,” said Ouanda.

Ender folded himself to sit at the base of the tree. “This is Rooter’s tree, isn’t it?” he asked.

They took it calmly—of course—but their momentary pause told him that yes, he had surprised them by knowing something about a past that they surely regarded as their own. I may be a framling here, Ender said silently, but I don’t have to be an ignorant one.

“Yes,” said Ouanda. “He’s the totem they seem to get the most—direction from. Lately—the last seven or eight years. They’ve never let us see the rituals in which they talk to their ancestors, but it seems to involve drumming on the trees with heavy polished sticks. We hear them at night sometimes.”

“Sticks? Made of fallen wood?”

“We assume so. Why?”

“Because they have no stone or metal tools to cut the wood—isn’t that right? Besides, if they worship the trees, they couldn’t very well cut them down.”

“We don’t think they worship the trees. It’s totemic. They stand for dead ancestors. They—plant them. With the bodies.”

Ouanda had wanted to stop, to talk or question him, but Ender had no intention of letting her believe she—or Miro, for that matter—was in charge of this expedition. Ender intended to talk to the piggies himself. He had never prepared for a speaking by letting someone else determine his agenda, and he wasn’t going to begin now. Besides, he had information they didn’t have. He knew Ela’s theory.

“And anywhere else?” he asked. “Do they plant trees at any other time?”

They looked at each other. “Not that we’ve seen,” said Miro.

Ender was not merely curious. He was still thinking of what Ela had told him about reproductive anomalies. “And do the trees also grow by themselves? Are seedlings and saplings scattered through the forest?”

Ouanda shook her head. “We really don’t have any evidence of the trees being planted anywhere but in the corpses of the dead. At least, all the trees we know of are quite old, except these three out here.”

“Four, if we don’t hurry,” said Miro.

Ah. Here was the tension between them. Miro’s sense of urgency was to save a piggy from being planted at the base of another tree. While Ouanda was concerned about something quite different. They had revealed enough of themselves to him; now he could let her interrogate him. He sat up straight and tipped his head back, to look up into the leaves of the tree above him, the spreading branches, the pale green of photosynthesis that confirmed the convergence, the inevitability of evolution on every world. Here was the center of all of Ela’s paradoxes: evolution on this world was obviously well within the pattern that xenobiologists had seen on all the Hundred Worlds, and yet somewhere the pattern had broken down, collapsed. The piggies were one of a few dozen species that had survived the collapse. What was the Descolada, and how had the piggies adapted to it?

He had meant to turn the conversation, to say, Why are we here behind this tree? That would invite Ouanda’s questions. But at that moment, his head tilted back, the soft green leaves moving gently in an almost imperceptible breeze, he felt a powerful déjà vu. He had looked up into these leaves before. Recently. But that was impossible. There were no large trees on Trondheim, and none grew within the compound of Milagre. Why did the sunlight through the leaves feel so familiar to him?

“Speaker,” said Miro.

“Yes,” he said, allowing himself to be drawn out of his momentary reverie.

“We didn’t want to bring you out here.” Miro said it firmly, and with his body so oriented toward Ouanda’s that Ender understood that in fact Miro had wanted to bring him out here, but was including himself in Ouanda’s reluctance in order to show her that he was one with her. You are in love with each other, Ender said silently. And tonight, if I speak Marcão’s death, I will have to tell you that you’re brother and sister. I have to drive the wedge of the incest tabu between you. And you will surely hate me.

“You’re going to see—some—” Ouanda could not bring herself to say it.

Miro smiled. “We call them Questionable Activities. They began with Pipo, accidentally. But Libo did it deliberately, and we are continuing his work. It is careful, gradual. We didn’t just discard the Congressional rules about this. But there were crises, and we had to help. A few years ago, for instance, the piggies were running short of macios, the bark worms they mostly lived on then—”

“You’re going to tell him that first?” asked Ouanda.

Ah, thought Ender. It isn’t as important to her to maintain the illusion of solidarity as it is to him.

“He’s here partly to speak Libo’s death,” said Miro. “And this was what happened right before.”

“We have no evidence of a causal relationship—”

“Let me discover causal relationships,” said Ender quietly. “Tell me what happened when the piggies got hungry.”

“It was the wives who were hungry, they said.” Miro ignored Ouanda’s anxiety. “You see, the males gather food for the females and the young, and so there wasn’t enough to go around. They kept hinting about how they would have to go to war. About how they would probably all die.” Miro shook his head. “They seemed almost happy about it.”

Ouanda stood up. “He hasn’t even promised. Hasn’t promised anything.”

“What do you want me to promise?” asked Ender.

“Not to—let any of this—”

“Not to tell on you?” asked Ender.

She nodded, though she plainly resented the childish phrase.

“I won’t promise any such thing,” said Ender. “My business is telling.”

She whirled on Miro. “You see!”

Miro in turn looked frightened. “You can’t tell. They’ll seal the gate. They’ll never let us through!”

“And you’d have to find another line of work?” asked Ender.

Ouanda looked at him with contempt. “Is that all you think xenology is? A job? That’s another intelligent species there in the woods. Ramen, not varelse, and they must be known.”

Ender did not answer, but his gaze did not leave her face.

“It’s like the Hive Queen and the Hegemon,” said Miro. “The piggies, they’re like the buggers. Only smaller, weaker, more primitive. We need to study them, yes, but that isn’t enough. You can study beasts and not care a bit when one of them drops dead or gets eaten up, but these are—they’re like us. We can’t just study their hunger, observe their destruction in war, we know them, we—”

“Love them,” said Ender.

“Yes!” said Ouanda defiantly.

“But if you left them, if you weren’t here at all, they wouldn’t disappear, would they?”

“No,” said Miro.

“I told you he’d be just like the committee,” said Ouanda.

Ender ignored her. “What would it cost them if you left?”

“It’s like—” Miro struggled for words. “It’s as if you could go back, to old Earth, back before the Xenocide, before star travel, and you said to them, You can travel among the stars, you can live on other worlds. And then showed them a thousand little miracles. Lights that turn on from switches. Steel. Even simple things—pots to hold water. Agriculture. They see you, they know what you are, they know that they can become what you are, do all the things that you do. What do they say—take this away, don’t show us, let us live out our nasty, short, brutish little lives, let evolution take its course? No. They say, Give us, teach us, help us.”

“And you say, I can’t, and then you go away.”

“It’s too late!” said Miro. “Don’t you understand? They’ve already seen the miracles! They’ve already seen us fly here. They’ve seen us be tall and strong, with magical tools and knowledge of things they never dreamed of. It’s too late to tell them good-bye and go. They know what is possible. And the longer we stay, the more they try to learn, and the more they learn, the more we see how learning helps them, and if you have any kind of compassion, if you understand that they’re—they’re—”

“Human.”

“Ramen, anyway. They’re our children, do you understand that?”

Ender smiled. “What man among you, if his son asks for bread, gives him a stone?”

Ouanda nodded. “That’s it. The Congressional rules say we have to give them stones. Even though we have so much bread.”

Ender stood up. “Well, let’s go on.”

Ouanda wasn’t ready. “You haven’t promised—”

“Have you read the Hive Queen and the Hegemon?”

“I have,” said Miro.

“Can you conceive of anyone choosing to call himself Speaker for the Dead, and then doing anything to harm these little ones, these pequeninos?”

Ouanda’s anxiety visibly eased, but her hostility was no less. “You’re slick, Senhor Andrew, Speaker for the Dead, you’re very clever. You remind him of the Hive Queen, and speak scripture to me out of the side of your mouth.”

“I speak to everyone in the language they understand,” said Ender. “That isn’t being slick. It’s being clear.”

“So you’ll do whatever you want.”

“As long as it doesn’t hurt the piggies.”

Ouanda sneered. “In your judgment.”

“I have no one else’s judgment to use.” He walked away from her, out of the shade of the spreading limbs of the tree, heading for the woods that waited atop the hill. They followed him, running to catch up.

“I have to tell you,” said Miro. “The piggies have been asking for you. They believe you’re the very same speaker who wrote the Hive Queen and the Hegemon.”

“They’ve read it?”

“They’ve pretty well incorporated it into their religion, actually. They treat the printout we gave them like a holy book. And now they claim the hive queen herself is talking to them.”

Ender glanced at him. “What does she say?” he asked.

“That you’re the real Speaker. And that you’ve got the hive queen with you. And that you’re going to bring her to live with them, and teach them all about metal and—it’s really crazy stuff. That’s the worst thing, they have such impossible expectations of you.”

It might be simple wish fulfillment on their part, as Miro obviously believed, but Ender knew that from her cocoon the hive queen had been talking to someone. “How do they say the hive queen talks to them?”

Ouanda was on the other side of him now. “Not to them, just to Rooter. And Rooter talks to them. It’s all part of their system of totems. We’ve always tried to play along with it, and act as if we believed it.”

“How condescending of you,” said Ender.

“It’s standard anthropological practice,” said Miro.

“You’re so busy pretending to believe them, there isn’t a chance in the world you could learn anything from them.”

For a moment they lagged behind, so that he actually entered the forest alone. Then they ran to catch up with him. “We’ve devoted our lives to learning about them!” Miro said.

Ender stopped. “Not from them.” They were just inside the trees; the spotty light through the leaves made their faces unreadable. But he knew what their faces would tell him. Annoyance, resentment, contempt—how dare this unqualified stranger question their professional attitude? This is how: “You’re cultural supremacists to the core. You’ll perform your Questionable Activities to help out the poor little piggies, but there isn’t a chance in the world you’ll notice when they have something to teach you.”

“Like what!” demanded Ouanda. “Like how to murder their greatest benefactor, torture him to death after he saved the lives of dozens of their wives and children?”

“So why do you tolerate it? Why are you here helping them after what they did?”

Miro slipped in between Ouanda and Ender. Protecting her, thought Ender, or else keeping her from revealing her weaknesses. “We’re professionals. We understand that cultural differences, which we can’t explain—”

“You understand that the piggies are animals, and you no more condemn them for murdering Libo and Pipo than you would condemn a cabra for chewing up capim.”

“That’s right,” said Miro.

Ender smiled. “And that’s why you’ll never learn anything from them. Because you think of them as animals.”

“We think of them as ramen!” said Ouanda, pushing in front of Miro. Obviously she was not interested in being protected.

“You treat them as if they were not responsible for their own actions,” said Ender. “Ramen are responsible for what they do.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Ouanda sarcastically. “Come in and put them on trial?”

“I’ll tell you this. The piggies have learned more about me from dead Rooter than you have learned from having me with you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? That you really are the original Speaker?” Miro obviously regarded it as the most ridiculous proposition imaginable. “And I suppose you really do have a bunch of buggers up there in your starship circling Lusitania, so you can bring them down and—”

“What it means,” interrupted Ouanda, “is that this amateur thinks he’s better qualified to deal with the piggies than we are. And as far as I’m concerned that’s proof that we should never have agreed to bring him to—”

At that moment Ouanda stopped talking, for a piggy had emerged from the underbrush. Smaller than Ender had expected. Its odor, while not wholly unpleasant, was certainly stronger than Jane’s computer simulation could ever imply. “Too late,” Ender murmured. “I think we’re already meeting.”

The piggy’s expression, if he had one, was completely unreadable to Ender. Miro and Ouanda, however, could understand something of his unspoken language. “He’s astonished,” Ouanda murmured. By telling Ender that she understood what he did not, she was putting him in his place. That was fine. Ender knew he was a novice here. He also hoped, however, that he had stirred them a little from their normal, unquestioned way of thinking. It was obvious that they were following in well-established patterns. If he was to get any real help from them, they would have to break out of those old patterns and reach new conclusions.

“Leaf-eater,” said Miro.

Leaf-eater did not take his eyes off Ender. “Speaker for the Dead,” he said.

“We brought him,” said Ouanda.

Leaf-eater turned and disappeared among the bushes.

“What does that mean?” Ender asked. “That he left?”

“You mean you haven’t already figured it out?” asked Ouanda.

“Whether you like it or not,” said Ender, “the piggies want to speak to me and I will speak to them. I think it will work out better if you help me understand what’s going on. Or don’t you understand it either?”

He watched them struggle with their annoyance. And then, to Ender’s relief, Miro made a decision. Instead of answering with hauteur, he spoke simply, mildly. “No. We don’t understand it. We’re still playing guessing games with the piggies. They ask us questions, we ask them questions, and to the best of our ability neither they nor we have ever deliberately revealed a thing. We don’t even ask them the questions whose answers we really want to know, for fear that they’ll learn too much about us from our questions.”

Ouanda was not willing to go along with Miro’s decision to cooperate. “We know more than you will in twenty years,” she said. “And you’re crazy if you think you can duplicate what we know in a ten-minute briefing in the forest.”

“I don’t need to duplicate what you know,” Ender said.

“You don’t think so?” asked Ouanda.

“Because I have you with me.” Ender smiled.

Miro understood and took it as a compliment. He smiled back. “Here’s what we know, and it isn’t much. Leaf-eater probably isn’t glad to see you. There’s a schism between him and a piggy named Human. When they thought we weren’t going to bring you, Leaf-eater was sure he had won. Now his victory is taken away. Maybe we saved Human’s life.”

“And cost Leaf-eater his?” asked Ender.

“Who knows? My gut feeling is that Human’s future is on the line, but Leaf-eater’s isn’t. Leaf-eater’s just trying to make Human fail, not succeed himself.”

“But you don’t know.”

“That’s the kind of thing we never ask about.” Miro smiled again. “And you’re right. It’s so much a habit that we usually don’t even notice that we’re not asking.”

Ouanda was angry. “He’s right! He hasn’t even seen us at work, and suddenly he’s a critic of—”

But Ender had no interest in watching them squabble. He strode off in the direction Leaf-eater had gone, and let them follow as they would. And, of course, they did, leaving their argument for later. As soon as Ender knew they were walking with him, he began to question them again. “These Questionable Activities you’ve carried out,” he said as he walked. “You introduced new food into their diet?”

“We taught them how to eat the merdona root,” said Ouanda. She was crisp and businesslike, but at least she was speaking to him. She wasn’t going to let her anger keep her from being part of what was obviously going to be a crucial meeting with the piggies. “How to nullify the cyanide content by soaking it and drying it in the sun. That was the short-term solution.”

“The long-term solution was some of Mother’s cast-off amaranth adaptations,” said Miro. “She made a batch of amaranth that was so well-adapted to Lusitania that it wasn’t very good for humans. Too much Lusitanian protein structure, not enough Earthborn. But that sounded about right for the piggies. I got Ela to give me some of the cast-off specimens, without letting her know it was important.”

Don’t kid yourself about what Ela does and doesn’t know, Ender said silently.

“Libo gave it to them, taught them how to plant it. Then how to grind it, make flour, turn it into bread. Nasty-tasting stuff, but it gave them a diet directly under their control for the first time ever. They’ve been fat and sassy ever since.”

Ouanda’s voice was bitter. “But they killed Father right after the first loaves were taken to the wives.”

Ender walked in silence for a few moments, trying to make sense of this. The piggies killed Libo immediately after he saved them from starvation? Unthinkable, and yet it happened. How could such a society evolve, killing those who contributed most to its survival? They should do the opposite—they should reward the valuable ones by enhancing their opportunity to reproduce. That’s how communities improve their chances of surviving as a group. How could the piggies possibly survive, murdering those who contribute most to their survival?

And yet there were human precedents. These children, Miro and Ouanda, with the Questionable Activities—they were better and wiser, in the long run, than the Starways committee that made the rules. But if they were caught, they would be taken from their homes to another world—already a death sentence, in a way, since everyone they knew would be dead before they could ever return—and they would be tried and punished, probably imprisoned. Neither their ideas nor their genes would propagate, and society would be impoverished by it.

Still, just because humans did it, too, did not make it sensible. Besides, the arrest and imprisonment of Miro and Ouanda, if it ever happened, would make sense if you viewed humans as a single community, and the piggies as their enemies; if you thought that anything that helped the piggies survive was somehow a menace to humanity. Then the punishment of people who enhanced the piggies’ culture would be designed, not to protect the piggies, but to keep the piggies from developing.

At that moment Ender saw clearly that the rules governing human contact with the piggies did not really function to protect the piggies at all. They functioned to guarantee human superiority and power. From that point of view, by performing their Questionable Activities, Miro and Ouanda were traitors to the self-interest of their own species.

“Renegades,” he said aloud.

“What?” said Miro. “What did you say?”

“Renegades. Those who have denied their own people, and claimed the enemy as their own.”

“Ah,” said Miro.

“We’re not,” said Ouanda.

“Yes we are,” said Miro.

“I haven’t denied my humanity!”

“The way Bishop Peregrino defines it, we denied our humanity long ago,” said Miro.

“But the way I define it—” she began.

“The way you define it,” said Ender, “the piggies are also human. That’s why you’re a renegade.”

“I thought you said we treated the piggies like animals!” Ouanda said.

“When you don’t hold them accountable, when you don’t ask them direct questions, when you try to deceive them, then you treat them like animals.”

“In other words,” said Miro, “when we do follow the committee rules.”

“Yes,” said Ouanda, “yes, that’s right, we are renegades.”

“And you?” said Miro. “Why are you a renegade?”

“Oh, the human race kicked me out a long time ago. That’s how I got to be a speaker for the dead.”

With that they arrived at the piggies’ clearing.

Mother wasn’t at dinner and neither was Miro. That was fine with Ela. When either one of them was there, Ela was stripped of her authority; she couldn’t keep control over the younger children. And yet neither Miro nor Mother took Ela’s place, either. Nobody obeyed Ela and nobody else tried to keep order. So it was quieter, easier when they stayed away.

Not that the little ones were particularly well-behaved even now. They just resisted her less. She only had to yell at Grego a couple of times to keep him from poking and kicking Quara under the table. And today both Quim and Olhado were keeping to themselves. None of the normal bickering.

Until the meal was over.

Quim leaned back in his chair and smiled maliciously at Olhado. “So you’re the one who taught that spy how to get into Mother’s files.”

Olhado turned to Ela. “You left Quim’s face open again, Ela. You’ve got to learn to be tidier.” It was Olhado’s way of appealing, through humor, for Ela’s intervention.

Quim did not want Olhado to have any help. “Ela’s not on your side this time, Olhado. Nobody’s on your side. You helped that sneaking spy get into Mother’s files, and that makes you as guilty as he is. He’s the devil’s servant, and so are you.”

Ela saw the fury in Olhado’s body; she had a momentary image in her mind of Olhado flinging his plate at Quim. But the moment passed. Olhado calmed himself. “I’m sorry,” Olhado said. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

He was giving in to Quim. He was admitting Quim was right.

“I hope,” said Ela, “that you mean that you’re sorry that you didn’t mean to do it. I hope you aren’t apologizing for helping the Speaker for the Dead.”

“Of course he’s apologizing for helping the spy,” said Quim.

“Because,” said Ela, “we should all help Speaker all we can.”

Quim jumped to his feet, leaned across the table to shout in her face. “How can you say that! He was violating Mother’s privacy, he was finding out her secrets, he was—”

To her surprise Ela found herself also on her feet, shoving him back across the table, shouting back at him, and louder. “Mother’s secrets are the cause of half the poison in this house! Mother’s secrets are what’s making us all sick, including her! So maybe the only way to make things right here is to steal all her secrets and get them out in the open where we can kill them!” She stopped shouting. Both Quim and Olhado stood before her, pressed against the far wall as if her words were bullets and they were being executed. Quietly, intensely, Ela went on. “As far as I’m concerned, the Speaker for the Dead is the only chance we have to become a family again. And Mother’s secrets are the only barrier standing in his way. So today I told him everything I knew about what’s in Mother’s files, because I want to give him every shred of truth that I can find.”

“Then you’re the worst traitor of all,” said Quim. His voice was trembling. He was about to cry.

“I say that helping the Speaker for the Dead is an act of loyalty,” Ela answered. “The only real treason is obeying Mother, because what she wants, what she has worked for all her life, is her own self-destruction and the destruction of this family.”

To Ela’s surprise, it was not Quim but Olhado who wept. His tear glands did not function, of course, having been removed when his eyes were installed. So there was no moistening of his eyes to warn of the onset of crying. Instead he doubled over with a sob, then sank down along the wall until he sat on the floor, his head between his knees, sobbing and sobbing. Ela understood why. Because she had told him that his love for the Speaker was not disloyal, that he had not sinned, and he believed her when she told him that, he knew that it was true.

Then she looked up from Olhado to see Mother standing in the doorway. Ela felt herself go weak inside, trembling at the thought of what Mother must have overheard.

But Mother did not seem angry. Just a little sad, and very tired. She was looking at Olhado.

Quim’s outrage found his voice. “Did you hear what Ela was saying?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Mother, never taking her eyes from Olhado. “And for all I know she might be right.”

Ela was no less unnerved than Quim.

“Go to your rooms, children,” Mother said quietly. “I need to talk to Olhado.”

Ela beckoned to Grego and Quara, who slid off their chairs and scurried to Ela’s side, eyes wide with awe at the unusual goings-on. After all, even Father had never been able to make Olhado cry. She led them out of the kitchen, back to their bedroom. She heard Quim walk down the hall and go into his own room, slam the door, and hurl himself on his bed. And in the kitchen Olhado’s sobs faded, calmed, ended as Mother, for the first time since he lost his eyes, held him in her arms and comforted him, shedding her own silent tears into his hair as she rocked him back and forth.

Miro did not know what to make of the Speaker for the Dead. Somehow he had always imagined a Speaker to be very much like a priest—or rather, like a priest was supposed to be. Quiet, contemplative, withdrawn from the world, carefully leaving action and decision to others. Miro had expected him to be wise.

He had not expected him to be so intrusive, so dangerous. Yes, he was wise, all right, he kept seeing past pretense, kept saying or doing outrageous things that were, when you thought about it, exactly right. It was as if he were so familiar with the human mind that he could see, right on your face, the desires so deep, the truths so well-disguised that you didn’t even know yourself that you had them in you.

How many times had Miro stood with Ouanda just like this, watching as Libo handled the piggies? But always with Libo they had understood what he was doing; they knew his technique, knew his purpose. The Speaker, however, followed lines of thought that were completely alien to Miro. Even though he wore a human shape, it made Miro wonder if Ender was really a framling—he could be as baffling as the piggies. He was as much a ramen as they were, alien but still not animal.

What did the Speaker notice? What did he see? The bow that Arrow carried? The sun-dried pot in which merdona root soaked and stank? How many of the Questionable Activities did he recognize, and how many did he think were native practices?

The piggies spread out the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. “You,” said Arrow, “you wrote this?”

“Yes,” said the Speaker for the Dead.

Miro looked at Ouanda. Her eyes danced with vindication. So the Speaker is a liar.

Human interrupted. “The other two, Miro and Ouanda, they think you’re a liar.”

Miro immediately looked at the Speaker, but he wasn’t glancing at them. “Of course they do,” he said. “It never occurred to them that Rooter might have told you the truth.”

The Speaker’s calm words disturbed Miro. Could it be true? After all, people who traveled between star systems skipped decades, often centuries in getting from one system to another. Sometimes as much as half a millennium. It wouldn’t take all that many voyages for a person to survive three thousand years. But that would be too incredible a coincidence, for the original Speaker for the Dead to come here. Except that the original Speaker for the Dead was the one who had written the Hive Queen and the Hegemon; he would be interested in the first race of ramen since the buggers. I don’t believe it, Miro told himself, but he had to admit the possibility that it might just be true.

“Why are they so stupid?” asked Human. “Not to know the truth when they hear it?”

“They aren’t stupid,” said the Speaker. “This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe, and those we never think to question. They never thought to question the idea that the original Speaker for the Dead died three thousand years ago, even though they know how star travel prolongs life.”

“But we told them.”

“No—you told them that the hive queen told Rooter that I wrote this book.”

“That’s why they should have known it was true,” said Human. “Rooter is wise, he’s a father; he would never make a mistake.”

Miro did not smile, but he wanted to. The Speaker thought he was so clever, but now here he was, where all the important questions ended, frustrated by the piggies’ insistence that their totem trees could talk to them.

“Ah,” said Speaker. “There’s so much that we don’t understand. And so much that you don’t understand. We should tell each other more.”

Human sat down beside Arrow, sharing the position of honor with him. Arrow gave no sign of minding. “Speaker for the Dead,” said Human, “will you bring the hive queen to us?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” said the Speaker.

Again Miro looked at Ouanda. Was the Speaker insane, hinting that he could deliver what could not be delivered?

Then he remembered what the Speaker had said about questioning all our beliefs except the ones we really believed. Miro had always taken for granted what everyone knew—that all the buggers had been destroyed. But what if a hive queen had survived? What if that was how the Speaker for the Dead had been able to write his book, because he had a bugger to talk to? It was unlikely in the extreme, but it was not impossible. Miro didn’t know for sure that the last bugger had been killed. He only knew that everybody believed it, and that no one in three thousand years had produced a shred of evidence to the contrary.

But even if it was true, how could Human have known it? The simplest explanation was that the piggies had incorporated the powerful story of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon into their religion, and were unable to grasp the idea that there were many speakers for the dead, and none of them was the author of the book; that all the buggers were dead, and no hive queen could ever come. That was the simplest explanation, the one easiest to accept. Any other explanation would force him to admit the possibility that Rooter’s totem tree somehow talked to the piggies.

“What will make you decide?” said Human. “We give gifts to the wives, to win their honor, but you are the wisest of all humans, and we have nothing that you need.”

“You have many things that I need,” said Speaker.

“What? Can’t you make better pots than these? Truer arrows? The cape I wear is made from cabra wool—but your clothing is finer.”

“I don’t need things like that,” said Speaker. “What I need are true stories.”

Human leaned closer, then let his body become rigid in excitement, in anticipation. “O Speaker!” he said, and his voice was powerful with the importance of his words. “Will you add our story to the Hive Queen and the Hegemon?”

“I don’t know your story,” said the Speaker.

“Ask us! Ask us anything!”

“How can I tell your story? I only tell the stories of the dead.”

“We are dead!” shouted Human. Miro had never seen him so agitated. “We are being murdered every day. Humans are filling up all the worlds. The ships travel through the black of night from star to star to star, filling up every empty place. Here we are, on our one little world, watching the sky fill up with humans. The humans build their stupid fence to keep us out, but that is nothing. The sky is our fence!” Human leapt upward—startlingly high, for his legs were powerful. “Look how the fence throws me back down to the ground!”

He ran at the nearest tree, bounded up the trunk, higher than Miro had ever seen him climb; he shinnied out on a limb and threw himself upward into the air. He hung there for an agonizing moment at the apex of his leap; then gravity flung him downward onto the hard ground.

Miro could hear the breath thrust out of him by the force of the blow. The Speaker immediately rushed to Human; Miro was close behind. Human wasn’t breathing.

“Is he dead?” asked Ouanda behind him.

“No!” cried a piggy in the Males’ Language. “You can’t die! No, no, no!” Miro looked; to his surprise, it was Leaf-eater. “You can’t die!”

Then Human reached up a feeble hand and touched the Speaker’s face. He inhaled, a deep gasp. And then spoke, “You see, Speaker? I would die to climb the wall that keeps us from the stars.”

In all the years that Miro had known the piggies, in all the years before, they had never once spoken of star travel, never once asked about it. Yet now Miro realized that all the questions they did ask were oriented toward discovering the secret of starflight. The xenologers had never realized that because they knew—knew without questioning—that the piggies were so remote from the level of culture that could build starships that it would be a thousand years before such a thing could possibly be in their reach. But their craving for knowledge about metal, about motors, about flying above the ground, it was all their way of trying to find the secret of starflight.

Human slowly got to his feet, holding the Speaker’s hands. Miro realized that in all the years he had known the piggies, never once had a piggy taken him by the hand. He felt a deep regret. And the sharp pain of jealousy.

Now that Human was clearly not injured, the other piggies crowded close around the Speaker. They did not jostle, but they wanted to be near.

“Rooter says the hive queen knows how to build starships,” said Arrow.

“Rooter says the hive queen will teach us everything,” said Cups. “Metal, fire made from rocks, houses made from black water, everything.”

Speaker raised his hands, fended off their babbling. “If you were all very thirsty, and saw that I had water, you’d all ask me for a drink. But what if I knew that the water I had was poisoned?”

“There is no poison in the ships that fly to the stars,” said Human.

“There are many paths to starflight,” said the Speaker. “Some are better than others. I’ll give you everything I can that won’t destroy you.”

“The hive queen promises!” said Human.

“And so do I.”

Human lunged forward, grabbed the Speaker by the hair and ears, and pulled him face to face. Miro had never seen such an act of violence; it was what he had dreaded, the decision to murder—

“If we are ramen,” shouted Human into the Speaker’s face, “then it is ours to decide, not yours! And if we are varelse, then you might as well kill us all right now, the way you killed all the hive queen’s sisters!”

Miro was stunned. It was one thing for the piggies to decide this was the Speaker who wrote the book. But how could they reach the unbelievable conclusion that he was somehow guilty of the Xenocide? Who did they think he was, the monster Ender?

And yet there sat the Speaker for the Dead, tears running down his cheeks, his eyes closed, as if Human’s accusation had the force of truth.

Human turned his head to speak to Miro. “What is this water?” he whispered. Then he touched the Speaker’s tears.

“It’s how we show pain or grief or suffering,” Miro answered.

Mandachuva suddenly cried out, a hideous cry that Miro had never heard before, like an animal dying.

“That is how we show pain,” whispered Human.

“Ah! Ah!” cried Mandachuva. “I have seen that water before! In the eyes of Libo and Pipo I saw that water!”

One by one, and then all at once, all the other piggies took up the same cry. Miro was terrified, awed, excited all at once. He had no idea what it meant, but the piggies were showing emotions that they had concealed from the xenologers for forty-seven years.

“Are they grieving for Papa?” whispered Ouanda. Her eyes, too, glistened with excitement, and her hair was matted with the sweat of fear.

Miro said it the moment it occurred to him: “They didn’t know until this moment that Pipo and Libo were crying when they died.”

Miro had no idea what thoughts then went through Ouanda’s head; he only knew that she turned away, stumbled a few steps, fell to her hands and knees, and wept bitterly.

All in all, the coming of the Speaker had certainly stirred things up.

Miro knelt beside the Speaker, whose head was now bowed, his chin pressed against his chest. “Speaker,” Miro said. “Como pode ser? How can it be, that you are the first Speaker, and yet you are also Ender? Não pode ser.”

“She told them more than I ever thought she would,” he whispered.

“But the Speaker for the Dead, the one who wrote this book, he’s the wisest man who lived in the age of flight among the stars. While Ender was a murderer, he killed a whole people, a beautiful race of ramen that could have taught us everything—”

“Both human, though,” whispered the Speaker.

Human was near them now, and he spoke a couplet from the Hegemon: “Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand.”

“Human,” said the Speaker, “tell your people not to grieve for what they did in ignorance.”

“It was a terrible thing,” said Human. “It was our greatest gift.”

“Tell your people to be quiet, and listen to me.”

Human shouted a few words, not in the Males’ Language, but in the Wives’ Language, the language of authority. They fell silent, then sat to hear what Speaker would say.

“I’ll do everything I can,” said the Speaker, “but first I have to know you, or how can I tell your story? I have to know you, or how can I know whether the drink is poisonous or not? And the hardest problem of all will still remain. The human race is free to love the buggers because they think the buggers all are dead. You are still alive, and so they’re still afraid of you.”

Human stood among them and gestured toward his body, as if it were a weak and feeble thing. “Of us!”

“They’re afraid of the same thing you fear, when you look up and see the stars fill up with humans. They’re afraid that someday they’ll come to a world and find that you have got there first.”

“We don’t want to be there first,” said Human. “We want to be there too.”

“Then give me time,” said the Speaker. “Teach me who you are, so that I can teach them.”

“Anything,” said Human. He looked around at the others. “We’ll teach you anything.”

Leaf-eater stood up. He spoke in the Males’ Language, but Miro understood him. “Some things aren’t yours to teach.”

Human answered him sharply, and in Stark. “What Pipo and Libo and Ouanda and Miro taught us wasn’t theirs to teach, either. But they taught us.”

“Their foolishness doesn’t have to be our foolishness,” Leaf-eater still spoke in Males’ Language.

“Nor does their wisdom necessarily apply to us,” Human retorted.

Then Leaf-eater said something in Tree Language that Miro could not understand. Human made no answer, and Leaf-eater walked away.

As he left, Ouanda returned, her eyes red from crying.

Human turned back to the Speaker. “What do you want to know?” he asked. “We’ll tell you, we’ll show you, if we can.”

Speaker in turn looked at Miro and Ouanda. “What should I ask them? I know so little that I don’t know what we need to know.”

Miro looked at Ouanda.

“You have no stone or metal tools,” she said. “But your house is made of wood, and so are your bows and arrows.”

Human stood, waiting. The silence lengthened. “But what is your question?” Human finally said.

How could he have missed the connection? Miro thought.

“We humans,” said Speaker, “use tools of stone or metal to cut down trees, when we want to shape them into houses or arrows or clubs like the ones I see some of you carrying.”

It took a moment for the Speaker’s words to sink in. Then, suddenly, all the piggies were on their feet. They began running around madly, purposelessly, sometimes bumping into each other or into trees or the log houses. Most of them were silent, but now and then one of them would wail, exactly as they had cried out a few minutes ago. It was eerie, the almost silent insanity of the piggies, as if they had suddenly lost control of their bodies. All the years of careful noncommunication, refraining from telling the piggies anything, and now Speaker breached that policy and the result was this madness.

Human emerged from the chaos and threw himself to the ground in front of Speaker. “O Speaker!” he cried loudly. “Promise that you’ll never let them cut my father Rooter with their stone and metal tools! If you want to murder someone, there are ancient brothers who will give themselves, or I will gladly die, but don’t let them kill my father!”

“Or my father!” cried the other piggies. “Or mine!”

“We would never have planted Rooter so close to the fence,” said Mandachuva, “if we had known you were—were varelse.”

Speaker raised his hands again. “Has any human cut a tree in Lusitania? Never. The law here forbids it. You have nothing to fear from us.”

There was a silence as the piggies became still. Finally Human picked himself up from the ground. “You’ve made us fear humans all the more,” he said to Speaker. “I wish you had never come to our forest.”

Ouanda’s voice rang out above his. “How can you say that after the way you murdered my father!”

Human looked at her with astonishment, unable to answer. Miro put his arm around Ouanda’s shoulders. And the Speaker for the Dead spoke into the silence. “You promised me that you’d answer all my questions. I ask you now: How do you build a house made of wood, and the bow and arrows that this one carries, and those clubs? We’ve told you the only way we know; you tell me another way, the way you do it.”

“The brother gives himself,” said Human. “I told you. We tell the ancient brother of our need, and we show him the shape, and he gives himself.”

“Can we see how it’s done?” said Ender.

Human looked around at the other piggies. “You want us to ask a brother to give himself, just so you can see it? We don’t need a new house, not for years yet, and we have all the arrows we need—”

“Show him!”

Miro turned, as the others also turned, to see Leaf-eater re-emerging from the forest. He walked purposefully into the middle of the clearing; he did not look at them, and he spoke as if he were a herald, a town crier, not caring whether anyone was listening to him or not. He spoke in the Wives’ Language, and Miro could understand only bits and pieces.

“What is he saying?” whispered the Speaker.

Miro, still kneeling beside him, translated as best he could. “He went to the wives, apparently, and they said to do whatever you asked. But it isn’t that simple, he’s telling them that—I don’t know these words—something about all of them dying. Something about brothers dying, anyway. Look at them—they aren’t afraid, any of them.”

“I don’t know what their fear looks like,” said Speaker. “I don’t know these people at all.”

“I don’t either,” said Miro. “I’ve got to hand it to you—you’ve caused more excitement here in half an hour than I’ve seen in years of coming here.”

“It’s a gift I was born with,” said the Speaker. “I’ll make you a bargain. I won’t tell anybody about your Questionable Activities. And you don’t tell anybody who I am.”

“That’s easy,” said Miro. “I don’t believe it anyway.”

Leaf-eater’s speech ended. He immediately padded to the house and went inside.

“We’ll ask for the gift of an ancient brother,” said Human. “The wives have said so.”

So it was that Miro stood with his arm around Ouanda, and the Speaker standing at his other side, as the piggies performed a miracle far more convincing than any of the ones that had won old Gusto and Cida their title Os Venerados.

The piggies gathered in a circle around a thick old tree at the clearing’s edge. Then, one by one, each piggy shimmied up the tree and began beating on it with a club. Soon they were all in the tree, singing and pounding out complex rhythms. “Father Tongue,” Ouanda whispered.

After only a few minutes of this the tree tilted noticeably. Immediately about half the piggies jumped down and began pushing the tree so it would fall into the open ground of the clearing. The rest began beating all the more furiously and singing all the louder.

One by one the great branches of the tree began to fall off. Immediately piggies ran out and picked them up, dragged them away from the area where the tree was meant to fall. Human carried one to the Speaker, who took it carefully, and showed it to Miro and Ouanda. The raw end, where it had been attached to the tree, was absolutely smooth. It wasn’t flat—the surface undulated slightly along an oblique angle. But there was no raggedness to it, no leaking sap, nothing to imply the slightest violence in its separation from the tree. Miro touched his finger to it, and it was cold and smooth as marble.

Finally the tree was a single straight trunk, nude and majestic; the pale patches where branches once had grown were brightly lit by the afternoon sun. The singing reached a climax, then stopped. The tree tilted and then began a smooth and graceful fall to the earth. The ground shook and thundered when it struck, and then all was still.

Human walked to the fallen tree and began to stroke its surface, singing softly. The bark split gradually under his hands; the crack extended itself up and down the length of the tree until the bark was split completely in half. Then many piggies took hold of it and prised it from the trunk; it came away on one side and the other, in two continuous sheets of bark. The bark was carried to the side.

“Have you ever seen them use the bark?” Speaker asked Miro.

Miro shook his head. He had no words to say aloud.

Now Arrow stepped forward, singing softly. He drew his fingers up and down the trunk, as if tracing exactly the length and width of a single bow. Miro saw how lines appeared, how the naked wood creased, split, crumbled until only the bow remained, perfect and polished and smooth, lying in a long trench in the wood.

Other piggies came forward, drawing shapes on the trunk and singing. They came away with clubs, with bows and arrows, thin-bladed knives, and thousands of strands of thin basketwood. Finally, when half the trunk was dissipated, they all stepped back and sang together. The tree shivered and split into half a dozen long poles. The tree was entirely used up.

Human walked slowly forward and knelt by the poles, his hands gently resting on the nearest one. He tilted back his head and began to sing, a wordless melody that was the saddest sound that Miro had ever heard. The song went on and on, Human’s voice alone; only gradually did Miro realize that the other piggies were looking at him, waiting for something.

Finally Mandachuva came to him and spoke softly. “Please,” he said. “It’s only right that you should sing for the brother.”

“I don’t know how,” said Miro, feeling helpless and afraid.

“He gave his life,” said Mandachuva, “to answer your question.”

To answer my question and then raise a thousand more, Miro said silently. But he walked forward, knelt beside Human, curled his fingers around the same cold smooth pole that Human held, tilted back his head, and let his voice come out. At first weak and hesitant, unsure what melody to sing; but soon he understood the reason for the tuneless song, felt the death of the tree under his hands, and his voice became loud and strong, making agonizing disharmonies with Human’s voice that mourned the death of the tree and thanked it for its sacrifice and promised to use its death for the good of the tribe, for the good of the brothers and the wives and the children, so that all would live and thrive and prosper. That was the meaning of the song, and the meaning of the death of the tree, and when the song was finally over Miro bent until his forehead touched the wood and he said the words of extreme unction, the same words he had whispered over Libo’s corpse on the hillside five years ago.

15
SPEAKING

HUMAN: Why don’t any of the other humans ever come see us?

MIRO: We’re the only ones allowed to come through the gate.

HUMAN: Why don’t they just climb over the fence?

MIRO: Haven’t any of you ever touched the fence? (Human does not answer.) It’s very painful to touch the fence. To pass over the fence would be like every part of your body hurting as bad as possible, all at once.

HUMAN: That’s stupid. Isn’t there grass on both sides?

—Ouanda Quenhatta Figueira Mucumbi, Dialogue Transcripts, 103:0:1970:1:1:5

The sun was only an hour from the horizon when Mayor Bosquinha climbed the stairs to Bishop Peregrino’s private office in the Cathedral. Dom and Dona Cristães were already there, looking grave. Bishop Peregrino, however, looked pleased with himself. He always enjoyed it when all the political and religious leadership of Milagre was gathered under his roof. Never mind that Bosquinha was the one who called the meeting, and then offered to have it at the Cathedral because she was the one with the skimmer. Peregrino liked the feeling that he was somehow the master of Lusitania Colony. Well, by the end of this meeting it would be plain to them all that no one in this room was the master of anything.

Bosquinha greeted them all. She did not sit down in the offered chair, however. Instead she sat before the Bishop’s own terminal, logged in, and ran the program she had prepared. In the air above the terminal there appeared several layers of tiny cubes. The highest layer had only a few cubes; most of the layers had many, many more. More than half the layers, starting with the highest, were colored red; the rest were blue.

“Very pretty,” said Bishop Peregrino.

Bosquinha looked over at Dom Cristão. “Do you recognize the model?”

He shook his head. “But I think I know what this meeting is about.”

Dona Cristã leaned forward on her chair. “Is there any safe place where we can hide the things we want to keep?”

Bishop Peregrino’s expression of detached amusement vanished from his face. “I don’t know what this meeting is about.”

Bosquinha turned around on her stool to face him. “I was very young when I was appointed to be Governor of the new Lusitania Colony. It was a great honor to be chosen, a great trust. I had studied government of communities and social systems since my childhood, and I had done well in my short career in Oporto. What the committee apparently overlooked was the fact that I was already suspicious, deceptive, and chauvinistic.”

“These are virtues of yours that we have all come to admire,” said Bishop Peregrino.

Bosquinha smiled. “My chauvinism meant that as soon as Lusitania Colony was mine, I became more loyal to the interests of Lusitania than to the interests of the Hundred Worlds or Starways Congress. My deceptiveness led me to pretend to the committee that on the contrary, I had the best interests of Congress at heart at all times. And my suspicion led me to believe that Congress was not likely to give Lusitania anything remotely like independent and equal status among the Hundred Worlds.”

“Of course not,” said Bishop Peregrino. “We are a colony.”

“We are not a colony,” said Bosquinha. “We are an experiment. I examined our charter and license and all the Congressional Orders pertaining to us, and I discovered that the normal privacy laws did not apply to us. I discovered that the committee had the power of unlimited access to all the memory files of every person and institution on Lusitania.”

The Bishop began to look angry. “Do you mean that the committee has the right to look at the confidential files of the Church?”

“Ah,” said Bosquinha. “A fellow chauvinist.”

“The Church has some rights under the Starways Code.”

“Don’t be angry with me.”

“You never told me.”

“If I had told you, you would have protested, and they would have pretended to back down, and then I couldn’t have done what I did.”

“Which is?”

“This program. It monitors all ansible-initiated accesses to any files in Lusitania Colony.”

Dom Cristão chuckled. “You’re not supposed to do that.”

“I know. As I said, I have many secret vices. But my program never found any major intrusion—oh, a few files each time the piggies killed one of our xenologers, that was to be expected—but nothing major. Until four days ago.”

“When the Speaker for the Dead arrived,” said Bishop Peregrino.

Bosquinha was amused that the Bishop obviously regarded the Speaker’s arrival as such a landmark date that he instantly made such a connection. “Three days ago,” said Bosquinha, “a nondestructive scan was initiated by ansible. It followed an interesting pattern.” She turned to the terminal and changed the display. Now it showed accesses primarily in high-level areas, and limited to only one region of the display. “It accessed everything to do with the xenologers and xenobiologists of Milagre. It ignored all security routines as if they didn’t exist. Everything they discovered, and everything to do with their personal lives. And yes, Bishop Peregrino, I believed at the time and I believe today that this had to do with the Speaker.”

“Surely he has no authority with Starways Congress,” said the Bishop.

Dom Cristão nodded wisely. “San Angelo once wrote—in his private journals, which no one but the Children of the Mind ever read—”

The Bishop turned on him with glee. “So the Children of the Mind do have secret writings of San Angelo!”

“Not secret,” said Dona Cristã. “Merely boring. Anyone can read the journals, but we’re the only ones who bother.”

“What he wrote,” said Dom Cristão, “was that Speaker Andrew is older than we know. Older than Starways Congress, and in his own way perhaps more powerful.”

Bishop Peregrino snorted. “He’s a boy. Can’t be forty years old yet.”

“Your stupid rivalries are wasting time,” said Bosquinha sharply. “I called this meeting because of an emergency. As a courtesy to you, because I have already acted for the benefit of the government of Lusitania.”

The others fell silent.

Bosquinha returned the terminal to the original display. “This morning my program alerted me for a second time. Another systematic ansible access, only this time it was not the selective nondestructive access of three days ago. This time it is reading everything at data-transfer speed, which implies that all our files are being copied into offworld computers. Then the directories are rewritten so that a single ansible-initiated command will completely destroy every single file in our computer memories.”

Bosquinha could see that Bishop Peregrino was surprised—and the Children of the Mind were not.

“Why?” said Bishop Peregrino. “To destroy all our files—this is what you do to a nation or a world that is—in rebellion, that you wish to destroy, that you—”

“I see,” said Bosquinha to the Children of the Mind, “that you also were chauvinistic and suspicious.”

“Much more narrowly than you, I’m afraid,” said Dom Cristão. “But we also detected the intrusions. We of course copied all our records—at great expense—to the monasteries of the Children of the Mind on other worlds, and they will try to restore our files after they are stripped. However, if we are being treated as a rebellious colony, I doubt that such a restoration will be permitted. So we are also making paper copies of the most vital information. There is no hope of printing everything, but we think we may be able to print out enough to get by. So that our work isn’t utterly destroyed.”

“You knew this?” said the Bishop. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“Forgive me, Bishop Peregrino, but it did not occur to us that you would not have detected this yourselves.”

“And you also don’t believe we do any work that is important enough to be worth printing out to save!”

“Enough!” said Mayor Bosquinha. “Printouts can’t save more than a tiny percentage—there aren’t enough printers in Lusitania to make a dent in the problem. We couldn’t even maintain basic services. I don’t think we have more than an hour left before the copying is complete and they are able to wipe out our memory. But even if we began this morning, when the intrusion started, we could not have printed out more than a hundredth of one percent of the files that we access every day. Our fragility, our vulnerability is complete.”

“So we’re helpless,” said the Bishop.

“No. But I wanted to make clear to you the extremity of our situation, so that you would accept the only alternative. It will be very distasteful to you.”

“I have no doubt of that,” said Bishop Peregrino.

“An hour ago, as I was wrestling with this problem, trying to see if there was any class of files that might be immune to this treatment, I discovered that in fact there was one person whose files were being completely overlooked. At first I thought it was because he was a framling, but the reason is much more subtle than that. The Speaker for the Dead has no files in Lusitanian memory.”

“None? Impossible,” said Dona Cristão.

“He is invisible to Starways Congress. If they place an embargo on all data transfers to and from Lusitania, his files will still be accessible because the computers do not see his file accesses as data transfers. They are original storage—yet they are not in Lusitanian memory.”

“Are you suggesting,” said Bishop Peregrino, “that we transfer our most confidential and important files as messages to that—that unspeakable infidel?”

“I am telling you that I have already done exactly that. The transfer of the most vital and sensitive government files is almost complete. It was a high priority transfer, at local speeds, so it runs much faster than the Congressional copying. I am offering you a chance to make a similar transfer, using my highest priority so that it takes precedence over all other local computer usage. If you don’t want to do it, fine—I’ll use my priority to transfer the second tier of government files.”

“But he could look in our files,” said the Bishop.

“Yes, he could.”

Dom Cristão shook his head. “He won’t if we ask him not to.”

“You are naive as a child,” said Bishop Peregrino. “There would be nothing to compel him even to give the data back to us.”

Bosquinha nodded. “That’s true. He’ll have everything that’s vital to us, and he can keep it or return it as he wishes. But I believe, as Dom Cristão does, that he’s a good man who’ll help us in our time of need.”

Dona Cristã stood. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’d like to begin crucial transfers immediately.”

Bosquinha turned to the Bishop’s terminal and logged into her own high priority mode. “Just enter the classes of files that you want to send into Speaker Andrew’s message queue. I assume you already have them prioritized, since you were printing them out.”

“How long do we have?” asked Dom Cristão. Dona Cristã was already typing furiously.

“The time is here, at the top.” Bosquinha put her hand into the holographic display and touched the countdown numbers with her finger.

“Don’t bother transferring anything that we’ve already printed,” said Dom Cristão. “We can always type that back in. There’s precious little of it, anyway.”

Bosquinha turned to the Bishop. “I knew this would be difficult.”

The Bishop gave one derisive laugh. “Difficult.”

“I hope you’ll consider carefully before rejecting this—”

“Rejecting it!” said the Bishop. “Do you think I’m a fool? I may detest the pseudo-religion of these blasphemous speakers for the dead, but if this is the only way God has opened for us to preserve the vital records of the Church, then I’d be a poor servant of the Lord if I let pride stop me from using it. Our files aren’t prioritized yet, and it will take a few minutes, but I trust that the Children of the Mind will leave us enough time for our data transfers.”

“How much time will you need, do you think?” asked Dom Cristão.

“Not much. Ten minutes at the most, I’d think.”

Bosquinha was surprised, and pleasantly so. She had been afraid the Bishop would insist on copying all his files before allowing the Children of the Mind to go ahead—just one more attempt to assert the precedence of the bishopric over the monastery.

“Thank you,” Dom Cristão said, kissing the hand that Peregrino extended to him.

The Bishop looked at Bosquinha coldly. “You don’t need to look surprised, Mayor Bosquinha. The Children of the Mind work with the knowledge of the world, so they depend far more on the world’s machines. Mother Church works with things of the Spirit, so our use of public memory is merely clerical. As for the Bible—we are so old-fashioned and set in our ways that we still keep dozens of leatherbound paper copies in the Cathedral. Starways Congress can’t steal from us our copies of the word of God.” He smiled. Maliciously, of course. Bosquinha smiled back quite cheerfully.

“A small matter,” said Dom Cristão. “After our files are destroyed, and we copy them back into memory from the Speaker’s files, what is to stop Congress from doing it again? And again, and again?”

“That is the difficult decision,” said Bosquinha. “What we do depends on what Congress is trying to accomplish. Maybe they won’t actually destroy our files at all. Maybe they’ll immediately restore our most vital files after this demonstration of their power. Since I have no idea why they’re disciplining us, how can I guess how far this will go? If they leave us any way to remain loyal, then of course we must also remain vulnerable to further discipline.”

“But if, for some reason, they are determined to treat us like rebels?”

“Well, if bad came to worst, we could copy everything back into local memory and then—cut off the ansible.”

“God help us,” said Dona Cristã. “We would be utterly alone.”

Bishop Peregrino looked annoyed. “What an absurd idea, Sister Detestai o Pecado. Or do you think that Christ depends upon the ansible? That Congress has the power to silence the Holy Ghost?”

Dona Cristã blushed and returned to her work at the terminal.

The Bishop’s secretary handed him a paper with a list of files on it. “You can leave my personal correspondence off the list,” said the Bishop. “I’ve already sent my messages. We’ll let the Church decide which of my letters is worth preserving. They have no value to me.”

“The Bishop is ready,” said Dom Cristão. Immediately his wife arose from the terminal and the secretary took her place.

“By the way,” said Bosquinha, “I thought you’d want to know. The Speaker has announced that this evening, in the praça, he’ll speak the death of Marcos Maria Ribeira.” Bosquinha looked at her watch. “Very soon now, in fact.”

“Why,” said the Bishop acidly, “did you think that I would care?”

“I thought you might want to send a representative.”

“Thank you for telling us,” said Dom Cristão. “I think that I’ll attend. I’d like to hear a speaking by the man who spoke the death of San Angelo.” He turned to the Bishop. “I’ll report to you on what he says, if you’d like.”

The Bishop leaned back and smiled tightly. “Thank you, but one of my people will be in attendance.”

Bosquinha left the Bishop’s office and clattered down the stairs and out the Cathedral doors. She had to be back in her own rooms now, because whatever the Congress was planning, it would be Bosquinha who received their messages.

She had not discussed it with the religious leaders because it was really none of their business, but she knew perfectly well, at least in a general way, why Congress was doing this. The paragraphs that gave Congress the right to treat Lusitania like a rebellious colony were all tied to the rules dealing with contact with the piggies.

Obviously the xenologers had done something grossly wrong. Since Bosquinha had not known of any violations, it had to be something so big that its evidence showed up on the satellites, the only monitoring devices that reported directly to the committee without passing through Bosquinha’s hands. Bosquinha had tried to think of what Miro and Ouanda might have done—start a forest fire? Cut down trees? Led a war between the piggy tribes? Anything she thought of sounded absurd.

She tried to call them in to question them, but they were gone, of course. Through the gate, out into the forest to continue, no doubt, the same activities that had brought the possibility of destruction to Lusitania Colony. Bosquinha kept reminding herself that they were young, that it might all be some ridiculous juvenile mistake.

But they weren’t that young, and they were two of the brightest minds in a colony that contained many intelligent people. It was a very good thing that governments under the Starways Code were forbidden to own any instruments of punishment that might be used for torture. For the first time in her life, Bosquinha felt such fury that she might use such instruments, if she had them. I don’t know what you thought you were doing, Miro and Ouanda, and I don’t know what you did; but whatever your purpose might have been, this whole community will pay the price for it. And somehow, if there were any justice, I would make you pay it back.

Many people had said they wouldn’t come to any speaking—they were good Catholics, weren’t they? Hadn’t the Bishop told them that the Speaker spoke with Satan’s voice?

But other things were whispered, too, once the Speaker came. Rumors, mostly, but Milagre was a little place, where rumors were the sauce of a dry life; and rumors have no value unless they are believed. So word spread that Marcão’s little girl Quara, who had been silent since he died, was now so talkative that it got her in trouble in school. And Olhado, that ill-mannered boy with the repulsive metal eyes, it was said that he suddenly seemed cheerful and excited. Perhaps manic. Perhaps possessed. Rumors began to imply that somehow the Speaker had a healing touch, that he had the evil eye, that his blessings made you whole, his curses could kill you, his words could charm you into obedience. Not everybody heard this, of course, and not everybody who heard it believed it. But in the four days between the Speaker’s arrival and the evening of his speaking the death of Marcos Maria Ribeira, the community of Milagre decided, without any formal announcement, that they would come to the speaking and hear what the Speaker had to say, whether the Bishop said to stay away or not.

It was the Bishop’s own fault. From his vantage point, calling the Speaker satanic put Andrew Wiggin at the farthest extreme from himself and all good Catholics: The Speaker is the opposite of us. But to those who were not theologically sophisticated, while Satan was frightening and powerful, so was God. They understood well enough the continuum of good and evil that the Bishop referred to, but they were far more interested in the continuum of strong and weak—that was the one they lived with day by day. And on that continuum, they were weak, and God and Satan and the Bishop all were strong. The Bishop had elevated the Speaker to stand with him as a man of power. The people were thus prepared to believe the whispered hints of miracles.

So even though the announcement came only an hour before the speaking, the praça was full, and people gathered in the buildings and houses that fronted the praça, and crowded the grassy alleyways and streets. Mayor Bosquinha had—as the law required—provided the Speaker with the simple microphone that she used for the rare public meetings. People oriented themselves toward the platform where he would stand; then they looked around to see who was there. Everyone was there. Of course Marcão’s family. Of course the Mayor. But also Dom Cristão and Dona Cristã, and many a robed priest from the Cathedral. Dr. Navio, Pipo’s widow, old Conceição, the Archivist, Libo’s widow, Bruxinha, and her children. It was rumored that the Speaker also meant to speak Pipo’s and Libo’s deaths someday, too.

And finally, just as the Speaker stepped up onto the platform, the rumor swept the praça: Bishop Peregrino was here. Not in his vestments, but in the simple robes of a priest. Here himself, to hear the Speaker’s blasphemy! Many a citizen of Milagre felt a delicious thrill of anticipation. Would the Bishop rise up and miraculously strike down Satan? Would there be a battle here such as had not been seen outside the vision of the Apocalypse of St. John?

Then the Speaker stood before the microphone and waited for them to be still. He was fairly tall, youngish still, but his white skin made him look sickly compared to the thousand shades of brown of the Lusos. Ghostly. They fell silent, and he began to speak.

“He was known by three names. The official records have the first one: Marcos Maria Ribeira. And his official data. Born 1929. Died 1970. Worked in the steel foundry. Perfect safety record. Never arrested. A wife, six children. A model citizen, because he never did anything bad enough to go on the public record.”

Many who were listening felt a vague disquiet. They had expected oration. Instead the Speaker’s voice was nothing remarkable. And his words had none of the formality of religious speech. Plain, simple, almost conversational. Only a few of them noticed that its very simplicity made his voice, his speech utterly believable. He wasn’t telling the Truth, with trumpets; he was telling the truth, the story that you wouldn’t think to doubt because it’s taken for granted. Bishop Peregrino was one who noticed, and it made him uneasy. This Speaker would be a formidable enemy, one who could not be blasted down with fire from before the altar.

“The second name he had was Marcão. Big Marcos. Because he was a giant of a man. Reached his adult size early in his life. How old was he when he reached two meters? Eleven? Definitely by the time he was twelve. His size and strength made him valuable in the foundry, where the lots of steel are so small that much of the work is controlled directly by hand, and strength matters. People’s lives depended on Marcão’s strength.”

In the praça the men from the foundry nodded. They had all bragged to each other that they’d never talk to the framling atheist. Obviously one of them had, but now it felt good that the Speaker got it right, that he understood what they remembered of Marcão. Every one of them wished that he had been the one to tell about Marcão to the Speaker. They did not guess that the Speaker had not even tried to talk to them. After all these years, there were many things that Andrew Wiggin knew without asking.

“His third name was Cão. Dog.”

Ah, yes, thought the Lusos. This is what we’ve heard about speakers for the dead. They have no respect for the dead, no sense of decorum.

“That was the name you used for him when you heard that his wife, Novinha, had another black eye, walked with a limp, had stitches in her lip. He was an animal to do that to her.”

How dare he say that? The man’s dead! But under their anger the Lusos were uncomfortable for an entirely different reason. Almost all of them remembered saying or hearing exactly those words. The Speaker’s indiscretion was in repeating in public the words that they had used about Marcão when he was alive.

“Not that any of you liked Novinha. Not that cold woman who never gave any of you good morning. But she was smaller than he was, and she was the mother of his children, and when he beat her he deserved the name of Cão.”

They were embarrassed; they muttered to each other. Those sitting in the grass near Novinha glanced at her and glanced away, eager to see how she was reacting, painfully aware of the fact that the Speaker was right, that they didn’t like her, that they at once feared and pitied her.

“Tell me, is this the man you knew? Spent more hours in the bars than anybody, and yet never made any friends there, never the camaraderie of alcohol for him. You couldn’t even tell how much he had been drinking. He was surly and short-tempered before he had a drink, and surly and short-tempered just before he passed out—nobody could tell the difference. You never heard of him having a friend, and none of you was ever glad to see him come into a room. That’s the man you knew, most of you. Cão. Hardly a man at all.”

Yes, they thought. That was the man. Now the initial shock of his indecorum had faded. They were accustomed to the fact that the Speaker meant to soften nothing in his story. Yet they were still uncomfortable. For there was a note of irony, not in his voice, but inherent in his words. “Hardly a man at all,” he had said, but of course he was a man, and they were vaguely aware that while the Speaker understood what they thought of Marcão, he didn’t necessarily agree.

“A few others, the men from the foundry in Bairro das Fabricadoras, knew him as a strong arm they could trust. They knew he never said he could do more than he could do, and always did what he said he would do. You could count on him. So within the walls of the foundry he had their respect. But when you walked out the door you treated him like everybody else—ignored him, thought little of him.”

The irony was pronounced now. Though the Speaker gave no hint in his voice—still the simple, plain speech he began with—the men who worked with him felt it wordlessly inside themselves. We should not have ignored him as we did. If he had worth inside the foundry, then perhaps we should have valued him outside, too.

“Some of you also know something else that you never talk about much. You know that you gave him the name Cão long before he earned it. You were ten, eleven, twelve years old. Little boys. He grew so tall. It made you ashamed to be near him. And afraid, because he made you feel helpless.”

Dom Cristão murmured to his wife, “They came for gossip, and he gives them responsibility.”

“So you handled him the way human beings always handle things that are bigger than they are,” said the Speaker. “You banded together. Like hunters trying to bring down a mastodon. Like bullfighters trying to weaken a giant bull to prepare it for the kill. Pokes, taunts, teases. Keep him turning around. He can’t guess where the next blow is coming from. Prick him with barbs that stay under his skin. Weaken him with pain. Madden him. Because big as he is, you can make him do things. You can make him yell. You can make him run. You can make him cry. See? He’s weaker than you after all.”

Ela was angry. She had meant him to accuse Marcão, not excuse him. Just because he had a tough childhood didn’t give him the right to knock Mother down whenever he felt like it.

“There’s no blame in this. You were children then, and children are cruel without knowing better. You wouldn’t do that now. But now that I’ve reminded you, you can easily see an answer. You called him a dog, and so he became one. For the rest of his life. Hurting helpless people. Beating his wife. Speaking so cruelly and abusively to his son Miro that he drove the boy out of his house. He was acting out the way you treated him, becoming what you told him that he was.”

You’re a fool, thought Bishop Peregrino. If people only react to the way that others treat them, then nobody is responsible for anything. If your sins are not your own to choose, then how can you repent?

As if he heard the Bishop’s silent argument, the Speaker raised a hand and swept away his own words. “But the easy answer isn’t true. Your torments didn’t make him violent—they made him sullen. And when you grew out of tormenting him, he grew out of hating you. He wasn’t one to bear a grudge. His anger cooled and turned into suspicion. He knew you despised him; he learned to live without you. In peace.”

The Speaker paused a moment, and then gave voice to the question they silently were asking. “So how did he become the cruel man you knew him to be? Think a moment. Who was it who tasted his cruelty? His wife. His children. Some people beat their wife and children because they lust for power, but are too weak or stupid to win power in the world. A helpless wife and children, bound to such a man by need and custom and, bitterly enough, love, are the only victims he is strong enough to rule.”

Yes, thought Ela, stealing a glance at her mother. This is what I wanted. This is why I asked him to speak Father’s death.

“There are men like that,” said the Speaker, “but Marcos Ribeira wasn’t one of them. Think a moment. Did you ever hear of him striking any of his children? Ever? You who worked with him—did he ever try to force his will on you? Seem resentful when things didn’t go his way? Marcão was not a weak and evil man. He was a strong man. He didn’t want power. He wanted love. Not control. Loyalty.”

Bishop Peregrino smiled grimly, the way a duelist might salute a worthy opponent. You walk a twisted path, Speaker, circling around the truth, feinting at it. And when you strike, your aim will be deadly. These people came for entertainment, but they’re your targets; you will pierce them to the heart.

“Some of you remember an incident,” said the Speaker. “Marcos was maybe thirteen, and so were you. Taunting him on the grassy hillside behind the school. You attacked more viciously than usual. You threatened him with stones, whipped him with capim blades. You bloodied him a little, but he bore it. Tried to evade you. Asked you to stop. Then one of you struck him hard in the belly, and it hurt him more than you ever imagined, because even then he was already sick with the disease that finally killed him. He hadn’t yet become accustomed to his fragility and pain. It felt like death to him. He was cornered. You were killing him. So he struck at you.”

How did he know? thought half a dozen men. It was so long ago. Who told him how it was? It was out of hand, that’s all. We never meant anything, but when his arm swung out, his huge fist, like the kick of a cabra—he was going to hurt me—

“It could have been any one of you that fell to the ground. You knew then that he was even stronger than you feared. What terrified you most, though, was that you knew exactly the revenge that you deserved. So you called for help. And when the teachers came, what did they see? One little boy on the ground, crying, bleeding. One large man-sized child with a few scratches here and there, saying I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. And a half-dozen others saying, He just hit him. Started killing him for no reason. We tried to stop him but Cão is so big. He’s always picking on the little kids.”

Little Grego was caught up in the story. “Mentirosos!” he shouted. They were lying! Several people nearby chuckled. Quara shushed him.

“So many witnesses,” said the Speaker. “The teachers had no choice but to believe the accusation. Until one girl stepped forward and coldly informed them that she had seen it all. Marcos was acting to protect himself from a completely unwarranted, vicious, painful attack by a pack of boys who were acting far more like cães, like dogs, than Marcos Ribeira ever did. Her story was instantly accepted as the truth. After all, she was the daughter of Os Venerados.”

Grego looked at his mother with glowing eyes, then jumped up and announced to the people around him, “A mamãe o libertou!” Mama saved him! People laughed, turned around and looked at Novinha. But she held her face expressionless, refusing to acknowledge their momentary affection for her child. They looked away again, offended.

“Novinha,” said the Speaker. “Her cold manner and bright mind made her just as much an outcast among you as Marcão. None of you could think of a time when she had ever made a friendly gesture toward any of you. And here she was, saving Marcão. Well, you knew the truth. She wasn’t saving Marcão—she was preventing you from getting away with something.”

They nodded and smiled knowingly, those people whose overtures of friendship she had just rebuffed. That’s Dona Novinha, the Biologista, too good for any of the rest of us.

“Marcos didn’t see it that way. He had been called an animal so often that he almost believed it. Novinha showed him compassion, like a human being. A pretty girl, a brilliant child, the daughter of the holy Venerados, always aloof as a goddess, she had reached down and blessed him and granted his prayer. He worshipped her. Six years later he married her. Isn’t that a lovely story?”

Ela looked at Miro, who raised an eyebrow at her. “Almost makes you like the old bastard, doesn’t it?” said Miro dryly.

Suddenly, after a long pause, the Speaker’s voice erupted, louder than ever before. It startled them, awoke them. “Why did he come to hate her, to beat her, to despise their children? And why did she endure it, this strong-willed, brilliant woman? She could have stopped the marriage at any moment. The Church may not allow divorce, but there’s always desquite, and she wouldn’t be the first person in Milagre to quit her husband. She could have taken her suffering children and left him. But she stayed. The Mayor and the Bishop both suggested that she leave him. She told them they could go to hell.”

Many of the Lusos laughed; they could imagine tight-lipped Novinha snapping at the Bishop himself, facing down Bosquinha. They might not like Novinha much, but she was just about the only person in Milagre who could get away with thumbing her nose at authority.

The Bishop remembered the scene in his chambers more than a decade ago. She had not used exactly the words the Speaker quoted, but the effect was much the same. Yet he had been alone. He had told no one. Who was this Speaker, and how did he know so much about things he could not possibly have known?

When the laughter died, the Speaker went on. “There was a tie that bound them together in a marriage they hated. That tie was Marcão’s disease.”

His voice was softer now. The Lusos strained to hear.

“It shaped his life from the moment he was conceived. The genes his parents gave him combined in such a way that from the moment puberty began, the cells of his glands began a steady, relentless transformation into fatty tissues. Dr. Navio can tell you how it progresses better than I can. Marcão knew from childhood that he had this condition; his parents knew it before they died in the Descolada; Gusto and Cida knew it from their genetic examinations of all the humans of Lusitania. They were all dead. Only one other person knew it, the one who had inherited the xenobiological files. Novinha.”

Dr. Navio was puzzled. If she knew this before they married, she surely knew that most people who had his condition were sterile. Why would she have married him when for all she knew he had no chance of fathering children? Then he realized what he should have known before, that Marcão was not a rare exception to the pattern of the disease. There were no exceptions. Navio’s face reddened. What the Speaker was about to tell them was unspeakable.

“Novinha knew that Marcão was dying,” said the Speaker. “She also knew before she married him that he was absolutely and completely sterile.”

It took a moment for the meaning of this to sink in. Ela felt as if her organs were melting inside her body. She saw without turning her head that Miro had gone rigid, that his cheeks had paled.

Speaker went on despite the rising whispers from the audience. “I saw the genetic scans. Marcos Maria Ribeira never fathered a child. His wife had children, but they were not his, and he knew it, and she knew he knew it. It was part of the bargain that they made when they got married.”

The murmurs turned to muttering, the grumbles to complaints, and as the noise reached a climax, Quim leaped to his feet and shouted, screamed at the Speaker. “My mother is not an adulteress! I’ll kill you for calling her a whore!”

His last word hung in the silence. The Speaker did not answer. He only waited, not letting his gaze drop from Quim’s burning face. Until finally Quim realized that it was he, not the Speaker, whose voice had said the word that kept ringing in his ears. He faltered. He looked at his mother sitting beside him on the ground, but not rigidly now, slumped a little now, looking at her hands as they trembled in her lap. “Tell them, Mother,” Quim said. His voice sounded more pleading than he had intended.

She didn’t answer. Didn’t say a word, didn’t look at him. If he didn’t know better, he would think her trembling hands were a confession, that she was ashamed, as if what the Speaker said was the truth that God himself would tell if Quim were to ask him. He remembered Father Mateu explaining the tortures of hell: God spits on adulterers, they mock the power of creation that he shared with them, they haven’t enough goodness in them to be anything better than amoebas. Quim tasted bile in his mouth. What the Speaker said was true.

“Mamãe,” he said loudly, mockingly. “Quem fôde p’ra fazer-me?”

People gasped. Olhado jumped to his feet at once, his hands doubled in fists. Only then did Novinha react, reaching out a hand as if to restrain Olhado from hitting his brother. Quim hardly noticed that Olhado had leapt to Mother’s defense; all he could think of was the fact that Miro had not. Miro also knew that it was true.

Quim breathed deeply, then turned around, looking lost for a moment; then he threaded his way through the crowd. No one spoke to him, though everyone watched him go. If Novinha had denied the charge, they would have believed her, would have mobbed the Speaker for accusing Os Venerados’ daughter of such a sin. But she had not denied it. She had listened to her own son accuse her obscenely, and she said nothing. It was true. And now they listened in fascination. Few of them had any real concern. They just wanted to learn who had fathered Novinha’s children.

The Speaker quietly resumed his tale. “After her parents died and before her children were born, Novinha loved only two people. Pipo was her second father. Novinha anchored her life in him; for a few short years she had a taste of what it meant to have a family. Then he died, and Novinha believed that she had killed him.”

People sitting near Novinha’s family saw Quara kneel in front of Ela and ask her, “Why is Quim so angry?”

Ela answered softly. “Because Papai was not really our father.”

“Oh,” said Quara. “Is the Speaker our father now?” She sounded hopeful. Ela shushed her.

“The night Pipo died,” said the Speaker, “Novinha showed him something that she had discovered, something to do with the Descolada and the way it works with the plants and animals of Lusitania. Pipo saw more in her work than she did herself. He rushed to the forest where the piggies waited. Perhaps he told them what he had discovered. Perhaps they only guessed. But Novinha blamed herself for showing him a secret that the piggies would kill to keep.

“It was too late to undo what she had done. But she could keep it from happening again. So she sealed up all the files that had anything to do with the Descolada and what she had shown to Pipo that night. She knew who would want to see the files. It was Libo, the new Zenador. If Pipo had been her father, Libo had been her brother, and more than a brother. Hard as it was to bear Pipo’s death, Libo’s would be worse. He asked for the files. He demanded to see them. She told him she would never let him see them.

“They both knew exactly what that meant. If he ever married her, he could strip away the protection on those files. They loved each other desperately, they needed each other more than ever, but Novinha could never marry him. He would never promise not to read the files, and even if he made such a promise, he couldn’t keep it. He would surely see what his father saw. He would die.

“It was one thing to refuse to marry him. It was another thing to live without him. So she didn’t live without him. She made her bargain with Marcão. She would marry him under the law, but her real husband and the father of all her children would be, was, Libo.”

Bruxinha, Libo’s widow, rose shakily to her feet, tears streaming down her face, and wailed, “Mentira, mentira.” Lies, lies. But her weeping was not anger, it was grief. She was mourning the loss of her husband all over again. Three of her daughters helped her leave the praça.

Softly the Speaker continued while she left. “Libo knew that he was hurting his wife Bruxinha and their four daughters. He hated himself for what he had done. He tried to stay away. For months, sometimes years, he succeeded. Novinha also tried. She refused to see him, even to speak to him. She forbade her children to mention him. Then Libo would think that he was strong enough to see her without falling back into the old way. Novinha would be so lonely with her husband who could never measure up to Libo. They never pretended there was anything good about what they were doing. They just couldn’t live for long without it.”

Bruxinha heard this as she was led away. It was little comfort to her now, of course, but as Bishop Peregrino watched her go, he recognized that the Speaker was giving her a gift. She was the most innocent victim of his cruel truth, but he didn’t leave her with nothing but ashes. He was giving her a way to live with the knowledge of what her husband did. It was not your fault, he was telling her. Nothing you did could have prevented it. Your husband was the one who failed, not you. Blessed Virgin, prayed the Bishop silently, let Bruxinha hear what he says and believe it.

Libo’s widow was not the only one who cried. Many hundreds of the eyes that watched her go were also filled with tears. To discover Novinha was an adulteress was shocking but delicious: the steel-hearted woman had a flaw that made her no better than anyone else. But there was no pleasure in finding the same flaw in Libo. Everyone had loved him. His generosity, his kindness, his wisdom that they so admired, they didn’t want to know that it was all a mask.

So they were surprised when the Speaker reminded them that it was not Libo whose death he spoke today. “Why did Marcos Ribeira consent to this? Novinha thought it was because he wanted a wife and the illusion that he had children, to take away his shame in the community. It was partly that. Most of all, though, he married her because he loved her. He never really hoped that she would love him the way he loved her, because he worshipped her, she was a goddess, and he knew that he was diseased, filthy, an animal to be despised. He knew she could not worship him, or even love him. He hoped that she might someday feel some affection. That she might feel some—loyalty.”

The Speaker bowed his head a moment. The Lusos heard the words that he did not have to say: She never did.

“Each child that came,” said the Speaker, “was another proof to Marcos that he had failed. That the goddess still found him unworthy. Why? He was loyal. He had never hinted to any of his children that they were not his own. He never broke his promise to Novinha. Didn’t he deserve something from her? At times it was more than he could bear. He refused to accept her judgment. She was no goddess. Her children were all bastards. This is what he told himself when he lashed out at her, when he shouted at Miro.”

Miro heard his own name, but didn’t recognize it as anything to do with him. His connection with reality was more fragile than he ever had supposed, and today had given him too many shocks. The impossible magic with the piggies and the trees. Mother and Libo, lovers. Ouanda suddenly torn from being as close to him as his own body, his own self, she was now set back at one remove, like Ela, like Quara, another sister. His eyes did not focus on the grass; the Speaker’s voice was pure sound, he didn’t hear meanings in the words, only the terrible sound. Miro had called for that voice, had wanted it to speak Libo’s death. How could he have known that instead of a benevolent priest of a humanist religion he would get the original Speaker himself, with his penetrating mind and far too perfect understanding? He could not have known that beneath that empathic mask would be hiding Ender the destroyer, the mythic Lucifer of mankind’s greatest crime, determined to live up to his name, making a mockery of the life work of Pipo, Libo, Ouanda, and Miro himself by seeing in a single hour with the piggies what all the others had failed in almost fifty years to see, and then riving Ouanda from him with a single, merciless stroke from the blade of truth; that was the voice that Miro heard, the only certainty left to him, that relentless terrible voice. Miro clung to the sound of it, trying to hate it, yet failing, because he knew, could not deceive himself, he knew that Ender was a destroyer, but what he destroyed was illusion, and the illusion had to die. The truth about the piggies, the truth about ourselves. Somehow this ancient man is able to see the truth and it doesn’t blind his eyes or drive him mad. I must listen to this voice and let its power come to me so I, too, can stare at the light and not die.

“Novinha knew what she was. An adulteress, a hypocrite. She knew she was hurting Marcão, Libo, her children, Bruxinha. She knew she had killed Pipo. So she endured, even invited Marcão’s punishment. It was her penance. It was never penance enough. No matter how much Marcão might hate her, she hated herself much more.”

The Bishop nodded slowly. The Speaker had done a monstrous thing, to lay these secrets before the whole community. They should have been spoken in the confessional. Yet Peregrino had felt the power of it, the way the whole community was forced to discover these people that they thought they knew, and then discover them again, and then again; and each revision of the story forced them all to reconceive themselves as well, for they had been part of this story, too, had been touched by all the people a hundred, a thousand times, never understanding until now who it was they touched. It was a painful, fearful thing to go through, but in the end it had a curiously calming effect. The Bishop leaned to his secretary and whispered, “At least the gossips will get nothing from this—there aren’t any secrets left to tell.”

“All the people in this story suffered pain,” the Speaker said. “All of them sacrificed for the people they loved. All of them caused terrible pain to the people who loved them. And you—listening to me here today, you also caused pain. But remember this: Marcão’s life was tragic and cruel, but he could have ended his bargain with Novinha at any time. He chose to stay. He must have found some joy in it. And Novinha: She broke the laws of God that bind this community together. She has also borne her punishment. The Church asks for no penance as terrible as the one she imposed on herself. And if you’re inclined to think she might deserve some petty cruelty at your hands, keep this in mind: She suffered everything, did all this for one purpose: to keep the piggies from killing Libo.”

The words left ashes in their hearts.

Olhado stood and walked to his mother, knelt by her, put an arm around her shoulder. Ela sat beside her, but she was folded to the ground, weeping. Quara came and stood in front of her mother, staring at her with awe. And Grego buried his face in Novinha’s lap and wept. Those who were near enough could hear him crying, “Todo papai é morto. Não tenho nem papai.” All my papas are dead. I don’t have any papa.

Ouanda stood in the mouth of the alley where she had gone with her mother just before the speaking ended. She looked for Miro, but he was already gone.

Ender stood behind the platform, looking at Novinha’s family, wishing he could do something to ease their pain. There was always pain after a speaking, because a speaker for the dead did nothing to soften the truth. But only rarely had people lived such lives of deceit as Marcão, Libo, and Novinha; rarely were there so many shocks, so many bits of information that forced people to revise their conception of the people that they knew, the people that they loved. Ender knew from the faces that looked up at him as he spoke that he had caused great pain today. He had felt it all himself, as if they had passed their suffering to him. Bruxinha had been most surprised, but Ender knew she was not worst injured. That distinction belonged to Miro and Ouanda, who had thought they knew what the future would bring them. But Ender had also felt the pain that people felt before, and he knew that today’s new wounds would heal much faster than the old ones ever would have done. Novinha might not recognize it, but Ender had stripped from her a burden that was much too heavy for her to bear any longer.

“Speaker,” said Mayor Bosquinha.

“Mayor,” said Ender. He didn’t like talking to people after a speaking, but he was used to the fact that someone always insisted on talking to him. He forced a smile. “There were many more people here than I expected.”

“A momentary thing, for most of them,” said Bosquinha. “They’ll forget it by morning.”

Ender was annoyed that she was trivializing it. “Only if something monumental happens in the night,” he said.

“Yes. Well, that has been arranged.”

Only then did Ender realize that she was extremely upset, barely under control at all. He took her by the elbow and then cast an arm over her shoulder; she leaned gratefully.

“Speaker, I came to apologize. Your starship has been commandeered by Starways Congress. It has nothing to do with you. A crime was committed here, a crime so—terrible—that the criminals must be taken to the nearest world, Trondheim, for trial and punishment. Your ship.”

Ender reflected for a moment. “Miro and Ouanda.”

She turned her head, looked at him sharply. “You are not surprised.”

“I also won’t let them go.”

Bosquinha pulled herself away from him. “Won’t let them?”

“I have some idea what they’re charged with.”

“You’ve been here four days, and you already know something that even I never suspected?”

“Sometimes the government is the last to know.”

“Let me tell you why you will let them go, why we’ll all let them go to stand trial. Because Congress has stripped our files. The computer memory is empty except for the most rudimentary programs that control our power supply, our water, our sewer. Tomorrow no work can be done because we haven’t enough power to run any of the factories, to work in the mines, to power the tractors. I have been removed from office. I am now nothing more than the deputy chief of police, to see that the directives of the Lusitanian Evacuation Committee are carried out.”

“Evacuation?”

“The colony’s license has been revoked. They’re sending starships to take us all away. Every sign of human habitation here is to be removed. Even the gravestones that mark our dead.”

Ender tried to measure her response. He had not thought Bosquinha was the kind who would bow to mindless authority. “Do you intend to submit to this?”

“The power and water supplies are controlled by ansible. They also control the fence. They can shut us in here without power or water or sewers, and we can’t get out. Once Miro and Ouanda are aboard your starship, headed for Trondheim, they say that some of the restrictions will be relaxed.” She sighed. “Oh, Speaker, I’m afraid this isn’t a good time to be a tourist in Lusitania.”

“I’m not a tourist.” He didn’t bother telling her his suspicion that it might not be pure coincidence, Congress noticing the Questionable Activities when Ender happened to be there. “Were you able to save any of your files?”

Bosquinha sighed. “By imposing on you, I’m afraid. I noticed that all your files were maintained by ansible, offworld. We sent our most crucial files as messages to you.”

Ender laughed. “Good, that’s right, that was well done.”

“It doesn’t matter. We can’t get them back. Or, well, yes, we can, but they’ll notice it at once and then you’ll be in just as much trouble as the rest of us. And they’ll wipe out everything then.”

“Unless you sever the ansible connection immediately after copying all my files to local memory.”

“Then we really would be in rebellion. And for what?”

“For the chance to make Lusitania the best and most important of the Hundred Worlds.”

Bosquinha laughed. “I think they’ll regard us as important, but treason is hardly the way to be known as the best.”

“Please. Don’t do anything. Don’t arrest Miro and Ouanda. Wait for an hour and let me meet with you and anyone else who needs to be in on the decision.”

“The decision whether or not to rebel? I can’t think why you should be in on that decision, Speaker.”

“You’ll understand at the meeting. Please, this place is too important for the chance to be missed.”

“The chance for what?”

“To undo what Ender did in the Xenocide three thousand years ago.”

Bosquinha gave him a sharp-eyed look. “And here I thought you had just proved yourself to be nothing but a gossip-monger.”

She might have been joking. Or she might not. “If you think that what I just did was gossip-mongering, you’re too stupid to lead this community in anything.” He smiled.

Bosquinha spread her hands and shrugged. “Pois é,” she said. Of course. What else?

“Will you have the meeting?”

“I’ll call it. In the Bishop’s chambers.”

Ender winced.

“The Bishop won’t meet anywhere else,” she said, “and no decision to rebel will mean a thing if he doesn’t agree to it.” Bosquinha laid her hand on his chest. “He may not even let you into the Cathedral. You are the infidel.”

“But you’ll try.”

“I’ll try because of what you did tonight. Only a wise man could see my people so clearly in so short a time. Only a ruthless one would say it all out loud. Your virtue and your flaw—we need them both.”

Bosquinha turned and hurried away. Ender knew that she did not, in her inmost heart, want to comply with Starways Congress. It had been too sudden, too severe; they had preempted her authority as if she were guilty of a crime. To give in smacked of confession, and she knew she had done nothing wrong. She wanted to resist, wanted to find some plausible way to slap back at Congress and tell them to wait, to be calm. Or, if necessary, to tell them to drop dead. But she wasn’t a fool. She wouldn’t do anything to resist them unless she knew it would work and knew it would benefit her people. She was a good Governor, Ender knew. She would gladly sacrifice her pride, her reputation, her future for her people’s sake.

He was alone in the praça. Everyone had gone while Bosquinha talked to him. Ender felt as an old soldier must feel, walking over placid fields at the site of a long-ago battle, hearing the echoes of the carnage in the breeze across the rustling grass.

“Don’t let them sever the ansible connection.”

The voice in his ear startled him, but he knew it at once. “Jane,” he said.

“I can make them think you’ve cut off your ansible, but if you really do it then I won’t be able to help you.”

“Jane,” he said, “you did this, didn’t you! Why else would they notice what Libo and Miro and Ouanda have been doing if you didn’t call it to their attention?”

She didn’t answer.

“Jane, I’m sorry that I cut you off, I’ll never—”

He knew she knew what he would say; he didn’t have to finish sentences with her. But she didn’t answer.

“I’ll never turn off the—”

What good did it do to finish sentences that he knew she understood? She hadn’t forgiven him yet, that was all, or she would already be answering, telling him to stop wasting her time. Yet he couldn’t keep himself from trying one more time. “I missed you, Jane. I really missed you.”

Still she didn’t answer. She had said what she had to say, to keep the ansible connection alive, and that was all. For now. Ender didn’t mind waiting. It was enough to know that she was still there, listening. He wasn’t alone. Ender was surprised to find tears on his cheeks. Tears of relief, he decided. Catharsis. A speaking, a crisis, people’s lives in tatters, the future of the colony in doubt. And I cry in relief because an overblown computer program is speaking to me again.

Ela was waiting for him in his little house. Her eyes were red from crying. “Hello,” she said.

“Did I do what you wanted?” he asked.

“I never guessed,” she said. “He wasn’t our father, I should have known.”

“I can’t think how you could have.”

“What have I done? Calling you here to speak my father’s—Marcão’s death.” She began weeping again. “Mother’s secrets—I thought I knew what they were. I thought it was just her files—I thought she hated Libo.”

“All I did was open the windows and let in some air.”

“Tell that to Miro and Ouanda.”

“Think a moment, Ela. They would have found out eventually. The cruel thing was that they didn’t know for so many years. Now that they have the truth, they can find their own way out.”

“Like Mother did? Only this time even worse than adultery?”

Ender touched her hair, smoothed it. She accepted his touch, his consolation. He couldn’t remember if his father or mother had ever touched him with such a gesture. They must have. How else would he have learned it?

“Ela, will you help me?”

“Help you what? You’ve done your work, haven’t you?”

“This has nothing to do with speaking for the dead. I have to know, within the hour, how the Descolada works.”

“You’ll have to ask Mother—she’s the one who knows.”

“I don’t think she’d be glad to see me tonight.”

“I’m supposed to ask her? Good evening, Mamãe, you’ve just been revealed to all of Milagre as an adulteress who’s been lying to your children all our lives. So if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to ask you a couple of science questions.”

“Ela, it’s a matter of survival for Lusitania. Not to mention your brother Miro.” He reached over and turned to the terminal. “Log on,” he said.

She was puzzled, but she did it. The computer wouldn’t recognize her name. “I’ve been taken off.” She looked at him in alarm. “Why?”

“It’s not just you. It’s everybody.”

“It isn’t a breakdown,” she said. “Somebody stripped out the log-on file.”

“Starways Congress stripped all the local computer memory. Everything’s gone. We’re regarded as being in a state of rebellion. Miro and Ouanda are going to be arrested and sent to Trondheim for trial. Unless I can persuade the Bishop and Bosquinha to launch a real rebellion. Do you understand? If your mother doesn’t tell you what I need to know, Miro and Ouanda will both be sent twenty-two lightyears away. The penalty for treason is death. But even going to the trial is as bad as life imprisonment. We’ll all be dead or very very old before they get back.”

Ela looked blankly at the wall. “What do you need to know?”

“I need to know what the Committee will find when they open up her files. About how the Descolada works.”

“Yes,” said Ela. “For Miro’s sake she’ll do it.” She looked at him defiantly. “She does love us, you know. For one of her children, she’d talk to you herself.”

“Good,” said Ender. “It would be better if she came herself. To the Bishop’s chambers, in an hour.”

“Yes,” said Ela. For a moment she sat still. Then a synapse connected somewhere, and she stood up and hurried toward the door.

She stopped. She came back, embraced him, kissed him on the cheek. “I’m glad you told it all,” she said. “I’m glad to know it.”

He kissed her forehead and sent her on her way. When the door closed behind her, he sat down on his bed, then lay down and stared at the ceiling. He thought of Novinha, tried to imagine what she was feeling now. No matter how terrible it is, Novinha, your daughter is hurrying home to you right now, sure that despite the pain and humiliation you’re going through, you’ll forget yourself completely and do whatever it takes to save your son. I would trade you all your suffering, Novinha, for one child who trusted me like that.

16
THE FENCE

A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife’s adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. (There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine, a speaker for the dead, has told me of two other rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I’m going to tell you.)

The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. “Is there anyone here,” he says to them, “who has not desired another man’s wife, another woman’s husband?”

They murmur and say, “We all know the desire. But, Rabbi, none of us has acted on it.”

The rabbi says, “Then kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong.” He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, “Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he’ll know I am his loyal servant.”

So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.

Another rabbi, another city. He goes to her and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, “Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.”

The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they think, I may be like this woman, and I’ll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated.

As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground, the rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones.

“Nor am I without sin,” he says to the people. “But if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it.”

So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.

The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.

—San Angelo, Letters to an Incipient Heretic, trans. Amai a Tudomundo Para Que Deus Vos Ame Cristão, 103:72:54:2

Minha irmã. My sister. The words kept running through Miro’s head until he didn’t hear them anymore, they were part of the background: A Ouanda é minha irmã. She’s my sister. His feet carried him by habit from the praça to the playing fields and over the saddle of the hill. The crown of the higher peak held the Cathedral and the monastery, which always loomed over the Zenador’s Station, as if they were a fortress keeping watch over the gate. Did Libo walk this way as he went to meet my mother? Did they meet in the Xenobiologist’s Station? Or was it more discreet, rutting in the grass like hogs on the fazendas?

He stood at the door of the Zenador’s Station and tried to think of some reason to go inside. Nothing to do there. Hadn’t written a report on what happened today, but he didn’t know how to write it anyway. Magical powers, that’s what it was. The piggies sing to the trees and the trees split themselves into kindling. Much better than carpentry. The aboriginals are a good deal more sophisticated than previously supposed. Multiple uses for everything. Each tree is at once a totem, a grave marker, and a small lumber mill. Sister. There’s something I have to do but I can’t remember.

The piggies have the most sensible plan. Live as brothers only, and never mind the women. Would have been better for you, Libo, and that’s the truth—no, I should call you Papai, not Libo. Too bad Mother never told you or you could have dandled me on your knee. Both your eldest children, Ouanda on one knee and Miro on the other, aren’t we proud of our two children? Born the same year, only two months apart, what a busy fellow Papai was then, sneaking along the fence to tup Mamãe in her own back yard. Everyone felt sorry for you because you had nothing but daughters. No one to carry on the family name. Their sympathy was wasted. You were brimming over with sons. And I have far more sisters than I ever thought. One more sister than I wanted.

He stood at the gate, looking up toward the woods atop the piggies’ hill. There is no scientific purpose to be served by visiting at night. So I guess I’ll serve an unscientific purposelessness and see if they have room for another brother in the tribe. I’m probably too big for a bedspace in the log house, so I’ll sleep outside, and I won’t be much for climbing trees, but I do know a thing or two about technology, and I don’t feel any particular inhibitions now about telling you anything you want to know.

He laid his right hand on the identification box and reached out his left to pull the gate. For a split second he didn’t realize what was happening. Then his hand felt like it was on fire, like it was being cut off with a rusty saw, he shouted and pulled his left hand away from the gate. Never since the gate was built had it stayed hot after the box was touched by the Zenador’s hand.

“Marcos Vladimir Ribeira von Hesse, your passage through the fence has been revoked by order of the Lusitanian Evacuation Committee.”

Never since the gate was built had the voice challenged a Zenador. It took a moment before Miro understood what it was saying.

“You and Ouanda Quenhatta Figueira Mucumbi will present yourselves to Deputy Chief of Police Faria Lima Maria do Bosque, who will arrest you in the name of Starways Congress and present you on Trondheim for trial.”

For a moment he was lightheaded and his stomach felt heavy and sick. They know. Tonight of all nights. Everything over. Lose Ouanda, lose the piggies, lose my work, all gone. Arrest. Trondheim. Where the Speaker came from, twenty-two years in transit, everybody gone except Ouanda, the only one left, and she’s my sister—

His hand flashed out again to pull at the gate; again the excruciating pain shot through his arm, the pain nerves all alerted, all afire at once. I can’t just disappear. They’ll seal the gate to everyone. Nobody will go to the piggies, nobody will tell them, the piggies will wait for us to come and no one will ever come out of the gate again. Not me, not Ouanda, not the Speaker, nobody, and no explanation.

Evacuation Committee. They’ll evacuate us and wipe out every trace of our being here. That much is in the rules, but there’s more, isn’t there? What did they see? How did they find out? Did the Speaker tell them? He’s so addicted to truth. I have to explain to the piggies why we won’t be coming back, I have to tell them.

A piggy always watched them, followed them from the moment they entered the forest. Could a piggy be watching now? Miro waved his hand. It was too dark, though. They couldn’t possibly see him. Or perhaps they could; no one knew how good the piggies’ vision was at night. Whether they saw him or not, they didn’t come. And soon it would be too late; if the framlings were watching the gate, they had no doubt already notified Bosquinha, and she’d be on her way, zipping over the grass. She would be oh-so-reluctant to arrest him, but she would do her job, and never mind arguing with her about whether it was good for humans or piggies, either one, to maintain this foolish separation, she wasn’t the sort to question the law, she just did what she was told. And he’d surrender, there was no reason to fight, where could he hide inside the fence, out among the cabra herds? But before he gave up, he’d tell the piggies, he had to tell them.

So he walked along the fence, away from the gate, toward the open grassland directly down the hill from the Cathedral, where no one lived near enough to hear his voice. As he walked, he called. Not words, but a high hooting sound, a cry that he and Ouanda used to call each other’s attention when they were separated among the piggies. They’d hear it, they had to hear it, they had to come to him because he couldn’t possibly pass the fence. So come, Human, Leaf-eater, Mandachuva, Arrow, Cups, Calendar, anyone, everyone, come and let me tell you that I cannot tell you any more.

Quim sat miserably on a stool in the Bishop’s office.

“Estevão,” the Bishop said quietly, “there’ll be a meeting here in a few minutes, but I want to talk to you a minute first.”

“Nothing to talk about,” said Quim. “You warned us, and it happened. He’s the devil.”

“Estevão, we’ll talk for a minute and then you’ll go home and sleep.”

“Never going back there.”

“The Master ate with worse sinners than your mother, and forgave them. Are you better than he?”

“None of the adulteresses he forgave was his mother!”

“Not everyone’s mother can be the Blessed Virgin.”

“Are you on his side, then? Has the Church made way here for the speakers for the dead? Should we tear down the Cathedral and use the stones to make an amphitheater where all our dead can be slandered before we lay them in the ground?”

A whisper: “I am your Bishop, Estevão, the vicar of Christ on this planet, and you will speak to me with the respect you owe to my office.”

Quim stood there, furious, unspeaking.

“I think it would have been better if the Speaker had not told these stories publicly. Some things are better learned in privacy, in quiet, so that we need not deal with shocks while an audience watches us. That’s why we use the confessional, to shield us from public shame while we wrestle with our private sins. But be fair, Estevão. The Speaker may have told the stories, but the stories all were true. Né?”

“É.”

“Now, Estevão, let us think. Before today, did you love your mother?”

“Yes.”

“And this mother that you loved, had she already committed adultery?”

“Ten thousand times.”

“I suspect she was not so libidinous as that. But you tell me that you loved her, though she was an adulteress. Isn’t she the same person tonight? Has she changed between yesterday and today? Or is it only you who have changed?”

“What she was yesterday was a lie.”

“Do you mean that because she was ashamed to tell her children that she was an adulteress, she must also have been lying when she cared for you all the years you were growing up, when she trusted you, when she taught you—”

“She was not exactly a nurturing mother.”

“If she had come to the confessional and won forgiveness for her adultery, then she would never have had to tell you at all. You would have gone to your grave not knowing. It would not have been a lie; because she would have been forgiven, she would not have been an adulteress. Admit the truth, Estevão: You’re not angry with her adultery. You’re angry because you embarrassed yourself in front of the whole city by trying to defend her.”

“You make me seem like a fool.”

“No one thinks you’re a fool. Everyone thinks you’re a loyal son. But now, if you’re to be a true follower of the Master, you will forgive her and let her see that you love her more than ever, because now you understand her suffering.” The Bishop glanced toward the door. “I have a meeting here now, Estevão. Please go into my inner chamber and pray to the Madelena to forgive you for your unforgiving heart.”

Looking more miserable than angry, Quim passed through the curtain behind the Bishop’s desk.

The Bishop’s secretary opened the other door and let the Speaker for the Dead into the chamber. The Bishop did not rise. To his surprise, the Speaker knelt and bowed his head. It was an act that Catholics did only in a public presentation to the Bishop, and Peregrino could not think what the Speaker meant by this. Yet the man knelt there, waiting, and so the Bishop arose from his chair, walked to him, and held out his ring to be kissed. Even then the Speaker waited, until finally Peregrino said, “I bless you, my son, even though I’m not sure whether you mock me with this obeisance.”

Head still bowed, the Speaker said, “There’s no mockery in me.” Then he looked up at Peregrino. “My father was a Catholic. He pretended not to be, for the sake of convenience, but he never forgave himself for his faithlessness.”

“You were baptized?”

“My sister told me that yes, Father baptized me shortly after birth. My mother was a Protestant of a faith that deplored infant baptism, so they had a quarrel about it.” The Bishop held out his hand to lift the Speaker to his feet. The Speaker chuckled. “Imagine. A closet Catholic and a lapsed Mormon, quarreling over religious procedures that they both claimed not to believe in.”

Peregrino was skeptical. It was too elegant a gesture, for the Speaker to turn out to be Catholic. “I thought,” said the Bishop, “that you speakers for the dead renounced all religions before taking up your, shall we say, vocation.”

“I don’t know what the others do. I don’t think there are any rules about it—certainly there weren’t when I became a speaker.”

Bishop Peregrino knew that speakers were not supposed to lie, but this one certainly seemed to be evasive. “Speaker Andrew, there isn’t a place in all the Hundred Worlds where a Catholic has to conceal his faith, and there hasn’t been for three thousand years. That was the great blessing of space travel, that it removed the terrible population restrictions on an overcrowded Earth. Are you telling me that your father lived on Earth three thousand years ago?”

“I’m telling you that my father saw to it I was baptized a Catholic, and for his sake I did what he never could do in his life. It was for him that I knelt before a bishop and received his blessing.”

“But it was you that I blessed.” And you’re still dodging my question. Which implies that my inference about your father’s time of life is true, but you don’t want to discuss it. Dom Cristão said that there was more to you than met the eye.

“Good,” said the Speaker. “I need the blessing more than my father, since he’s dead, and I have many more problems to deal with.”

“Please sit down.” The Speaker chose a stool near the far wall. The Bishop sat in his massive chair behind his desk. “I wish you hadn’t spoken today. It came at an inconvenient time.”

“I had no warning that Congress would do this.”

“But you knew that Miro and Ouanda had violated the law. Bosquinha told me.”

“I found out only a few hours before the speaking. Thank you for not arresting them yet.”

“That’s a civil matter.” The Bishop brushed it aside, but they both knew that if he had insisted, Bosquinha would have had to obey her orders and arrest them regardless of the Speaker’s request. “Your speaking has caused a great deal of distress.”

“More than usual, I’m afraid.”

“So—is your responsibility over? Do you inflict the wounds and leave it to others to heal them?”

“Not wounds, Bishop Peregrino. Surgery. And if I can help to heal the pain afterward, then yes, I stay and help. I have no anesthesia, but I do try for antisepsis.”

“You should have been a priest, you know.”

“Younger sons used to have only two choices. The priesthood or the military. My parents chose the latter course for me.”

“A younger son. Yet you had a sister. And you lived in the time when population controls forbade parents to have more than two children unless the government gave special permission. They called such a child a Third, yes?”

“You know your history.”

“Were you born on Earth, before starflight?”

“What concerns us, Bishop Peregrino, is the future of Lusitania, not the biography of a speaker for the dead who is plainly only thirty-five years old.”

“The future of Lusitania is my concern, Speaker Andrew, not yours.”

“The future of the humans on Lusitania is your concern, Bishop. I’m concerned with the pequeninos as well.”

“Let’s not compete to see whose concern is greater.”

The secretary opened the door again, and Bosquinha, Dom Cristão, and Dona Cristã came in. Bosquinha glanced back and forth between the Bishop and the Speaker.

“There’s no blood on the floor, if that’s what you’re looking for,” said the Bishop.

“I was just estimating the temperature,” said Bosquinha.

“The warmth of mutual respect, I think,” said the Speaker. “Not the heat of anger or the ice of hate.”

“The Speaker is a Catholic by baptism, if not by belief,” said the Bishop. “I blessed him, and it seems to have made him docile.”

“I’ve always been respectful of authority,” said the Speaker.

“You were the one who threatened us with an Inquisitor,” the Bishop reminded him. With a smile.

The Speaker’s smile was just as chilly. “And you’re the one who told the people I was Satan and they shouldn’t talk to me.”

While the Bishop and the Speaker grinned at each other, the others laughed nervously, sat down, waited.

“It’s your meeting, Speaker,” said Bosquinha.

“Forgive me,” said the Speaker. “There’s someone else invited. It’ll make things much simpler if we wait a few more minutes for her to come.”

Ela found her mother outside the house, not far from the fence. A light breeze that barely rustled the capim had caught her hair and tossed it lightly. It took a moment for Ela to realize why this was so startling. Her mother had not worn her hair down in many years. It looked strangely free, all the more so because Ela could see how it curled and bent where it had been so long forced into a bun. It was then that she knew that the Speaker was right. Mother would listen to his invitation. Whatever shame or pain tonight’s speaking might have caused her, it led her now to stand out in the open, in the dusk just after sunset, looking toward the piggies’ hill. Or perhaps she was looking at the fence. Perhaps remembering a man who met her here, or somewhere else in the capim, so that unobserved they could love each other. Always in hiding, always in secret. Mother is glad, thought Ela, to have it known that Libo was her real husband, that Libo is my true father. Mother is glad, and so am I.

Mother did not turn to look at her, though she surely could hear Ela’s approach through the noisy grass. Ela stopped a few steps away.

“Mother,” she said.

“Not a herd of cabra, then,” said Mother. “You’re so noisy, Ela.”

“The Speaker. Wants your help.”

“Does he.”

Ela explained what the Speaker had told her. Mother did not turn around. When Ela was finished, Mother waited a moment, and then turned to walk over the shoulder of the hill. Ela ran after her, caught up with her. “Mother,” said Ela. “Mother, are you going to tell him about the Descolada?”

“Yes.”

“Why now? After all these years? Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“Because you did better work on your own, without my help.”

“You know what I was doing?”

“You’re my apprentice. I have complete access to your files without leaving any footprints. What kind of master would I be if I didn’t watch your work?”

“But—”

“I also read the files you hid under Quara’s name. You’ve never been a mother, so you didn’t know that all the file activities of a child under twelve are reported to the parents every week. Quara was doing some remarkable research. I’m glad you’re coming with me. When I tell the Speaker, I’ll be telling you, too.”

“You’re going the wrong way,” said Ela.

Mother stopped. “Isn’t the Speaker’s house near the praça?”

“The meeting is in the Bishop’s chambers.”

For the first time Mother faced Ela directly. “What are you and the Speaker trying to do to me?”

“We’re trying to save Miro,” said Ela. “And Lusitania Colony, if we can.”

“Taking me to the spider’s lair—”

“The Bishop has to be on our side or—”

“Our side! So when you say we, you mean you and the Speaker, is that it? Do you think I haven’t noticed that? All my children, one by one, he’s seduced you all—”

“He hasn’t seduced anybody!”

“He seduced you with his way of knowing just what you want to hear, of—”

“He’s no flatterer,” said Ela. “He doesn’t tell us what we want. He tells us what we know is true. He didn’t win our affection, Mother, he won our trust.”

“Whatever he gets from you, you never gave it to me.”

“We wanted to.”

Ela did not bend this time before her mother’s piercing, demanding glare. It was her mother, instead, who bent, who looked away and then looked back with tears in her eyes. “I wanted to tell you.” Mother wasn’t talking about her files. “When I saw how you hated him, I wanted to say, He’s not your father, your father is a good, kind man—”

“Who didn’t have the courage to tell us himself.”

Rage came into Mother’s eyes. “He wanted to. I wouldn’t let him.”

“I’ll tell you something, Mother. I loved Libo, the way everybody in Milagre loved him. But he was willing to be a hypocrite, and so were you, and without anybody even guessing, the poison of your lies hurt us all. I don’t blame you, Mother, or him. But I thank God for the Speaker. He was willing to tell us the truth, and it set us free.”

“It’s easy to tell the truth,” said Mother softly, “when you don’t love anybody.”

“Is that what you think?” said Ela. “I think I know something, Mother. I think you can’t possibly know the truth about somebody unless you love them. I think the Speaker loved Father. Marcão, I mean. I think he understood him and loved him before he spoke.”

Mother didn’t answer, because she knew that it was true.

“And I know he loves Grego, and Quara, and Olhado. And Miro, and even Quim. And me. I know he loves me. And when he shows me that he loves me, I know it’s true because he never lies to anybody.”

Tears came out of Mother’s eyes and drifted down her cheeks.

“I have lied to you and everybody else,” Mother said. Her voice sounded weak and strained. “But you have to believe me anyway. When I tell you that I love you.”

Ela embraced her mother, and for the first time in years she felt warmth in her mother’s response. Because the lies between them now were gone. The Speaker had erased the barrier, and there was no reason to be tentative and cautious anymore.

“You’re thinking about that damnable Speaker even now, aren’t you?” whispered her mother.

“So are you,” Ela answered.

Both their bodies shook with Mother’s laugh. “Yes.” Then she stopped laughing and pulled away, looked Ela in the eyes. “Will he always come between us?”

“Yes,” said Ela. “Like a bridge he’ll come between us, not a wall.”

Miro saw the piggies when they were halfway down the hillside toward the fence. They were so silent in the forest, but the piggies had no great skill in moving through the capim—it rustled loudly as they ran. Or perhaps in coming to answer Miro’s call they felt no need to conceal themselves. As they came nearer, Miro recognized them. Arrow, Human, Mandachuva, Leaf-eater, Cups. He did not call out to them, nor did they speak when they arrived. Instead they stood behind the fence opposite him and regarded him silently. No Zenador had ever called the piggies to the fence before. By their stillness they showed their anxiety.

“I can’t come to you anymore,” said Miro.

They waited for his explanation.

“The framlings found out about us. Breaking the law. They sealed the gate.”

Leaf-eater touched his chin. “Do you know what it was the framlings saw?”

Miro laughed bitterly. “What didn’t they see? Only one framling ever came with us.”

“No,” said Human. “The hive queen says it wasn’t the Speaker. The hive queen says they saw it from the sky.”

The satellites? “What could they see from the sky?”

“Maybe the hunt,” said Arrow.

“Maybe the shearing of the cabra,” said Leaf-eater.

“Maybe the fields of amaranth,” said Cups.

“All of those,” said Human. “And maybe they saw that the wives have let three hundred twenty children be born since the first amaranth harvest.”

“Three hundred!”

“And twenty,” said Mandachuva.

“They saw that food would be plenty,” said Arrow. “Now we’re sure to win the next war. Our enemies will be planted in huge new forests all over the plain, and the wives will put mother trees in every one of them.”

Miro felt sick. Is this what all their work and sacrifice was for, to give some transient advantage to one tribe of piggies? Almost he said, Libo didn’t die so you could conquer the world. But his training took over, and he asked a noncommittal question. “Where are all these new children?”

“None of the little brothers come to us,” explained Human. “We have too much to do, learning from you and teaching all the other brother-houses. We can’t be training little brothers.” Then, proudly, he added, “Of the three hundred, fully half are children of my father, Rooter.”

Mandachuva nodded gravely. “The wives have great respect for what you have taught us. And they have great hope in the Speaker for the Dead. But what you tell us now, this is very bad. If the framlings hate us, what will we do?”

“I don’t know,” said Miro. For the moment, his mind was racing to try to cope with all the information they had just told him. Three hundred twenty new babies. A population explosion. And Rooter somehow the father of half of them. Before today Miro would have dismissed the statement of Rooter’s fatherhood as part of the piggies’ totemic belief system. But having seen a tree uproot itself and fall apart in response to singing, he was prepared to question all his old assumptions.

Yet what good did it do to learn anything now? They’d never let him report again; he couldn’t follow up; he’d be aboard a starship for the next quarter century while someone else did all his work. Or worse, no one else.

“Don’t be unhappy,” said Human. “You’ll see—the Speaker for the Dead will make it all work out well.”

“The Speaker. Yes, he’ll make everything work out fine.” The way he did for me and Ouanda. My sister.

“The hive queen says he’ll teach the framlings to love us—”

“Teach the framlings,” said Miro. “He’d better do it quickly then. It’s too late for him to save me and Ouanda. They’re arresting us and taking us off planet.”

“To the stars?” asked Human hopefully.

“Yes, to the stars, to stand trial! To be punished for helping you. It’ll take us twenty-two years to get there, and they’ll never let us come back.”

The piggies took a moment to absorb this information. Fine, thought Miro. Let them wonder how the Speaker is going to solve everything for them. I trusted in the Speaker, too, and it didn’t do much for me. The piggies conferred together.

Human emerged from the group and came closer to the fence. “We’ll hide you.”

“They’ll never find you in the forest,” said Mandachuva.

“They have machines that can track me by my smell,” said Miro.

“Ah. But doesn’t the law forbid them to show us their machines?” asked Human.

Miro shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. The gate is sealed to me. I can’t cross the fence.”

The piggies looked at each other.

“But you have capim right there,” said Arrow.

Miro looked stupidly at the grass. “So what?” he asked.

“Chew it,” said Human.

“Why?” asked Miro.

“We’ve seen humans chewing capim,” said Leaf-eater. “The other night, on the hillside, we saw the Speaker and some of the robe-humans chewing capim.”

“And many other times,” said Mandachuva.

Their impatience with him was frustrating. “What does that have to do with the fence?”

Again the piggies looked at each other. Finally Mandachuva tore off a blade of capim near the ground, folded it carefully into a thick wad, and put it in his mouth to chew it. He sat down after a while. The others began teasing him, poking him with their fingers, pinching him. He showed no sign of noticing. Finally Human gave him a particularly vicious pinch, and when Mandachuva did not respond, they began saying, in males’ language, Ready, Time to go, Now, Ready.

Mandachuva stood up, a bit shaky for a moment. Then he ran at the fence and scrambled to the top, flipped over, and landed on all fours on the same side as Miro.

Miro leaped to his feet and began to cry out just as Mandachuva reached the top; by the time he finished his cry, Mandachuva was standing up and dusting himself off.

“You can’t do that,” said Miro. “It stimulates all the pain nerves in the body. The fence can’t be crossed.”

“Oh,” said Mandachuva.

From the other side of the fence, Human was rubbing his thighs together. “He didn’t know,” he said. “The humans don’t know.”

“It’s an anesthetic,” said Miro. “It stops you from feeling pain.”

“No,” said Mandachuva. “I feel the pain. Very bad pain. Worst pain in the world.”

“Rooter says the fence is even worse than dying,” said Human. “Pain in all the places.”

“But you don’t care,” said Miro.

“It’s happening to your other self,” said Mandachuva. “It’s happening to your animal self. But your tree self doesn’t care. It makes you be your tree self.”

Then Miro remembered a detail that had been lost in the grotesquerie of Libo’s death. The dead man’s mouth had been filled with a wad of capim. So had the mouth of every piggy that had died. Anesthetic. The death looked like hideous torture, but pain was not the purpose of it. They used an anesthetic. It had nothing to do with pain.

“So,” said Mandachuva. “Chew the grass, and come with us. We’ll hide you.”

“Ouanda,” said Miro.

“Oh, I’ll go get her,” said Mandachuva.

“You don’t know where she lives.”

“Yes I do,” said Mandachuva.

“We do this many times a year,” said Human. “We know where everybody lives.”

“But no one has ever seen you,” said Miro.

“We’re very secret,” said Mandachuva. “Besides, nobody is looking for us.”

Miro imagined dozens of piggies creeping about in Milagre in the middle of the night. No guard was kept. Only a few people had business that took them out in the darkness. And the piggies were small, small enough to duck down in the capim and disappear completely. No wonder they knew about metal and machines, despite all the rules designed to keep them from learning about them. No doubt they had seen the mines, had watched the shuttle land, had seen the kilns firing the bricks, had watched the fazendeiros plowing and planting the human-specific amaranth. No wonder they had known what to ask for.

How stupid of us, to think we could cut them off from our culture. They kept far more secrets from us than we could possibly keep from them. So much for cultural superiority.

Miro pulled up his own blade of capim.

“No,” said Mandachuva, taking the blade from his hands. “You don’t get the root part. If you take the root part, it doesn’t do you any good.” He threw away Miro’s blade and tore off his own, about ten centimeters above the base. Then he folded it and handed it to Miro, who began to chew it.

Mandachuva pinched and poked him.

“Don’t worry about that,” said Miro. “Go get Ouanda. They could arrest her any minute. Go. Now. Go on.”

Mandachuva looked at the others and, seeing some invisible signal of consent, jogged off along the fenceline toward the slopes of Vila Alta, where Ouanda lived.

Miro chewed a little more. He pinched himself. As the piggies said, he felt the pain, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was that this was a way out, a way to stay on Lusitania. To stay, perhaps, with Ouanda. Forget the rules, all the rules. They had no power over him once he left the human enclave and entered the piggies’ forest. He would become a renegade, as they already accused him of being, and he and Ouanda could leave behind all the insane rules of human behavior and live as they wanted to, and raise a family of humans who had completely new values, learned from the piggies, from the forest life; something new in the Hundred Worlds, and Congress would be powerless to stop them.

He ran at the fence and seized it with both hands. The pain was no less than before, but now he didn’t care, he scrambled up to the top. But with each new handhold the pain grew more intense, and he began to care, he began to care very much about the pain, he began to realize that the capim had no anesthetic effect on him at all, but by this time he was already at the top of the fence. The pain was maddening; he couldn’t think; momentum carried him above the top and as he balanced there his head passed through the vertical field of the fence. All the pain possible to his body came to his brain at once, as if every part of him were on fire.

The Little Ones watched in horror as their friend hung there atop the fence, his head and torso on one side, his hips and legs on the other. At once they cried out, reached for him, tried to pull him down. Since they had not chewed capim, they dared not touch the fence.

Hearing their cries, Mandachuva ran back. Enough of the anesthetic remained in his body that he could climb up and push the heavy human body over the top. Miro landed with a bone-crushing thump on the ground, his arm still touching the fence. The piggies pulled him away. His face was frozen in a rictus of agony.

“Quick!” shouted Leaf-eater. “Before he dies, we have to plant him!”

“No!” Human answered, pushing Leaf-eater away from Miro’s frozen body. “We don’t know if he’s dying! The pain is just an illusion, you know that, he doesn’t have a wound, the pain should go away—”

“It isn’t going away,” said Arrow. “Look at him.”

Miro’s fists were clenched, his legs were doubled under him, and his spine and neck were arched backward. Though he was breathing in short, hard pants, his face seemed to grow even tighter with pain.

“Before he dies,” said Leaf-eater. “We have to give him root.”

“Go get Ouanda,” said Human. He turned to face Mandachuva. “Now! Go get her and tell her Miro is dying. Tell her the gate is sealed and Miro is on this side of it and he’s dying.”

Mandachuva took off at a run.

The secretary opened the door, but not until he actually saw Novinha did Ender allow himself to feel relief. When he sent Ela for her, he was sure that she would come; but as they waited so many long minutes for her arrival, he began to doubt his understanding of her. There had been no need to doubt. She was the woman that he thought she was. He noticed that her hair was down and windblown, and for the first time since he came to Lusitania, Ender saw in her face a clear image of the girl who in her anguish had summoned him less than two weeks, more than twenty years ago.

She looked tense, worried, but Ender knew her anxiety was because of her present situation, coming into the Bishop’s own chambers so shortly after the disclosure of her transgressions. If Ela told her about the danger to Miro, that, too, might be part of her tension. All this was transient; Ender could see in her face, in the relaxation of her movement, in the steadiness of her gaze, that the end of her long deception was indeed the gift he had hoped, had believed it would be. I did not come to hurt you, Novinha, and I’m glad to see that my speaking has brought you better things than shame.

Novinha stood for a moment, looking at the Bishop. Not defiantly, but politely, with dignity; he responded the same way, quietly offering her a seat. Dom Cristão started to rise from his stool, but she shook her head, smiled, took another stool near the wall. Near Ender. Ela came and stood behind and beside her mother, so she was also partly behind Ender. Like a daughter standing between her parents, thought Ender, then he thrust the thought away from him and refused to think of it anymore. There were far more important matters at hand.

“I see,” said Bosquinha, “that you intend this meeting to be an interesting one.”

“I think Congress decided that already,” said Dona Cristã.

“Your son is accused,” Bishop Peregrino began, “of crimes against—”

“I know what he’s accused of,” said Novinha. “I didn’t know until tonight, when Ela told me, but I’m not surprised. My daughter Elanora has also been defying some rules her master set for her. Both of them have a higher allegiance to their own conscience than to the rules others set down for them. It’s a failing, if your object is to maintain order, but if your goal is to learn and adapt, it’s a virtue.”

“Your son isn’t on trial here,” said Dom Cristão.

“I asked you to meet together,” said Ender, “because a decision must be made. Whether or not to comply with the orders given us by Starways Congress.”

“We don’t have much choice,” said Bishop Peregrino.

“There are many choices,” said Ender, “and many reasons for choosing. You already made one choice—when you found your files being stripped, you decided to try to save them, and you decided to trust them with me, a stranger. Your trust was not misplaced—I’ll return your files to you whenever you ask, unread, unaltered.”

“Thank you,” said Dona Cristã. “But we did that before we knew the gravity of the charge.”

“They’re going to evacuate us,” said Dom Cristão.

“They control everything,” said Bishop Peregrino.

“I already told him that,” said Bosquinha.

“They don’t control everything,” said Ender. “They only control you through the ansible connection.”

“We can’t cut off the ansible,” said Bishop Peregrino. “That is our only connection with the Vatican.”

“I don’t suggest cutting off the ansible. I only tell you what I can do. And when I tell you this, I am trusting you the way you trusted me. Because if you repeat this to anyone, the cost to me—and to someone else, whom I love and depend on—would be immeasurable.”

He looked at each of them, and each in turn nodded acquiescence.

“I have a friend whose control over ansible communications among all the Hundred Worlds is complete—and completely unsuspected. I’m the only one who knows what she can do. And she has told me that when I ask her to, she can make it seem to all the framlings that we here on Lusitania have cut off our ansible connection. And yet we will have the ability to send guarded messages if we want to—to the Vatican, to the offices of your order. We can read distant records, intercept distant communications. In short, we will have eyes and they will be blind.”

“Cutting off the ansible, or even seeming to, would be an act of rebellion. Of war.” Bosquinha was saying it as harshly as possible, but Ender could see that the idea appealed to her, though she was resisting it with all her might. “I will say, though, that if we were insane enough to decide on war, what the Speaker is offering us is a clear advantage. We’d need any advantage we could get—if we were mad enough to rebel.”

“We have nothing to gain by rebellion,” said the Bishop, “and everything to lose. I grieve for the tragedy it would be to send Miro and Ouanda to stand trial on another world, especially because they are so young. But the court will no doubt take that into account and treat them with mercy. And by complying with the orders of the committee, we will save this community much suffering.”

“Don’t you think that having to evacuate this world will also cause them suffering?” asked Ender.

“Yes. Yes, it will. But a law was broken, and the penalty must be paid.”

“What if the law was based on a misunderstanding, and the penalty is far out of proportion to the sin?”

“We can’t be the judges of that,” said the Bishop.

“We are the judges of that. If we go along with Congressional orders, then we’re saying that the law is good and the punishment is just. And it may be that at the end of this meeting you’ll decide exactly that. But there are some things you must know before you can make your decision. Some of those things I can tell you, and some of those things only Ela and Novinha can tell you. You shouldn’t make your decision until you know all that we know.”

“I’m always glad to know as much as possible,” said the Bishop. “Of course, the final decision is Bosquinha’s, not mine—”

“The final decision belongs to all of you together, the civil and religious and intellectual leadership of Lusitania. If any one of you decides against rebellion, rebellion is impossible. Without the Church’s support, Bosquinha can’t lead. Without civil support, the Church has no power.”

“We have no power,” said Dom Cristão. “Only opinions.”

“Every adult in Lusitania looks to you for wisdom and fairmindedness.”

“You forget a fourth power,” said Bishop Peregrino. “Yourself.”

“I’m a framling here.”

“A most extraordinary framling,” said the Bishop. “In your four days here you have captured the soul of this people in a way I feared and foretold. Now you counsel rebellion that could cost us everything. You are as dangerous as Satan. And yet here you are, submitting to our authority as if you weren’t free to get on the shuttle and leave here when the starship returns to Trondheim with our two young criminals aboard.”

“I submit to your authority,” said Ender, “because I don’t want to be a framling here. I want to be your citizen, your student, your parishioner.”

“As a speaker for the dead?” asked the Bishop.

“As Andrew Wiggin. I have some other skills that might be useful. Particularly if you rebel. And I have other work to do that can’t be done if humans are taken from Lusitania.”

“We don’t doubt your sincerity,” said the Bishop. “But you must forgive us if we are doubtful about casting in with a citizen who is something of a latecomer.”

Ender nodded. The Bishop could not say more until he knew more. “Let me tell you first what I know. Today, this afternoon, I went out into the forest with Miro and Ouanda.”

“You! You also broke the law!” The Bishop half-rose from his chair.

Bosquinha reached forward, gestured to settle the Bishop’s ire. “The intrusion in our files began long before this afternoon. The Congressional Order couldn’t possibly be related to his infraction.”

“I broke the law,” said Ender, “because the piggies were asking for me. Demanding, in fact, to see me. They had seen the shuttle land. They knew that I was here. And, for good or ill, they had read the Hive Queen and the Hegemon.”

“They gave the piggies that book?” said the Bishop.

“They also gave them the New Testament,” said Ender. “But surely you won’t be surprised to learn that the piggies found much in common between themselves and the hive queen. Let me tell you what the piggies said. They begged me to convince all the Hundred Worlds to end the rules that keep them isolated here. You see, the piggies don’t think of the fence the way we do. We see it as a way of protecting their culture from human influence and corruption. They see it as a way of keeping them from learning all the wonderful secrets that we know. They imagine our ships going from star to star, colonizing them, filling them up. And five or ten thousand years from now, when they finally learn all that we refuse to teach them, they’ll emerge into space to find all the worlds filled up. No place for them at all. They think of our fence as a form of species murder. We will keep them on Lusitania like animals in a zoo, while we go out and take all the rest of the universe.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Dom Cristão. “That isn’t our intention at all.”

“Isn’t it?” Ender retorted. “Why are we so anxious to keep them from any influence from our culture? It isn’t just in the interest of science. It isn’t just good xenological procedure. Remember, please, that our discovery of the ansible, of starflight, of partial gravity control, even of the weapon we used to destroy the buggers—all of them came as a direct result of our contact with the buggers. We learned most of the technology from the machines they left behind from their first foray into Earth’s star system. We were using those machines long before we understood them. Some of them, like the philotic bond, we don’t even understand now. We are in space precisely because of the impact of a devastatingly superior culture. And yet in only a few generations, we took their machines, surpassed them, and destroyed them. That’s what our fence means—we’re afraid the piggies will do the same to us. And they know that’s what it means. They know it, and they hate it.”

“We aren’t afraid of them,” said the Bishop. “They’re—savages, for heaven’s sake—”

“That’s how we looked to the buggers, too,” said Ender. “But to Pipo and Libo and Ouanda and Miro, the piggies have never looked like savages. They’re different from us, yes, far more different than framlings. But they’re still people. Ramen, not varelse. So when Libo saw that the piggies were in danger of starving, that they were preparing to go to war in order to cut down the population, he didn’t act like a scientist. He didn’t observe their war and take notes on the death and suffering. He acted like a Christian. He got experimental amaranth that Novinha had rejected for human use because it was too closely akin to Lusitanian biochemistry, and he taught the piggies how to plant it and harvest it and prepare it as food. I have no doubt that the rise in piggy population and the fields of amaranth are what the Starways Congress saw. Not a willful violation of the law, but an act of compassion and love.”

“How can you call such disobedience a Christian act?” said the Bishop.

“What man of you is there, when his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?”

“The devil can quote scripture to suit his own purpose,” said the Bishop.

“I’m not the devil,” said Ender, “and neither are the piggies. Their babies were dying of hunger, and Libo gave them food and saved their lives.”

“And look what they did to him!”

“Yes, let’s look what they did to him. They put him to death. Exactly the way they put to death their own most honored citizens. Shouldn’t that have told us something?”

“It told us that they’re dangerous and have no conscience,” said the Bishop.

“It told us that death means something completely different to them. If you really believed that someone was perfect in heart, Bishop, so righteous that to live another day could only cause them to be less perfect, then wouldn’t it be a good thing for them if they were killed and taken directly into heaven?”

“You mock us. You don’t believe in heaven.”

“But you do! What about the martyrs, Bishop Peregrino? Weren’t they caught up joyfully into heaven?”

“Of course they were. But the men who killed them were beasts. Murdering saints didn’t sanctify them, it damned their murderers’ souls to hell forever.”

“But what if the dead don’t go to heaven? What if the dead are transformed into new life, right before your eyes? What if when a piggy dies, if they lay out his body just so, it takes root and turns into something else? What if it turns into a tree that lives fifty or a hundred or five hundred years more?”

“What are you talking about?” demanded the Bishop.

“Are you telling us that the piggies somehow metamorphose from animal to plant?” asked Dom Cristão. “Basic biology suggests that this isn’t likely.”

“It’s practically impossible,” said Ender. “That’s why there are only a handful of species on Lusitania that survived the Descolada. Because only a few of them were able to make the transformation. When the piggies kill one of their people, he is transformed into a tree. And the tree retains at least some of its intelligence. Because today I saw the piggies sing to a tree, and without a single tool touching it, the tree severed its own roots, fell over, and split itself into exactly the shapes and forms of wood and bark that the piggies needed. It wasn’t a dream. Miro and Ouanda and I all saw it with our own eyes, and heard the song, and touched the wood, and prayed for the soul of the dead.”

“What does this have to do with our decision?” demanded Bosquinha. “So the forests are made up of dead piggies. That’s a matter for scientists.”

“I’m telling you that when the piggies killed Pipo and Libo they thought they were helping them transform into the next stage of their existence. They weren’t beasts, they were ramen, giving the highest honor to the men who had served them so well.”

“Another moral transformation, is that it?” asked the Bishop. “Just as you did today in your speaking, making us see Marcos Ribeira again and again, each time in a new light, now you want us to think the piggies are noble? Very well, they’re noble. But I won’t rebel against Congress, with all the suffering such a thing would cause, just so our scientists can teach the piggies how to make refrigerators.”

“Please,” said Novinha.

They looked at her expectantly.

“You say that they stripped our files? They read them all?”

“Yes,” said Bosquinha.

“Then they know everything that I have in my files. About the Descolada.”

“Yes,” said Bosquinha.

Novinha folded her hands in her lap. “There won’t be any evacuation.”

“I didn’t think so,” said Ender. “That’s why I asked Ela to bring you.”

“Why won’t there be an evacuation?” asked Bosquinha.

“Because of the Descolada.”

“Nonsense,” said the Bishop. “Your parents found a cure for that.”

“They didn’t cure it,” said Novinha. “They controlled it. They stopped it from becoming active.”

“That’s right,” said Bosquinha. “That’s why we put the additives in the water. The Colador.”

“Every human being on Lusitania, except perhaps the Speaker, who may not have caught it yet, is a carrier of the Descolada.”

“The additive isn’t expensive,” said the Bishop. “But perhaps they might isolate us. I can see that they might do that.”

“There’s nowhere isolated enough,” said Novinha. “The Descolada is infinitely variable. It attacks any kind of genetic material. The additive can be given to humans. But can they give additives to every blade of grass? To every bird? To every fish? To every bit of plankton in the sea?”

“They can all catch it?” asked Bosquinha. “I didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t tell anybody,” said Novinha. “But I built the protection into every plant that I developed. The amaranth, the potatoes, everything—the challenge wasn’t making the protein usable, the challenge was to get the organisms to produce their own Descolada blockers.”

Bosquinha was appalled. “So anywhere we go—”

“We can trigger the complete destruction of the biosphere.”

“And you kept this a secret?” asked Dom Cristão.

“There was no need to tell it. No one had ever left Lusitania, and no one was planning to go.” Novinha looked at her hands in her lap. “Something in the information had caused the piggies to kill Pipo. I kept it secret so no one else would know. But now, what Ela has learned over the last few years, and what the Speaker has said tonight—now I know what it was that Pipo learned. The Descolada doesn’t just split the genetic molecules and prevent them from reforming or duplicating. It also encourages them to bond with completely foreign genetic molecules. Ela did the work on this against my will. All the native life on Lusitania thrives in plant-and-animal pairs. The cabra with the capim. The watersnakes with the grama. The suckflies with the reeds. The xingadora bird with the tropeço vines. And the piggies with the trees of the forest.”

“You’re saying that one becomes the other?” Dom Cristão was at once fascinated and repelled.

“The piggies may be unique in that, in transforming from the corpse of a piggy into a tree,” said Novinha. “But perhaps the cabras become fertilized from the pollen of the capim. Perhaps the flies are hatched from the tassels of the river reeds. It should be studied. I should have been studying it all these years.”

“And now they’ll know this?” asked Dom Cristão. “From your files?”

“Not right away. But sometime in the next ten or twenty years. Before any other framlings get here, they’ll know,” said Novinha.

“I’m not a scientist,” said the Bishop. “Everyone else seems to understand except me. What does this have to do with the evacuation?”

Bosquinha fidgeted with her hands. “They can’t take us off Lusitania,” she said. “Anywhere they took us, we’d carry the Descolada with us, and it would kill everything. There aren’t enough xenobiologists in the Hundred Worlds to save even a single planet from devastation. By the time they get here, they’ll know that we can’t leave.”

“Well, then,” said the Bishop. “That solves our problem. If we tell them now, they won’t even send a fleet to evacuate us.”

“No,” said Ender. “Bishop Peregrino, once they know what the Descolada will do, they’ll see to it that no one leaves this planet, ever.”

The Bishop scoffed. “What, do you think they’ll blow up the planet? Come now, Speaker, there are no more Enders among the human race. The worst they might do is quarantine us here—”

“In which case,” said Dom Cristão, “why should we submit to their control at all? We could send them a message telling them about the Descolada, informing them that we will not leave the planet and they should not come here, and that’s it.”

Bosquinha shook her head. “Do you think that none of them will say, ‘The Lusitanians, just by visiting another world, can destroy it. They have a starship, they have a known propensity for rebelliousness, they have the murderous piggies. Their existence is a threat.’ ”

“Who would say that?” said the Bishop.

“No one in the Vatican,” said Ender. “But Congress isn’t in the business of saving souls.”

“And maybe they’d be right,” said the Bishop. “You said yourself that the piggies want starflight. And yet wherever they might go, they’ll have this same effect. Even uninhabited worlds, isn’t that right? What will they do, endlessly duplicate this bleak landscape—forests of a single tree, prairies of a single grass, with only the cabra to graze it and only the xingadora to fly above it?”

“Maybe someday we could find a way to get the Descolada under control,” said Ela.

“We can’t stake our future on such a thin chance,” said the Bishop.

“That’s why we have to rebel,” said Ender. “Because Congress will think exactly that way. Just as they did three thousand years ago, in the Xenocide. Everybody condemns the Xenocide because it destroyed an alien species that turned out to be harmless in its intentions. But as long as it seemed that the buggers were determined to destroy humankind, the leaders of humanity had no choice but to fight back with all their strength. We are presenting them with the same dilemma again. They’re already afraid of the piggies. And once they understand the Descolada, all the pretense of trying to protect the piggies will be done with. For the sake of humanity’s survival, they’ll destroy us. Probably not the whole planet. As you said, there are no Enders today. But they’ll certainly obliterate Milagre and remove any trace of human contact. Including killing all the piggies who know us. Then they’ll set a watch over this planet to keep the piggies from ever emerging from their primitive state. If you knew what they know, wouldn’t you do the same?”

“A speaker for the dead says this?” said Dom Cristão.

“You were there,” said the Bishop. “You were there the first time, weren’t you. When the buggers were destroyed.”

“Last time we had no way of talking to the buggers, no way of knowing they were ramen and not varelse. This time we’re here. We know that we won’t go out and destroy other worlds. We know that we’ll stay here on Lusitania until we can go out safely, the Descolada neutralized. This time,” said Ender, “we can keep the ramen alive, so that whoever writes the piggies’ story won’t have to be a speaker for the dead.”

The secretary opened the door abruptly, and Ouanda burst in. “Bishop,” she said. “Mayor. You have to come. Novinha—”

“What is it?” said the Bishop.

“Ouanda, I have to arrest you,” said Bosquinha.

“Arrest me later,” she said. “It’s Miro. He climbed over the fence.”

“He can’t do that,” said Novinha. “It might kill him—” Then, in horror, she realized what she had said. “Take me to him—”

“Get Navio,” said Dona Cristã.

“You don’t understand,” said Ouanda. “We can’t get to him. He’s on the other side of the fence.”

“Then what can we do?” asked Bosquinha.

“Turn the fence off,” said Ouanda.

Bosquinha looked helplessly at the others. “I can’t do that. The Committee controls that now. By ansible. They’d never turn it off.”

“Then Miro’s as good as dead,” said Ouanda.

“No,” said Novinha.

Behind her, another figure came into the room. Small, fur-covered. None of them but Ender had ever before seen a piggy in the flesh, but they knew at once what the creature was. “Excuse me,” said the piggy. “Does this mean we should plant him now?”

No one bothered to ask how the piggy got over the fence. They were too busy realizing what he meant by planting Miro.

“No!” screamed Novinha.

Mandachuva looked at her in surprise. “No?”

“I think,” said Ender, “that you shouldn’t plant any more humans.”

Mandachuva stood absolutely still.

“What do you mean?” said Ouanda. “You’re making him upset.”

“I expect he’ll be more upset before this day is over,” said Ender. “Come, Ouanda, take us to the fence where Miro is.”

“What good will it do if we can’t get over the fence?” asked Bosquinha.

“Call for Navio,” said Ender.

“I’ll go get him,” said Dona Cristã. “You forget that no one can call anybody.”

“I said, what good will it do?” demanded Bosquinha.

“I told you before,” said Ender. “If you decide to rebel, we can sever the ansible connection. And then we can turn off the fence.”

“Are you trying to use Miro’s plight to force my hand?” asked the Bishop.

“Yes,” said Ender. “He’s one of your flock, isn’t he? So leave the ninety-nine, shepherd, and come with us to save the one that’s lost.”

“What’s happening?” asked Mandachuva.

“You’re leading us to the fence,” said Ender. “Hurry, please.”

They filed down the stairs from the Bishop’s chambers to the Cathedral below. Ender could hear the Bishop behind him, grumbling about perverting scripture to serve private ends.

They passed down the aisle of the Cathedral, Mandachuva leading the way. Ender noticed that the Bishop paused near the altar, watching the small furred creature as the humans trooped after him. Outside the Cathedral, the Bishop caught up with him. “Tell me, Speaker,” he said, “just as a matter of opinion, if the fence came down, if we rebelled against Starways Congress, would all the rules about contact with the piggies be ended?”

“I hope so,” said Ender. “I hope that there’ll be no more unnatural barriers between us and them.”

“Then,” said the Bishop, “we’d be able to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Little Ones, wouldn’t we? There’d be no rule against it.”

“That’s right,” said Ender. “They might not be converted, but there’d be no rule against trying.”

“I have to think about this,” said the Bishop. “But perhaps, my dear infidel, your rebellion will open the door to the conversion of a great nation. Perhaps God led you here after all.”

By the time the Bishop, Dom Cristão, and Ender reached the fence, Mandachuva and the women had already been there for some time. Ender could tell by the way Ela was standing between her mother and the fence, and the way Novinha was holding her hands out in front of her face, that Novinha had already tried to climb over the fence to reach her son. She was crying now and shouting at him. “Miro! Miro, how could you do this, how could you climb it—” while Ela tried to talk to her, to calm her.

On the other side of the fence, four piggies stood watching, amazed.

Ouanda was trembling with fear for Miro’s life, but she had enough presence of mind to tell Ender what she knew he could not see for himself. “That’s Cups, and Arrow, and Human, and Leaf-eater. Leaf-eater’s trying to get the others to plant him. I think I know what that means, but we’re all right. Human and Mandachuva have convinced them not to do it.”

“But it still doesn’t get us any closer,” said Ender. “Why did Miro do something so stupid?”

“Mandachuva explained on the way here. The piggies chew capim and it has an anesthetic effect. They can climb the fence whenever they want. Apparently they’ve been doing it for years. They thought we didn’t do it because we were so obedient to law. Now they know that capim doesn’t have the same effect on us.”

Ender walked to the fence. “Human,” he said.

Human stepped forward.

“There’s a chance that we can turn off the fence. But if we do it, we’re at war with all the humans on every other world. Do you understand that? The humans of Lusitania and the piggies, together, at war against all the other humans.”

“Oh,” said Human.

“Will we win?” asked Arrow.

“We might,” said Ender. “And we might not.”

“Will you give us the hive queen?” asked Human.

“First I have to meet with the wives,” said Ender.

The piggies stiffened.

“What are you talking about?” asked the Bishop.

“I have to meet with the wives,” said Ender to the piggies, “because we have to make a treaty. An agreement. A set of rules between us. Do you understand me? Humans can’t live by your laws, and you can’t live by ours, but if we’re to live in peace, with no fence between us, and if I’m to let the hive queen live with you and help you and teach you, then you have to make us some promises, and keep them. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” said Human. “But you don’t know what you’re asking for, to deal with the wives. They’re not smart the way that the brothers are smart.”

“They make all the decisions, don’t they?”

“Of course,” said Human. “They’re the keepers of the mothers, aren’t they? But I warn you, it’s dangerous to speak to the wives. Especially for you, because they honor you so much.”

“If the fence comes down, I have to speak to the wives. If I can’t speak to them, then the fence stays up, and Miro dies, and we’ll have to obey the Congressional Order that all the humans of Lusitania must leave here.” Ender did not tell them that the humans might well be killed. He always told the truth, but he didn’t always tell it all.

“I’ll take you to the wives,” said Human.

Leaf-eater walked up to him and ran his hand derisively across Human’s belly. “They named you right,” he said. “You are a human, not one of us.” Leaf-eater started to run away, but Arrow and Cups held him.

“I’ll take you,” said Human. “Now, stop the fence and save Miro’s life.”

Ender turned to the Bishop.

“It’s not my decision,” said the Bishop. “It’s Bosquinha’s.”

“My oath is to the Starways Congress,” said Bosquinha, “but I’ll perjure myself this minute to save the lives of my people. I say the fence comes down and we try to make the most of our rebellion.”

“If we can preach to the piggies,” said the Bishop.

“I’ll ask them when I meet with the wives,” said Ender. “I can’t promise more than that.”

“Bishop!” cried Novinha. “Pipo and Libo already died beyond that fence!”

“Bring it down,” said the Bishop. “I don’t want to see this colony end with God’s work here still untouched.” He smiled grimly. “But Os Venerados had better be made saints pretty soon. We’ll need their help.”

“Jane,” murmured Ender.

“That’s why I love you,” said Jane. “You can do anything, as long as I set up the circumstances just right.”

“Cut off the ansible and turn off the fence, please,” said Ender.

“Done,” she said.

Ender ran for the fence, climbed over it. With the piggies’ help he lifted Miro to the top and let his rigid body drop into the waiting arms of the Bishop, the Mayor, Dom Cristão, and Novinha. Navio was jogging down the slope right behind Dona Cristã. Whatever they could do to help Miro would be done.

Ouanda was climbing the fence.

“Go back,” said Ender. “We’ve already got him over.”

“If you’re going to see the wives,” said Ouanda, “I’m going with you. You need my help.”

Ender had no answer to that. She dropped down and came to Ender.

Navio was kneeling by Miro’s body. “He climbed the fence?” he said. “There’s nothing in the books for that. It isn’t possible. Nobody can bear enough pain to get his head right through the field.”

“Will he live?” demanded Novinha.

“How should I know?” said Navio, impatiently stripping away Miro’s clothing and attaching sensors to him. “Nobody covered this in medical school.”

Ender noticed that the fence was shaking again. Ela was climbing over. “I don’t need your help,” Ender said.

“It’s about time somebody who knows something about xenobiology got to see what’s going on,” she retorted.

“Stay and look after your brother,” said Ouanda.

Ela looked at her defiantly. “He’s your brother, too,” she said. “Now let’s both see to it that if he dies, he didn’t die for nothing.”

The three of them followed Human and the other piggies into the forest.

Bosquinha and the Bishop watched them go. “When I woke up this morning,” Bosquinha said, “I didn’t expect to be a rebel before I went to bed.”

“Nor did I ever imagine that the Speaker would be our ambassador to the piggies,” said the Bishop.

“The question is,” said Dom Cristão, “will we ever be forgiven for it.”

“Do you think we’re making a mistake?” snapped the Bishop.

“Not at all,” said Dom Cristão. “I think we’ve taken a step toward something truly magnificent. But humankind almost never forgives true greatness.”

“Fortunately,” said the Bishop, “humankind isn’t the judge that matters. And now I intend to pray for this boy, since medical science has obviously reached the boundary of its competence.”

17
THE WIVES

Find out how word got out that the Evacuation Fleet is armed with the Little Doctor. That is HIGHEST PRIORITY. Then find out who this so-called Demosthenes is. Calling the Evacuation Fleet a Second Xenocide is definitely a violation of the treason laws under the Code and if CSA can’t find this voice and put a stop to it, I can’t think of any good reason for CSA to continue to exist.

In the meantime, continue your evaluation of the files retrieved from Lusitania. It’s completely irrational for them to rebel just because we want to arrest two errant xenologers. There was nothing in the Mayor’s background to suggest this was possible. If there’s a chance that there was a revolution, I want to find out who the leaders of that revolution might be.

Pyotr, I know you’re doing your best. So am I. So is everybody. So are the people on Lusitania, probably. But my responsibility is the safety and integrity of the Hundred Worlds. I have a hundred times the responsibility of Peter the Hegemon and about a tenth of his power. Not to mention the fact that I’m far from being the genius he was. No doubt you and everybody else would be happier if Peter were still available. I’m just afraid that by the time this thing is over, we may need another Ender. Nobody wants xenocide, but if it happens, I want to make sure it’s the other guys that disappear. When it comes to war, human is human and alien is alien. All that ramen business goes up in smoke when we’re talking about survival.

Does that satisfy you? Do you believe me when I tell you that I’m not being soft? Now see to it you’re not soft, either. See to it you get me results, fast. Now. Love and kisses, Bawa.

—Gobawa Ekimbo, Chmn Xen Ovst Comm, to Pyotr Martinov, Dir Cgrs Sec Age, Memo 44:1970:5:4:2; cit. Demosthenes, The Second Xenocide, 87:1972:1:1:1

Human led the way through the forest. The piggies scrambled easily up and down slopes, across a stream, through thick underbrush. Human, though, seemed to make a dance of it, running partway up certain trees, touching and speaking to others. The other piggies were much more restrained, only occasionally joining him in his antics. Only Mandachuva hung back with the human beings.

“Why does he do that?” asked Ender quietly.

Mandachuva was baffled for a moment. Ouanda explained what Ender meant. “Why does Human climb the trees, or touch them and sing?”

“He sings to them about the third life,” said Mandachuva. “It’s very bad manners for him to do that. He has always been selfish and stupid.”

Ouanda looked at Ender in surprise, then back at Mandachuva. “I thought everybody liked Human,” she said.

“Great honor,” said Mandachuva. “A wise one.” Then Mandachuva poked Ender in the hip. “But he’s a fool in one thing. He thinks you’ll do him honor. He thinks you’ll take him to the third life.”

“What’s the third life?” asked Ender.

“The gift that Pipo kept for himself,” said Mandachuva. Then he walked faster, caught up with the other piggies.

“Did any of that make sense to you?” Ender asked Ouanda.

“I still can’t get used to the way you ask them direct questions.”

“I don’t get much in the way of answers, do I?”

“Mandachuva is angry, that’s something. And he’s angry at Pipo, that’s another. The third life—a gift that Pipo kept for himself. It will all make sense.”

“When?”

“In twenty years. Or twenty minutes. That’s what makes xenology so fun.”

Ela was touching the trees, too, and looking from time to time at the bushes. “All the same species of tree. And the bushes, too, just alike. And that vine, climbing most of the trees. Have you ever seen any other plant species here in the forest, Ouanda?”

“Not that I noticed. I never looked for that. The vine is called merdona. The macios seem to feed on it, and the piggies eat the macios. The merdona root, we taught the piggies how to make it edible. Before the amaranth. So they’re eating lower on the food chain now.”

“Look,” said Ender.

The piggies were all stopped, their backs to the humans, facing a clearing. In a moment Ender, Ouanda, and Ela caught up with them and looked over them into the moonlit glen. It was quite a large space, and the ground was beaten bare. Several log houses lined the edges of the clearing, but the middle was empty except for a single huge tree, the largest they had seen in the forest.

The trunk seemed to be moving. “It’s crawling with macios,” said Ouanda.

“Not macios,” said Human.

“Three hundred twenty,” said Mandachuva.

“Little brothers,” said Arrow.

“And little mothers,” added Cups.

“And if you harm them,” said Leaf-eater, “we will kill you unplanted and knock down your tree.”

“We won’t harm them,” said Ender.

The piggies did not take a single step into the clearing. They waited and waited, until finally there was some movement near the largest of the log houses, almost directly opposite them. It was a piggy. But larger than any of the piggies they had seen before.

“A wife,” murmured Mandachuva.

“What’s her name?” asked Ender.

The piggies turned to him and stared. “They don’t tell us their names,” said Leaf-eater.

“If they even have names,” added Cups.

Human reached up and drew Ender down to where he could whisper in his ear. “We always call her Shouter. But never where a wife can hear.”

The female looked at them, and then sang—there was no other way to describe the mellifluous flow of her voice—a sentence or two in Wives’ Language.

“It’s for you to go,” said Mandachuva. “Speaker. You.”

“Alone?” asked Ender. “I’d rather bring Ouanda and Ela with me.”

Mandachuva spoke loudly in Wives’ Language; it sounded like gargling compared to the beauty of the female’s voice. Shouter answered, again singing only briefly.

“She says of course they can come,” Mandachuva reported. “She says they’re females, aren’t they? She’s not very sophisticated about the differences between humans and little ones.”

“One more thing,” said Ender. “At least one of you, as an interpreter. Or can she speak Stark?”

Mandachuva relayed Ender’s request. The answer was brief, and Mandachuva didn’t like it. He refused to translate it. It was Human who explained. “She says that you may have any interpreter you like, as long as it’s me.”

“Then we’d like to have you as our interpreter,” said Ender.

“You must enter the birthing place first,” said Human. “You are the invited one.”

Ender stepped out into the open and strode into the moonlight. He could hear Ela and Ouanda following him, and Human padding along behind. Now he could see that Shouter was not the only female here. Several faces were in every doorway. “How many are there?” asked Ender.

Human didn’t answer. Ender turned to face him. “How many wives are there?” Ender repeated.

Human still did not answer. Not until Shouter sang again, more loudly and commandingly. Only then did Human translate. “In the birthing place, Speaker, it is only to speak when a wife asks you a question.”

Ender nodded gravely, then walked back to where the other males waited at the edge of the clearing. Ouanda and Ela followed him. He could hear Shouter singing behind him, and now he understood why the males referred to her by that name—her voice was enough to make the trees shake. Human caught up with Ender and tugged at his clothing. “She says why are you going, you haven’t been given permission to go. Speaker, this is a very bad thing, she’s very angry.”

“Tell her that I did not come to give instructions or to receive instructions. If she won’t treat me as an equal, I won’t treat her as an equal.”

“I can’t tell her that,” said Human.

“Then she’ll always wonder why I left, won’t she?”

“This is a great honor, to be called among the wives!”

“It is also a great honor for the Speaker of the Dead to come and visit them.”

Human stood still for a few moments, rigid with anxiety. Then he turned and spoke to Shouter.

She in turn fell silent. There was not a sound in the glen.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Speaker,” murmured Ouanda.

“I’m improvising,” said Ender. “How do you think it’s going?”

She didn’t answer.

Shouter went back into the large log house. Ender turned around and again headed for the forest. Almost immediately Shouter’s voice rang out again.

“She commands you to wait,” said Human.

Ender did not break stride, and in a moment he was on the other side of the piggy males. “If she asks me to return, I may come back. But you must tell her, Human, that I did not come to command or to be commanded.”

“I can’t say that,” said Human.

“Why not?” asked Ender.

“Let me,” said Ouanda. “Human, do you mean you can’t say it because you’re afraid, or because there are no words for it?”

“No words. For a brother to speak to a wife about him commanding her, and her petitioning him, those words can’t be said in that direction.”

Ouanda smiled at Ender. “Not mores, here, Speaker. Language.”

“Don’t they understand your language, Human?” asked Ender.

“Males’ Language can’t be spoken in the birthing place,” said Human.

“Tell her that my words can’t be spoken in Wives’ Language, but only in Males’ Language, and tell her that I—petition—that you be allowed to translate my words in Males’ Language.”

“You are a lot of trouble, Speaker,” said Human. He turned and spoke again to Shouter.

Suddenly the glen was full of the sound of Wives’ Language, a dozen different songs, like a choir warming up.

“Speaker,” said Ouanda, “you have now violated just about every rule of good anthropological practice.”

“Which ones did I miss?”

“The only one I can think of is that you haven’t killed any of them yet.”

“What you’re forgetting,” said Ender, “is that I’m not here as a scientist to study them. I’m here as an ambassador to make a treaty with them.”

Just as quickly as they started, the wives fell silent. Shouter emerged from her house and walked to the middle of the clearing to stand very near to the huge central tree. She sang.

Human answered her—in Brothers’ Language. Ouanda murmured a rough translation. “He’s telling her what you said, about coming as equals.”

Again the wives erupted in cacophonous song.

“How do you think they’ll respond?” asked Ela.

“How could I know?” asked Ouanda. “I’ve been here exactly as often as you.”

“I think they’ll understand it and let me in on those terms,” said Ender.

“Why do you think that?” asked Ouanda.

“Because I came out of the sky. Because I’m the Speaker for the Dead.”

“Don’t start thinking you’re a great white god,” said Ouanda. “It usually doesn’t work out very well.”

“I’m not Pizarro,” said Ender.

In his ear Jane murmured, “I’m beginning to make some sense out of the Wives’ Language. The basics of the Males’ Language were in Pipo’s and Libo’s notes. Human’s translations are very helpful. The Wives’ Language is closely related to Males’ Language, except that it seems more archaic—closer to the roots, more old forms—and all the female-to-male forms are in the imperative voice, while the male-to-female forms are in the supplicative. The female word for the brothers seems to be related to the male word for macio, the tree worm. If this is the language of love, it’s a wonder they manage to reproduce at all.”

Ender smiled. It was good to hear Jane speak to him again, good to know he would have her help.

He realized that Mandachuva had been asking Ouanda a question, for now he heard her whispered answer. “He’s listening to the jewel in his ear.”

“Is it the hive queen?” asked Mandachuva.

“No,” said Ouanda. “It’s a . . .” She struggled to find a word. “It’s a computer. A machine with a voice.”

“Can I have one?” asked Mandachuva.

“Someday,” Ender answered, saving Ouanda the trouble of trying to figure out how to answer.

The wives fell silent, and again Shouter’s voice was alone. Immediately the males became agitated, bouncing up and down on their toes.

Jane whispered in his ear. “She’s speaking Males’ Language herself,” she said.

“Very great day,” said Arrow quietly. “The wives speaking Males’ Language in this place. Never happened before.”

“She invites you to come in,” said Human. “As a sister to a brother she invites you.”

Immediately Ender walked into the clearing and approached her directly. Even though she was taller than the males, she was still a good fifty centimeters shorter than Ender, so he fell to his knees at once. They were eye to eye.

“I am grateful for your kindness to me,” said Ender.

“I could say that in Wives’ Language,” Human said.

“Say it in your language anyway,” said Ender.

He did. Shouter reached out a hand and touched the smooth skin of his forehead, the rough stubble of his jaw; she pressed a finger against his lip, and he closed his eyes but did not flinch as she laid a delicate finger on his eyelid.

She spoke. “You are the holy Speaker?” translated Human. Jane corrected the translation. “He added the word holy.”

Ender looked Human in the eye. “I am not holy,” he said.

Human went rigid.

“Tell her.”

He was in turmoil for a moment; then he apparently decided that Ender was the less dangerous of the two. “She didn’t say holy.”

“Tell me what she says, as exactly as you can,” said Ender.

“If you aren’t holy,” said Human, “how did you know what she really said?”

“Please,” said Ender, “be truthful between her and me.”

“To you I’ll be truthful,” said Human. “But when I speak to her, it’s my voice she hears saying your words. I have to say them—carefully.”

“Be truthful,” said Ender. “Don’t be afraid. It’s important that she knows exactly what I said. Tell her this. Say that I ask her to forgive you for speaking to her rudely, but I am a rude framling and you must say exactly what I say.”

Human rolled his eyes, but turned to Shouter and spoke.

She answered briefly. Human translated. “She says her head is not carved from merdona root. Of course she understands that.”

“Tell her that we humans have never seen such a great tree before. Ask her to explain to us what she and the other wives do with this tree.”

Ouanda was aghast. “You certainly get straight to the point, don’t you?”

But when Human translated Ender’s words, Shouter immediately went to the tree, touched it, and began to sing.

Now, gathered closer to the tree, they could see the mass of creatures squirming on the bark. Most of them were no more than four or five centimeters long. They looked vaguely fetal, though a thin haze of dark fur covered their pinkish bodies. Their eyes were open. They climbed over each other, struggling to win a place at one of the smears of drying dough that dotted the bark.

“Amaranth mash,” said Ouanda.

“Babies,” said Ela.

“Not babies,” said Human. “These are almost grown enough to walk.”

Ender stepped to the tree, reached out his hand. Shouter abruptly stopped her song. But Ender did not stop his movement. He touched his fingers to the bark near a young piggy. In its climbing, it touched him, climbed over his hand, clung to him. “Do you know this one by name?” asked Ender.

Frightened, Human hastily translated. And gave back Shouter’s answer. “That one is a brother of mine,” he said. “He won’t get a name until he can walk on two legs. His father is Rooter.”

“And his mother?” asked Ender.

“Oh, the little mothers never have names,” said Human.

“Ask her.”

Human asked her. She answered. “She says his mother was very strong and very courageous. She made herself fat in bearing her five children.” Human touched his forehead. “Five children is a very good number. And she was fat enough to feed them all.”

“Does his mother bring the mash that feeds him?”

Human looked horrified. “Speaker, I can’t say that. Not in any language.”

“Why not?”

“I told you. She was fat enough to feed all five of her little ones. Put back that little brother, and let the wife sing to the tree.”

Ender put his hand near the trunk again and the little brother squirmed away. Shouter resumed her song. Ouanda glared at Ender for his impetuousness. But Ela seemed excited. “Don’t you see? The newborns feed on their mother’s body.”

Ender drew away, repelled.

“How can you say that?” asked Ouanda.

“Look at them squirming on the trees, just like little macios. They and the macios must have been competitors.” Ela pointed toward a part of the tree unstained by amaranth mash. “The tree leaks sap. Here in the cracks. Back before the Descolada there must have been insects that fed on the sap, and the macios and the infant piggies competed to eat them. That’s why the piggies were able to mingle their genetic molecules with these trees. Not only did the infants live here, the adults constantly had to climb the trees to keep the macios away. Even when there were plenty of other food sources, they were still tied to these trees throughout their life cycles. Long before they ever became trees.”

“We’re studying piggy society,” said Ouanda impatiently. “Not the distant evolutionary past.”

“I’m conducting delicate negotiations,” said Ender. “So please be quiet and learn what you can without conducting a seminar.”

The singing reached a climax; a crack appeared in the side of the tree.

“They’re not going to knock down this tree for us, are they?” asked Ouanda, horrified.

“She is asking the tree to open her heart,” Human touched his forehead. “This is the mothertree, and it is the only one in all our forest. No harm may come to this tree, or all our children will come from other trees, and our fathers all will die.”

All the other wives’ voices joined Shouter’s now, and soon a hole gaped wide in the trunk of the mothertree. Immediately Ender moved to stand directly in front of the hole. It was too dark inside for him to see.

Ela took her nightstick from her belt and held it out to him. Ouanda’s hand flew out and seized Ela’s wrist. “A machine!” she said. “You can’t bring that here.”

Ender gently took the nightstick out of Ela’s hand. “The fence is off,” said Ender, “and we all can engage in Questionable Activities now.” He pointed the barrel of the nightstick at the ground and pressed it on, then slid his finger quickly along the barrel to soften the light and spread it. The wives murmured, and Shouter touched Human on the belly.

“I told them you could make little moons at night,” he said. “I told them you carried them with you.”

“Will it hurt anything if I let this light into the heart of the mothertree?”

Human asked Shouter, and Shouter reached for the nightstick. Then, holding it in trembling hands, she sang softly and tilted it slightly so that a sliver of the light passed through the hole. Almost at once she recoiled and pointed the nightstick the other direction. “The brightness blinds them,” Human said.

In Ender’s ear, Jane whispered, “The sound of her voice is echoing from the inside of the tree. When the light went in, the echo modulated, causing a high overtone and a shaping of the sound. The tree was answering, using the sound of Shouter’s own voice.”

“Can you see?” Ender said softly.

“Kneel down and get me close enough, and then move me across the opening.” Ender obeyed, letting his head move slowly in front of the hole, giving the jeweled ear a clear angle toward the interior. Jane described what she saw. Ender knelt there for a long time, not moving. Then he turned to the others. “The little mothers,” said Ender. “There are little mothers in there, pregnant ones. Not more than four centimeters long. One of them is giving birth.”

“You see with your jewel?” asked Ela.

Ouanda knelt beside him, trying to see inside and failing. “Incredible sexual dimorphism. The females come to sexual maturity in their infancy, give birth, and die.” She asked Human, “All of these little ones on the outside of the tree, they’re all brothers?”

Human repeated the question to Shouter. The wife reached up to a place near the aperture in the trunk and took down one fairly large infant. She sang a few words of explanation. “That one is a young wife,” Human translated. “She will join the other wives in caring for the children, when she’s old enough.”

“Is there only one?” asked Ela.

Ender shuddered and stood up. “That one is sterile, or else they never let her mate. She couldn’t possibly have had children.”

“Why not?” asked Ouanda.

“There’s no birth canal,” said Ender. “The babies eat their way out.”

Ouanda muttered a prayer.

Ela, however, was more curious than ever. “Fascinating,” she said. “But if they’re so small, how do they mate?”

“We carry them to the fathers, of course,” said Human. “How do you think? The father’s can’t come here, can they?”

“The fathers,” said Ouanda. “That’s what they call the most revered trees.”

“That’s right,” said Human. “The fathers are ripe on the bark. They put their dust on the bark, in the sap. We carry the little mother to the father the wives have chosen. She crawls on the bark, and the dust on the sap gets into her belly and fills it up with little ones.”

Ouanda wordlessly pointed to the small protuberances on Human’s belly.

“Yes,” Human said. “These are the carries. The honored brother puts the little mother on one of his carries, and she holds very tight all the way to the father.” He touched his belly. “It is the greatest joy we have in our second life. We would carry the little mothers every night if we could.”

Shouter sang, long and loud, and the hole in the mothertree began to close again.

“All those females, all the little mothers,” asked Ela. “Are they sentient?”

It was a word that Human didn’t know.

“Are they awake?” asked Ender.

“Of course,” said Human.

“What he means,” explained Ouanda, “is can the little mothers think? Do they understand language?”

“Them?” asked Human. “No, they’re no smarter than the cabras. And only a little smarter than the macios. They only do three things. Eat, crawl, and cling to the carry. The ones on the outside of the tree, now—they’re beginning to learn. I can remember climbing on the face of the mothertree. So I had memory then. But I’m one of the very few that remember so far back.”

Tears came unbidden to Ouanda’s eyes. “All the mothers, they’re born, they mate, they give birth and die, all in their infancy. They never even know they were alive.”

“It’s sexual dimorphism carried to a ridiculous extreme,” said Ela. “The females reach sexual maturity early, but the males reach it late. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the dominant female adults are all sterile. They govern the whole tribe, and yet their own genes can’t be passed on—”

“Ela,” said Ouanda, “what if we could develop a way to let the little mothers bear their children without being devoured. A caesarean section. With a protein-rich nutrient substitute for the little mother’s corpse. Could the females survive to adulthood?”

Ela didn’t have a chance to answer. Ender took them both by the arms and pulled them away. “How dare you!” he whispered. “What if they could find a way to let infant human girls conceive and bear children, which would feed on their mother’s tiny corpse?”

“What are you talking about!” said Ouanda.

“That’s sick,” said Ela.

“We didn’t come here to attack them at the root of their lives,” said Ender. “We came here to find a way to share a world with them. In a hundred years or five hundred years, when they’ve learned enough to make changes for themselves, then they can decide whether to alter the way their children are conceived and born. But we can’t begin to guess what it would do to them if suddenly as many females as males came to maturity. To do what? They can’t bear more children, can they? They can’t compete with the males to become fathers, can they? What are they for?”

“But they’re dying without ever being alive—”

“They are what they are,” said Ender. “They decide what changes they’ll make, not you, not from your blindly human perspective, trying to make them have full and happy lives, just like us.”

“You’re right,” said Ela. “Of course, you’re right, I’m sorry.”

To Ela, the piggies weren’t people, they were strange alien fauna, and Ela was used to discovering that other animals had inhuman life patterns. But Ender could see that Ouanda was still upset. She had made the raman transition: She thought of piggies as us instead of them. She accepted the strange behavior that she knew about, even the murder of her father, as within an acceptable range of alienness. This meant she was actually more tolerant and accepting of the piggies than Ela could possibly be; yet it also made her more vulnerable to the discovery of cruel, bestial behaviors among her friends.

Ender noticed, too, that after years of association with the piggies, Ouanda had one of their habits: At a moment of extreme anxiety, her whole body became rigid. So he reminded her of her humanity by taking her shoulder in a fatherly gesture, drawing her close under his arm.

At his touch Ouanda melted a little, laughed nervously, her voice low. “Do you know what I keep thinking?” she said. “That the little mothers have all their children and die unbaptized.”

“If Bishop Peregrino converts them,” said Ender, “maybe they’ll let us sprinkle the inside of the mothertree and say the words.”

“Don’t mock me,” Ouanda whispered.

“I wasn’t. For now, though, we’ll ask them to change enough that we can live with them, and no more. We’ll change ourselves only enough that they can bear to live with us. Agree to that, or the fence goes up again, because then we truly would be a threat to their survival.”

Ela nodded her agreement, but Ouanda had gone rigid again. Ender’s fingers suddenly dug harshly into Ouanda’s shoulder. Frightened, she nodded her agreement. He relaxed his grip. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But they are what they are. If you want, they are what God made them. So don’t try to remake them in your own image.”

He returned to the mothertree. Shouter and Human were waiting.

“Please excuse the interruption,” said Ender.

“It’s all right,” said Human. “I told her what you were doing.”

Ender felt himself sink inside. “What did you tell her we were doing?”

“I said that they wanted to do something to the little mothers that would make us all more like humans, but you said they never could do that or you’d put back the fence. I told her that you said we must remain Little Ones, and you must remain humans.”

Ender smiled. His translation was strictly true, but he had the sense not to get into specifics. It was conceivable that the wives might actually want the little mothers to survive childbirth, without realizing how vast the consequences of such a simple-seeming, humanitarian change might be. Human was an excellent diplomat; he told the truth and yet avoided the whole issue.

“Well,” said Ender. “Now that we’ve all met each other, it’s time to begin serious talking.”

Ender sat down on the bare earth. Shouter squatted on the ground directly opposite him. She sang a few words.

“She says you must teach us everything you know, take us out to the stars, bring us the hive queen and give her the lightstick that this new human brought with you, or in the dark of night she’ll send all the brothers of this forest to kill all the humans in your sleep and hang you high above the ground so you get no third life at all.” Seeing the humans’ alarm, Human reached out his hand and touched Ender’s chest. “No, no, you must understand. That means nothing. That’s the way we always begin when we’re talking to another tribe. Do you think we’re crazy? We’d never kill you! You gave us amaranth, pottery, the Hive Queen and the Hegemon.”

“Tell her to withdraw that threat or we’ll never give her anything else.”

“I told you, Speaker, it doesn’t mean—”

“She said the words, and I won’t talk to her as long as those words stand.”

Human spoke to her.

Shouter jumped to her feet and walked all the way around the mothertree, her hands raised high, singing loudly.

Human leaned to Ender. “She’s complaining to the great mother and to all the wives that you’re a brother who doesn’t know his place. She’s saying that you’re rude and impossible to deal with.”

Ender nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly right. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Again Shouter squatted across from Ender. She spoke in Males’ Language.

“She says she’ll never kill any human or let any of the brothers or wives kill any of you. She says for you to remember that you’re twice as tall as any of us and you know everything and we know nothing. Now has she humiliated herself enough that you’ll talk to her?”

Shouter watched him, glumly waiting for his response.

“Yes,” said Ender. “Now we can begin.”

Novinha knelt on the floor beside Miro’s bed. Quim and Olhado stood behind her. Dom Cristão was putting Quara and Grego to bed in their room. The sound of his off-tune lullaby was barely audible behind the tortured sound of Miro’s breathing.

Miro’s eyes opened.

“Miro,” said Novinha.

Miro groaned.

“Miro, you’re home in bed. You went over the fence while it was on. Now Dr. Navio says that your brain has been damaged. We don’t know whether the damage is permanent or not. You may be partially paralyzed. But you’re alive, Miro, and Navio says that he can do many things to help you compensate for what you may have lost. Do you understand? I’m telling you the truth. It may be very bad for a while, but it’s worth trying.”

He moaned softly. But it was not a sound of pain. It was as if he were trying to talk, and couldn’t.

“Can you move your jaw, Miro?” asked Quim.

Slowly Miro’s mouth opened and closed.

Olhado held his hand a meter above Miro’s head and moved it. “Can you make your eyes follow the movement of my hand?”

Miro’s eyes followed. Novinha squeezed Miro’s hand. “Did you feel me squeeze your hand?”

Miro moaned again.

“Close your mouth for no,” said Quim, “and open your mouth for yes.”

Miro closed his mouth and said, “Mm.”

Novinha could not help herself; despite her encouraging words, this was the most terrible thing that had happened to any of her children. She had thought when Lauro lost his eyes and became Olhado—she hated the nickname, but now used it herself—that nothing worse could happen. But Miro, paralyzed, helpless, so he couldn’t even feel the touch of her hand, that could not be borne. She had felt one kind of grief when Pipo died, and another kind when Libo died, and a terrible regret at Marcão’s death. She even remembered the aching emptiness she felt as she watched them lower her mother and father into the ground. But there was no pain worse than to watch her child suffer and be unable to help.

She stood up to leave. For his sake, she would do her crying silently, and in another room.

“Mm. Mm. Mm.”

“He doesn’t want you to go,” said Quim.

“I’ll stay if you want,” said Novinha. “But you should sleep again. Navio said that the more you sleep for a while—”

“Mm. Mm. Mm.”

“Doesn’t want to sleep, either,” said Quim.

Novinha stifled her immediate response, to snap at Quim and tell him that she could hear his answers perfectly well for herself. This was no time for quarreling. Besides, it was Quim who had worked out the system that Miro was using to communicate. He had a right to take pride in it, to pretend that he was Miro’s voice. It was his way of affirming that he was part of the family. That he was not quitting because of what he learned in the praça today. It was his way of forgiving her, so she held her tongue.

“Maybe he wants to tell us something,” said Olhado.

“Mm.”

“Or ask a question?” said Quim.

“Ma. Aa.”

“That’s great,” said Quim. “If he can’t move his hands, he can’t write.”

“Sem problema,” said Olhado. “Scanning. He can scan. If we bring him in by the terminal, I can make it scan the letters and he just says yes when it hits the letters he wants.”

“That’ll take forever,” said Quim.

“Do you want to try that, Miro?” asked Novinha.

He wanted to.

The three of them carried him to the front room and laid him on the bed there. Olhado oriented the terminal so it displayed all the letters of the alphabet, facing so Miro could see them. He wrote a short program that caused each letter to light up in turn for a fraction of a second. It took a few trial runs for the speed to be right—slow enough that Miro could make a sound that meant this letter before the light moved on to the next one.

Miro, in turn, kept things moving faster yet by deliberately abbreviating his words.

P-I-G.

“Piggies,” said Olhado.

“Yes,” said Novinha. “Why were you crossing the fence with the piggies?”

“Mmmmm!”

“He’s asking a question, Mother,” said Quim. “He doesn’t want to answer any.”

“Aa.”

“Do you want to know about the piggies that were with you when you crossed the fence?” asked Novinha. He did. “They’ve gone back into the forest. With Ouanda and Ela and the Speaker for the Dead.” Quickly she told him about the meeting in the Bishop’s chambers, what they had learned about the piggies, and above all what they had decided to do. “When they turned off the fence to save you, Miro, it was a decision to rebel against Congress. Do you understand? The Committee’s rules are finished. The fence is nothing but wires now. The gate will stand open.”

Tears came to Miro’s eyes.

“Is that all you wanted to know?” asked Novinha. “You should sleep.”

No, he said. No no no no.

“Wait till his eyes are clear,” said Quim. “And then we’ll scan some more.”

D-I-G-A-F-A-L—

“Diga ao Falante pelos Mortos,” said Olhado.

“What should we tell the Speaker?” asked Quim.

“You should sleep now and tell us later,” said Novinha. “He won’t be back for hours. He’s negotiating a set of rules to govern relations between the piggies and us. To stop them from killing any more of us, the way they killed Pipo and L—and your father.”

But Miro refused to sleep. He continued spelling out his message as the terminal scanned. Together the three of them worked out what he was trying to get them to tell the Speaker. And they understood that he wanted them to go now, before the negotiations ended.

So Novinha left Dom Cristão and Dona Cristã to watch over the house and the little children. On the way out of the house she stopped beside her oldest son. The exertion had worn him out; his eyes were closed and his breathing was regular. She touched his hand, held it, squeezed it; he couldn’t feel her touch, she knew, but then it was herself she was comforting, not him.

He opened his eyes. And, ever so gently, she felt his fingers tighten on hers. “I felt it,” she whispered to him. “You’ll be all right.”

He shut his eyes against his tears. She got up and walked blindly to the door. “I have something in my eye,” she told Olhado. “Lead me for a few minutes until I can see for myself.”

Quim was already at the fence. “The gate’s too far!” he shouted. “Can you climb over, Mother?”

She could, but it wasn’t easy. “No doubt about it,” she said. “Bosquinha’s going to have to let us install another gate right here.”

It was late now, past midnight, and both Ouanda and Ela was getting sleepy. Ender was not. He had been on edge for hours in his bargaining with Shouter; his body chemistry had responded, and even if he had gone home right now it would have been hours before he was capable of sleep.

He now knew far more about what the piggies wanted and needed. Their forest was their home, their nation; it was all the definition of property they had ever needed. Now, however, the amaranth fields had caused them to see that the prairie was also useful land, which they needed to control. Yet they had little concept of land measurement. How many hectares did they need to keep under cultivation? How much land could the humans use? Since the piggies themselves barely understood their needs, it was hard for Ender to pin them down.

Harder still was the concept of law and government. The wives ruled: to the piggies, it was that simple. But Ender had finally got them to understand that humans made their laws differently, and that human laws applied to human problems. To make them understand why humans needed their own laws, Ender had to explain to them human mating patterns. He was amused to note that Shouter was appalled at the notion of adults mating with each other, and of men having an equal voice with women in the making of the laws. The idea of family and kinship separate from the tribe was “brother blindness” to her. It was all right for Human to take pride in his father’s many matings, but as far as the wives were concerned, they chose fathers solely on the basis of what was good for the tribe. The tribe and the individual—they were the only entities the wives respected.

Finally, though, they understood that human laws must apply within the borders of human settlements, and piggy laws must apply within the piggy tribes. Where the borders should be was entirely a different matter. Now, after three hours, they had finally agreed to one thing and one thing only: Piggy law applied within the forest, and all humans who came within the forest were subject to it. Human law applied within the fence, and all piggies who came there were subject to human government. All the rest of the planet would be divided up later. It was a very small triumph, but at least there was some agreement.

“You must understand,” Ender told her, “that humans will need a lot of open land. But we’re only the beginning of the problem. You want the hive queen to teach you, to help you mine ore and smelt metals and make tools. But she’ll also need land. And in a very short time she’ll be far stronger than either humans or Little Ones.” Every one of her buggers, he explained, was perfectly obedient and infinitely hardworking. They would quickly outstrip the humans in their productivity and power. Once she was restored to life on Lusitania, she would have to be reckoned with at every turn.

“Rooter says she can be trusted,” said Human. And, translating for Shouter, he said, “The mothertree also gives the hive queen her trust.”

“Do you give her your land?” Ender insisted.

“The world is big,” Human translated for Shouter. “She can use all the forests of the other tribes. So can you. We give them to you freely.”

Ender looked at Ouanda and Ela. “That’s all very good,” said Ela, “but are those forests theirs to give?”

“Definitely not,” said Ouanda. “They even have wars with the other tribes.”

“We’ll kill them for you if they give you trouble,” offered Human. “We’re very strong now. Three hundred twenty babies. In ten years no tribe can stand against us.”

“Human,” said Ender, “tell Shouter that we are dealing with this tribe now. We’ll deal with other tribes later.”

Human translated quickly, his words tumbling over each other, and quickly had Shouter’s response. “No no no no no.”

“What is she objecting to?” asked Ender.

“You won’t deal with our enemies. You came to us. If you go to them, then you are the enemy, too.”

It was at that moment that the lights appeared in the forest behind them, and Arrow and Leaf-eater led Novinha, Quim, and Olhado into the wives’ clearing.

“Miro sent us,” Olhado explained.

“How is he?” asked Ouanda.

“Paralyzed,” said Quim bluntly. It saved Novinha the effort of explaining it gently.

“Nossa Senhora,” whispered Ouanda.

“But much of it is temporary,” said Novinha. “Before I left, I squeezed his hand. He felt it, and squeezed me back. Just a little, but the nerve connections aren’t dead, not all of them, anyway.”

“Excuse me,” said Ender, “but that’s a conversation you can carry on back in Milagre. I have another matter to attend to here.”

“Sorry,” Novinha said. “Miro’s message. He couldn’t speak, but he gave it to us letter by letter, and we figured out what went in the cracks. The piggies are planning war. Using the advantages they’ve gained from us. Arrows, their greater numbers—they’d be irresistible. As I understand it, though, Miro says that their warfare isn’t just a matter of conquest of territory. It’s an opportunity for genetic mixing. Male exogamy. The winning tribe gets the use of the trees that grow from the bodies of the war dead.”

Ender looked at Human, Leaf-eater, Arrow. “It’s true,” said Arrow. “Of course it’s true. We are the wisest of tribes now. All of us will make better fathers than any of the other piggies.”

“I see,” said Ender.

“That’s why Miro wanted us to come to you now, tonight,” said Novinha. “While the negotiations still aren’t final. That has to end.”

Human stood up, bounced up and down as if he were about to take off and fly. “I won’t translate that,” said Human.

“I will,” said Leaf-eater.

“Stop!” shouted Ender. His voice was far louder than he had ever let it be heard before. Immediately everyone fell silent; the echo of his shout seemed to linger among the trees. “Leaf-eater,” said Ender, “I will have no interpreter but Human.”

“Who are you to tell me that I may not speak to the wives? I am a piggy, and you are nothing.”

“Human,” said Ender, “tell Shouter that if she lets Leaf-eater translate words that we humans have said among ourselves, then he is a spy. And if she lets him spy on us, we will go home now and you will have nothing from us. I’ll take the hive queen to another world to restore her. Do you understand?”

Of course he understood. Ender also knew that Human was pleased. Leaf-eater was trying to usurp Human’s role and discredit him—along with Ender. When Human finished translating Ender’s words, Shouter sang at Leaf-eater. Abashed, he quickly retreated to the woods to watch with the other piggies.

But Human was by no means a puppet. He gave no sign that he was grateful. He looked Ender in the eye. “You said you wouldn’t try to change us.”

“I said I wouldn’t try to change you more than is necessary.”

“Why is this necessary? It’s between us and the other piggies.”

“Careful,” said Ouanda. “He’s very upset.”

Before he could hope to persuade Shouter, he had to convince Human. “You are our first friends among the piggies. You have our trust and our love. We will never do anything to harm you, or to give any other piggies an advantage over you. But we didn’t come just to you. We represent all of humankind, and we’ve come to teach all we can to all of the piggies. Regardless of tribe.”

“You don’t represent all humankind. You’re about to fight a war with other humans. So how can you say that our wars are evil and your wars are good?”

Surely Pizarro, for all his shortcomings, had an easier time of it with Atahualpa. “We’re trying not to fight a war with other humans,” said Ender. “And if we fight one, it won’t be our war, trying to gain an advantage over them. It will be your war, trying to win you the right to travel among the stars.” Ender held up his open hand. “We have set aside our humanness to become ramen with you.” He closed his hand into a fist. “Human and piggy and hive queen, here on Lusitania, will be one. All humans. All buggers. All piggies.”

Human sat in silence, digesting this.

“Speaker,” he finally said. “This is very hard. Until you humans came, other piggies were—always to be killed, and their third life was to be slaves to us in forests that we kept. This forest was once a battlefield, and the most ancient trees are the warriors who died in battle. Our oldest fathers are the heroes of that war, and our houses are made of the cowards. All our lives we prepare to win battles with our enemies, so that our wives can make a mothertree in a new battle forest, and make us mighty and great. These last ten years we have learned to use arrows to kill from far off. Pots and cabra skins to carry water across the drylands. Amaranth and merdona root so we can be many and strong and carry food with us far from the macios of our home forest. We rejoiced in this because it meant that we would always be victorious in war. We would carry our wives, our little mothers, our heroes to every corner of the great world, and finally one day out into the stars. This is our dream, Speaker, and you tell me now that you want us to lose it like wind in the sky.”

It was a powerful speech. None of the others offered Ender any suggestions about what to say in answer. Human had half-convinced them.

“You dream is a good one,” said Ender. “It’s the dream of every living creature. The desire that is the very root of life itself: To grow until all the space you can see is part of you, under your control. It’s the desire for greatness. There are two ways, though, to fulfil it. One way is to kill anything that is not yourself, to swallow it up or destroy it, until nothing is left to oppose you. But that way is evil. You say to all the universe, Only I will be great, and to make room for me the rest of you must give up even what you already have, and become nothing. Do you understand, Human, that if we humans felt this way, acted this way, we could kill every piggy in Lusitania and make this place our home. How much of your dream would be left, if we were evil?”

Human was trying hard to understand. “I see that you gave us great gifts, when you could have taken from us even the little that we had. But why did you give us the gifts, if we can’t use them to become great?”

“We want you to grow, to travel among the stars. Here on Lusitania we want you to be strong and powerful, with hundreds and thousands of brothers and wives. We want to teach you to grow many kinds of plants and raise many different animals. Ela and Novinha, these two women, will work all the days of their lives to develop more plants that can live here in Lusitania, and every good thing that they make, they’ll give to you. So you can grow. But why does a single piggy in any other forest have to die, just so you can have these gifts? And why would it hurt you in any way, if we also gave the same gifts to them?”

“If they become just as strong as we are, then what have we gained?”

What am I expecting this brother to do, thought Ender. His people have always measured themselves against the other tribes. Their forest isn’t fifty hectares or five hundred—it’s either larger or smaller than the forest of the tribe to the west or the south. What I have to do now is the work of a generation: I have to teach him a new way of conceiving the stature of his own people. “Is Rooter great?” asked Ender.

“I say he is,” said Human. “He’s my father. His tree isn’t the oldest or thickest, but no father that we remember has ever had so many children so quickly after he was planted.”

“So in a way, all the children that he fathered are still part of him. The more children he fathers, the greater he becomes.” Human nodded slowly. “And the more you accomplish in your life, the greater you make your father, is that true?”

“If his children do well, then yes, it’s a great honor to the fathertree.”

“Do you have to kill all the other great trees in order for your father to be great?”

“That’s different,” said Human. “All the other great trees are fathers of the tribe. And the lesser trees are still brothers.” Yet Ender could see that Human was uncertain now. He was resisting Ender’s ideas because they were strange, not because they were wrong or incomprehensible. He was beginning to understand.

“Look at the wives,” said Ender. “They have no children. They can never be great the way that your father is great.”

“Speaker, you know that they’re the greatest of all. The whole tribe obeys them. When they rule us well, the tribe prospers; when the tribe becomes many, then the wives are also made strong—”

“Even though not a single one of you is their own child.”

“How could we be?” asked Human.

“And yet you add to their greatness. Even though they aren’t your mother or your father, they still grow when you grow.”

“We’re all the same tribe . . .”

“But why are you the same tribe? You have different fathers, different mothers.”

“Because we are the tribe! We live here in the forest, we—”

“If another piggy came here from another tribe, and asked you to let him stay and be a brother—”

“We would never make him a fathertree!”

“But you tried to make Pipo and Libo fathertrees.”

Human was breathing heavily. “I see,” he said. “They were part of the tribe. From the sky, but we made them brothers and tried to make them fathers. The tribe is whatever we believe it is. If we say the tribe is all the Little Ones in the forest, and all the trees, then that is what the tribe is. Even though some of the oldest trees here came from warriors of two different tribes, fallen in battle. We become one tribe because we say we’re one tribe.”

Ender marveled at his mind, this small raman. How few humans were able to grasp this idea, or let it extend beyond the narrow confines of their tribe, their family, their nation.

Human walked behind Ender, leaned against him, the weight of the young piggy pressed against his back. Ender felt Human’s breath on his cheek, and then their cheeks were pressed together, both of them looking in the same direction. All at once Ender understood: “You see what I see,” said Ender.

“You humans grow by making us part of you, humans and piggies and buggers, ramen together. Then we are one tribe, and our greatness is your greatness, and yours is ours.” Ender could feel Human’s body trembling with the strength of the idea. “You say to us, we must see all other tribes the same way. As one tribe, our tribe all together, so that we grow by making them grow.”

“You could send teachers,” said Ender. “Brothers to the other tribes, who could pass into their third life in the other forests and have children there.”

“This is a strange and difficult thing to ask of the wives,” said Human. “Maybe an impossible thing. Their minds don’t work the way a brother’s mind works. A brother can think of many different things. But a wife thinks of only one thing: what is good for the tribe, and at the root of that, what is good for the children and the little mothers.”

“Can you make them understand this?” asked Ender.

“Better than you could,” said Human. “But probably not. Probably I’ll fail.”

“I don’t think you’ll fail,” said Ender.

“You came here tonight to make a covenant between us, the piggies of this tribe, and you, the humans who live on this world. The humans outside Lusitania won’t care about our covenant, and the piggies outside this forest won’t care about it.”

“We want to make the same covenant with all of them.”

“And in this covenant, you humans promise to teach us everything.”

“As quickly as you can understand it.”

“Any question we ask.”

“If we know the answer.”

“When! If! These aren’t words in a covenant! Give me straight answers now, Speaker for the Dead.” Human stood up, pushed away from Ender, walked around in front of him, bent down a little to look at Ender from above. “Promise to teach us everything that you know!”

“We promise that.”

“And you also promise to restore the hive queen to help us.”

“I’ll restore the hive queen. You’ll have to make your own covenant with her. She doesn’t obey human law.”

“You promise to restore the hive queen, whether she helps us or not.”

“Yes.”

“You promise to obey our law when you come into our forest. And you agree that the prairie land that we need will also be under our law.”

“Yes.”

“And you will go to war against all the other humans in all the stars of the sky to protect us and let us also travel in the stars?”

“We already have.”

Human relaxed, stepped back, squatted in his old position. He drew with his finger in the dirt. “Now, what you want from us,” said Human. “We will obey human law in your city, and also in the prairie land that you need.”

“Yes,” said Ender.

“And you don’t want us to go to war,” said Human.

“That’s right.”

“And that’s all?”

“One more thing,” said Ender.

“What you ask is already impossible,” said Human. “You might as well ask more.”

“The third life,” said Ender. “When does it begin? When you kill a piggy and he grows into a tree, is that right?”

“The first life is within the mothertree, where we never see the light, and where we eat blindly the meat of our mother’s body and the sap of the mothertree. The second life is when we live in the shade of the forest, the half-light, running and walking and climbing, seeing and singing and talking, making with our hands. The third life is when we reach and drink from the sun, in the full light at last, never moving except in the wind; only to think, and on those certain days when the brothers drum on your trunk, to speak to them. Yes, that’s the third life.”

“Humans don’t have the third life.”

Human looked at him, puzzled.

“When we die, even if you plant us, nothing grows. There’s no tree. We never drink from the sun. When we die, we’re dead.”

Human looked at Ouanda. “But the other book you gave us. It talked all the time about living after death and being born again.”

“Not as a tree,” said Ender. “Not as anything you can touch or feel. Or talk to. Or get answers from.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Human. “If that’s true, why did Pipo and Libo make us plant them?”

Novinha knelt down beside Ender, touching him—no, leaning on him—so she could hear more clearly.

“How did they make you plant them?” said Ender.

“They made the great gift, won the great honor. The human and the piggy together. Pipo and Mandachuva. Libo and Leaf-eater. Mandachuva and Leaf-eater both thought that they would win the third life, but each time, Pipo and Libo would not. They insisted on keeping the gift for themselves. Why would they do that, if humans have no third life?”

Novinha’s voice came then, husky and emotional. “What did they have to do, to give the third life to Mandachuva or Leaf-eater?”

“Plant them, of course,” said Human. “The same as today.”

“The same as what today?” asked Ender.

“You and me,” said Human. “Human and the Speaker for the Dead. If we make this covenant so that the wives and the humans agree together, then this is a great, a noble day. So either you will give me the third life, or I will give it to you.”

“With my own hand?”

“Of course,” said Human. “If you won’t give me the honor, then I must give it to you.”

Ender remembered the picture he had first seen only two weeks ago, of Pipo dismembered and disemboweled, his body parts stretched and spread. Planted. “Human,” said Ender, “the worst crime that a human being can commit is murder. And one of the worst ways to do it is to take a living person and cut him and hurt him so badly that he dies.”

Again Human squatted for a while, trying to make sense of this. “Speaker,” he said at last, “my mind keeps seeing this two ways. If humans don’t have a third life, then planting is killing, forever. In our eyes, Libo and Pipo were keeping the honor to themselves, and leaving Mandachuva and Leaf-eater as you see them, to die without honor for their accomplishments. In our eyes, you humans came out of the fence to the hillside and tore them from the ground before their roots could grow. In our eyes, it was you who committed murder, when you carried Pipo and Libo away. But now I see it another way. Pipo and Libo wouldn’t take Mandachuva and Leaf-eater into the third life, because to them it would be murder. So they willingly allowed their own death, just so they wouldn’t have to kill any of us.”

“Yes,” said Novinha.

“But if that’s so, then when you humans saw them on the hillside, why didn’t you come into the forest and kill us all? Why didn’t you make a great fire and consume all our fathers, and the great mothertree herself?”

Leaf-eater cried out from the edge of the forest, a terrible keening cry, an unbearable grief.

“If you had cut one of our trees,” said Human. “If you had murdered a single tree, we would have come upon you in the night and killed you, every one of you. And even if some of you survived, our messengers would have told the story to every other tribe, and none of you would ever have left this land alive. Why didn’t you kill us, for murdering Pipo and Libo?”

Mandachuva suddenly appeared behind Human, panting heavily. He flung himself to the ground, his hands outstretched toward Ender. “I cut him with these hands,” he cried. “I tried to honor him, and I killed his tree forever!”

“No,” said Ender. He took Mandachuva’s hands, held them. “You both thought you were saving each other’s life. He hurt you, and you—hurt him, yes, killed him, but you both believed you were doing good. That’s enough, until now. Now you know the truth, and so do we. We know that you didn’t mean murder. And you know that when you take a knife to a human being, we die forever. That’s the last term in the covenant, Human. Never take another human being to the third life, because we don’t know how to go.”

“When I tell this story to the wives,” said Human, “you’ll hear grief so terrible that it will sound like the breaking of trees in a thunderstorm.”

He turned and stood before Shouter, and spoke to her for a few moments. Then he returned to Ender. “Go now,” he said.

“We have no covenant yet,” said Ender.

“I have to speak to all the wives. They’ll never do that while you’re here, in the shade of the mothertree, with no one to protect the little ones. Arrow will lead you back out of the forest. Wait for me on the hillside, where Rooter keeps watch over the gate. Sleep if you can. I’ll present the covenant to the wives and try to make them understand that we must deal as kindly with the other tribes as you have dealt with us.”

Impulsively, Human reached out a hand and touched Ender firmly on the belly. “I make my own covenant,” he said to Ender. “I will honor you forever, but I will never kill you.”

Ender put out his hand and laid his palm against Human’s warm abdomen. The protuberances under his hand were hot to the touch. “I will also honor you forever,” said Ender.

“And if we make this covenant between your tribe and ours,” said Human, “will you give me the honor of the third life? Will you let me rise up and drink the light?”

“Can we do it quickly? Not the slow and terrible way that—”

“And make me one of the silent trees? Never fathering? Without honor, except to feed my sap to the filthy macios and give my wood to the brothers when they sing to me?”

“Isn’t there someone else who can do it?” asked Ender. “One of the brothers, who knows your way of life and death?”

“You don’t understand,” said Human. “This is how the whole tribe knows that the truth has been spoken. Either you must take me into the third life, or I must take you, or there’s no covenant. I won’t kill you, Speaker, and we both want a treaty.”

“I’ll do it,” said Ender.

Human nodded, withdrew his hand, and returned to Shouter.

“Ó Deus,” whispered Ouanda. “How will you have the heart?”

Ender had no answer. He merely followed silently behind Arrow as he led them to the woods. Novinha gave him her own nightstick to lead the way; Arrow played with it like a child, making the light small and large, making it hover and swoop like a suckfly among the trees and bushes. He was as happy and playful as Ender had ever seen a piggy be.

But behind them, they could hear the voices of the wives, singing a terrible and cacophonous song. Human had told them the truth about Pipo and Libo, that they died the final death, and in pain, all so that they would not have to do to Mandachuva and Leaf-eater what they thought was murder. Only when they had gone far enough that the sound of the wives’ keening was softer than their own footfalls and the wind in the trees did any of the humans speak.

“That was the mass for my father’s soul,” said Ouanda softly.

“And for mine,” answered Novinha; they all knew that she spoke of Pipo, not the long-dead Venerado, Gusto.

But Ender was not part of their conversation; he had not known Libo and Pipo, and did not belong to their memory of grief. All he could think of was the trees of the forest. They had once been living, breathing piggies, every one of them. The piggies could sing to them, talk to them, even, somehow, understand their speech. But Ender couldn’t. To Ender the trees were not people, could never be people. If he took the knife to Human, it might not be murder in the piggies’ eyes, but to Ender himself he would be taking away the only part of Human’s life that Ender understood. As a piggy, Human was a true raman, a brother. As a tree he would be little more than a gravestone, as far as Ender could understand, as far as he could really believe.

Once again, he thought, I must kill, though I promised that I never would again.

He felt Novinha’s hand take him by the crook of the arm. She leaned on him. “Help me,” she said. “I’m almost blind in the darkness.”

“I have good night vision,” Olhado offered cheerfully from behind her.

“Shut up, stupid,” Ela whispered fiercely. “Mother wants to walk with him.”

Both Novinha and Ender heard her clearly, and both could feel each other’s silent laughter. Novinha drew closer to him as they walked. “I think you have the heart for what you have to do,” she said softly, so that only he could hear.

“Cold and ruthless?” he asked. His voice hinted at wry humor, but the words tasted sour and truthful in his mouth.

“Compassionate enough,” she said, “to put the hot iron into the wound when that’s the only way to heal it.”

As one who had felt his burning iron cauterize her deepest wounds, she had the right to speak; and he believed her, and it eased his heart for the bloody work ahead.

Ender hadn’t thought it would be possible to sleep, knowing what was ahead of him. But now he woke up, Novinha’s voice soft in his ear. He realized that he was outside, lying in the capim, his head resting on Novinha’s lap. It was still dark.

“They’re coming,” said Novinha softly.

Ender sat up. Once, as a child, he would have come awake fully, instantly; but he was trained as a soldier then. Now it took a moment to orient himself. Ouanda, Ela, both awake and watching; Olhado asleep; Quim just stirring. The tall tree of Rooter’s third life rising only a few meters away. And in the near distance, beyond the fence at the bottom of the little valley, the first houses of Milagre rising up the slopes; the Cathedral and the monastery atop the highest and nearest of the hills.

In the other direction, the forest, and coming down from the trees, Human, Mandachuva, Leaf-eater, Arrow, Cups, Calendar, Worm, Bark-dancer, several other brothers whose names Ouanda didn’t know. “I’ve never seen them,” she said. “They must come from other brother-houses.”

Do we have a covenant? said Ender silently. That’s all I care about. Did Human make the wives understand a new way of conceiving of the world?

Human was carrying something. Wrapped in leaves. The piggies wordlessly laid it before Ender; Human unwrapped it carefully. It was a computer printout.

“The Hive Queen and the Hegemon,” said Ouanda softly. “The copy Miro gave them.”

“The covenant,” said Human.

Only then did they realize that the printout was upside down, on the blank side of the paper. And there, in the light of a nightstick, they saw faint hand-printed letters. They were large and awkwardly formed. Ouanda was in awe. “We never taught them to make ink,” she said. “We never taught them to write.”

“Calendar learned to make the letters,” said Human. “Writing with sticks in the dirt. And Worm made the ink from cabra dung and dried macios. This is how you make treaties, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Ender.

“If we didn’t write it on paper, then we would remember it differently.”

“That’s right,” said Ender. “You did well to write it down.”

“We made some changes. The wives wanted some changes, and I thought you would accept them.” Human pointed them out. “You humans can make this covenant with other piggies, but you can’t make a different covenant. You can’t teach any other piggies things you haven’t taught us. Can you accept that?”

“Of course,” said Ender.

“That was the easy one. Now, what if we disagree about what the rules are? What if we disagree about where your prairie land ends and ours begins? So Shouter said, Let the hive queen judge between humans and Little Ones. Let the humans judge between the Little Ones and the hive queen. And let Little Ones judge between the hive queen and the humans.”

Ender wondered how easy that would be. He remembered, as no other living human did, how terrifying the buggers were three thousand years ago. Their insectlike bodies were the nightmares of humanity’s childhood. How easily would the people of Milagre accept their judgment?

So it’s hard. It’s no harder than what we’ve asked the piggies to do. “Yes,” said Ender. “We can accept that, too. It’s a good plan.”

“And another change,” said Human. He looked up at Ender and grinned. It looked ghastly, since piggy faces weren’t designed for that human expression. “This is why it took so long. All these changes.”

Ender smiled back.

“If a tribe of piggies won’t sign the covenant with humans, and if that tribe attacks one of the tribes that has signed the covenant, then we can go to war against them.”

“What do you mean by attack?” asked Ender. If they could take a mere insult as an attack, then this clause would reduce the prohibition of war to nothing.

“Attack,” said Human. “It begins when they come into our lands and kill the brothers or the wives. It is not attack when they present themselves for war, or offer an agreement to begin a war. It is attack when they start to fight without an agreement. Since we will never agree to a war, an attack by another tribe is the only way war could begin. I knew you’d ask.”

He pointed to the words of the covenant, and indeed the treaty carefully defined what constituted an attack.

“That is also acceptable,” said Ender. It meant that the possibility of war would not be removed for many generations, perhaps for centuries, since it would take a long time to bring this covenant to every tribe of piggies in the world. But long before the last tribe joined the covenant, Ender thought, the benefits of peaceful exogamy would be made plain, and few would want to be warriors anymore.

“Now the last change,” said Human. “The wives meant this to punish you for making this covenant so difficult. But I think you will believe it is no punishment. Since we are forbidden to take you into the third life, after this covenant is in effect humans are also forbidden to take brothers into the third life.”

For a moment Ender thought it meant his reprieve; he would not have to do the thing that Libo and Pipo had both refused.

“After the covenant,” said Human. “You will be the first and last human to give this gift.”

“I wish . . .” said Ender.

“I know what you wish, my friend Speaker,” said Human. “To you it feels like murder. But to me—when a brother is given the right to pass into the third life as a father, then he chooses his greatest rival or his truest friend to give him the passage. You. Speaker—ever since I first learned Stark and read the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, I waited for you. I said many times to my father, Rooter: Of all humans he is the one who will understand us. Then Rooter told me when your starship came, that it was you and the hive queen aboard that ship, and I knew then that you had come to give me passage, if only I did well.”

“You did well, Human,” said Ender.

“Here,” he said. “See? We signed the covenant in the human way.”

At the bottom of the last page of the covenant two words were crudely, laboriously shaped. “Human,” Ender read aloud. The other word he could not read.

“It’s Shouter’s true name,” said Human. “Star-looker. She wasn’t good with the writing stick—the wives don’t use tools very often, since the brothers do that kind of work. So she wanted me to tell you what her name is. And to tell you that she got it because she was always looking in the sky. She says that she didn’t know it then, but she was watching for you to come.”

So many people had so much hope in me, thought Ender. In the end, though, everything depended on them. On Novinha, Miro, Ela, who called for me; on Human and Star-looker. And on the ones who feared my coming, too.

Worm carried the cup of ink; Calendar carried the pen. It was a thin strip of wood with a slit in it and a narrow well that held a little ink when he dipped it in the cup. He had to dip it five times in order to sign his name. “Five,” said Arrow. Ender remembered then that the number five was portentous to the piggies. It had been an accident, but if they chose to see it as a good omen, so much the better.

“I’ll take the covenant to our Governor and the Bishop,” said Ender.

“Of all the documents that were ever treasured in the history of mankind . . .” said Ouanda. No one needed her to finish the sentence. Human, Leaf-eater, and Mandachuva carefully wrapped the book again in leaves and handed it, not to Ender, but to Ouanda. Ender knew at once, with terrible certainty, what that meant. The piggies still had work for him to do, work that would require that his hands be free.

“Now the covenant is made the human way,” said Human. “You must make it true for the Little Ones as well.”

“Can’t the signing be enough?” asked Ender.

“From now on the signing is enough,” said Human. “But only because the same hand that signed for the humans also took the covenant in our way, too.”

“Then I will,” said Ender, “as I promised you I would.”

Human reached out and stroked Ender from the throat to the belly. “The brother’s word is not just in his mouth,” he said. “The brother’s word is in his life.” He turned to the other piggies. “Let me speak to my father one last time before I stand beside him.”

Two of the strange brothers came forward with their small clubs in their hands. They walked with Human to Rooter’s tree and began to beat on it and sing in the Tree Language. Almost at once the trunk split open. The tree was still fairly young, and not so very much thicker in the the trunk than Human’s own body; it was a struggle for him to get inside. But he fit, and the trunk closed up after him. The drumming changed rhythm, but did not let up for a moment.

Jane whispered in Ender’s ear. “I can hear the resonance of the drumming change inside the tree,” she said. “The tree is slowly shaping the sound, to turn the drumming into language.”

The other piggies set to work clearing ground for Human’s tree. Ender noticed that he would be planted so that, from the gate, Rooter would seem to stand on the left hand, and Human on the right. Pulling up the capim by the root was hard work for the piggies; soon Quim was helping them, and then Olhado, and then Ouanda and Ela.

Ouanda gave the covenant to Novinha to hold while she helped dig capim. Novinha, in turn, carried it to Ender, stood before him, looked at him steadily. “You signed it Ender Wiggin,” she said. “Ender.”

The name sounded ugly even to his own ears. He had heard it too often as an epithet. “I’m older than I look,” said Ender. “That was the name I was known by when I blasted the buggers’ home world out of existence. Maybe the presence of that name on the first treaty ever signed between humans and ramen will do something to change the meaning of the name.”

“Ender,” she whispered. She reached toward him, the bundled treaty in her hands, and held it against his chest; it was heavy, since it contained all the pages of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, on the other sides of pages where the covenant was written. “I never went to the priests to confess,” she said, “because I knew they would despise me for my sin. Yet when you named all my sins today, I could bear it because I knew you didn’t despise me. I couldn’t understand why, though, till now.”

“I’m not one to despise other people for their sins,” said Ender. “I haven’t found one yet, that I didn’t say inside myself, I’ve done worse than this.”

“All these years you’ve borne the burden of humanity’s guilt.”

“Yes, well, it’s nothing mystical,” said Ender. “I think of it as being like the mark of Cain. You don’t make many friends, but nobody hurts you much, either.”

The ground was clear. Mandachuva spoke in Tree Language to the piggies beating on the trunk; their rhythm changed, and again the aperture in the tree came open. Human slid out as if he were an infant being born. Then he walked to the center of the cleared ground. Leaf-eater and Mandachuva each handed him a knife. As he took the knives, Human spoke to them—in Portuguese, so the humans could understand, and so it would carry great force. “I told Shouter that you lost your passage to the third life because of a great misunderstanding by Pipo and Libo. She said that before another hand of hands of days, you both would grow upward into the light.”

Leaf-eater and Mandachuva both let go of their knives, touched Human gently on the belly, and stepped back to the edge of the cleared ground.

Human held out the knives to Ender. They were both made of thin wood. Ender could not imagine a tool that could polish wood to be at once so fine and sharp, and yet so strong. But of course no tool had polished these. They had come thus perfectly shaped from the heart of a living tree, given as a gift to help a brother into the third life.

It was one thing to know with his mind that Human would not really die. It was another thing to believe it. Ender did not take the knives at first. Instead he reached past the blades and took Human by the wrists. “To you it doesn’t feel like death. But to me—I only saw you for the first time yesterday, and tonight I know you are my brother as surely as if Rooter were my father, too. And yet when the sun rises in the morning, I’ll never be able to talk to you again. It feels like death to me, Human, how ever it feels to you.”

“Come and sit in my shade,” said Human, “and see the sunlight through my leaves, and rest your back against my trunk. And do this, also. Add another story to the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Call it the Life of Human. Tell all the humans how I was conceived on the bark of my father’s tree, and born in darkness, eating my mother’s flesh. Tell them how I left the life of darkness behind and came into the half-light of my second life, to learn language from the wives and then come forth to learn all the miracles that Libo and Miro and Ouanda came to teach. Tell them how on the last day of my second life, my true brother came from above the sky, and together we made this covenant so that humans and piggies would be one tribe, not a human tribe or a piggy tribe, but a tribe of ramen. And then my friend gave me passage to the third life, to the full light, so that I could rise into the sky and give life to ten thousand children before I die.”

“I’ll tell your story,” said Ender.

“Then I will truly live forever.”

Ender took the knives. Human lay down upon the ground.

“Olhado,” said Novinha. “Quim. Go back to the gate. Ela, you too.”

“I’m going to see this, Mother,” said Ela. “I’m a scientist.”

“You forget my eyes,” said Olhado. “I’m recording everything. We can show humans everywhere that the treaty was signed. And we can show piggies that the Speaker took the covenant in their way, too.”

“I’m not going, either,” said Quim. “Even the Blessed Virgin stood at the foot of the cross.”

“So stay,” said Novinha softly. And she also stayed. Human’s mouth was filled with capim, but he didn’t chew it very much. “More,” said Ender, “so you don’t feel anything.”

“That’s not right,” said Mandachuva. “These are the last moments of his second life. It’s good to feel something of the pains of this body, to remember when you’re in the third life, and beyond pain.”

Mandachuva and Leaf-eater told Ender where and how to cut. It had to be done quickly, they told him, and their hands reached into the steaming body to point out organs that must go here or there. Ender’s hands were quick and sure, his body calm, but even though he could only rarely spare a glance away from the surgery, he knew that above his bloody work, Human’s eyes were watching him, watching him, filled with gratitude and love, filled with agony and death.

It happened under his hands, so quickly that for the first few minutes they could watch it grow. Several large organs shriveled as roots shot out of them; tendrils reached from place to place within the body; Human’s eyes went wide with the final agony; and out of his spine a sprout burst upward, two leaves, four leaves—

And then stopped. The body was dead; its last spasm of strength had gone to making the tree that rooted in Human’s spine. Ender had seen the rootlets and tendrils reaching through the body. The memories, the soul of Human had been transferred into the cells of the newly sprouted tree. It was done. His third life had begun. And when the sun rose in the morning, not long from now, the leaves would taste the light for the first time.

The other piggies were rejoicing, dancing. Leaf-eater and Mandachuva took the knives from Ender’s hands and jammed them into the ground on either side of Human’s head. Ender could not join their celebration. He was covered with blood and reeked with the stench of the body he had butchered. On all fours he crawled from the body, up the hill to a place where he didn’t have to see it. Novinha followed him. Exhausted, spent, all of them, from the work and the emotions of the day. They said nothing, did nothing, but fell into the thick capim, each one leaning or lying on someone else, seeking relief at last in sleep, as the piggies danced away up the hill into the woods.

Bosquinha and Bishop Peregrino made their way to the gate before the sun was up, to watch for the Speaker’s return from the forest. They were there a full ten minutes before they saw a movement much nearer than the forest’s edge. It was a boy, sleepily voiding his bladder into a bush.

“Olhado!” called the Mayor.

The boy turned, waved, then hastily fastened his trousers and began waking others who slept in the tall grass. Bosquinha and the Bishop opened the gate and walked out to meet them.

“Foolish, isn’t it,” said Bosquinha, “but this is the moment when our rebellion seems most real. When I first walk beyond the fence.”

“Why did they spend the night out of doors?” Peregrino wondered aloud. “The gate was open, they could have gone home.”

Bosquinha took a quick census of the group outside the gates. Ouanda and Ela, arm in arm like sisters. Olhado and Quim. Novinha. And there, yes, the Speaker, sitting down, Novinha behind him, resting her hands on his shoulders. They all waited expectantly, saying nothing. Until Ender looked up at them. “We have the treaty,” he said. “It’s a good one.”

Novinha held up a bundle wrapped in leaves. “They wrote it down,” she said. “For you to sign.”

Bosquinha took the bundle. “All the files were restored before midnight,” she said. “Not just the ones we saved in your message queue. Whoever your friend is, Speaker, he’s very good.”

“She,” said the Speaker. “Her name is Jane.”

Now, though, the Bishop and Bosquinha could see what lay on the cleared earth just down the hill from where the Speaker had slept. Now they understood the dark stains on the Speaker’s hands and arms, the spatter marks on his face.

“I would rather have no treaty,” said Bosquinha, “than one you had to kill to get.”

“Wait before you judge,” said the Bishop. “I think the night’s work was more than just what we see before us.”

“Very wise, Father Peregrino,” said the Speaker softly.

“I’ll explain it to you if you want,” said Ouanda. “Ela and I understand it as well as anyone.”

“It was like a sacrament,” said Olhado.

Bosquinha looked at Novinha, uncomprehending. “You let him watch?”

Olhado tapped his eyes. “All the piggies will see it, someday, through my eyes.”

“It wasn’t death,” said Quim. “It was resurrection.”

The Bishop stepped near the tortured corpse and touched the seedling tree growing from the chest cavity. “His name is Human,” said the Speaker.

“And so is yours,” said the Bishop softly. He turned and looked around at the members of his little flock, who had already taken humanity a step further than it had ever gone before. Am I the shepherd, Peregrino asked himself, or the most confused and helpless of the sheep? “Come, all of you. Come with me to the Cathedral. The bells will soon ring for mass.”

The children gathered and prepared to go. Novinha, too, stepped away from her place behind the Speaker. Then she stopped, turned back to him, looked at him with silent invitation in her eyes.

“Soon,” he said. “A moment more.”

She, too, followed the Bishop through the gate and up the hill into the Cathedral.

The mass had barely begun when Peregrino saw the Speaker enter at the back of the Cathedral. He paused a moment, then found Novinha and her family with his eyes. In only a few steps he had taken a place beside her. Where Marcão had sat, those rare times when the whole family came together.

The duties of the service took his attention; a few moments later, when Peregrino could look again, he saw that Grego was now sitting beside the Speaker. Peregrino thought of the terms of the treaty as the girls had explained it to him. Of the meaning of the death of the piggy called Human, and before him, of the deaths of Pipo and Libo. All things coming clear, all things coming together. The young man, Miro, lying paralyzed in bed, with his sister Ouanda tending him. Novinha, the lost one, now found. The fence, its shadow so dark in the minds of all who had lived within its bounds, now still and harmless, invisible, insubstantial.

It was the miracle of the wafer, turned into the flesh of God in his hands. How suddenly we find the flesh of God within us after all, when we thought that we were only made of dust.

18
THE HIVE QUEEN

Evolution gave his mother no birth canal and no breasts. So the small creature who would one day be named Human was given no exit from the womb except by the teeth of his mouth. He and his infant siblings devoured their mother’s body. Because Human was strongest and most vigorous, he ate the most and so became even stronger.

Human lived in utter darkness. When his mother was gone, there was nothing to eat but the sweet liquid that flowed on the surface of his world. He did not know yet that the vertical surface was the inside of a great hollow tree, and that the liquid that he ate was the sap of the tree. Nor did he know that the warm creatures that were far larger than himself were older pequeninos, almost ready to leave the darkness of the tree, and that the smaller creatures were younger ones, more recently emerged than himself.

All he really cared about was to eat, to move, and to see the light. For now and then, in rhythms that he could not comprehend, a sudden light came into the darkness. It began each time with a sound, whose source he could not comprehend. Then the tree would shudder slightly; the sap would cease to flow; and all the tree’s energy would be devoted to changing the shape of the trunk in one place, to make an opening that let the light inside. When the light was there, Human moved toward it. When the light was gone, Human lost his sense of direction, and wandered aimlessly in search of liquid to drink.

Until one day, when almost all the other creatures were smaller than himself, and none at all were larger, the light came and he was so strong and swift that he reached the opening before it closed. He bent his body around the curve of the wood of the tree, and for the first time felt the rasp of outer bark under his soft belly. He hardly noticed this new pain, because the light dazzled him. It was not just in one place, but everywhere, and it was not grey but vivid green and yellow. His rapture lasted many seconds. Then he was hungry again, and here on the outside of the mothertree the sap flowed only in the fissures of the bark, where it was hard to reach, and instead of all the other creatures being little ones that he could push aside, they all were larger than himself, and drove him away from the easy feeding places. This was a new thing, a new world, a new life, and he was afraid.

Later, when he learned language, he would remember the journey from darkness into light, and he would call it the passage from the first life to the second, from the life of darkness to the half-lit life.

—Speaker for the Dead, The Life of Human, 1:1–5

Miro decided to leave Lusitania. Take the Speaker’s starship and go to Trondheim after all. Perhaps at his trial he could persuade the Hundred Worlds not to go to war against Lusitania. At worst, he could become a martyr, to stir people’s hearts, to be remembered, to stand for something. Whatever happened to him, it would be better than staying here.

In the first few days after he climbed the fence, Miro recovered rapidly. He gained some control and feeling in his arms and legs. Enough to take shuffling steps, like an old man. Enough to move his arms and hands. Enough to end the humiliation of his mother having to clean his body. But then his progress slowed and stopped. “Here it is,” said Navio. “We have reached the level of permanent damage. You are so lucky, Miro, you can walk, you can talk, you are a whole man. You are no more limited than, say, a very healthy man who is a hundred years old. I would rather tell you that your body would be as it was before you climbed the fence, that you would have all the vigor and control of a twenty-year-old. But I’m very glad that I don’t have to tell you that you will be bedridden all your life, diapered and catheterized, able to do nothing more than listen to soft music and wonder where your body went.”

So I’m grateful, Miro thought. As my fingers curl into a useless club on the ends of my arms, as I hear my own speech sounding thick and unintelligible, my voice unable to modulate properly, then I will be glad that I am like a hundred-year-old man, that I can look forward to eighty more years of life as a centegenarian.

Once it was clear that he did not need constant attention, the family scattered and went about their business. These days were too exciting for them to stay home with a crippled brother, son, friend. He understood completely. He did not want them to stay home with him. He wanted to be with them. His work was unfinished. Now, at long last, all the fences, all the rules were gone. Now he could ask the piggies the questions that had so long puzzled him.

He tried at first to work through Ouanda. She came to him every morning and evening and made her reports on the terminal in the front room of the Ribeira house. He read her reports, asked her questions, listened to her stories. And she very seriously memorized the questions he wanted her to ask the piggies. After a few days of this, however, he noticed that in the evening she would indeed have the answers to Miro’s questions. But there was no follow-up, no exploration of meaning. Her real attention was devoted to her own work. And Miro stopped giving her questions to ask for him. He lied and told her that he was far more interested in what she was doing, that her avenues of exploration were the most important.

The truth was that he hated seeing Ouanda. For him, the revelation that she was his sister was painful, terrible, but he knew that if the decision were his alone, he would cast aside the incest tabu, marry her and live in the forest with the piggies if need be. Ouanda, however, was a believer, a belonger. She couldn’t possibly violate the only universal human law. She grieved when she learned that Miro was her brother, but she immediately began to separate herself from him, to forget the touches, the kisses, the whispers, the promises, the teasing, the laughter . . .

Better if he forgot them, too. But he could not. Every time he saw her, it hurt him to see how reserved she was, how polite and kind she was. He was her brother, he was crippled, she would be good to him. But the love was gone.

Uncharitably, he compared Ouanda to his own mother, who had loved her lover regardless of the barriers between them. But Mother’s lover had been a whole man, an able man, not this useless carcass.

So Miro stayed home and studied the file reports of everybody else’s work. It was torture to know what they were doing, that he could not take part in it; but it was better than doing nothing, or watching the tedious vids on the terminal, or listening to music. He could type, slowly, by aiming his hand so the stiffest of his fingers, the index finger, touched exactly one key. It wasn’t fast enough to enter any meaningful data, or even to write memos, but he could call up other people’s public files and read what they were doing. He could maintain some connection with the vital work that had suddenly blossomed on Lusitania, with the opening of the gate.

Ouanda was working with the piggies on a lexicon of the Males’ and Wives’ Languages, complete with a phonetic spelling system so they could write their language down. Quim was helping her, but Miro knew that he had his own purpose: He intended to be a missionary to the pequeninos in other tribes, taking them the Gospels before they ever saw the Hive Queen and the Hegemon; he intended to translate at least some of the scripture and speak to the piggies in their own language. All this work with piggy language and culture was very good, very important, preserve the past, prepare to communicate with other tribes, but Miro knew that it could easily be done by Dom Cristão’s scholars, who now ventured forth in their monkish robes and quietly asked questions of the piggies and answered their questions ably and powerfully. Ouanda was allowing herself to become redundant, Miro believed.

The real work with the piggies, as Miro saw it, was being done by Ender and a few key technicians from Bosquinha’s services department. They were laying pipe from the river to the mothertree’s clearing, to bring water to them. They were setting up electricity and teaching the brothers how to use a computer terminal. In the meantime, they were teaching them very primitive means of agriculture and trying to domesticate cabras to pull plows. It was confusing, the different levels of technology that were coming to the piggies all at once, but Ender had discussed it with Miro, explaining that he wanted the piggies to see quick, dramatic, immediate results from their treaty. Running water, a computer connection with a holographic terminal that let them read anything in the library, electric lights at night. But all this was still magic, completely dependent on human society. At the same time, Ender was trying to keep them self-sufficient, inventive, resourceful. The dazzle of electricity would make myths that would spread through the world from tribe to tribe, but it would be no more than rumor for many, many years. It was the wooden plow, the scythe, the harrow, the amaranth seed that would make the real changes, that would allow piggy population to increase tenfold wherever they went. And those could be transmitted from place to place with a handful of seeds in a cabra-skin pouch and the memory of how the work was done.

This was the work that Miro longed to be part of. But what good were his clubbed hands and shuffling step in the amaranth fields? Of what use was he sitting at a loom, weaving cabra wool? He couldn’t even talk well enough to teach.

Ela was working on developing new strains of Earthborn plants and even small animals and insects, new species that could resist the Descolada, even neutralize it. Mother was helping her with advice, but little more, for she was working on the most vital and secret project of them all. Again, it was Ender who came to Miro and told him what only his family and Ouanda knew: that the hive queen lived, that she was being restored as soon as Novinha found a way for her to resist the Descolada, her and all the buggers that would be born to her. As soon as it was ready, the hive queen would be revived.

And Miro would not be part of that, either. For the first time, humans and two alien races, living together as ramen on the same world, and Miro wasn’t part of any of it. He was less human than the piggies were. He couldn’t speak or use his hands half so well. He had stopped being a tool-using, language-speaking animal. He was varelse now. They only kept him as a pet.

He wanted to go away. Better yet, he wanted to disappear, to go away even from himself.

But not right now. There was a new puzzle that only he knew about, and so only he could solve. His terminal was behaving very strangely.

He noticed it the first week after he recovered from total paralysis. He was scanning some of Ouanda’s files and realized that without doing anything special, he had accessed confidential files. They were protected with several layers, he had no idea what the passwords were, and yet a simple, routine scan had brought the information forward. It was her speculations on pequenino evolution and their probable pre-Descolada society and life patterns. The sort of thing that as recently as two weeks ago she would have talked about, argued about with Miro. Now she kept it confidential and never discussed it with him at all.

Miro didn’t tell her he had seen the files, but he did steer conversations toward the subject and drew her out; she talked about her ideas willingly enough, once Miro showed his interest. Sometimes it was almost like old times. Except that he would hear the sound of his own slurred voice and keep most of his opinions to himself, merely listening to her, letting things he would have argued with pass right by. Still, seeing her confidential files allowed him to penetrate to what she was really interested in.

But how had he seen them?

It happened again and again. Files of Ela’s, Mother’s, Dom Cristão’s. As the piggies began to play with their new terminal, Miro was able to watch them in an echo mode that he had never seen the terminal use before—it enabled him to watch all their computer transactions and then make some suggestions, change things a little. He took particular delight in guessing what the piggies were really trying to do and helping them, surreptitiously, to do it. But how had he got such unorthodox, powerful access to the machine?

The terminal was learning to accommodate itself to him, too. Instead of long code sequences, he only had to begin a sequence and the machine would obey his instructions. Finally he did not even have to log on. He touched the keyboard and the terminal displayed a list of all the activities he usually engaged in, then scanned through them. He could touch a key and it would go directly to the activity he wanted, skipping dozens of preliminaries, saving him many painful minutes of typing one character at a time.

At first he thought that Olhado had created the new program for him, or perhaps someone in the Mayor’s office. But Olhado only looked blankly at what the terminal was doing and said, “Bacâna,” that’s great. And when he sent a message to the Mayor, she never got it. Instead, the Speaker for the Dead came to visit him.

“So your terminal is being helpful,” said Ender.

Miro didn’t answer. He was too busy trying to think why the Mayor had sent the Speaker to answer his note.

“The Mayor didn’t get your message,” said Ender. “I did. And it’s better if you don’t mention to anybody else what your terminal is doing.”

“Why?” asked Miro. That was one word he could say without slurring too much.

“Because it isn’t a new program helping you. It’s a person.”

Miro laughed. No human being could be as quick as the program that was helping him. It was faster, in fact, than most programs he had worked with before, and very resourceful and intuitive; faster than a human, but smarter than a program.

“It’s an old friend of mine, I think. At least, she was the one who told me about your message and suggested that I let you know that discretion was a good idea. You see, she’s a bit shy. She doesn’t make many friends.”

“How many?”

“At the present moment, exactly two. For a few thousand years before now, exactly one.”

“Not human,” said Miro.

“Raman,” said Ender. “More human than most humans. We’ve loved each other for a long time, helped each other, depended on each other. But in the last few weeks, since I got here, we’ve drifted apart. I’m—involved more in the lives of people around me. Your family.”

“Mother.”

“Yes. Your mother, your brothers and sisters, the work with the piggies, the work for the hive queen. My friend and I used to talk to each other constantly. I don’t have time now. We’ve hurt each other’s feeling sometimes. She’s lonely, and so I think she’s chosen another companion.”

“Não quero.” Don’t want one.

“Yes you do,” said Ender. “She’s already helped you. Now that you know she exists, you’ll find that she’s—a good friend. You can’t have a better one. More loyal. More helpful.”

“Puppy dog?”

“Don’t be a jackass,” said Ender. “I’m introducing you to a fourth alien species. You’re supposed to be a xenologer, aren’t you? She knows you, Miro. Your physical problems are nothing to her. She has no body at all. She exists among the philotic disturbances in the ansible communications of the Hundred Worlds. She’s the most intelligent creature alive, and you’re the second human being she’s ever chosen to reveal herself to.”

“How?” How did she come to be? How did she know me, to choose me?

“Ask her yourself.” Ender touched the jewel in his ear. “Just a word of advice. Once she comes to trust you, keep her with you always. Keep no secrets from her. She once had a lover who switched her off. Only for an hour, but things were never the same between them after that. They became—just friends. Good friends, loyal friends, always until he dies. But all his life he will regret that one thoughtless act of disloyalty.”

Ender’s eyes glistened, and Miro realized that whatever this creature was that lived in the computer, it was no phantom, it was part of this man’s life. And he was passing it down to Miro, like father to son, the right to know this friend.

Ender left without another word, and Miro turned to the terminal. There was a holo of a woman there. She was small, sitting on a stool, leaning against a holographic wall. She was not beautiful. Not ugly, either. Her face had character. Her eyes were haunting, innocent, sad. Her mouth delicate, about to smile, about to weep. Her clothing seemed veil-like, insubstantial, and yet instead of being provocative, it revealed a sort of innocence, a girlish, small-breasted body, the hands clasped lightly in her lap, her legs childishly parted with the toes pointing inward. She could have been sitting on a teeter-totter in a playground. Or on the edge of her lover’s bed.

“Bom dia,” Miro said softly.

“Hi,” she said. “I asked him to introduce us.”

She was quiet, reserved, but it was Miro who felt shy. For so long, Ouanda had been the only woman in his life, besides the women of his family, and he had little confidence in the social graces. At the same time, he was aware that he was speaking to a hologram. A completely convincing one, but a midair laser projection all the same.

She reached up one hand and laid it gently on her breast. “Feels nothing,” she said. “No nerves.”

Tears came to his eyes. Self-pity, of course. That he would probably never have a woman more substantial than this one. If he tried to touch one, his caresses would be crude pawing. Sometimes, when he wasn’t careful, he drooled and couldn’t even feel it. What a lover.

“But I have eyes,” she said. “And ears. I see everything in all the Hundred Worlds. I watch the sky through a thousand telescopes. I overhear a trillion conversations every day.” She giggled a little. “I’m the best gossip in the universe.”

Then, suddenly, she stood up, grew larger, closer, so that she only showed from the waist up, as if she had moved closer to an invisible camera. Her eyes burned with intensity as she stared right at him. “And you’re a parochial schoolboy who’s never seen anything but one town and one forest in his life.”

“Don’t get much chance to travel,” he said.

“We’ll see about that,” she answered. “So. What do you want to do today?”

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“You don’t need my name,” she said.

“How do I call you?”

“I’m here whenever you want me.”

“But I want to know,” he said.

She touched her ear. “When you like me well enough to take me with you wherever you go, then I’ll tell you my name.”

Impulsively, he told her what he had told no one else. “I want to leave this place,” said Miro. “Can you take me away from Lusitania?”

She at once became coquettish, mocking. “And we only just met! Really, Mr. Ribeira, I’m not that sort of girl.”

“Maybe when we get to know each other,” Miro said, laughing.

She made a subtle, wonderful transition, and the woman on the screen was a lanky feline, sprawling sensuously on a tree limb. She purred noisily, stretched out a limb, groomed herself. “I can break your neck with a single blow from my paw,” she whispered; her tone of voice suggested seduction; her claws promised murder. “When I get you alone, I can bite your throat out with a single kiss.”

He laughed. Then he realized that in all this conversation, he had actually forgotten how slurred his speech was. She understood every word. She never said, “What? I didn’t get that,” or any of the other polite but infuriating things that people said. She understood him without any special effort at all.

“I want to understand everything,” said Miro. “I want to know everything and put it all together to see what it means.”

“Excellent project,” she said. “It will look very good on your résumé.”

Ender found that Olhado was a much better driver than he was. The boy’s depth perception was better, and when he plugged his eye directly into the onboard computer, navigation practically took care of itself. Ender could devote his energies to looking.

The scenery seemed monotonous when they first began these exploratory flights. Endless prairies, huge herds of cabra, occasional forests in the distance—they never came close to those, of course, since they didn’t want to attract the attention of the piggies that lived there. Besides, they were looking for a home for the hive queen, and it wouldn’t do to put her too close to any tribe.

Today they headed west, on the other side of Rooter’s Forest, and they followed a small river to its outlet. They stopped there on the beach, with breakers rolling gently to shore. Ender tasted the water. Salt. The sea.

Olhado got the onboard terminal to display a map of this region of Lusitania, pointing out their location, Rooter’s Forest, and the other piggy settlements nearby. It was a good place, and in the back of his mind Ender could sense the hive queen’s approval. Near the sea, plenty of water, sunny.

They skimmed over the water, traveling upstream a few hundred meters until the right bank rose to form a low cliff. “Any place to stop along here?” asked Ender.

Olhado found a place, fifty meters from the crown of the hill. They walked back along the river’s edge, where the reeds gave way to the grama. Every river on Lusitania looked like this, of course. Ela had easily documented the genetic patterns, as soon as she had access to Novinha’s files and permission to pursue the subject. Reeds that co-reproduced with suckflies. Grama that mated with watersnakes. And then the endless capim, which rubbed its pollen-rich tassels on the bellies of fertile cabra to germinate the next generation of manure-producing animals. Entwined in the roots and stems of the capim were the tropeços, long trailing vines that Ela proved had the same genes as the xingadora, the ground-nesting bird that used the living plant for its nest. The same sort of pairing continued in the forest: Macio worms that hatched from the seeds of merdona vines and then gave birth to merdona seed. Puladors, small insects that mated with the shiny-leafed bushes in the forest. And, above all, the piggies and the trees, both at the peak of their kingdoms, plant and animal merged into one long life.

That was the list, the whole list of surface animals and plants of Lusitania. Under water there were many, many more. But the Descolada had left Lusitania monotonous.

And yet even the monotony had a peculiar beauty. The geography was as varied as any other world—rivers, hills, mountains, deserts, oceans, islands. The carpet of capim and the patches of forest became background music to the symphony of landforms. The eye became sensitized to undulations, outcroppings, cliffs, pits, and, above all, the sparkle and rush of water in the sunlight. Lusitania, like Trondheim, was one of the rare worlds that was dominated by a single motif instead of displaying the whole symphony of possibility. With Trondheim, however, it was because the planet was on the bare edge of habitability, its climate only just able to support surface life. Lusitania’s climate and soil cried out a welcome to the oncoming plow, the excavator’s pick, the mason’s trowel. Bring me to life, it said.

Ender did not understand that he loved this place because it was as devastated and barren as his own life, stripped and distorted in his childhood by events every bit as terrible, on a small scale, as the Descolada had been to this world. And yet it had thrived, had found a few threads strong enough to survive and continue to grow. Out of the challenge of the Descolada had come the three lives of the Little Ones. Out of the Battle School, out of years of isolation, had come Ender Wiggin. He fit this place as if he had planned it. The boy who walked beside him through the grama felt like his true son, as if he had known the boy from infancy. I know how it feels to have a metal wall between me and the world, Olhado. But here and now I have made the wall come down, and flesh touches earth, drinks water, gives comfort, takes love.

The earthen bank of the river rose in terraces, a dozen meters from shore to crest. The soil was moist enough to dig and hold its shape. The hive queen was a burrower; Ender felt the desire in him to dig, and so he dug, Olhado beside him. The ground gave way easily enough, and yet the roof of their cavelet stayed firm.

<Yes. Here.>

And so it was decided.

“Here it is,” said Ender aloud.

Olhado grinned. But it was really Jane that Ender was talking to, and her answer that he heard. “Novinha thinks they have it. The tests all came through negative—the Descolada stayed inactive with the new Colador present in the cloned bugger cells. Ela thinks that the daisies she’s been working with can be adapted to produce the Colador naturally. If that works, you’ll only have to plant seeds here and there and the buggers can keep the Descolada at bay by sucking flowers.”

Her tone was lively enough, but it was all business, no fun. No fun at all. “Fine,” Ender said. He felt a stab of jealousy—Jane was no doubt talking far more easily with Miro, teasing him, taunting him as she used to do with Ender.

But it was easy enough to drive the feeling of jealousy away. He put out a hand and rested it easily on Olhado’s shoulder; he momentarily pulled the boy close, and then together they walked back to the waiting flyer. Olhado marked the spot on the map and stored it. He laughed and made jokes all the way home, and Ender laughed with him. The boy wasn’t Jane. But he was Olhado, and Ender loved him, and Olhado needed Ender, and that was what a few million years of evolution had decided Ender needed most. It was the hunger that had gnawed at him through all those years with Valentine, that had kept him moving from world to world. This boy with metal eyes. His bright and devastatingly destructive little brother Grego. Quara’s penetrating understanding, her innocence; Quim’s utter self-control, asceticism, faith; Ela’s dependability, like a rock, and yet she knew when to move out and act; and Miro . . .

Miro. I have no consolation for Miro, not in this world, not at this time. His life’s work was taken from him, his body, his hope for the future, and nothing I can say or do will give him a vital work to do. He lives in pain, his lover turned into his sister, his life among the piggies now impossible to him as they look to other humans for friendship and learning.

“Miro needs . . .” Ender said softly.

“Miro needs to leave Lusitania,” said Olhado.

“Mm,” said Ender.

“You’ve got a starship, haven’t you?” said Olhado. “I remember reading a story once. Or maybe it was a vid. About an old-time hero in the Bugger Wars, Mazer Rackham. He saved Earth from destruction once, but they knew he’d be dead long before the next battle. So they sent him out in a starship at relativistic speeds, just sent him out and had him come back. A hundred years had gone by for the Earth, but only two years for him.”

“You think Miro needs something as drastic as that?”

“There’s a battle coming. There are decisions to make. Miro’s the smartest person in Lusitania, and the best. He doesn’t get mad, you know. Even in the worst of times with Father. Marcão. Sorry, I still call him Father.”

“That’s all right. In many ways he was.”

“Miro would think, and he’d decide the best thing to do, and it always was the best thing. Mother depended on him too. The way I see it, we need Miro when Starways Congress sends its fleet against us. He’ll study all the information, everything we’ve learned in the years that he was gone, put it all together, and tell us what to do.”

Ender couldn’t help himself. He laughed.

“So it’s a dumb idea,” said Olhado.

“You see better than anybody else I know,” said Ender. “I’ve got to think about this, but you might be right.”

They drove on in silence for a while.

“I was just talking,” said Olhado. “When I said that about Miro. It was just something I thought, putting him together with that old story. It probably isn’t even a true story.”

“It’s true,” said Ender.

“How do you know?”

“I knew Mazer Rackham.”

Olhado whistled. “You’re old. You’re older than any of the trees.”

“I’m older than any of the human colonies. It doesn’t make me wise, unfortunately.”

“Are you really Ender? The Ender?”

“That’s why it’s my password.”

“It’s funny. Before you got here, the Bishop tried to tell us all that you were Satan. Quim’s the only one in the family that took him seriously. But if the Bishop had told us you were Ender, we would have stoned you to death in the praça the day you arrived.”

“Why don’t you now?”

“We know you now. That makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Even Quim doesn’t hate you now. When you really know somebody, you can’t hate them.”

“Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”

“Is that a circular paradox? Dom Cristão says that most truth can only be expressed in circular paradoxes.”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with truth, Olhado. It’s just cause and effect. We never can sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except first cause—knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can’t hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can’t hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.”

“Mother doesn’t like it that you’re Ender.”

“I know.”

“But she loves you anyway.”

“I know.”

“And Quim—it’s really funny, but now that he knows you’re Ender, he likes you better for it.”

“That’s because he’s a crusader, and I got my bad reputation by winning a crusade.”

“And me,” said Olhado.

“Yes, you,” said Ender.

“You killed more people than anybody in history.”

“Be the best at whatever you do, that’s what my mother always told me.”

“But when you spoke for Father, you made me feel sorry for him. You make people love each other and forgive each other. How could you kill all those millions of people in the Xenocide?”

“I thought I was playing games. I didn’t know it was the real thing. But that’s no excuse, Olhado. If I had known the battle was real, I would have done the same thing. We thought they wanted to kill us. We were wrong, but we had no way to know that.” Ender shook his head. “Except that I knew better. I knew my enemy. That’s how I beat her, the hive queen, I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her. I didn’t want to fight her anymore. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go home. So I blew up her planet.”

“And today we found the place to bring her back to life.” Olhado was very serious. “Are you sure she won’t try to get even? Are you sure she won’t try to wipe out humankind, starting with you?”

“I’m as sure,” said Ender, “as I am of anything.”

“Not absolutely sure,” said Olhado.

“Sure enough to bring her back to life,” said Ender. “And that’s as sure as we ever are of anything. We believe it enough to act as though it’s true. When we’re that sure, we call it knowledge. Facts. We bet our lives on it.”

“I guess that’s what you’re doing. Betting your life on her being what you think she is.”

“I’m more arrogant than that. I’m betting your life, too, and everybody else’s, and I’m not so much as asking anyone else’s opinion.”

“Funny,” said Olhado. “If I asked somebody whether they’d trust Ender with a decision that might affect the future of the human race, they’d say, of course not. But if I asked them whether they’d trust the Speaker for the Dead, they’d say yes, most of them. And they wouldn’t even guess that they were the same person.”

“Yeah,” said Ender. “Funny.”

Neither of them laughed. Then, after a long time, Olhado spoke again. His thoughts had wandered to a subject that mattered more. “I don’t want Miro to go away for thirty years.”

“You will be forty-two.”

“And he’ll come back the age he is now. Twenty. Half my age. If there’s ever a girl who wants to marry a guy with reflecting eyes, I might even be married and have kids then. He won’t even know me. I won’t be his little brother anymore.” Olhado swallowed. “It’d be like him dying.”

“No,” said Ender. “It’d be like him passing from his second life to his third.”

“That’s like dying, too,” said Olhado.

“It’s also like being born,” said Ender. “As long as you keep getting born, it’s all right to die sometimes.”

Valentine called the next day. Ender’s fingers trembled as he keyed instructions into the terminal. It wasn’t just a message, either. It was a call, a full ansible voice communication. Incredibly expensive, but that wasn’t a problem. It was the fact that ansible communications with the Hundred Worlds were supposedly cut off; for Jane to allow this call to come through meant that it was urgent. It occurred to Ender right away that Valentine might be in danger. That Starways Congress might have decided Ender was involved in the rebellion and traced his connection with her.

She was older. The hologram of her face showed weather lines from many windy days on the islands, floes, and boats of Trondheim. But her smile was the same, and her eyes danced with the same light. Ender was silenced at first by the changes the years had wrought in his sister; she, too, was silenced, by the fact that Ender seemed unchanged, a vision coming back to her out of her past.

“Ah, Ender,” she sighed. “Was I ever so young?”

“And will I age so beautifully?”

She laughed. Then she cried. He did not; how could he? He had missed her for a couple of months. She had missed him for twenty-two years.

“I suppose you’ve heard,” he said, “about our trouble getting along with Congress.”

“I imagine that you were at the thick of it.”

“Stumbled into the situation, really,” said Ender. “But I’m glad I was here. I’m going to stay.”

She nodded, drying her eyes. “Yes. I thought so. But I had to call and make sure. I didn’t want to spend a couple of decades flying to meet you, and have you gone when I arrive.”

“Meet me?” he said.

“I got much too excited about your revolution there, Ender. After twenty years of raising a family, teaching my students, loving my husband, living at peace with myself, I thought I’d never resurrect Demosthenes again. But then the story came about illegal contact with the piggies, and right away the news that Lusitania was in revolt, and suddenly people were saying the most ridiculous things, and I saw it was the beginning of the same old hate. Remember the videos about the buggers? How terrifying and awful they were? Suddenly we were seeing videos of the bodies they found, of the xenologers, I can’t remember their names, but grisly pictures everywhere you looked, heating us up to war fever. And then stories about the Descolada, how if anyone ever went from Lusitania to another world it would destroy everything—the most hideous plague imaginable—”

“It’s true,” said Ender, “but we’re working on it. Trying to find ways to keep the Descolada from spreading when we go to other worlds.”

“True or not, Ender, it’s all leading to war. I remember war—nobody else does. So I revived Demosthenes. I stumbled across some memos and reports. Their fleet is carrying the Little Doctor, Ender. If they decide to, they can blow Lusitania to bits. Just like—”

“Just like I did before. Poetic justice, do you think, for me to end the same way? He who lives by the sword—”

“Don’t joke with me, Ender! I’m a middle-aged matron now, and I’ve lost my patience with silliness. At least for now. I wrote some very ugly truths about what Starways Congress is doing, and published them as Demosthenes. They’re looking for me. Treason is what they’re calling it.”

“So you’re coming here?”

“Not just me. Dear Jakt is turning the fleet over to his brothers and sisters. We’ve already bought a starship. There’s apparently some kind of resistance movement that’s helping us—someone named Jane has jimmied the computers to cover our tracks.”

“I know Jane,” said Ender.

“So you do have an organization here! I was shocked when I got a message that I could call you. Your ansible was supposedly blown up.”

“We have powerful friends.”

“Ender, Jakt and I are leaving today. We’re bringing our three children.”

“Your first one—”

“Yes, Syfte, the one who was making me fat when you left, she’s almost twenty-two now. A very lovely girl. And a good friend, the children’s tutor, named Plikt.”

“I have a student by that name,” said Ender, thinking back to conversations only a couple of months ago.

“Oh, yes, well, that was twenty-two years ago, Ender. It’s not an emergency—you have twenty-two years to prepare for me. Actually longer, more like thirty years. We’re taking the voyage in several hops, the first few in the wrong direction, so that nobody can be sure we’re going to Lusitania.”

Coming here. Thirty years from now. I’ll be older than she is now. Coming here. By then I’ll have my family, too. Novinha’s and my children, if we have any, all grown, like hers.

And then, thinking of Novinha, he remembered Miro, remembered what Olhado had suggested several days ago, the day they found the nesting place for the hive queen.

“Would you mind terribly,” said Ender, “if I sent someone to meet you on the way?”

“Meet us? In deep space? No, don’t send someone to do that, Ender—it’s too terrible a sacrifice, to come so far when the computers can guide us in just fine—”

“It’s not really for you, though I want him to meet you. He’s one of the xenologers. He was badly injured in an accident. Some brain damage; like a bad stroke. He’s—he’s the smartest person in Lusitania, says someone whose judgment I trust, but he’s lost all his connections with our life here. Yet we’ll need him later. When you arrive. He’s a very good man, Val. He can make the last week of your voyage very educational.”

“Can your friend arrange to get us course information for such a rendezvous? We’re navigators, but only on the sea.”

“Jane will have the revised navigational information in your ship’s computer when you leave.”

“Ender—for you it’ll be thirty years, but for me—I’ll see you in only a few weeks.” She started to cry.

“Maybe I’ll come with Miro to meet you.”

“Don’t!” she said. “I want you to be as old and crabbed as possible when I arrive. I couldn’t put up with you as the thirty-year-old brat I see on my terminal.”

“Thirty-five.”

“You’ll be there when I arrive!” she demanded.

“I will,” he said. “And Miro, the boy I’m sending to you. Think of him as my son.”

She nodded gravely. “These are such dangerous times, Ender. I only wish we had Peter.”

“I don’t. If he were running our little rebellion, he’d end up Hegemon of all the Hundred Worlds. We just want them to leave us alone.”

“It may not be possible to get the one without the other,” said Val. “But we can quarrel about that later. Good-bye, my dear brother.”

He didn’t answer. Just looked at her and looked at her until she smiled wryly and switched off the connection.

Ender didn’t have to ask Miro to go; Jane had already told him everything.

“Your sister is Demosthenes?” asked Miro. Ender was used to his slurred speech now. Or maybe his speech was clearing a little. It wasn’t as hard to understand, anyway.

“We were a talented family,” said Ender. “I hope you like her.”

“I hope she likes me.” Miro smiled, but he looked afraid.

“I told her,” said Ender, “to think of you as my son.”

Miro nodded. “I know,” he said. And then, almost defiantly, “She showed me your conversation with her.”

Ender felt cold inside.

Jane’s voice came into his ear. “I should have asked you,” she said. “But you know you would have said yes.”

It wasn’t the invasion of privacy that Ender minded. It was the fact that Jane was so very close to Miro. Get used to it, he told himself. He’s the one she’s looking out for now.

“We’ll miss you,” said Ender.

“Those who will miss me, miss me already,” said Miro, “because they already think of me as dead.”

“We need you alive,” said Ender.

“When I come back, I’ll still be only nineteen. And brain-damaged.”

“You’ll still be Miro, and brilliant, and trusted, and loved. You started this rebellion, Miro. The fence came down for you. Not for some great cause, but for you. Don’t let us down.”

Miro smiled, but Ender couldn’t tell if the twist in his smile was because of his paralysis, or because it was a bitter, poisonous smile.

“Tell me something,” said Miro.

“If I won’t,” said Ender, “she will.”

“It isn’t hard. I just want to know what it was that Pipo and Libo died for. What it was the piggies honored them for.”

Ender understood better than Miro knew: He understood why the boy cared so much about the question. Miro had learned that he was really Libo’s son only hours before he crossed the fence and lost his future. Pipo, then Libo, then Miro; father, son, grandson; the three xenologers who had lost their futures for the piggies’ sake. Miro hoped that in understanding why his forebears died, he might make more sense of his own sacrifice.

The trouble was that the truth might well leave Miro feeling that none of the sacrifices meant anything at all. So Ender answered with a question. “Don’t you already know why?”

Miro spoke slowly and carefully, so that Ender could understand his slurred speech. “I know that the piggies thought they were doing them an honor. I know that Mandachuva and Leaf-eater could have died in their places. With Libo, I even know the occasion. It was when the first amaranth harvest came, and there was plenty of food. They were rewarding him for that. Except why not earlier? Why not when we taught them to use merdona root? Why not when we taught them to make pots, or shoot arrows?”

“The truth?” said Ender.

Miro knew from Ender’s tone that the truth would not be easy. “Yes,” he said.

“Neither Pipo nor Libo really deserved the honor. It wasn’t the amaranth that the wives were rewarding. It was the fact that Leaf-eater had persuaded them to let a whole generation of infants be conceived and born even though there wasn’t enough food for them to eat once they left the mothertree. It was a terrible risk to take, and if he had been wrong, that whole generation of young piggies would have died. Libo brought the harvest, but Leaf-eater was the one who had, in a sense, brought the population to a point where they needed the grain.”

Miro nodded. “Pipo?”

“Pipo told the piggies about his discovery. That the Descolada, which killed humans, was part of their normal physiology. That their bodies could handle transformations that killed us. Mandachuva told the wives that this meant that humans were not godlike and all-powerful. That in some ways we were even weaker than the Little Ones. That what made humans stronger than piggies was not something inherent in us—our size, our brains, our language—but rather the mere accident that we were a few thousand years ahead of them in learning. If they could acquire our knowledge, then we humans would have no more power over them. Mandachuva’s discovery that piggies were potentially equal to humans—that was what they rewarded, not the information Pipo gave that led to that discovery.”

“So both of them—”

“The piggies didn’t want to kill either Pipo or Libo. In both cases, the crucial achievement belonged to a pequenino. The only reason Pipo and Libo died was because they couldn’t bring themselves to take a knife and kill a friend.”

Miro must have seen the pain in Ender’s face, despite his best effort to conceal it. Because it was Ender’s bitterness that he answered. “You,” said Miro, “you can kill anybody.”

“It’s a knack I was born with,” said Ender.

“You killed Human because you knew it would make him live a new and better life,” said Miro.

“Yes.”

“And me,” said Miro.

“Yes,” said Ender. “Sending you away is very much like killing you.”

“But will I live a new and better life?”

“I don’t know. Already you get around better than a tree.”

Miro laughed. “So I’ve got one thing on old Human, don’t I—at least I’m ambulatory. And nobody has to hit me with a stick so I can talk.” Then Miro’s expression grew sour again. “Of course, now he can have a thousand children.”

“Don’t count on being celibate all your life,” said Ender. “You may be disappointed.”

“I hope so,” said Miro.

And then, after a silence: “Speaker?”

“Call me Ender.”

“Ender, did Pipo and Libo die for nothing, then?” Ender understood the real question: Am I also enduring this for nothing?

“There are worse reasons to die,” Ender answered, “than to die because you cannot bear to kill.”

“What about someone,” said Miro, “who can’t kill, and can’t die, and can’t live, either?”

“Don’t deceive yourself,” said Ender. “You’ll do all three someday.”

Miro left the next morning. There were tearful good-byes. For weeks afterward, it was hard for Novinha to spend any time in her own house, because Miro’s absence was so painful to her. Even though she had agreed wholeheartedly with Ender that it was right for Miro to go, it was still unbearable to lose her child. It made Ender wonder if his own parents felt such pain when he was taken away. He suspected they had not. Nor had they hoped for his return. He already loved another man’s children more than his parents had loved their own child. Well, he’d get fit revenge for their neglect of him. He’d show them, three thousand years later, how a father should behave. Bishop Peregrino married them in his chambers.

Before the marriage, though, there were two days of note. On a day in summer, Ela, Ouanda, and Novinha presented him with the results of their research and speculation: as completely as possible, the life cycle and community structure of the piggies, male and female, and a likely reconstruction of their patterns of life before the Descolada bonded them forever to the trees that, till then, had been no more to them than habitat. Ender had reached his own understanding of who the pequeninos were, and especially who Human was before his passage to the life of light.

He lived with the piggies for a week while he wrote the Life of Human. Mandachuva and Leaf-eater read it carefully, discussed it with him; he revised and reshaped; finally it was ready. On that day he invited everyone who was working with the piggies—all the Ribeira family, Ouanda and her sisters, the many workmen who had brought technological miracles to the piggies, the scholar-monks of the Children of the Mind, Bishop Peregrino, Mayor Bosquinha—and read the book to them. It wasn’t long, less than an hour to read. They had gathered on the hillside near where Human’s seedling tree reached upward, now more than three meters high, and where Rooter overshadowed them in the afternoon sunlight. “Speaker,” said the Bishop, “almost thou persuadest me to become a humanist.” Others, less trained to eloquence, found no words to say, not then or ever. But they knew from that day forward who the piggies were, just as the readers of the Hive Queen had understood the buggers, and the readers of the Hegemon had understood humankind in its endless quest for greatness in a wilderness of separation and suspicion. “This was why I called you here,” said Novinha. “I dreamed once of writing this book. But you had to write it.”

“I played more of a role in the story than I would have chosen for myself,” said Ender. “But you fulfilled your dream, Ivanova. It was your work that led to this book. And you and your children who made me whole enough to write it.”

He signed it, as he had signed the others, The Speaker for the Dead.

Jane took the book and carried it by ansible across the lightyears to the Hundred Worlds. With it she brought the text of the Covenant and Olhado’s pictures of its signing and of the passage of Human into the full light. She placed it here and there, in a score of places on each of the Hundred Worlds, giving it to people likely to read it and understand what it was. Copies were sent as messages from computer to computer; by the time Starways Congress knew of it, it was too widely distributed to be suppressed.

Instead they tried to discredit it as a fake. The pictures were a crude simulation. Textual analysis revealed that it could not possibly have the same author as the other two books. Ansible usage records revealed that it could not possibly have come from Lusitania, which had no ansible. Some people believed them. Most people didn’t care. Many who did care enough to read the Life of Human hadn’t the heart to accept the piggies as ramen.

Some did accept the piggies, and read the accusation that Demosthenes had written a few months before, and began to call the fleet that was already under way toward Lusitania “The Second Xenocide.” It was a very ugly name. There weren’t enough jails in the Hundred Worlds to hold all those who used it. The Starways Congress had thought the war would begin when their ships reached Lusitania thirty or forty years from then. Instead, the war was already begun, and it would be fierce. What the Speaker for the Dead wrote, many people believed; and many were ready to accept the piggies as ramen, and to think of anyone who sought their deaths as murderers.

Then, on a day in autumn, Ender took the carefully wrapped cocoon, and he and Novinha, Olhado, Quim, and Ela skimmed over the kilometers of capim till they came to the hill beside the river. The daisies they had planted were in furious bloom; the winter here would be mild, and the hive queen would be safe from the Descolada.

Ender carried the hive queen gingerly to the riverbank, and laid her in the chamber he and Olhado had prepared. They laid the carcass of a freshly killed cabra on the ground outside her chamber.

And then Olhado drove them back. Ender wept with the vast, uncontrollable ecstasy that the hive queen placed within his mind, her rejoicing too strong for a human heart to bear; Novinha held him, Quim quietly prayed, and Ela sang a jaunty folksong that once had been heard in the hill country of Minas Geráis, among the caipiras and mineiros of old Brazil. It was a good time, a good place to be, better than Ender had ever dreamed for himself in the sterile corridors of the Battle School when he was little, and fighting for his life.

“I can probably die now,” said Ender. “All my life’s work is done.”

“Mine too,” said Novinha. “But I think that means that it’s time to start to live.”

Behind them, in the dank and humid air of a shallow cave by a river, strong mandibles tore at the cocoon, and a limp and skeletal body struggled forth. Her wings only gradually spread out and dried in the sunlight; she struggled weakly to the riverbank and pulled strength and moisture into her desiccated body. She nibbled at the meat of the cabra. The unhatched eggs she held within her cried out to be released; she laid the first dozen of them in the cabra’s corpse, then ate the nearest daisies, trying to feel the changes in her body as she came alive at last.

The sunlight on her back, the breeze against her wings, the water cool under her feet, her eggs warming and maturing in the flesh of the cabra: Life, so long waited for, and not until today could she be sure that she would be, not the last of her tribe, but the first.

XENOCIDE

ORSON SCOTT CARD

To Clark and Kathy Kidd:
for the freedom, for the haven,
and for frolics all over America.

1

A PARTING

<Today one of the brothers asked me: Is it a terrible prison, not to be able to move from the place where you’re standing?>

<You answered …>

<I told him that I am now more free than he is. The inability to move frees me from the obligation to act.>

<You who speak languages, you are such liars.>

Han Fei-tzu sat in lotus position on the bare wooden floor beside his wife’s sickbed. Until a moment ago he might have been sleeping; he wasn’t sure. But now he was aware of the slight change in her breathing, a change as subtle as the wind from a butterfly’s passing.

Jiang-qing, for her part, must also have detected some change in him, for she had not spoken before and now she did speak. Her voice was very soft. But Han Fei-tzu could hear her clearly, for the house was silent. He had asked his friends and servants for stillness during the dusk of Jiang-qing’s life. Time enough for careless noise during the long night that was to come, when there would be no hushed words from her lips.

“Still not dead,” she said. She had greeted him with these words each time she woke during the past few days. At first the words had seemed whimsical or ironic to him, but now he knew that she spoke with disappointment. She longed for death now, not because she hadn’t loved life, but because death was now unavoidable, and what cannot be shunned must be embraced. That was the Path. Jiang-qing had never taken a step away from the Path in her life.

“Then the gods are kind to me,” said Han Fei-tzu.

“To you,” she breathed. “What do we contemplate?”

It was her way of asking him to share his private thoughts with her. When others asked his private thoughts, he felt spied upon. But Jiang-qing asked only so that she could also think the same thought; it was part of their having become a single soul.

“We are contemplating the nature of desire,” said Han Fei-tzu.

“Whose desire?” she asked. “And for what?”

My desire for your bones to heal and become strong, so that they don’t snap at the slightest pressure. So that you could stand again, or even raise an arm without your own muscles tearing away chunks of bone or causing the bone to break under the tension. So that I wouldn’t have to watch you wither away until now you weigh only eighteen kilograms. I never knew how perfectly happy we were until I learned that we could not stay together.

“My desire,” he answered. “For you.”

“‘You only covet what you do not have.’ Who said that?”

“You did,” said Han Fei-tzu. “Some say, ‘what you cannot have.’ Others say, ‘what you should not have.’ I say, ‘You can truly covet only what you will always hunger for.’”

“You have me forever.”

“I will lose you tonight. Or tomorrow. Or next week.”

“Let us contemplate the nature of desire,” said Jiang-qing. As before, she was using philosophy to pull him out of his brooding melancholy.

He resisted her, but only playfully. “You are a harsh ruler,” said Han Fei-tzu. “Like your ancestor-of-the-heart, you make no allowance for other people’s frailty.” Jiang-qing was named for a revolutionary leader of the ancient past, who had tried to lead the people onto a new Path but was overthrown by weak-hearted cowards. It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary as a man alone.

Jiang-qing refused to let him return to brooding. “When a man’s wife is dead, what does he long for?”

Rebelliously, Han Fei-tzu gave her the most false answer to her question. “To lie with her,” he said.

“The desire of the body,” said Jiang-qing.

Since she was determined to have this conversation, Han Fei-tzu took up the catalogue for her. “The desire of the body is to act. It includes all touches, casual and intimate, and all customary movements. Thus he sees a movement out of the corner of his eye, and thinks he has seen his dead wife moving across the doorway, and he cannot be content until he has walked to the door and seen that it was not his wife. Thus he wakes up from a dream in which he heard her voice, and finds himself speaking his answer aloud as if she could hear him.”

“What else?” asked Jiang-qing.

“I’m tired of philosophy,” said Han Fei-tzu. “Maybe the Greeks found comfort in it, but not me.”

“The desire of the spirit,” said Jiang-qing, insisting.

“Because the spirit is of the earth, it is that part which makes new things out of old ones. The husband longs for all the unfinished things that he and his wife were making when she died, and all the unstarted dreams of what they would have made if she had lived. Thus a man grows angry at his children for being too much like him and not enough like his dead wife. Thus a man hates the house they lived in together, because either he does not change it, so that it is as dead as his wife, or because he does change it, so that it is no longer half of her making.”

“You don’t have to be angry at our little Qing-jao,” said Jiang-qing.

“Why?” asked Han Fei-tzu. “Will you stay, then, and help me teach her to be a woman? All I can teach her is to be what I am—cold and hard, sharp and strong, like obsidian. If she grows like that, while she looks so much like you, how can I help but be angry?”

“Because you can teach her everything that I am, too,” said Jiang-qing.

“If I had any part of you in me,” said Han Fei-tzu, “I would not have needed to marry you to become a complete person.” Now he teased her by using philosophy to turn the conversation away from pain. “That is the desire of the soul. Because the soul is made of light and dwells in air, it is that part which conceives and keeps ideas, especially the idea of the self. The husband longs for his whole self, which was made of the husband and wife together. Thus he never believes any of his own thoughts, because there is always a question in his mind to which his wife’s thoughts were the only possible answer. Thus the whole world seems dead to him because he cannot trust anything to keep its meaning before the onslaught of this unanswerable question.”

“Very deep,” said Jiang-qing.

“If I were Japanese I would commit seppuku, spilling my bowel into the jar of your ashes.”

“Very wet and messy,” she said.

He smiled. “Then I should be an ancient Hindu, and burn myself on your pyre.”

But she was through with joking. “Qing-jao,” she whispered. She was reminding him he could do nothing so flamboyant as to die with her. There was little Qing-jao to care for.

So Han Fei-tzu answered her seriously. “How can I teach her to be what you are?”

“All that is good in me,” said Jiang-qing, “comes from the Path. If you teach her to obey the gods, honor the ancestors, love the people, and serve the rulers, I will be in her as much as you are.”

“I would teach her the Path as part of myself,” said Han Fei-tzu.

“Not so,” said Jiang-qing. “The Path is not a natural part of you, my husband. Even with the gods speaking to you every day, you insist on believing in a world where everything can be explained by natural causes.”

“I obey the gods.” He thought, bitterly, that he had no choice; that even to delay obedience was torture.

“But you don’t know them. You don’t love their works.”

“The Path is to love the people. The gods we only obey.” How can I love gods who humiliate me and torment me at every opportunity?

“We love the people because they are creatures of the gods.”

“Don’t preach to me.”

She sighed.

Her sadness stung him like a spider. “I wish you would preach to me forever,” said Han Fei-tzu.

“You married me because you knew I loved the gods, and that love for them was completely missing from yourself. That was how I completed you.”

How could he argue with her, when he knew that even now he hated the gods for everything they had ever done to him, everything they had ever made him do, everything they had stolen from him in his life.

“Promise me,” said Jiang-qing.

He knew what these words meant. She felt death upon her; she was laying the burden of her life upon him. A burden he would gladly bear. It was losing her company on the Path that he had dreaded for so long.

“Promise that you will teach Qing-jao to love the gods and walk always on the Path. Promise that you will make her as much my daughter as yours.”

“Even if she never hears the voice of the gods?”

“The Path is for everyone, not just the godspoken.”

Perhaps, thought Han Fei-tzu, but it was much easier for the godspoken to follow the Path, because to them the price for straying from it was so terrible. The common people were free; they could leave the Path and not feel the pain of it for years. The godspoken couldn’t leave the Path for an hour.

“Promise me.”

I will. I promise.

But he couldn’t say the words out loud. He did not know why, but his reluctance was deep.

In the silence, as she waited for his vow, they heard the sound of running feet on the gravel outside the front door of the house. It could only be Qing-jao, home from the garden of Sun Cao-pi. Only Qing-jao was allowed to run and make noise during this time of hush. They waited, knowing that she would come straight to her mother’s room.

The door slid open almost noiselessly. Even Qing-jao had caught enough of the hush to walk softly when she was actually in the presence of her mother. Though she walked on tiptoe, she could hardly keep from dancing, almost galloping across the floor. But she did not fling her arms around her mother’s neck; she remembered that lesson even though the terrible bruise had faded from Jiang-qing’s face, where Qing-jao’s eager embrace had broken her jaw three months ago.

“I counted twenty-three white carp in the garden stream,” said Qing-jao.

“So many,” said Jiang-qing.

“I think they were showing themselves to me,” said Qing-jao. “So I could count them. None of them wanted to be left out.”

“Love you,” whispered Jiang-qing.

Han Fei-tzu heard a new sound in her breathy voice—a popping sound, like bubbles bursting with her words.

“Do you think that seeing so many carp means that I will be godspoken?” asked Qing-jao.

“I will ask the gods to speak to you,” said Jiang-qing.

Suddenly Jiang-qing’s breathing became quick and harsh. Han Fei-tzu immediately knelt and looked at his wife. Her eyes were wide and frightened. The moment had come.

Her lips moved. Promise me, she said, though her breath could make no sound but gasping.

“I promise,” said Han Fei-tzu.

Then her breathing stopped.

“What do the gods say when they talk to you?” asked Qing-jao.

“Your mother is very tired,” said Han Fei-tzu. “You should go out now.”

“But she didn’t answer me. What do the gods say?”

“They tell secrets,” said Han Fei-tzu. “No one who hears will repeat them.”

Qing-jao nodded wisely. She took a step back, as if to leave, but stopped. “May I kiss you, Mama?”

“Lightly on the cheek,” said Han Fei-tzu.

Qing-jao, being small for a four-year-old, did not have to bend very far at all to kiss her mother’s cheek. “I love you, Mama.”

“You’d better leave now, Qing-jao,” said Han Fei-tzu.

“But Mama didn’t say she loved me too.”

“She did. She said it before. Remember? But she’s very tired and weak. Go now.”

He put just enough sternness in his voice that Qing-jao left without further questions. Only when she was gone did Han Fei-tzu let himself feel anything but care for her. He knelt over Jiang-qing’s body and tried to imagine what was happening to her now. Her soul had flown and was now already in heaven. Her spirit would linger much longer; perhaps her spirit would dwell in this house, if it had truly been a place of happiness for her. Superstitious people believed that all spirits of the dead were dangerous, and put up signs and wards to fend them off. But those who followed the Path knew that the spirit of a good person was never harmful or destructive, for their goodness in life had come from the spirit’s love of making things. Jiang-qing’s spirit would be a blessing in the house for many years to come, if she chose to stay.

Yet even as he tried to imagine her soul and spirit, according to the teachings of the Path, there was a cold place in his heart that was certain that all that was left of Jiang-qing was this brittle, dried-up body. Tonight it would burn as quickly as paper, and then she would be gone except for the memories in his heart.

Jiang-qing was right. Without her to complete his soul, he was already doubting the gods. And the gods had noticed—they always did. At once he felt the unbearable pressure to do the ritual of cleansing, until he was rid of his unworthy thoughts. Even now they could not leave him unpunished. Even now, with his wife lying dead before him, the gods insisted that he do obeisance to them before he could shed a single tear of grief for her.

At first he meant to delay, to put off obedience. He had schooled himself to be able to postpone the ritual for as long as a whole day, while hiding all outward signs of his inner torment. He could do that now—but only by keeping his heart utterly cold. There was no point in that. Proper grief could come only when he had satisfied the gods. So, kneeling there, he began the ritual.

He was still twisting and gyrating with the ritual when a servant peered in. Though the servant said nothing, Han Fei-tzu heard the faint sliding of the door and knew what the servant would assume: Jiang-qing was dead, and Han Fei-tzu was so righteous that he was communing with the gods even before he announced her death to the household. No doubt some would even suppose that the gods had come to take Jiang-qing, since she was known for her extraordinary holiness. No one would guess that even as Han Fei-tzu worshiped, his heart was full of bitterness that the gods would dare demand this of him even now.

O Gods, he thought, if I knew that by cutting off an arm or cutting out my liver I could be rid of you forever, I would seize the knife and relish the pain and loss, all for the sake of freedom.

That thought, too, was unworthy, and required even more cleansing. It was hours before the gods at last released him, and by then he was too tired, too sick at heart to grieve. He got up and fetched the women to prepare Jiang-qing’s body for the burning.

At midnight he was the last to come to the pyre, carrying a sleepy Qing-jao in his arms. She clutched in her hands the three papers she had written for her mother in her childish scrawl. “Fish,” she had written, and “book” and “secrets.” These were the things that Qing-jao was giving to her mother to carry with her into heaven. Han Fei-tzu had tried to guess at the thoughts in Qing-jao’s mind as she wrote those words. Fish because of the carp in the garden stream today, no doubt. And book—that was easy enough to understand, because reading aloud was one of the last things Jiang-qing could do with her daughter. But why secrets? What secrets did Qing-jao have for her mother? He could not ask. One did not discuss the paper offerings to the dead.

Han Fei-tzu set Qing-jao on her feet; she had not been deeply asleep, and so she woke at once and stood there, blinking slowly. Han Fei-tzu whispered to her and she rolled her papers and tucked them into her mother’s sleeve. She didn’t seem to mind touching her mother’s cold flesh—she was too young to have learned to shudder at the touch of death.

Nor did Han Fei-tzu mind the touch of his wife’s flesh as he tucked his own three papers into her other sleeve. What was there to fear from death now, when it had already done its worst?

No one knew what was written on his papers, or they would have been horrified, for he had written, “My body,” “My spirit,” and “My soul.” Thus it was that he burned himself on Jiang-qing’s funeral pyre, and sent himself with her wherever it was she was going.

Then Jiang-qing’s secret maid, Mu-pao, laid the torch onto the sacred wood and the pyre burst into flames. The heat of the fire was painful, and Qing-jao hid herself behind her father, only peeking around him now and then to watch her mother leave on her endless journey. Han Fei-tzu, though, welcomed the dry heat that seared his skin and made brittle the silk of his robe. Her body had not been as dry as it seemed; long after the papers had crisped into ash and blown upward into the smoke of the fire, her body still sizzled, and the heavy incense burning all around the fire could not conceal from him the smell of burning flesh. That is what we’re burning here: meat, fish, carrion, nothing. Not my Jiang-qing. Only the costume she wore into this life. That which made that body into the woman that I loved is still alive, must still live. And for a moment he thought he could see, or hear, or somehow feel the passage of Jiang-qing.

Into the air, into the earth, into the fire. I am with you.

2

A MEETING

<The strangest thing about humans is the way they pair up, males and females. Constantly at war with each other, never content to leave each other alone. They never seem to grasp the idea that males and females are separate species with completely different needs and desires, forced to come together only to reproduce.>

<Of course you feel that way. Your mates are nothing but mindless drones, extensions of yourself, without their own identity.>

<We know our lovers with perfect understanding. Humans invent an imaginary lover and put that mask over the face of the body in their bed.>

<That is the tragedy of language, my friend. Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.>

<That is the source of their misery.>

<And some of their strength, I think. Your people and mine, each for our own evolutionary reasons, mate with vastly unequal partners. Our mates are always, hopelessly, our intellectual inferiors. Humans mate with beings who challenge their supremacy. They have conflict between mates, not because their communication is inferior to ours, but because they commune with each other at all.>

Valentine Wiggin read over her essay, making a few corrections here and there. When she was done, the words stood in the air over her computer terminal. She was feeling pleased with herself for having written such a deft ironic dismemberment of the personal character of Rymus Ojman, the chairman of the cabinet of Starways Congress.

“Have we finished another attack on the masters of the Hundred Worlds?”

Valentine did not turn to face her husband; she knew from his voice exactly what expression would be on his face, and so she smiled back at him without turning around. After twenty-five years of marriage, they could see each other clearly without having to look. “We have made Rymus Ojman look ridiculous.”

Jakt leaned into her tiny office, his face so close to hers that she could hear his soft breathing as he read the opening paragraphs. He wasn’t young anymore; the exertion of leaning into her office, bracing his hands on the doorframe, was making him breathe more rapidly than she liked to hear.

Then he spoke, but with his face so close to hers that she felt his lips brush her cheek, tickling her with every word. “From now on even his mother will laugh behind her hand whenever she sees the poor bastard.”

“It was hard to make it funny,” said Valentine. “I caught myself denouncing him again and again.”

“This is better.”

“Oh, I know. If I had let my outrage show, if I had accused him of all his crimes, it would have made him seem more formidable and frightening and the Rule-of-law Faction would have loved him all the more, while the cowards on every world would have bowed to him even lower.”

“If they bow any lower they’ll have to buy thinner carpets,” said Jakt.

She laughed, but it was as much because the tickling of his lips on her cheek was becoming unbearable. It was also beginning, just a little, to tantalize her with desires that simply could not be satisfied on this voyage. The starship was too small and cramped, with all their family aboard, for any real privacy. “Jakt, we’re almost at the midpoint. We’ve abstained longer than this during the mishmish run every year of our lives.”

“We could put a do-not-enter sign on the door.”

“Then you might just as well put out a sign that says, ‘naked elderly couple reliving old memories inside.’”

“I’m not elderly.”

“You’re over sixty.”

“If the old soldier can still stand up and salute, I say let him march in the parade.”

“No parades till the voyage is over. It’s only a couple of weeks more. We only have to complete this rendezvous with Ender’s stepson and then we’re back on course to Lusitania.”

Jakt drew away from her, pulled himself out of her doorway and stood upright in the corridor—one of the few places on the starship where he could actually do that. He groaned as he did it, though.

“You creak like an old rusty door,” said Valentine.

“I’ve heard you make the same sounds when you get up from your desk here. I’m not the only senile, decrepit, miserable old coot in our family.”

“Go away and let me transmit this.”

“I’m used to having work to do on a voyage,” said Jakt. “The computers do everything here, and this ship never rolls or pitches in the sea.”

“Read a book.”

“I worry about you. All work and no play makes Val a mean-tempered old hag.”

“Every minute that we talk here is eight and a half hours in real time.”

“Our time here on this starship is just as real as their time out there,” said Jakt. “Sometimes I wish Ender’s friends hadn’t figured out a way for our starship to keep up a landside link.”

“It takes up a huge amount of computer time,” said Val. “Until now, only the military could communicate with starships during near-lightspeed flight. If Ender’s friends can achieve it, then I owe it to them to use it.”

“You’re not doing all this because you owe it to somebody.”

That was true enough. “If I write an essay every hour, Jakt, it means that to the rest of humanity Demosthenes is publishing something only once every three weeks.”

“You can’t possibly write an essay every hour. You sleep, you eat.”

“You talk, I listen. Go away, Jakt.”

“If I’d known that saving a planet from destruction would mean my returning to a state of virginity, I’d never have agreed to it.”

He was only half teasing. Leaving Trondheim was a hard decision for all her family—even for her, even knowing that she was going to see Ender again. The children were all adults now, or nearly so; they saw this voyage as a great adventure. Their visions of the future were not so tied to a particular place. None of them had become a sailor, like their father; all of them were becoming scholars or scientists, living the life of public discourse and private contemplation, like their mother. They could live their lives, substantially unchanged, anywhere, on any world. Jakt was proud of them, but disappointed that the chain of family reaching back for seven generations on the seas of Trondheim would end with him. And now, for her sake, he had given up the sea himself. Giving up Trondheim was the hardest thing she could ever have asked of Jakt, and he had said yes without hesitation.

Perhaps he would go back someday, and, if he did, the oceans, the ice, the storms, the fish, the desperately sweet green meadows of summer would still be there. But his crews would be gone, were already gone. The men he had known better than his own children, better than his wife—those men were already fifteen years older, and when he returned, if he returned, another forty years would have passed. Their grandsons would be working the boats then. They wouldn’t know the name of Jakt. He’d be a foreign shipowner, come from the sky, not a sailor, not a man with the stink and yellowy blood of skrika on his hands. He would not be one of them.

So when he complained that she was ignoring him, when he teased about their lack of intimacy during the voyage, there was more to it than an aging husband’s playful desire. Whether he knew he was saying it or not, she understood the true meaning of his overtures: After what I’ve given up for you, have you nothing to give to me?

And he was right—she was pushing herself harder than she needed to. She was making more sacrifices than needed to be made—requiring overmuch from him as well. It wasn’t the sheer number of subversive essays that Demosthenes published during this voyage that would make the difference. What mattered was how many people read and believed what she wrote, and how many then thought and spoke and acted as enemies of Starways Congress. Perhaps more important was the hope that some within the bureaucracy of Congress itself would be moved to feel a higher allegiance to humanity and break their maddening institutional solidarity. Some would surely be changed by what she wrote. Not many, but maybe enough. And maybe it would happen in time to stop them from destroying the planet Lusitania.

If not, she and Jakt and those who had given up so much to come with them on this voyage from Trondheim would reach Lusitania just in time to turn around and flee—or be destroyed along with all the others of that world. It was not unreasonable for Jakt to be tense, to want to spend more time with her. It was unreasonable for her to be so single-minded, to use every waking moment writing propaganda.

“You make the sign for the door, and I’ll make sure you aren’t alone in the room.”

“Woman, you make my heart go flip-flop like a dying flounder,” said Jakt.

“You are so romantic when you talk like a fisherman,” said Valentine. “The children will have a good laugh, knowing you couldn’t keep your hands off me even for the three weeks of this voyage.”

“They have our genes. They should be rooting for us to stay randy till we’re well into our second century.”

“I’m well into my fourth millennium.”

“When oh when can I expect you in my stateroom, Ancient One?”

“When I’ve transmitted this essay.”

“And how long will that be?”

“Sometime after you go away and leave me alone.”

With a deep sigh that was more theatre than genuine misery, he padded off down the carpeted corridor. After a moment there came a clanging sound and she heard him yelp in pain. In mock pain, of course; he had accidentally hit the metal beam with his head on the first day of the voyage, but ever since then his collisions had been deliberate, for comic effect. No one ever laughed out loud, of course—that was a family tradition, not to laugh when Jakt pulled one of his physical gags—but then Jakt was not the sort of man who needed overt encouragement from others. He was his own best audience; a man couldn’t be a sailor and a leader of men all his life without being quite self-contained. As far as Valentine knew, she and the children were the only people he had ever allowed himself to need.

Even then, he had not needed them so much that he couldn’t go on with his life as a sailor and fisherman, away from home for days, often weeks, sometimes months at a time. Valentine went with him sometimes at first, when they were still so hungry for each other that they could never be satisfied. But within a few years their hunger had given way to patience and trust; when he was away, she did her research and wrote her books, and then gave her entire attention to him and the children when he returned.

The children used to complain, “I wish Father would get home, so Mother would come out of her room and talk to us again.” I was not a very good mother, Valentine thought. It’s pure luck that the children turned out so well.

The essay remained in the air over the terminal. Only a final touch remained to be given. At the bottom, she centered the cursor and typed the name under which all her writings were published:

DEMOSTHENES

It was a name given to her by her older brother, Peter, when they were children together fifty—no, three thousand years ago.

The mere thought of Peter still had the power to upset her, to make her go hot and cold inside. Peter, the cruel one, the violent one, the one whose mind was so subtle and dangerous that he was manipulating her by the age of two and the world by the age of twenty. When they were still children on Earth in the twenty-second century, he studied the political writings of great men and women, living and dead, not to learn their ideas—those he grasped instantly—but to learn how they said them. To learn, in practical terms, how to sound like an adult. When he had mastered it, he taught Valentine, and forced her to write low political demagoguery under the name Demosthenes while he wrote elevated statesmanlike essays under the name Locke. Then they submitted them to the computer networks and within a few years were at the heart of the greatest political issues of the day.

What galled Valentine then—and still stung a bit today, since it had never been resolved before Peter died—was that he, consumed by the lust for power, had forced her to write the sort of thing that expressed his character, while he got to write the peace-loving, elevated sentiments that were hers by nature. In those days the name “Demosthenes” had felt like a terrible burden to her. Everything she wrote under that name was a lie; and not even her lie—Peter’s lie. A lie within a lie.

Not now. Not for three thousand years. I’ve made the name my own. I’ve written histories and biographies that have shaped the thinking of millions of scholars on the Hundred Worlds and helped to shape the identities of dozens of nations. So much for you, Peter. So much for what you tried to make of me.

Except that now, looking at the essay she had just written, she realized that even though she had freed herself from Peter’s suzerainty, she was still his pupil. All she knew of rhetoric, polemic—yes, of demagoguery—she had learned from him or because of his insistence. And now, though she was using it in a noble cause, she was nevertheless doing exactly the sort of political manipulation that Peter had loved so much.

Peter had gone on to become Hegemon, ruler of all humanity for sixty years at the beginning of the Great Expansion. He was the one who united all the quarreling communities of man for the vast effort that flung starships out to every world where the buggers had once dwelt, and then on to discover more habitable worlds until, by the time he died, all the Hundred Worlds had either been settled or had colony ships on the way. It was almost a thousand years after that, of course, before Starways Congress once again united all of humankind under one government—but the memory of the first true Hegemon—the Hegemon—was at the heart of the story that made human unity possible.

Out of a moral wasteland like Peter’s soul came harmony and unity and peace. While Ender’s legacy, as far as humanity remembered, was murder, slaughter, xenocide.

Ender, Valentine’s younger brother, the man she and her family were voyaging to see—he was the tender one, the brother she loved and, in the earliest years, tried to protect. He was the good one. Oh, yes, he had a streak of ruthlessness that rivaled Peter’s, but he had the decency to be appalled by his own brutality. She had loved him as fervently as she had loathed Peter; and when Peter exiled his younger brother from the Earth that Peter was determined to rule, Valentine went with Ender—her final repudiation of Peter’s personal hegemony over her.

And here I am again, thought Valentine, back in the business of politics.

She spoke sharply, in the clipped voice that told her terminal that she was giving it a command. “Transmit,” she said.

The word transmitting appeared in the air above her essay. Ordinarily, back when she was writing scholarly works, she would have had to specify a destination—submit the essay to a publisher through some roundabout pathway so that it could not readily be traced to Valentine Wiggin. Now, though, a subversive friend of Ender’s, working under the obvious code name of “Jane,” was taking care of all that for her—managing the tricky business of translating an ansible message from a ship going at near-lightspeed to a message readable by a planetbound ansible for which time was passing more than five hundred times faster.

Since communicating with a starship ate up huge amounts of planetside ansible time, it was usually done only to convey navigational information and instructions. The only people permitted to send extended text messages were high officials in the government or the military. Valentine could not begin to understand how “Jane” managed to get so much ansible time for these text transmissions—and at the same time keep anyone from discovering where these subversive documents were coming from. Furthermore, “Jane” used even more ansible time transmitting back to her the published responses to her writings, reporting to her on all the arguments and strategies the government was using to counter Valentine’s propaganda. Whoever “Jane” was—and Valentine suspected that “Jane” was simply the name for a clandestine organization that had penetrated the highest reaches of government—she was extraordinarily good. And extraordinarily foolhardy. Still, if Jane was willing to expose herself—themselves—to such risks, Valentine owed it to her—them—to produce as many tracts as she could, and as powerful and dangerous as she could make them.

If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal.

But she was still a woman; even revolutionaries are allowed to have a life, aren’t they? Moments of joy—or pleasure, or perhaps only relief—stolen here and there. She got up from her seat, ignoring the pain that came from moving after sitting so long, and twisted her way out of the door of her tiny office—a storage bin, really, before they converted the starship to their own use. She was a little ashamed of how eager she was to get to the room where Jakt would be waiting. Most of the great revolutionary propagandists in history would have been able to endure at least three weeks of physical abstinence. Or would they? She wondered if anyone had done a study of that particular question.

She was still imagining how a researcher would go about writing a grant proposal for such a project when she got to the four-bunk compartment they shared with Syfte and her husband, Lars, who had proposed to her only a few days before they left, as soon as he realized that Syfte really meant to leave Trondheim. It was hard to share a cabin with newlyweds—Valentine always felt like such an intruder, using the same room. But there was no choice. Though this starship was a luxury yacht, with all the amenities they could hope for, it simply hadn’t been meant to hold so many bodies. It had been the only starship near Trondheim that was remotely suitable, so it had to do.

Their twenty-year-old daughter, Ro, and Varsam, their sixteen-year-old son, shared another compartment with Plikt, who had been their lifelong tutor and dearest family friend. The members of the yacht’s staff and crew who had chosen to make this voyage with them—it would have been wrong to dismiss them all and strand them on Trondheim—used the other two. The bridge, the dining room, the galley, the salon, the sleeping compartments—all were filled with people doing their best not to let their annoyance at the close quarters get out of hand.

None of them were in the corridor now, however, and Jakt had already taped a sign to their door:

STAY OUT OR DIE.

It was signed, “The proprietor.” Valentine opened the door. Jakt was leaning against the wall so close to the door that she was startled and gave a little gasp.

“Nice to know that the sight of me can make you cry out in pleasure.”

“In shock.”

“Come in, my sweet seditionist.”

“Technically, you know, I’m the proprietor of this starship.”

“What’s yours is mine. I married you for your property.”

She was inside the compartment now. He closed the door and sealed it.

“That’s all I am to you?” she asked. “Real estate?”

“A little plot of ground where I can plow and plant and harvest, all in their proper season.” He reached out to her; she stepped into his arms. His hands slid lightly up her back, cradled her shoulders. She felt contained in his embrace, never confined.

“It’s late in the autumn,” she said. “Getting on toward winter.”

“Time to harrow, perhaps,” said Jakt. “Or perhaps it’s already time to kindle up the fire and keep the old hut warm before the snow comes.”

He kissed her and it felt like the first time.

“If you asked me to marry you all over again today, I’d say yes,” said Valentine.

“And if I had only met you for the first time today, I’d ask.”

They had said the same words many, many times before. Yet they still smiled to hear them, because they were still true.

The two starships had almost completed their vast ballet, dancing through space in great leaps and delicate turns until at last they could meet and touch. Miro Ribeira had watched the whole process from the bridge of his starship, his shoulders hunched, his head leaned back on the headrest of the seat. To others this posture always looked awkward. Back on Lusitania, whenever Mother caught him sitting that way she would come and fuss over him, insist on bringing him a pillow so he could be comfortable. She never seemed to grasp the idea that it was only in that hunched, awkward-seeming posture that his head would remain upright without any conscious effort on his part.

He would endure her ministrations because it wasn’t worth the effort to argue with her. Mother was always moving and thinking so quickly, it was almost impossible for her to slow down enough to listen to him. Since the brain damage he had suffered passing through the disruptor field that separated the human colony and the piggies’ forest, his speech had been unbearably slow, painful to produce and difficult to understand. Miro’s brother Quim, the religious one, had told him that he should be grateful to God that he was able to speak at all—the first few days he had been incapable of communicating except through alphabetic scanning, spelling out messages letter by letter. In some ways, though, spelling things out had been better. At least then Miro had been silent; he hadn’t had to listen to his own voice. The thick, awkward sound, the agonizing slowness of it. Who in his family had the patience to listen to him? Even the ones who tried—his next-younger sister, Ela; his friend and stepfather, Andrew Wiggin, the Speaker for the Dead; and Quim, of course—he could feel their impatience. They tended to finish his sentences for him. They needed to hurry things. So even though they said they wanted to talk with him, even though they actually sat and listened as he spoke, he still couldn’t speak freely to them. He couldn’t talk about ideas; he couldn’t speak in long, involved sentences, because by the time he got to the end his listeners would have lost track of the beginning.

The human brain, Miro had concluded, just like a computer, can only receive data at certain speeds. If you get too slow, the listener’s attention wanders and the information is lost.

Not just the listeners, either. Miro had to be fair—he was as impatient with himself as they were. When he thought of the sheer effort involved in explaining a complicated idea, when he anticipated trying to form the words with lips and tongue and jaws that wouldn’t obey him, when he thought of how long it would all take, he usually felt too weary to speak. His mind raced on and on, as fast as ever, thinking so many thoughts that at times Miro wanted his brain to shut down, to be silent and give him peace. But his thoughts remained his own, unshared.

Except with Jane. He could speak to Jane. She had come to him first on his terminal at home, her face taking form on the screen. “I’m a friend of the Speaker for the Dead,” she had told him. “I think we can get this computer to be a little more responsive.” From then on, Miro had found that Jane was the only person he could talk to easily. For one thing, she was infinitely patient. She never finished his sentences. She could wait for him to finish them himself, so that he never felt rushed, never felt that he was boring her.

Perhaps even more important, he didn’t have to form his words as fully for her as he did for human listeners. Andrew had given him a personal terminal—a computer transceiver encased in a jewel like the one Andrew wore in his own ear. From that vantage point, using the jewel’s sensors, Jane could detect every sound he made, every motion of the muscles in his head. He didn’t have to complete each sound, he had only to begin it and she would understand. So he could be lazy. He could speak more quickly and be understood.

And he could also speak silently. He could subvocalize—he didn’t have to use that awkward, barking, yowling voice that was all his throat could produce now. So that when he was talking to Jane, he could speak quickly, naturally, without any reminder that he was crippled. With Jane he could feel like himself.

Now he sat on the bridge of the cargo ship that had brought the Speaker for the Dead to Lusitania only a few months ago. He dreaded the rendezvous with Valentine’s ship. If he could have thought of somewhere else to go, he might have gone there—he had no desire to meet Andrew’s sister Valentine or anybody else. If he could have stayed alone in the starship forever, speaking only to Jane, he would have been content.

No he wouldn’t. He would never be content again.

At least this Valentine and her family would be somebody new. On Lusitania he knew everybody, or at least everybody that he valued—all the scientific community there, the people of education and understanding. He knew them all so well that he could not help but see their pity, their grief, their frustration at what had become of him. When they looked at him all they could see was the difference between what he was before and what he was now. All they could see was loss.

There was a chance that new people—Valentine and her family—would be able to look at him and see something else.

Even that was unlikely, though. Strangers would look at him and see less, not more, than those who had known him before he was crippled. At least Mother and Andrew and Ela and Ouanda and all the others knew that he had a mind, knew that he was capable of understanding ideas. What will new people think when they see me? They’ll see a body that’s already atrophying, hunched over; they’ll see me walk with a shuffling gait; they’ll watch me use my hands like paws, clutching a spoon like a three-year-old; they’ll hear my thick, half-intelligible speech; and they’ll assume, they’ll know, that such a person cannot possibly understand anything complicated or difficult.

Why did I come?

I didn’t come. I went. I wasn’t coming here, to meet these people. I was leaving there. Getting away. Only I tricked myself. I thought of leaving on a thirty-year voyage, which is only how it will seem to them. To me I’ve been gone only a week and a half. No time at all. And already my time of solitude is over. My time of being alone with Jane, who listens to me as if I were still a human being, is done.

Almost. Almost he said the words that would have aborted the rendezvous. He could have stolen Andrew’s starship and taken off on a voyage that would last forever without having to face another living soul.

But such a nihilistic act was not in him, not yet. He had not yet despaired, he decided. There might yet be something he could do that might justify his continuing to live in this body. And perhaps it would begin with meeting Andrew’s sister.

The ships were now joining, the umbilicals snaking outward and searching, groping till they met each other. Miro watched on the monitors and listened to the computer reports of each successful linkage. The ships were joining in every possible way so that they could make the rest of the voyage to Lusitania in perfect tandem. All resources would be shared. Since Miro’s ship was a cargo vessel, it couldn’t take on more than a handful of people, but it could take some of the other ship’s life-support supplies; together, the two ship’s computers were figuring out a perfect balance.

Once they had calculated the load, they worked out exactly how fast each ship should accelerate as they made the park shift to get them both back to near-lightspeed at exactly the same pace. It was an extremely delicate and complicated negotiation between two computers that had to know almost perfectly what their ships carried and how they could perform. It was finished before the passage tube between the ships was fully connected.

Miro heard the footsteps scuffing along the corridor from the tube. He turned his chair—slowly, because he did everything slowly—and saw her coming toward him. Stooped over, but not very much, because she wasn’t that tall to begin with. Hair mostly white, with a few strands of mousy brown. When she stood he looked at her face and judged her. Old but not elderly. If she was nervous about this meeting it didn’t show. But then, from what Andrew and Jane had told him about her, she had met a lot of people who were a good deal more fearsome than a twenty-year-old cripple.

“Miro?” she asked.

“Who else?” he said.

It took a moment, just a heartbeat, for her to process the strange sounds that came out of his mouth and recognize the words. He was used to that pause now, but he still hated it.

“I’m Valentine,” she said.

“I know,” he answered. He wasn’t making this any easier, with his laconic replies, but what else was there to say? This wasn’t exactly a meeting between heads of state with a list of vital decisions to make. But he had to make some effort, if only not to seem hostile.

“Your name, Miro—it means ‘I look,’ doesn’t it?”

“‘I look closely.’ Maybe ‘I pay attention.’”

“It’s really not that hard to understand you,” said Valentine.

He was startled that she addressed the matter so openly.

“I think I’m having more problems with your Portuguese accent than with the brain damage.”

For a moment it felt like a hammer in his heart—she was speaking more frankly about his situation than anyone except Andrew. But then she was Andrew’s sister, wasn’t she? He should have expected her to be plainspoken.

“Or do you prefer that we pretend that it isn’t a barrier between you and other people?”

Apparently she had sensed his shock. But that was over, and now it occurred to him that he probably shouldn’t be annoyed, that he should probably be glad that they wouldn’t have to sidestep the issue. Yet he was annoyed, and it took him a moment to think why. Then he knew.

“My brain damage isn’t your problem,” he said.

“If it makes it hard for me to understand you, then it’s a problem I have to deal with. Don’t get prickly with me already, young man. I have only begun to bother you, and you have only begun to bother me. So don’t get steamed up because I happened to mention your brain damage as being somehow my problem. I have no intention of watching every word I say for fear I’ll offend an oversensitive young man who thinks the whole world revolves around his disappointments.”

Miro was furious that she had judged him already, and so harshly. It was unfair—not at all what the author of Demosthenes’ hierarchy ought to be like. “I don’t think the whole world revolves around my disappointments! But don’t you think you can come in here and run things on my ship!” That’s what annoyed him, not her words. She was right—her words were nothing. It was her attitude, her complete self-confidence. He wasn’t used to people looking at him without shock or pity.

She sat down in the seat next to him. He swiveled to face her. She, for her part, did not look away. Indeed, she pointedly scanned his body, head to toe, looking him over with an air of cool appraisal. “He said you were tough. He said you had been twisted but not broken.”

“Are you supposed to be my therapist?”

“Are you supposed to be my enemy?”

“Should I be?” asked Miro.

“No more than I should be your therapist. Andrew didn’t have us meet so I could heal you. He had us meet so you could help me. If you’re not going to, fine. If you are, fine. Just let me make a few things clear. I’m spending every waking moment writing subversive propaganda to try to arouse public sentiment on the Hundred Worlds and in the colonies. I’m trying to turn the people against the fleet that Starways Congress has sent to subdue Lusitania. Your world, not mine, I might add.”

“Your brother’s there.” He was not about to let her claim complete altruism.

“Yes, we both have family there. And we both are concerned about keeping the pequeninos from destruction. And we both know that Ender has restored the hive queen on your world, so that there are two alien species that will be destroyed if Starways Congress gets its way. There’s a great deal at stake, and I am already doing all that I can possibly do to try to stop that fleet. Now, if spending a few hours with you can help me do it better, it’s worth taking time away from my writing in order to talk with you. But I have no intention of wasting my time worrying about whether I’m going to offend you or not. So if you’re going to be my adversary, you can sit up here all by yourself and I’ll get back to my work.”

“Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew.”

“He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six.”

“Right.”

“And you’re the oldest.”

“Yes.”

“That’s too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That’s when parents know the least and care the most, so they’re more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they’re right.”

Miro didn’t like hearing this woman leap to conclusions about his mother. “She’s nothing like you.”

“Of course not.” She leaned forward in her seat. “Well, have you decided?”

“Decided what?”

“Are we working together or did you just unplug yourself from thirty years of human history for nothing?”

“What do you want from me?”

“Stories, of course. Facts I can get from the computer.”

“Stories about what?”

“You. The piggies. You and the piggies. This whole business with the Lusitania Fleet began with you and the piggies, after all. It was because you interfered with them that—”

“We helped them!”

“Oh, did I use the wrong word again?”

Miro glared at her. But even as he did, he knew that she was right—he was being oversensitive. The word interfered, when used in a scientific context, was almost value-neutral. It merely meant that he had introduced change into the culture he was studying. And if it did have a negative connotation, it was that he had lost his scientific perspective—he had stopped studying the pequeninos and started treating them as friends. Of that he was surely guilty. No, not guilty—he was proud of having made that transition. “Go on,” he said.

“All this began because you broke the law and piggies started growing amaranth.”

“Not anymore.”

“Yes, that’s ironic, isn’t it? The descolada virus has gotten in and killed every strain of amaranth that your sister developed for them. So your interference was in vain.”

“No it wasn’t,” said Miro. “They’re learning.”

“Yes, I know. More to the point, they’re choosing. What to learn, what to do. You brought them freedom. I approve wholeheartedly of what you decided to do. But my job is to write about you to the people out there in the Hundred Worlds and the colonies, and they won’t necessarily see things that way. So what I need from you is the story of how and why you broke the law and interfered with the piggies, and why the government and people of Lusitania rebelled against Congress rather than send you off to be tried and punished for your crimes.”

“Andrew already told you that story.”

“And I’ve already written about it, in larger terms. Now I need the personal things. I want to be able to let other people know these so-called piggies as people. And you, too. I have to let them know you as a person. If it’s possible, it would be nice if I could bring them to like you. Then the Lusitania Fleet will look like what it is—a monstrous overreaction to a threat that never existed.”

“The fleet is xenocide.”

“So I’ve said in my propaganda,” said Valentine.

He couldn’t bear her self-certainty. He couldn’t bear her unshakable faith in herself. So he had to contradict her, and the only way he could was to blurt out ideas that he had not yet thought out completely. Ideas that were still only half-formed doubts in his mind. “The fleet is also self-defense.”

It had the desired effect—it stopped her lecture and even made her raise her eyebrows, questioning him. The trouble was, now he had to explain what he meant.

“The descolada,” he said. “It’s the most dangerous form of life anywhere.”

“The answer to that is quarantine. Not sending a fleet armed with the M.D. Device, so they have the capacity to turn Lusitania and everybody on it into microscopic interstellar dust.”

“You’re so sure you’re right?”

“I’m sure that it’s wrong for Starways Congress even to contemplate obliterating another sentient species.”

“The piggies can’t live without the descolada,” said Miro, “and if the descolada ever spreads to another planet, it will destroy all life there. It will.”

It was a pleasure to see that Valentine was capable of looking puzzled. “But I thought the virus was contained. It was your grandparents who found a way to stop it, to make it dormant in human beings.”

“The descolada adapts,” said Miro. “Jane told me that it’s already changed itself a couple of times. My mother and my sister Ela are working on it—trying to stay ahead of the descolada. Sometimes it even looks like the descolada is doing it deliberately. Intelligently. Finding strategies to get around the chemicals we use to contain it and stop it from killing people. It’s getting into the Earthborn crops that humans need in order to survive on Lusitania. They have to spray them now. What if the descolada finds a way to get around all our barriers?”

Valentine was silent. No glib answer now. She hadn’t faced this question squarely—no one had, except Miro.

“I haven’t even told this to Jane,” said Miro. “But what if the fleet is right? What if the only way to save humanity from the descolada is to destroy Lusitania now?”

“No,” said Valentine. “This has nothing to do with the purposes for which Starways Congress sent out the fleet. Their reasons all have to do with interplanetary politics, with showing the colonies who’s boss. It has to do with a bureaucracy out of control and a military that—”

“Listen to me!” said Miro. “You said you wanted to hear my stories, listen to this one: It doesn’t matter what their reasons are. It doesn’t matter if they’re a bunch of murderous beasts. I don’t care. What matters is—should they blow up Lusitania?”

“What kind of person are you?” asked Valentine. He could hear both awe and loathing in her voice.

“You’re the moral philosopher,” said Miro. “You tell me. Are we supposed to love the pequeninos so much that we allow the virus they carry to destroy all of humanity?”

“Of course not. We simply have to find a way to neutralize the descolada.”

“And if we can’t?”

“Then we quarantine Lusitania. Even if all the human beings on the planet die—your family and mine—we still don’t destroy the pequeninos.”

“Really?” asked Miro. “What about the hive queen?”

“Ender told me that she was reestablishing herself, but—”

“She contains within herself a complete industrialized society. She’s going to build starships and get off the planet.”

“She wouldn’t take the descolada with her!”

“She has no choice. The descolada is in her already. It’s in me.”

That was when he really got to her. He could see it in her eyes—the fear.

“It’ll be in you, too. Even if you run back to your ship and seal me off and keep yourself from infection, once you land on Lusitania the descolada will get into you and your husband and your children. They’ll have to ingest the chemicals with their food and water, every day of their lives. And they can never go away from Lusitania again or they’ll carry death and destruction with them.”

“I suppose we knew that was a possibility,” said Valentine.

“When you left, it was only a possibility. We thought that the descolada would soon be controlled. Now they aren’t sure if it can ever be controlled. And that means that you can never leave Lusitania once you go there.”

“I hope we like the weather.”

Miro studied her face, the way she was processing the information he had given her. The initial fear was gone. She was herself again—thinking. “Here’s what I think,” said Miro. “I think that no matter how terrible Congress is, no matter how evil their plans might be, that fleet might be the salvation of humanity.”

Valentine answered thoughtfully, searching for words. Miro was glad to see that—she was a person who didn’t shoot back without thinking. She was able to learn. “I can see that if events move down one possible path, there might be a time when—but it’s very improbable. First of all, knowing all this, the hive queen is quite unlikely to build any starships that would carry the descolada away from Lusitania.”

“Do you know the hive queen?” demanded Miro. “Do you understand her?”

“Even if she would do such a thing,” said Valentine, “your mother and sister are working on this, aren’t they? By the time we reach Lusitania—by the time the fleet reaches Lusitania—they might have found a way to control the descolada once and for all.”

“And if they do,” said Miro, “should they use it?”

“Why shouldn’t they?”

“How could they kill all the descolada virus? The virus is an integral part of the pequenino life cycle. When the pequenino body-form dies, it’s the descolada virus that enables the transformation into the tree-state, what the piggies call the third life—and it’s only in the third life, as trees, that the pequenino males can fertilize the females. If the virus is gone, there can be no more passage into the third life, and this generation of piggies is the last.”

“That doesn’t make it impossible, it only makes it harder. Your mother and sister have to find a way to neutralize the descolada in human beings and the crops we need to eat, without destroying its ability to enable the pequeninos to pass into adulthood.”

“And they have less than fifteen years to do it,” said Miro. “Not likely.”

“But not impossible.”

“Yes. There’s a chance. And on the strength of that chance, you want to get rid of the fleet?”

“The fleet is being sent to destroy Lusitania whether we control the descolada virus or not.”

“And I say it again—the motive of the senders is irrelevant. No matter what the reason, the destruction of Lusitania may be the only sure protection for all the rest of humanity.”

“And I say you’re wrong.”

“You’re Demosthenes, aren’t you? Andrew said you were.”

“Yes.”

“So you thought up the Hierarchy of Foreignness. Utlannings are strangers from our own world. Framlings are strangers of our own species, but from another world. Ramen are strangers of another species, but capable of communication with us, capable of co-existence with humanity. Last are varelse—and what are they?”

“The pequeninos are not varelse. Neither is the hive queen.”

“But the descolada is. Varelse. An alien life form that’s capable of destroying all of humanity …”

“Unless we can tame it …”

“ … Yet which we cannot possibly communicate with, an alien species that we cannot live with. You’re the one who said that in that case war is unavoidable. If an alien species seems bent on destroying us and we can’t communicate with them, can’t understand them, if there’s no possibility of turning them away from their course peacefully, then we are justified in any action necessary to save ourselves, including the complete destruction of the other species.”

“Yes,” said Valentine.

“But what if we must destroy the descolada, and yet we can’t destroy the descolada without also destroying every living pequenino, the hive queen, and every human being on Lusitania?”

To Miro’s surprise, Valentine’s eyes were awash with tears. “So this is what you have become.”

Miro was confused. “When did this conversation become a discussion of me?”

“You’ve done all this thinking, you’ve seen all the possibilities for the future—good ones and bad ones alike—and yet the only one that you’re willing to believe in, the imagined future that you seize upon as the foundation for all your moral judgments, is the only future in which everyone that you and I have ever loved and everything we’ve ever hoped for must be obliterated.”

“I didn’t say I liked that future—”

“I didn’t say you liked it either,” said Valentine. “I said that’s the future you choose to prepare for. But I don’t. I choose to live in a universe that has some hope in it. I choose to live in a universe where your mother and sister will find a way to contain the descolada, a universe in which Starways Congress can be reformed or replaced, a universe in which there is neither the power nor the will to destroy an entire species.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Then I’ll still have plenty of time to despair before I die. But you—do you seek out every opportunity to despair? I can understand the impulse that might lead to that. Andrew tells me you were a handsome man—you still are, you know—and that losing the full use of your body has hurt you deeply. But other people have lost more than you have without getting such a black-hearted vision of the world.”

“This is your analysis of me?” asked Miro. “We’ve known each other half an hour, and now you understand everything about me?”

“I know that this is the most depressing conversation I’ve ever had in my life.”

“And so you assume that it’s because I am crippled. Well, let me tell you something, Valentine Wiggin. I hope the same things you hope. I even hope that someday I’ll get more of my body back again. If I didn’t have hope I’d be dead. The things I told you just now aren’t because I despair. I said all that because these things are possible. And because they’re possible we have to think of them so they don’t surprise us later. We have to think of them so that if the worst does come, we’ll already know how to live in that universe.”

Valentine seemed to be studying his face; he felt her gaze on him as an almost palpable thing, like a faint tickling under the skin, inside his brain. “Yes,” she said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, my husband and I will move over here and live on your ship.” She got up from her seat and started toward the corridor leading back to the tube.

“Why did you decide that?”

“Because it’s too crowded on our ship. And because you are definitely worth talking to. And not just to get material for the essays I have to write.”

“Oh, so I passed your test?”

“Yes, you did,” she said. “Did I pass yours?”

“I wasn’t testing you.”

“Like hell,” she said. “But in case you didn’t notice, I’ll tell you—I did pass. Or you wouldn’t have said to me all the things you said.”

She was gone. He could hear her shuffling down the corridor, and then the computer reported that she was passing through the tube between ships.

He already missed her.

Because she was right. She had passed his test. She had listened to him the way no one else did—without impatience, without finishing his sentences, without letting her gaze waver from his face. He had spoken to her, not with careful precision, but with great emotion. Much of the time his words must surely have been almost unintelligible. Yet she had listened so carefully and well that she had understood all his arguments and never once asked him to repeat something. He could talk to this woman as naturally as he ever talked to anyone before his brain was injured. Yes, she was opinionated, headstrong, bossy, and quick to reach conclusions. But she could also listen to an opposing view, change her mind when she needed to. She could listen, and so he could speak. Perhaps with her he could still be Miro.

3

CLEAN HANDS

<The most unpleasant thing about human beings is that they don’t metamorphose. Your people and mine are born as grubs, but we transform ourselves into a higher form before we reproduce. Human beings remain grubs all their lives.>

<Human beings do metamorphose. They change their identity constantly. However, each new identity thrives on the delusion that it was always in possession of the body it has just conquered.>

<Such changes are superficial. The nature of the organism remains the same. Humans are very proud of their changes, but every imagined transformation turns out to be a new set of excuses for behaving exactly as the individual has always behaved.>

<You are too different from humans ever to understand them.>

<You are too similar to humans for you ever to be able to see them clearly.>

The gods first spoke to Han Qing-jao when she was seven years old. She didn’t realize for a while that she was hearing the voice of a god. All she knew was that her hands were filthy, covered with some loathsome invisible slime, and she had to purify them.

The first few times, a simple washing was enough, and she felt better for days. But as time passed, the feeling of filthiness returned sooner each time, and it took more and more scrubbing to remove the dirt, until she was washing several times a day, using a hard-bristled brush to stab at her hands until they bled. Only when the pain was unbearable did she feel clean, and then only for a few hours at a time.

She told no one; she knew instinctively that the filthiness of her hands had to be kept secret. Everyone knew that handwashing was one of the first signs that the gods were speaking to a child, and most parents in the whole world of Path watched their children hopefully for signs of excessive concern with cleanliness. But what these people did not understand was the terrible self-knowledge that led to the washing: The first message from the gods was of the unspeakable filthiness of the one they spoke to. Qing-jao hid her handwashing, not because she was ashamed that the gods spoke to her, but because she was sure that if anyone knew how vile she was, they would despise her.

The gods conspired with her in concealment. They allowed her to confine her savage scrubbing to the palms of her hands. This meant that when her hands were badly hurt, she could clench them into fists, or tuck them into the folds of her skirt as she walked, or lay them in her lap very meekly when she sat, and no one would notice them. They saw only a very well-behaved little girl.

If her mother had been alive, Qing-jao’s secret would have been discovered much sooner. As it was, it took months for a servant to notice. Fat old Mu-pao happened to notice a bloody stain on the small tablecloth from Qing-jao’s breakfast table. Mu-pao knew at once what it meant—weren’t bloody hands well known to be an early sign of the gods’ attention? That was why many an ambitious mother and father forced a particularly promising child to wash and wash. Throughout the world of Path, ostentatious handwashing was called “inviting the gods.”

Mu-pao went at once to Qing-jao’s father, the noble Han Fei-tzu, rumored to be the greatest of the godspoken, one of the few so powerful in the eyes of the gods that he could meet with framlings—offworlders—and never betray a hint of the voices of the gods within him, thus preserving the divine secret of the world of Path. He would be grateful to hear the news, and Mu-pao would be honored for having been the first to see the gods in Qing-jao.

Within an hour, Han Fei-tzu had gathered up his beloved little Qing-jao and together they rode in a sedan chair to the temple at Rockfall. Qing-jao didn’t like riding in such chairs—she felt bad for the men who had to carry their weight. “They don’t suffer,” Father told her the first time she mentioned this idea. “They feel greatly honored. It’s one of the ways the people show honor to the gods—when one of the godspoken goes to a temple, he does it on the shoulders of the people of Path.”

“But I’m getting bigger every day,” Qing-jao answered.

“When you’re too big, either you’ll walk on your own feet or you’ll ride in your own chair,” said Father. He did not need to explain that she would have her own chair only if she grew up to be godspoken herself. “And we try to show our humility by remaining very thin and light so we aren’t a heavy burden to the people.” This was a joke, of course, since Father’s belly, while not immense, was copious. But the lesson behind the joke was true: The godspoken must never be a burden to the common people of Path. The people must always be grateful, never resentful, that the gods had chosen their world of all worlds to hear their voices.

Now, though, Qing-jao was more concerned with the ordeal that lay before her. She knew that she was being taken for testing. “Many children are taught to pretend that the gods speak to them,” Father explained. “We must find out if the gods have truly chosen you.”

“I want them to stop choosing me,” said Qing-jao.

“And you will want it even more during the test,” said Father. His voice was filled with pity. It made Qing-jao even more afraid. “The folk see only our powers and privileges, and envy us. They don’t know the great suffering of those who hear the voices of the gods. If the gods truly speak to you, my Qing-jao, you will learn to bear the suffering the way jade bears the carver’s knife, the polisher’s rough cloth. It will make you shine. Why else do you think I named you Qing-jao?”

Qing-jao—Gloriously Bright was what the name meant. It was also the name of a great poet from ancient times in Old China. A woman poet in an age when only men were given respect, and yet she was honored as the greatest of poets in her day. “Thin fog and thick cloud, gloom all day.” It was the opening of Li Qing-jao’s song “The Double Ninth.” That was how Qing-jao felt now.

And how did the poem end? “Now my curtain’s lifted only by the western wind. I’ve grown thinner than this golden blossom.” Would this be her ending also? Was her ancestor-of-the-heart telling her in this poem that the darkness falling over her now would be lifted only when the gods came out of the west to lift her thin, light, golden soul out of her body? It was too terrible, to think of death now, when she was only seven years old; and yet the thought came to her: If I die soon, then soon I’ll see Mother, and even the great Li Qing-jao herself.

But the test had nothing to do with death, or at least it was not supposed to. It was quite simple, really. Father led her into a large room where three old men knelt. Or they seemed like men—they could have been women. They were so old that all distinctions had disappeared. They had only the tiniest wisps of white hair and no beards at all, and they dressed in shapeless sacks. Later Qing-jao would learn that these were temple eunuchs, survivors of the old days before Starways Congress intervened and forbade even voluntary self-mutilation in the service of a religion. Now, though, they were mysterious ghostly old creatures whose hands touched her, exploring her clothing.

What were they searching for? They found her ebony chopsticks and took them away. They took the sash from around her waist. They took her slippers. Later she would learn that these things were taken because other children had become so desperate during their testing that they had killed themselves. One of them had inserted her chopsticks into her nostrils and then flung herself to the floor, jamming the sticks into her brain. Another had hanged herself with her sash. Another had forced her slippers into her mouth and down her throat, choking herself to death. Successful suicide attempts were rare, but they seemed to happen with the brightest of the children, and most commonly with girls. So they took away from Qing-jao all the known ways of committing suicide.

The old ones left. Father knelt beside Qing-jao and spoke to her face to face. “You must understand, Qing-jao, that we are not really testing you. Nothing that you do of your own free will can make the slightest difference in what happens here. We are really testing the gods, to see if they are determined to speak to you. If they are, they’ll find a way, and we’ll see it, and you’ll come out of this room as one of the godspoken. If they aren’t, then you’ll come out of here free of their voices for all time. I can’t tell you which outcome I pray for, since I don’t know myself.”

“Father,” said Qing-jao, “what if you’re ashamed of me?” The very thought made her feel a tingling in her hands, as if there were dirt on them, as if she needed to wash them.

“I will not be ashamed of you either way.”

Then he clapped his hands. One of the old ones came back in, bearing a heavy basin. He set it down before Qing-jao.

“Thrust in your hands,” said Father.

The basin was filled with thick black grease. Qing-jao shuddered. “I can’t put my hands in there.”

Father reached out, took her by the forearms, and forced her hands down into the muck. Qing-jao cried out—her father had never used force with her before. And when he let go of her arms, her hands were covered with clammy slime. She gasped at the filthiness of her hands; it was hard to breathe, looking at them like that, smelling them.

The old one picked up the basin and carried it out.

“Where can I wash, Father?” Qing-jao whimpered.

“You can’t wash,” said Father. “You can never wash again.”

And because Qing-jao was a child, she believed him, not guessing that his words were part of the test. She watched Father leave the room. She heard the door latch behind him. She was alone.

At first she simply held her hands out in front of her, making sure they didn’t touch any part of her clothing. She searched desperately for somewhere to wash, but there was no water, nor even a cloth. The room was far from bare—there were chairs, tables, statues, large stone jars—but all the surfaces were hard and well-polished and so clean that she couldn’t bear to touch them. Yet the filthiness of her hands was unendurable. She had to get them clean.

“Father!” she called out. “Come and wash my hands!” Surely he could hear her. Surely he was somewhere near, waiting for the outcome of her test. He must hear her—but he didn’t come.

The only cloth in the room was the gown she was wearing. She could wipe on that, only then she would be wearing the grease; it might get on other parts of her body. The solution, of course, was to take it off—but how could she do that without touching her filthy hands to some other part of herself?

She tried. First she carefully scraped off as much of the grease as she could on the smooth arms of a statue. Forgive me, she said to the statue, in case it belonged to a god. I will come and clean you after; I’ll clean you with my own gown.

Then she reached back over her shoulders and gathered the cloth on her back, pulling up on the gown to draw it over her head. Her greasy fingers slipped on the silk; she could feel the slime cold on her bare back as it penetrated the silk. I’ll clean it after, she thought.

At last she got a firm enough grasp of the fabric that she could pull off the gown. It slid over her head, but even before it was completely off, she knew that things were worse than ever, for some of the grease was in her long hair, and that hair had fallen onto her face, and now she had filth not just on her hands but also on her back, in her hair, on her face.

Still she tried. She got the gown the rest of the way off, then carefully wiped her hands on one small part of the fabric. Then she wiped her face on another. But it was no good. Some of the grease clung to her no matter what she did. Her face felt as if the silk of her gown had only smeared the grease around instead of lifting it away. She had never been so hopelessly grimy in her life. It was unbearable, and yet she couldn’t get rid of it.

“Father! Come take me away! I don’t want to be godspoken!” He didn’t come. She began to cry.

The trouble with crying was that it didn’t work. The more she cried, the filthier she felt. The desperate need to be clean overpowered even her weeping. So with tears streaming down her face, she began to search desperately for some way to get the grease off her hands. Again she tried the silk of her gown, but within a little while she was wiping her hands on the walls, sidling around the room, smearing them with grease. She rubbed her palms on the wall so rapidly that heat built up and the grease melted. She did it again and again until her hands were red, until some of the softened scabs on her palms had worn away or been torn off by invisible snags in the wooden walls.

When her palms and fingers hurt badly enough that she couldn’t feel the slime on them, she wiped her face with them, gouged at her face with her fingernails to scrape away the grease there. Then, hands dirty again, she once more rubbed them on the walls.

Finally, exhausted, she fell to the floor and wept at the pain in her hands, at her helplessness to get clean. Her eyes were shut with weeping. Tears streaked down her cheeks. She rubbed at her eyes, at her cheeks—and felt how slimy the tears made her skin, how filthy she was. She knew what this surely meant: The gods had judged her and found her unclean. She wasn’t worthy to live. If she couldn’t get clean, she had to blot herself out. That would satisfy them. That would ease the agony of it. All she had to do was find a way to die. To stop breathing. Father would be sorry he didn’t come when she called to him, but she couldn’t help that. She was under the power of the gods now, and they had judged her unworthy to be among the living. After all, what right did she have to breathe when the gate of Mother’s lips had stopped letting the air pass through, in or out, for all these many years?

She first thought of using her gown, thought of stuffing it into her mouth to block her breath, or tying it around her throat to choke herself—but it was too filthy to handle, too covered with grease. She would have to find another way.

Qing-jao walked to the wall, pressed against it. Sturdy wood. She leaned back and flung her head against the wood. Pain flashed through her head when it struck; stunned, she dropped to a sitting position on the floor. Her head ached inside. The room swung slowly around and around her. For a moment she forgot the filthiness of her hands.

But the relief didn’t last long. She could see on the wall a slightly duller place where the grease from her forehead broke up the shiny polished surface. The gods spoke inside her, insisted she was as filthy as ever. A little pain wouldn’t make up for her unworthiness.

Again she struck her head against the wall. This time, however, there was nowhere near as much pain. Again, again—and now she realized that against her will, her body was recoiling from the blow, refusing to inflict so much pain on herself. This helped her understand why the gods found her so unworthy—she was too weak to make her body obey. Well, she wasn’t helpless. She could fool her body into submission.

She selected the tallest of the statues, which stood perhaps three meters high. It was a bronze casting of a man in mid-stride, holding a sword above his head. There were enough angles and bends and projections that she could climb. Her hands kept slipping, but she persevered until she balanced on the statue’s shoulders, holding onto its headdress with one hand and the sword with the other.

For a moment, touching the sword, she thought of trying to cut her throat on it—that would stop her breath, wouldn’t it? But the blade was only a pretend blade. It wasn’t sharp, and she couldn’t get her neck to it at the right angle. So she went back to her original plan.

She took several deep breaths, then clasped her hands behind her back and toppled forward. She would land on her head; that would end her filthiness.

As the floor rushed upward, however, she lost control of herself. She screamed; she felt her hands tear free of each other behind her back and rush forward to try to break her fall. Too late, she thought with grim satisfaction, and then her head struck the floor and everything went black.

Qing-jao awoke with a dull ache in her arm and a sharp pain in her head whenever she moved—but she was alive. When she could bear to open her eyes she saw that the room was darker. Was it night outside? How long had she slept? She couldn’t bear to move her left arm, the one with the pain; she could see an ugly red bruise at the elbow and she thought she must have broken it inside when she fell.

She also saw that her hands were still smeared with grease, and felt her unbearable dirtiness: the gods’ judgment against her. She shouldn’t have tried to kill herself after all. The gods wouldn’t allow her to escape their judgment so easily.

What can I do? she pleaded. How can I be clean before you, O Gods? Li Qing-jao, my ancestor-of-the-heart, show me how to make myself worthy to receive the kind judgment of the gods!

What came at once to her mind was Li Qing-jao’s love song “Separation.” It was one of the first that Father had given her to memorize when she was only three years old, only a short time before he and Mother told her that Mother was going to die. It was exactly appropriate now, too, for wasn’t she separated from the goodwill of the gods? Didn’t she need to be reconciled with them so they could receive her as one of the truly godspoken ones?

someone’s sent
a loving note
in lines of returning geese
and as the moon fills
my western chamber
as petals dance
over the flowing stream
again I think of you
the two of us
living a sadness
apart
a hurt that can’t be removed
yet when my gaze comes down
my heart stays up

The moon filling the western chamber told her that it was really a god, not an ordinary man-lover who was being pined for in this poem—references to the west always meant that the gods were involved. Li Qing-jao had answered the prayer of little Han Qing-jao, and sent this poem to tell her how to cure the hurt that couldn’t be removed—the filthiness of her flesh.

What is the loving note? thought Qing-jao. Lines of returning geese—but there are no geese in this room. Petals dancing over a flowing stream—but there are no petals, there is no stream here.

“Yet when my gaze comes down, my heart stays up.” That was the clue, that was the answer, she knew it. Slowly, carefully Qing-jao rolled over onto her belly. Once when she tried to put weight on her left hand, her elbow buckled and an exquisite pain almost made her lose consciousness again. At last she knelt, her head bowed, leaning on her right hand. Gazing down. The poem promised that this would let her heart stay up.

She felt no better—still filthy, still in pain. Looking down showed her nothing but the polished boards of the floor, the grain of the wood making rippling lines reaching from between her knees outward to the very edge of the room.

Lines. Lines of woodgrain, lines of geese. And couldn’t the woodgrain also be seen as a flowing stream? She must follow these lines like the geese; she must dance over these flowing streams like a petal. That was what the promise meant: When her gaze came down, her heart would stay up.

She found one particular line in the woodgrain, a line of darkness like a river rippling through the lighter wood around it, and knew at once that this was the stream she was supposed to follow. She dared not touch it with her finger—filthy, unworthy finger. It had to be followed lightly, the way a goose touched the air, the way a petal touched the stream. Only her eyes could follow the line.

So she began to trace the line, follow it carefully to the wall. A couple of times she moved so quickly that she lost the line, forgot which one it was; but soon she found it again, or thought she did, and followed it to the wall. Was it good enough? Were the gods satisfied?

Almost, but not quite—she couldn’t be sure that when her gaze slipped from the line she had returned to the right one. Petals didn’t skip from stream to stream. She had to follow the right one, along its entire length. This time she started at the wall and bowed very low, so her eyes wouldn’t be distracted even by the movement of her own right hand. She inched her way along, never letting herself so much as blink, even when her eyes burned. She knew that if she lost the grain she was following she’d have to go back and start over. It had to be done perfectly or it would lose all its power to cleanse her.

It took forever. She did blink, but not haphazardly, by accident. When her eyes burned too much, she would bow down until her left eye was directly over the grain. Then she would close the other eye for a moment. Her right eye relieved, she would open it, then put that eye directly over the line in the wood and close the left. This way she was able to make it halfway across the room until the board ended, butting up against another.

She wasn’t sure whether that was good enough, whether it was enough to finish the board or if she needed to find another woodgrain line to follow. She made as if to get up, testing the gods, to see if they were satisfied. She half-rose, felt nothing; she stood, and still she was at ease.

Ah! They were satisfied, they were pleased with her. Now the grease on her skin felt like nothing more than a little oil. There was no need for washing, not at this moment, for she had found another way to cleanse herself, another way for the gods to discipline her. Slowly she lay back on the floor, smiling, weeping softly in joy. Li Qing-jao, my ancestor-of-the-heart, thank you for showing me the way. Now I have been joined to the gods; the separation is over. Mother, I am again connected to you, clean and worthy. White Tiger of the West, I am now pure enough to touch your fur and leave no mark of filthiness.

Then hands touched her—Father’s hands, picking her up. Drops of water fell onto her face, the bare skin of her body—Father’s tears. “You’re alive,” he said. “My godspoken one, my beloved, my daughter, my life, Gloriously Bright, you shine on.”

Later she would learn that Father had had to be tied and gagged during her test, that when she climbed the statue and made as if to press her throat against the sword he flung himself forward with such force that his chair fell and his head struck the floor. This was regarded as a great mercy, since it meant he didn’t see her terrible fall from the statue. He wept for her all the time she lay unconscious. And then, when she rose to her knees and began to trace the woodgrains on the floor, he was the one who realized what it meant. “Look,” he whispered. “The gods have given her a task. The gods are speaking to her.”

The others were slow to recognize it, because they had never seen anyone trace woodgrain lines before. It wasn’t in the Catalogue of Voices of the Gods: Door-Waiting, Counting-to-Multiples-of-Five, Object-Counting, Checking-for-Accidental-Murders, Fingernail-Tearing, Skin-Scraping, Pulling-Out-of-Hair, Gnawing-at-Stone, Bugging-Out-of-Eyes—all these were known to be penances that the gods demanded, rituals of obedience that cleansed the soul of the godspoken so that the gods could fill their minds with wisdom. No one had ever seen Woodgrain-Tracing. Yet Father saw what she was doing, named the ritual, and added it to the Catalogue of Voices. It would forever bear her name, Han Qing-jao, as the first to be commanded by the gods to perform this rite. It made her very special.

So did her unusual resourcefulness in trying to find ways to cleanse her hands and, later, kill herself. Many had tried scraping their hands on walls, of course, and most attempted to wipe on clothes. But rubbing her hands to build up the heat of friction, that was regarded as rare and clever. And while head-beating was common, climbing a statue and jumping off and landing on her head was very rare. And none who had done it before had been strong enough to keep their hands behind their back so long. The temple was all abuzz with it, and word soon spread to all the temples in Path.

It was a great honor to Han Fei-tzu, of course, that his daughter was so powerfully possessed by the gods. And the story of his near-madness when she was trying to destroy herself spread just as quickly and touched many hearts. “He may be the greatest of the godspoken,” they said of him, “but he loves his daughter more than life.” This made them love him as much as they already revered him.

It was then that people began whispering about the possible godhood of Han Fei-tzu. “He is great and strong enough that the gods will listen to him,” said the people who favored him. “Yet he is so affectionate that he will always love the people of the planet Path, and try to do good for us. Isn’t this what the god of a world ought to be?” Of course it was impossible to decide now—a man could not be chosen to be god of a village, let alone of a whole world, until he died. How could you judge what sort of god he’d be, until his whole life, from beginning to end, was known?

These whispers came to Qing-jao’s ears many times as she grew older, and the knowledge that her father might well be chosen god of Path became one of the beacons of her life. But at the time, and forever in her memory, she remembered that his hands were the ones that carried her bruised and twisted body to the bed of healing, his eyes were the ones that dropped warm tears onto her cold skin, his voice was the one that whispered in the beautiful passionate tones of the old language, “My beloved, my Gloriously Bright, never take your light from my life. Whatever happens, never harm yourself or I will surely die.”

4

JANE

<So many of your people are becoming Christians. Believing in the god these humans brought with them.>

<You don’t believe in God?>

<The question never came up. We have always remembered how we began.>

<You evolved. We were created.>

<By a virus.>

<By a virus that God created in order to create us.>

<So you, too, are a believer.>

<I understand belief.>

<No—you desire belief.>

<I desire it enough to act as if I believed. Maybe that’s what faith is.>

<Or deliberate insanity.>

It turned out not to be just Valentine and Jakt who came over to Miro’s ship. Plikt also came, without invitation, and installed herself in a miserable little cubicle where there wasn’t even room to stretch out completely. She was the anomaly on the voyage—not family, not crew, but a friend. Plikt had been a student of Ender’s when he was on Trondheim as a speaker for the dead. She had figured out, quite independently, that Andrew Wiggin was the Speaker for the Dead and that he was also the Ender Wiggin.

Why this brilliant young woman should have become so fixed on Ender Wiggin, Valentine could not really understand. At times she thought, Perhaps this is how some religions start. The founder doesn’t ask for disciples; they come and force themselves upon him.

In any event, Plikt had stayed with Valentine and her family for all the years since Ender left Trondheim, tutoring the children and helping in Valentine’s research, always waiting for the day that the family journeyed to be with Ender—a day that only Plikt had known would come.

So during the last half of the voyage to Lusitania, it was the four of them who traveled in Miro’s ship: Valentine, Miro, Jakt, and Plikt. Or so Valentine thought at first. It was on the third day since the rendezvous that she learned of the fifth traveler who had been with them all along.

That day, as always, the four of them were gathered on the bridge. There was nowhere else to go. This was a cargo ship—besides the bridge and the sleeping quarters, there was only a tiny galley and the toilet. All the other space was designed to hold cargo, not people—not in any kind of reasonable comfort.

Valentine didn’t mind the loss of privacy, though. She was slacking off now on her output of subversive essays; it was more important, she felt, to get to know Miro—and, through him, Lusitania. The people there, the pequeninos, and, most particularly, Miro’s family—for Ender had married Novinha, Miro’s mother. Valentine did glean much of that kind of information, of course—she couldn’t have been a historian and biographer for all these years without learning how to extrapolate much from scant bits of evidence.

The real prize for her had turned out to be Miro himself. He was bitter, angry, frustrated, and filled with loathing for his crippled body, but all that was understandable—his loss had happened only a few months before, and he was still trying to redefine himself. Valentine didn’t worry about his future—she could see that he was very strong-willed, the kind of man who didn’t easily fall apart. He would adapt and thrive.

What interested her most was his thought. It was as if the confinement of his body had freed his mind. When he had first been injured his paralysis was almost total. He had had nothing to do but lie in one place and think. Of course, much of his time had been spent brooding about his losses, his mistakes, the future he couldn’t have. But he had also spent many hours thinking about the issues that busy people almost never think about. And on that third day together, that’s what Valentine was trying to draw out of him.

“Most people don’t think about it, not seriously, and you have,” said Valentine.

“Just because I think about it doesn’t mean I know anything,” said Miro. She really was used to his voice now, though sometimes his speech was maddeningly slow. It took a real effort of will at times to keep from showing any sign of inattention.

“The nature of the universe,” said Jakt.

“The sources of life,” said Valentine. “You said you had thought about what it means to be alive, and I want to know what you thought.”

“How the universe works and why we all are in it.” Miro laughed. “It’s pretty crazy stuff.”

“I’ve been trapped alone in an ice floe in a fishing boat for two weeks in a blizzard with no heat,” said Jakt. “I doubt you’ve come up with anything that’ll sound crazy to me.”

Valentine smiled. Jakt was no scholar, and his philosophy was generally confined to holding his crew together and catching a lot of fish. But he knew that Valentine wanted to draw Miro out, and so he helped put the young man at ease, helped him know that he’d be taken seriously.

And it was important for Jakt to be the one who did that—because Valentine had seen, and so had Jakt, how Miro watched him. Jakt might be old, but his arms and legs and back were still those of a fisherman, and every movement revealed the suppleness of his body. Miro even commented on it once, obliquely, admiringly: “You’ve got the build of a twenty-year-old.” Valentine heard the ironic corollary that must have been in Miro’s mind: While I, who am young, have the body of an arthritic ninety-year-old. So Jakt meant something to Miro—he represented the future that Miro could never have. Admiration and resentment; it would have been hard for Miro to speak openly in front of Jakt, if Jakt had not taken care to make sure Miro heard nothing but respect and interest from him.

Plikt, of course, sat in her place, silent, withdrawn, effectively invisible.

“All right,” said Miro. “Speculations on the nature of reality and the soul.”

“Theology or metaphysics?” asked Valentine.

“Metaphysics, mostly,” said Miro. “And physics. Neither one is my specialty. And this isn’t the kind of story you said you needed me for.”

“I don’t always know exactly what I’ll need.”

“All right,” said Miro. He took a couple of breaths, as if he were trying to decide where to begin. “You know about philotic twining.”

“I know what everybody knows,” said Valentine. “And I know that it hasn’t led anywhere in the last twenty-five hundred years because it can’t really be experimented with.” It was an old discovery, from the days when scientists were struggling to catch up with technology. Teenage physics students memorized a few wise sayings: “Philotes are the fundamental building blocks of all matter and energy. Philotes have neither mass nor inertia. Philotes have only location, duration, and connection.” And everybody knew that it was philotic connections—the twining of philotic rays—that made ansibles work, allowing instantaneous communication between worlds and starships many lightyears apart. But no one knew why it worked, and because philotes could not be “handled,” it was almost impossible to experiment with them. They could only be observed, and then only through their connections.

“Philotics,” said Jakt. “Ansibles?”

“A by-product,” said Miro.

“What does it have to do with the soul?” asked Valentine.

Miro was about to answer, but he grew frustrated, apparently at the thought of trying to give a long speech through his sluggish, resisting mouth. His jaw was working, his lips moving slightly. Then he said aloud, “I can’t do it.”

“We’ll listen,” said Valentine. She understood his reluctance to try extended discourse with the limitations of his speech, but she also knew he had to do it anyway.

“No,” said Miro.

Valentine would have tried further persuasion, but she saw his lips were still moving, though little sound came out. Was he muttering? Cursing?

No—she knew it wasn’t that at all.

It took a moment for her to realize why she was so sure. It was because she had seen Ender do exactly the same thing, moving his lips and jaw, when he was issuing subvocalized commands to the computer terminal built into the jewel he wore in his ear. Of course: Miro has the same computer hookup Ender has, so he’ll speak to it the same way.

In a moment it became clear what command Miro had given to his jewel. It must have been tied in to the ship’s computer, because immediately afterward one of the display screens cleared and then showed Miro’s face. Only there was none of the slackness that marred his face in person. Valentine realized: It was Miro’s face as it used to be. And when the computer image spoke, the sound coming from the speakers was surely Miro’s voice as it used to be—clear. Forceful. Intelligent. Quick.

“You know that when philotes combine to make a durable structure—a meson, a neutron, an atom, a molecule, an organism, a planet—they twine up.”

“What is this?” demanded Jakt. He hadn’t yet figured out why the computer was doing the talking.

The computer image of Miro froze on the screen and fell silent. Miro himself answered. “I’ve been playing with this,” he said. “I tell it things, and it remembers and speaks for me.”

Valentine tried to imagine Miro experimenting until the computer program got his face and voice just right. How exhilarating it must have been, to re-create himself as he ought to be. And also how agonizing, to see what he could have been and know that it could never be real. “What a clever idea,” said Valentine. “Sort of a prosthesis for the personality.”

Miro laughed—a single “Ha!”

“Go ahead,” said Valentine. “Whether you speak for yourself or the computer speaks for you, we’ll listen.”

The computer image came back to life, and spoke again in Miro’s strong, imaginary voice. “Philotes are the smallest building blocks of matter and energy. They have no mass or dimension. Each philote connects itself to the rest of the universe along a single ray, a one-dimensional line that connects it to all the other philotes in its smallest immediate structure—a meson. All those strands from the philotes in that structure are twined into a single philotic thread that connects the meson to the next larger structure—a neutron, for instance. The threads in the neutron twine into a yarn connecting it to all the other 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 leels 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 the computer? Was the program under his control or wasn’t it?

“The principle of the ansible is that if you suspend a meson in a powerful magnetic field,” said computer-Miro, “split it, and carry the two parts as far away as you want, the philotic twining will still connect them. And the connection is instantaneous. If one fragment spins or vibrates, the ray between them spins and vibrates, and the movement is detectable at the other end at exactly the same moment. It takes no time whatsoever for the movement to be transmitted along the entire length of the ray, even if the two fragments are carried lightyears away from each other. Nobody knows why it works, but we’re glad it does. Without the ansible, there’d be no possibility of meaningful communication between human worlds.”

“Hell, there’s no meaningful communication now,” said Jakt. “And if it wasn’t for the ansibles, there’d be no warfleet heading for Lusitania right now.”

Valentine wasn’t listening to Jakt, though. She was watching Miro. This time Valentine saw when he moved his lips and jaw, slightly, silently. Sure enough, after he subvocalized, the computer image of Miro spoke again. He was giving commands. It had been absurd for her to think otherwise—who else could be controlling the computer?

“It’s a hierarchy,” said the image. “The more complex the structure, the faster the response to change. It’s as if the smaller the particle is, the stupider it is, so it’s slower to pick up on the fact that it’s now part of a different structure.”

“Now you’re anthropomorphizing,” said Valentine.

“Maybe,” said Miro. “Maybe not.”

“Human beings are organisms,” said the image. “But human philotic twinings go way beyond those of any other life form.”

“Now you’re talking about that stuff that came from Ganges a thousand years ago,” said Valentine. “Nobody’s been able to get consistent results from those experiments.” The researchers—Hindus all, and devout ones—claimed that they had shown that human philotic twinings, unlike those of other organisms, did not always reach directly down into the planet’s core to twine with all other life and matter. Rather, they claimed, the philotic rays from human beings often twined with those of other human beings, most often with families, but sometimes between teachers and students, and sometimes between close co-workers—including the researchers themselves. The Gangeans had concluded that this distinction between humans and other plant and animal life proved that the souls of some humans were literally lifted to a higher plane, nearer to perfection. They believed that the Perfecting Ones had become one with each other the way that all of life was one with the world. “It’s all very pleasingly mystical, but nobody except Gangean Hindus takes it seriously anymore.”

“I do,” said Miro.

“To each his own,” said Jakt.

“Not as a religion,” said Miro. “As science.”

“You mean metaphysics, don’t you?” said Valentine.

It was the Miro-image that answered. “The philotic connections between people change fastest of all, and what the Gangeans proved is that they respond to human will. If you have strong feelings binding you to your family, then your philotic rays will twine and you will be one, in exactly the same way that the different atoms in a molecule are one.”

It was a sweet idea—she had thought so when she first heard it, perhaps two thousand years ago, when Ender was speaking for a murdered revolutionary on Mindanao. She and Ender had speculated then on whether the Gangean tests would show that they were twined, as brother and sister. They wondered whether there had been such a connection between them as children, and if it had persisted when Ender was taken off to Battle School and they were separated for six years. Ender had liked that idea very much, and so had Valentine, but after that one conversation the subject never came up again. The notion of philotic connections between people had remained in the pretty-idea category in her memory. “It’s nice to think that the metaphor of human unity might have a physical analogue,” said Valentine.

“Listen!” said Miro. Apparently he didn’t want her to dismiss the idea as “nice.”

Again his image spoke for him. “If the Gangeans are right, then when a human being chooses to bond with another person, when he makes a commitment to a community, it is not just a social phenomenon. It’s a physical event as well. The philote, the smallest conceivable physical particle—if we can call something with no mass or inertia physical at all—responds to an act of the human will.”

“That’s why it’s so hard for anyone to take the Gangean experiments seriously.”

“The Gangean experiments were careful and honest.”

“But no one else ever got the same results.”

“No one else ever took them seriously enough to perform the same experiments. Does that surprise you?”

“Yes,” said Valentine. But then she remembered how the idea had been ridiculed in the scientific press, while it was immediately picked up by the lunatic fringe and incorporated into dozens of fringe religions. Once that happened, how could a scientist hope to get funding for such a project? How could a scientist expect to have a career if others came to think of him as a proponent of a metaphysical religion? “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

The Miro-image nodded. “If the philotic ray twines in response to the human will, why couldn’t we suppose that all philotic twining is willed? Every particle, all of matter and energy, why couldn’t every observable phenomenon in the universe be the willing behavior of individuals?”

“Now we’re beyond Gangean Hinduism,” said Valentine. “How seriously am I supposed to take this? What you’re talking about is Animism. The most primitive kind of religion. Everything’s alive. Stones and oceans and—”

“No,” said Miro. “Life is life.”

“Life is life,” said the computer program. “Life is when a single philote has the strength of will to bind together the molecules of a single cell, to entwine their rays into one. A stronger philote can bind together many cells into a single organism. The strongest of all are the intelligent beings. We can bestow our philotic connections where we will. The philotic basis of intelligent life is even clearer in the other known sentient species. When a pequenino dies and passes into the third life, it’s his strong-willed philote that preserves his identity and passes it from the mammaloid corpse to the living tree.”

“Reincarnation,” said Jakt. “The philote is the soul.”

“It happens with the piggies, anyway,” said Miro.

“The hive queen as well,” said the Miro-image. “The reason we discovered philotic connections in the first place was because we saw how the buggers communicated with each other faster than light—that’s what showed us it was possible. The individual buggers are all part of the hive queen; they’re like her hands and feet, and she’s their mind, one vast organism with thousands or millions of bodies. And the only connection between them is the twining of their philotic rays.”

It was a picture of the universe that Valentine had never conceived of before. Of course, as a historian and biographer she usually conceived of things in terms of peoples and societies; while she wasn’t ignorant of physics, neither was she deeply trained in it. Perhaps a physicist would know at once why this whole idea was absurd. But then, perhaps a physicist would be so locked into the consensus of his scientific community that it would be harder for him to accept an idea that transformed the meaning of everything he knew. Even if it were true.

And she liked the idea well enough to wish it were true. Of the trillion lovers who had whispered to each other, We are one, could it be that some of them really were? Of the billions of families who had bonded together so closely they felt like a single soul, wouldn’t it be lovely to think that at the most basic level of reality it was so?

Jakt, however, was not so caught up in the idea. “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about the existence of the hive queen,” he said. “I thought that was Ender’s secret.”

“It’s all right,” said Valentine. “Everyone in this room knows.”

Jakt gave her his impatient look. “I thought we were coming to Lusitania to help in the struggle against Starways Congress. What does any of this have to do with the real world?”

“Maybe nothing,” said Valentine. “Maybe everything.”

Jakt buried his face in his hands for a moment, then looked back up at her with a smile that wasn’t really a smile. “I haven’t heard you say anything so transcendental since your brother left Trondheim.”

That stung her, particularly because she knew it was meant to. After all these years, was Jakt still jealous of her connection with Ender? Did he still resent the fact that she could care about things that meant nothing to him? “When he went,” said Valentine, “I stayed.” She was really saying, I passed the only test that mattered. 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 suspends the fragment, of course,” said Jakt.

“Split mesons don’t endure long enough in nature for us to know how they naturally act,” said Valentine.

“I know all the standard answers,” said the image. “All nonsense. All the kind of answers parents give their children when they don’t know the truth and don’t want to bother finding out. People still treat the ansibles like magic. Everybody’s glad enough that the ansibles keep on working; if they tried to figure out why, the magic might go out of it and then the ansibles would stop.”

“Nobody feels that way,” said Valentine.

“They all do,” said the image. “Even if it took hundreds of years, or a thousand years, or three thousand years, one of those connections should have broken by now. One of those meson fragments should have shifted its philotic ray—but they never have.”

“Why?” asked Miro.

Valentine assumed at first that Miro was asking a rhetorical question. But no—he was looking at the image just like the rest of them, asking it to tell him why.

“I thought this program was reporting your speculations,” said Valentine.

“It was,” said Miro. “But not now.”

“What if there’s a being who lives among the philotic connections between ansibles?” asked the image.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Miro. Again he was speaking to the image on the screen.

And the image on the screen changed, to the face of a young woman, one that Valentine had never seen before.

“What if there’s a being who dwells in the web of philotic rays connecting the ansibles on every world and every starship in the human universe? What if she is composed of those philotic connections? What if her thoughts take place in the spin and vibration of the split pairs? What if her memories are stored in the computers of every world and every ship?”

“Who are you?” asked Valentine, speaking directly to the image.

“Maybe I’m the one who keeps all those philotic connections alive, ansible to ansible. Maybe I’m a new kind of organism, one that doesn’t twine rays together, but instead keeps them twined to each other so that they never break apart. And if that’s true, then if those connections ever broke, if the ansibles ever stopped moving—if the ansibles ever fell silent, then I would die.”

“Who are you?” asked Valentine again.

“Valentine, I’d like you to meet Jane,” said Miro. “Ender’s friend. And mine.”

“Jane.”

So Jane wasn’t the code name of a subversive group within the Starways Congress bureaucracy. Jane was a computer program, a piece of software.

No. If what she had just suggested was true, then Jane was more than a program. She was a being who dwelt in the web of philotic rays, who stored her memories in the computers of every world. If she was right, then the philotic web—the network of crisscrossing philotic rays that connected ansible to ansible on every world—was her body, her substance. And the philotic links continued working with never a breakdown because she willed it so.

“So now I ask the great Demosthenes,” said Jane. “Am I raman or varelse? Am I alive at all? I need your answer, because I think I can stop the Lusitania Fleet. But before I do it, I have to know: Is it a cause worth dying for?”

Jane’s words cut Miro to the heart. She could stop the fleet—he could see that at once. Congress had sent the M.D. Device with several ships of the fleet, but they had not yet sent the order to use it. They couldn’t send the order without Jane knowing it beforehand, and with her complete penetration of all the ansible communications, she could intercept the order before it was sent.

The trouble was that she couldn’t do it without Congress realizing that she existed—or at least that something was wrong. If the fleet didn’t confirm the order, it would simply be sent again, and again, and again. The more she blocked the messages, the clearer it would be to Congress that someone had an impossible degree of control over the ansible computers.

She might avoid this by sending a counterfeit confirmation, but then she would have to monitor all the communications between the ships of the fleet, and between the fleet and all planetside stations, in order to keep up the pretense that the fleet knew something about the kill order. Despite Jane’s enormous abilities, this would soon be beyond her—she could pay some degree of attention to hundreds, even thousands of things at a time, but it didn’t take Miro long to realize that there was no way she could handle all the monitoring and alterations this would take, even if she did nothing else.

One way or another, the secret would be out. And as Jane explained her plan, Miro knew that she was right—her best option, the one with the least chance of revealing her existence, was simply to cut off all ansible communications between the fleet and the planetside stations, and between the ships of the fleet. Let each ship remain isolated, the crew wondering what had happened, and they would have no choice but to abort their mission or continue to obey their original orders. Either they would go away or they would arrive at Lusitania without the authority to use the Little Doctor.

In the meantime, however, Congress would know that something had happened. It was possible that with Congress’s normal bureaucratic inefficiency, no one would ever figure out what happened. But eventually somebody would realize that there was no natural or human explanation of what happened. Someone would realize that Jane—or something like her—must exist, and that cutting off ansible communications would destroy her. Once they knew this, she would surely die.

“Maybe not,” Miro insisted. “Maybe you can keep them from acting. Interfere with interplanetary communications, so they can’t give the order to shut down communications.”

No one answered. He knew why: she couldn’t interfere with ansible communications forever. Eventually the government on each planet would reach the conclusion on its own. She might live on in constant warfare for years, decades, generations. But the more power she used, the more humankind would hate and fear her. Eventually she would be killed.

“A book, then,” said Miro. “Like the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Like the Life of Human. The Speaker for the Dead could write it. To persuade them not to do it.”

“Maybe,” said Valentine.

“She can’t die,” said Miro.

“I know that we can’t ask her to take that chance,” said Valentine. “But if it’s the only way to save the hive queen and the pequeninos—”

Miro was furious. “You can talk about her dying! What is Jane to you? A program, a piece of software. But she’s not, she’s real, she’s as real as the hive queen, she’s as real as any of the piggies—”

“More real to you, I think,” said Valentine.

“As real,” said Miro. “You forget—I know the piggies like my own brothers—”

“But you’re able to contemplate the possibility that destroying them may be morally necessary.”

“Don’t twist my words.”

“I’m untwisting them,” said Valentine. “You can contemplate losing them, because they’re already lost to you. Losing Jane, though—”

“Because she’s my friend, does that mean I can’t plead for her? Can life-and-death decisions only be made by strangers?”

Jakt’s voice, quiet and deep, interrupted the argument. “Calm down, both of you. It isn’t your decision. It’s Jane’s. She has the right to determine the value of her own life. I’m no philosopher, but I know that.”

“Well said,” Valentine answered.

Miro knew that Jakt was right, that it was Jane’s choice. But he couldn’t bear that, because he also knew what she would decide. Leaving the choice up to Jane was identical to asking her to do it. And yet, in the end, the choice would be up to her anyway. He didn’t even have to ask her what she would decide. Time passed so quickly for her, especially since they were already traveling at near-lightspeed, that she had probably decided already.

It was too much to bear. To lose Jane now would be unbearable; just thinking of it threatened Miro’s composure. He didn’t want to show such weakness in front of these people. Good people, they were good people, but he didn’t want them to see him lose control of himself. So Miro leaned forward, found his balance, and precariously lifted himself from his seat. It was hard, since only a few of his muscles responded to his will, and it took all his concentration just to walk from the bridge to his compartment. No one followed him or even spoke to him. He was glad of that.

Alone in his room, he lay down on his bunk and called to her. But not aloud. He subvocalized, because that was his custom when he talked to her. Even though the others on this ship now knew of her existence, he had no intention of losing the habits that had kept her concealed till now.

“Jane,” he said silently.

“Yes,” said the voice in his ear. He imagined, as always, that her soft voice came from a woman just out of sight, but close, very close. He shut his eyes, so he could imagine her better. Her breath on his cheek. Her hair dangling over his face as she spoke to him softly, as he answered in silence.

“Talk to Ender before you decide,” he said.

“I already did. Just now, while you were thinking about this.”

“What did he say?”

“To do nothing. To decide nothing, until the order is actually sent.”

“That’s right. Maybe they won’t do it.”

“Maybe. Maybe a new group with different policies will come into power. Maybe this group will change its mind. Maybe Valentine’s propaganda will succeed. Maybe there’ll be a mutiny on the fleet.”

This last was so unlikely that Miro realized Jane absolutely believed that the order would be sent.

“How soon?” asked Miro.

“The fleet should arrive in about fifteen years. A year or less after these two ships get there. That’s how I timed your voyage. The order will be sent sometime before. Maybe six months before arrival—which would be about eight hours ship’s time before the fleet drops out of lightspeed and staggers down to normal speeds.”

“Don’t do it,” said Miro.

“I haven’t decided.”

“Yes you have. You’ve decided to do it.”

She said nothing.

“Don’t leave me,” he said.

“I don’t leave my friends if I don’t have to,” she said. “Some people do, but I don’t.”

“Just don’t,” he said again. He was crying. Could she see that, sense it somehow through the jewel in his ear?

“I’ll try.”

“Find another way. Find another way to stop them. Find some way to put yourself outside the philotic net so they can’t kill you.”

“That’s what Ender said.”

“Then do it!”

“I can search for such a way, but who knows if it exists?”

“It has to.”

“This is why I wonder sometimes whether I’m alive or not. You living creatures, you think that because you want something very much, it has to happen. That wishing something with all your heart will make it so.”

“How can you search for something if you don’t believe that it exists?”

“Either I search or I don’t,” said Jane. “I don’t get distracted or bored like humans do. I’ll try to think of something else.”

“Think of this, too,” said Miro. “Think of who you are. Of how your mind works. You can’t possibly find a way of saving your life until you understand how you came to life in the first place. And once you understand yourself—”

“Then maybe I can make a copy and store it somewhere.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” she echoed.

But he knew she didn’t believe it, and neither did he. She existed in the philotic network of the ansibles; she could store her memories in the network of computers on every world and every ship in space, but there was nowhere that she could put her self, not if it required a network of philotic links.

Unless.

“What about the fathertrees on Lusitania? They communicate philotically, don’t they?”

“It’s not the same thing,” said Jane. “It isn’t digital. It isn’t coded the way the ansibles are.”

“It may not be digital, but the information gets transferred somehow. It works philotically. And the hive queen, too—she communicates with the buggers that way.”

“No chance of that,” said Jane. “The structure’s too simple. Her communication with them isn’t a network. They’re all connected only to her.”

“How do you know it won’t work, when you don’t even know for sure how you function?”

“All right. I’ll think about it.”

“Think hard,” he said.

“I only know one way to think,” said Jane.

“I mean, pay attention to it.”

She could follow many trains of thought at once, but her thoughts were prioritized, with many different levels of attention. Miro didn’t want her relegating her self-investigation to some low order of attention.

“I’ll pay attention,” she said.

“Then you’ll think of something,” he said. “You will.”

She didn’t answer for a while. He thought this meant that the conversation was over. His thoughts began to wander. To try to imagine what life would be like, still in this body, only without Jane. It could happen before he even arrived on Lusitania. And if it did, this voyage would have been the most terrible mistake of his life. By traveling at lightspeed, he was skipping thirty years of realtime. Thirty years that might have been spent with Jane. He might be able to deal with losing her then. But losing her now, only a few weeks into knowing her—he knew that his tears arose from self-pity, but he shed them all the same.

“Miro,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“How can I think of something that’s never been thought of before?”

For a moment he didn’t understand.

“Miro, how can I figure out something that isn’t just the logical conclusion of things that human beings have already figured out and written somewhere?”

“You think of things all the time,” said Miro.

“I’m trying to conceive of something inconceivable. I’m trying to find answers to questions that human beings have never even tried to ask.”

“Can’t you do that?”

“If I can’t think original thoughts, does that mean that I’m nothing but a computer program that got out of hand?”

“Hell, Jane, most people never have an original thought in their lives.” He laughed softly. “Does that mean they’re just ground-dwelling apes that got out of hand?”

“You were crying,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You don’t think I can think of a way out of this. You think I’m going to die.”

“I believe you can think of a way. I really do. But that doesn’t stop me from being afraid.”

“Afraid that I’ll die.”

“Afraid that I’ll lose you.”

“Would that be so terrible? To lose me?”

“Oh God,” he whispered.

“Would you miss me for an hour?” she insisted. “For a day? For a year?”

What did she want from him? Assurance that when she was gone she’d be remembered? That someone would yearn for her? Why would she doubt that? Didn’t she know him yet?

Maybe she was human enough that she simply needed reassurance of things she already knew.

“Forever,” he said.

It was her turn to laugh. Playfully. “You won’t live that long,” she said.

“Now you tell me,” he said.

This time when she fell silent, she didn’t come back, and Miro was left alone with his thoughts.

Valentine, Jakt, and Plikt had remained together on the bridge, talking through the things they had learned, trying to decide what they might mean, what might happen. The only conclusion they reached was that while the future couldn’t be known, it would probably be a good deal better than their worst fears and nowhere near as good as their best hopes. Wasn’t that how the world always worked?

“Yes,” said Plikt. “Except for the exceptions.”

That was Plikt’s way. Except when she was teaching, she said little, but when she did speak, it had a way of ending the conversation. Plikt got up to leave the bridge, headed for her miserably uncomfortable bed; as usual, Valentine tried to persuade her to go back to the other starship.

“Varsam and Ro don’t want me in their room,” said Plikt.

“They don’t mind a bit.”

“Valentine,” said Jakt, “Plikt doesn’t want to go back to the other ship because she doesn’t want to miss anything.”

“Oh,” said Valentine.

Plikt grinned. “Good night.”

Soon after, Jakt also left the bridge. His hand rested on Valentine’s shoulder for a moment as he left. “I’ll be there soon,” she said. And she meant it at the moment, meant to follow him almost at once. Instead she remained on the bridge, thinking, brooding, trying to make sense of a universe that would put all the nonhuman species ever known to man at risk of extinction, all at once. The hive queen, the pequeninos, and now Jane, the only one of her kind, perhaps the only one that ever could exist. A veritable profusion of intelligent life, and yet known only to a few. And all of them in line to be snuffed out.

At least Ender will realize at last that this is the natural order of things, that he might not be as responsible for the destruction of the buggers three thousand years ago as he had always thought. Xenocide must be built into the universe. No mercy, not even for the greatest players in the game.

How could she have ever thought otherwise? Why should intelligent species be immune to the threat of extinction that looms over every species that ever came to be?

It must have been an hour after Jakt left the bridge before Valentine finally turned off her terminal and stood up to go to bed. On a whim, though, she paused before leaving and spoke into the air. “Jane?” she said. “Jane?”

No answer.

There was no reason for her to expect one. It was Miro who wore the jewel in his ear. Miro and Ender both. How many people did she think Jane could monitor at one time? Maybe two was the most she could handle.

Or maybe two thousand. Or two million. What did Valentine know of the limitations of a being who existed as a phantom in the philotic web? Even if Jane heard her, Valentine had no right to expect that she would answer her call.

Valentine stopped in the corridor, directly between Miro’s door and the door to the room she shared with Jakt. The doors were not soundproof. She could hear Jakt’s soft snoring inside their compartment. She also heard another sound. Miro’s breath. He wasn’t sleeping. He might be crying. She hadn’t raised three children without being able to recognize that ragged, heavy breathing.

He’s not my child. I shouldn’t meddle.

She pushed open the door; it was noiseless, but it cast a shaft of light across the bed. Miro’s crying stopped immediately, but he looked at her through swollen eyes.

“What do you want?” he said.

She stepped into the room and sat on the floor beside his bunk, so their faces were only a few inches apart. “You’ve never cried for yourself, have you?” she said.

“A few times.”

“But tonight you’re crying for her.”

“Myself as much as her.”

Valentine leaned closer, put her arm around him, pulled his head onto her shoulder.

“No,” he said. But he didn’t pull away. And after a few moments, his arm swung awkwardly around to embrace her. He didn’t cry anymore, but he did let her hold him for a minute or two. Maybe it helped. Valentine had no way of knowing.

Then he was done. He pulled away, rolled onto his back. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she said. She believed in answering what people meant, not what they said.

“Don’t tell Jakt,” he whispered.

“Nothing to tell,” she said. “We had a good talk.”

She got up and left, closing his door behind her. He was a good boy. She liked the fact that he could admit caring what Jakt thought about him. And what did it matter if his tears tonight had self-pity in them? She had shed a few like that herself. Grief, she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner’s loss.

5

THE LUSITANIA FLEET

<Ender says that when the war fleet from Starways Congress reaches us, they plan to destroy this world.>

<Interesting.>

<You don’t fear death?>

<We don’t intend to be here when they arrive.>

Qing-jao was no longer the little girl whose hands had bled in secret. Her life had been transformed from the moment she was proved to be godspoken, and in the ten years since that day she had come to accept the voice of the gods in her life and the role this gave her in society. She learned to accept the privileges and honors given to her as gifts actually meant for the gods; as her father taught her, she did not take on airs, but instead grew more humble as the gods and the people laid ever-heavier burdens on her.

She took her duties seriously, and found joy in them. For the past ten years she had passed through a rigorous, exhilarating course of studies. Her body was shaped and trained in the company of other children—running, swimming, riding, combat-with-swords, combat-with-sticks, combat-with-bones. Along with other children, her memory was filled with languages—Stark, the common speech of the stars, which was typed into computers; Old Chinese, which was sung in the throat and drawn in beautiful ideograms on rice paper or in fine sand; and New Chinese, which was merely spoken at the mouth and jotted down with a common alphabet on ordinary paper or in dirt. No one was surprised except Qing-jao herself that she learned all these languages much more quickly and easily and thoroughly than any of the other children.

Other teachers came to her alone. This was how she learned sciences and history, mathematics and music. And every week she would go to her father and spend half a day with him, showing him all that she had learned and listening to what he said in response. His praise made her dance all the way back to her room; his mildest rebuke made her spend hours tracing woodgrain lines in her schoolroom, until she felt worthy to return to studying.

Another part of her schooling was utterly private. She had seen for herself how Father was so strong that he could postpone his obedience to the gods. She knew that when the gods demanded a ritual of purification, the hunger, the need to obey them was so exquisite it could not be denied. And yet Father somehow denied it—long enough, at least, that his rituals were always in private. Qing-jao longed for such strength herself, and so she began to discipline herself to delay. When the gods made her feel her oppressive unworthiness, and her eyes began to search for woodgrain lines or her hands began to feel unbearably filthy, she would wait, trying to concentrate on what was happening at the moment and put off obedience as long as she could.

At first it was a triumph if she managed to postpone her purification for a full minute—and when her resistance broke, the gods punished her for it by making the ritual more onerous and difficult than usual. But she refused to give up. She was Han Fei-tzu’s daughter, wasn’t she? And in time, over the years, she learned what her father had learned: that one could live with the hunger, contain it, often for hours, like a bright fire encased in a box of translucent jade, a dangerous, terrible fire from the gods, burning within her heart.

Then, when she was alone, she could open that box and let the fire out, not in a single, terrible eruption, but slowly, gradually, filling her with light as she bowed her head and traced the lines on the floor, or bent over the sacred laver of her holy washings, quietly and methodically rubbing her hands with pumice, lye, and aloe.

Thus she converted the raging voice of the gods into a private, disciplined worship. Only at rare moments of sudden distress did she lose control and fling herself to the floor in front of a teacher or visitor. She accepted these humiliations as the gods’ way of reminding her that their power over her was absolute, that her usual self-control was only permitted for their amusement. She was content with this imperfect discipline. After all, it would be presumptuous of her to equal her father’s perfect self-control. His extraordinary nobility came because the gods honored him, and so did not require his public humiliation; she had done nothing to earn such honor.

Last of all, her schooling included one day each week helping with the righteous labor of the common people. Righteous labor, of course, was not the work the common people did every day in their offices and factories. Righteous labor meant the backbreaking work of the rice paddies. Every man and woman and child on Path had to perform this labor, bending and stooping in shin-deep water to plant and harvest the rice—or forfeit citizenship. “This is how we honor our ancestors,” Father explained to her when she was little. “We show them that none of us will ever rise above doing their labor.” The rice that was grown by righteous labor was considered holy; it was offered in the temples and eaten on holy days; it was placed in small bowls as offerings to the household gods.

Once, when Qing-jao was twelve, the day was terribly hot and she was eager to finish her work on a research project. “Don’t make me go to the rice paddies today,” she said to her teacher. “What I’m doing here is so much more important.”

The teacher bowed and went away, but soon Father came into her room. He carried a heavy sword, and she screamed in terror when he raised it over his head. Did he mean to kill her for having spoken so sacrilegiously? But he did not hurt her—how could she have imagined that he might? Instead the sword came down on her computer terminal. The metal parts twisted; the plastic shattered and flew. The machine was destroyed.

Father did not raise his voice. It was in the faintest whisper that he said, “First the gods. Second the ancestors. Third the people. Fourth the rulers. Last the self.”

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 be entrusted only to one who was godspoken.

She came before the great Han Fei-tzu in his room. Like hers, it was a large open space; like hers, the sleeping accommodation was simple, a mat on the floor; like hers, the room was dominated by a table with a computer terminal on it. She had never entered her father’s room without seeing something floating in the display above the terminal—diagrams, three-dimensional models, realtime simulations, words. Most commonly words. Letters or ideographs floating in the air on simulated pages, moving back and forward, side to side as Father needed to compare them.

In Qing-jao’s room, all the rest of the space was empty. Since Father did not trace woodgrain lines, he had no need for that much austerity. Even so, his tastes were simple. One rug—only rarely one that had much decoration to it. One low table, with one sculpture standing on it. Walls bare except for one painting. And because the room was so large, each one of these things seemed almost lost, like the faint voice of someone crying out from very far away.

The message of this room to visitors was clear: Han Fei-tzu chose simplicity. One of each thing was enough for a pure soul.

The message to Qing-jao, however, was quite different. For she knew what no one outside the household realized: The rug, the table, the sculpture, and the painting were changed every day. And never in her life had she recognized any one of them. So the lesson she learned was this: A pure soul must never grow attached to any one thing. A pure soul must expose himself to new things every day.

Because this was a formal occasion, she did not come and stand behind him as he worked, studying what appeared in his display, trying to guess what he was doing. This time she came to the middle of the room and knelt on the plain rug, which was today the color of a robin’s egg, with a small stain in one corner. She kept her eyes down, not even studying the stain, until Father got up from his chair and came to stand before her.

“Han Qing-jao,” he said. “Let me see the sunrise of my daughter’s face.”

She lifted her head, looked at him, and smiled.

He smiled back. “What I will set before you is not an easy task, even for an experienced adult,” said Father.

Qing-jao bowed her head. She had expected that Father would set a hard challenge for her, and she was ready to do his will.

“Look at me, my Qing-jao,” said Father.

She lifted her head, looked into his eyes.

“This is not going to be a school assignment. This is a task from the real world. A task that Starways Congress has given me, on which the fate of nations and peoples and worlds may rest.”

Qing-jao had been tense already, but now Father was frightening her. “Then you must give this task to someone who can be trusted with it, not to an untried child.”

“You haven’t been a child in years, Qing-jao. Are you ready to hear your task?”

“Yes, Father.”

“What do you know about the Lusitania Fleet?”

“Do you want me to tell you everything I know about it?”

“I want you to tell me all that you think matters.”

So—this was a kind of test, to see how well she could distill the important from the unimportant in her knowledge about a particular subject.

“The fleet was sent to subdue a rebellious colony on Lusitania, where laws concerning noninterference in the only known alien species had been defiantly broken.”

Was that enough? No—Father was still waiting.

“There was controversy, right from the start,” she said. “Essays attributed to a person called Demosthenes stirred up trouble.”

“What trouble, in particular?”

“To colony worlds, Demosthenes gave warning that the Lusitania Fleet was a dangerous precedent—it would be only a matter of time before Starways Congress used force to compel their obedience, too. To Catholic worlds and Catholic minorities everywhere, Demosthenes charged that Congress was trying to punish the Bishop of Lusitania for sending missionaries to the pequeninos to save their souls from hell. 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 lightyears away. And to everyone, Demosthenes made claims that the Lusitania Fleet carried the Molecular Disruption Device. Of course that is an obvious lie, but some believed it.”

“How effective were these essays?” asked Father.

“I don’t know.”

“They were very effective,” said Father. “Fifteen years ago, the earliest essays to the colonies were so effective that they almost caused revolution.”

A near-rebellion in the colonies? Fifteen years ago? Qing-jao knew of only one such event, but she had never realized it had anything to do with Demosthenes’ essays. She blushed. “That was the time of the Colony Charter—your first great treaty.”

“The treaty was not mine,” said Han Fei-tzu. “The treaty belonged equally to Congress and the colonies. Because of it a terrible conflict was avoided. And the Lusitania Fleet continues on its great mission.”

“You wrote every word of the treaty, Father.”

“In doing so I only found expression for the wishes and desires already in the hearts of the people on both sides of the issue. I was a clerk.”

Qing-jao bowed her head. She knew the truth, and so did everyone else. It had been the beginning of Han Fei-tzu’s greatness, for he not only wrote the treaty but also persuaded both sides to accept it almost without revision. Ever after that, Han Fei-tzu had been one of the most trusted advisers to Congress; messages arrived daily from the greatest men and women of every world. If he chose to call himself a clerk in that great undertaking, that was only because he was a man of great modesty. Qing-jao also knew that Mother was already dying as he accomplished all this work. That was the kind of man her father was, for he neglected neither his wife nor his duty. He could not save Mother’s life, but he could save the lives that might have been lost in war.

“Qing-jao, why do you say that it is an obvious lie that the fleet is carrying the M.D. Device?”

“Because—because that would be monstrous. It would be like Ender the Xenocide, destroying an entire world. So much power has no right or reason to exist in the universe.”

“Who taught you this?”

“Decency taught me this,” said Qing-jao. “The gods made the stars and all the planets—who is man to unmake them?”

“But the gods also made the laws of nature that make it possible to destroy them—who is man to refuse to receive what the gods have given?”

Qing-jao was stunned to silence. She had never heard Father speak in apparent defense of any aspect of war—he loathed war in any form.

“I ask you again—who taught you that so much power has no right or reason to exist in the universe?”

“It’s my own idea.”

“But that sentence is an exact quotation.”

“Yes. From Demosthenes. But if I believe an idea, it becomes my own. You taught me that.”

“You must be careful that you understand all the consequences of an idea before you believe it.”

“The Little Doctor must never be used on Lusitania, and therefore it should not have been sent.”

Han Fei-tzu nodded gravely. “How do you know it must never be used?”

“Because it would destroy the pequeninos, a young and beautiful people who are eager to fulfill their potential as a sentient species.”

“Another quotation.”

“Father, have you read the Life of Human?”

“I have.”

“Then how can you doubt that the pequeninos must be preserved?”

“I said I had read the Life of Human. I didn’t say that I believed it.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“I neither believe it nor disbelieve it. The book first appeared after the ansible on Lusitania had been destroyed. Therefore it is probable that the book did not originate there, and if it didn’t originate there then it’s fiction. That seems particularly likely because it’s signed ‘Speaker for the Dead,’ which is the same name signed to the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, which are thousands of years old. Someone was obviously trying to capitalize on the reverence people feel toward those ancient works.”

“I believe the Life of Human is true.”

“That’s your privilege, Qing-jao. But why do you believe it?”

Because it sounded true when she read it. Could she say that to Father? Yes, she could say anything. “Because when I read it I felt that it must be true.”

“I see.”

“Now you know that I’m foolish.”

“On the contrary. I know that you are wise. When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be clumsily told and you will still love the tale, if you love truth. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you cannot deny truth no matter how shabbily it is dressed.”

“Then how is it that you don’t believe the Life of Human?”

“I spoke unclearly. We are using two different meanings of the words truth and belief. You believe that the story is true, because you responded to it from that sense of truth deep within you. But that sense of truth does not respond to a story’s factuality—to whether it literally depicts a real event in the real world. Your inner sense of truth responds to a story’s causality—to whether it faithfully shows the way the universe functions, the way the gods work their will among human beings.”

Qing-jao thought for only a moment, then nodded her understanding. “So the Life of Human may be universally true, but specifically false.”

“Yes,” said Han Fei-tzu. “You can read the book and gain great wisdom from it, because it is true. But is that book an accurate representation of the pequeninos themselves? One can hardly believe that—a mammaloid species that turns into a tree when it dies? Beautiful as poetry. Ludicrous as science.”

“But can you know that, either, Father?”

“I can’t be sure, no. Nature has done many strange things, and there is a chance that the Life of Human is genuine and true. Thus I neither believe it nor disbelieve it. I hold it in abeyance. I wait. Yet while I’m waiting, I don’t expect Congress to treat Lusitania as if it were populated by the fanciful creatures from the Life of Human. For all we know, the pequeninos may be deadly dangerous to us. They are aliens.”

“Ramen.”

“In the story. But raman or varelse, we do not know what they are. The fleet carries the Little Doctor because it might be necessary to save mankind from unspeakable peril. It is not up to us to decide whether or not it should be used—Congress will decide. It is not up to us to decide whether it should have been sent—Congress has sent it. And it is certainly not up to us to decide whether it should exist—the gods have decreed that such a thing is possible and can exist.”

“So Demosthenes was right. The M.D. Device is with the fleet.”

“Yes.”

“And the government files that Demosthenes published—they were genuine.”

“Yes.”

“But Father—you joined many others in claiming that they were forgeries.”

“Just as the gods speak only to a chosen few, so the secrets of the rulers must be known only to those who will use the knowledge properly. Demosthenes was giving powerful secrets to people who were not fit to use them wisely, and so for the good of the people those secrets had to be withdrawn. The only way to retrieve a secret, once it is known, is to replace it with a lie; then the knowledge of the truth is once again your secret.”

“You’re telling me that Demosthenes is not a liar, and Congress is.”

“I’m telling you that Demosthenes is the enemy of the gods. A wise ruler would never have sent the Lusitania Fleet without giving it the possibility of responding to any circumstance. But Demosthenes has used his knowledge that the Little Doctor is with the fleet in order to try to force Congress to withdraw the fleet. Thus he wishes to take power out of the hands of those whom the gods have ordained to rule humankind. What would happen to the people if they rejected the rulers given them by the gods?”

“Chaos and suffering,” said Qing-jao. History was full of times of chaos and suffering, until the gods sent strong rulers and institutions to keep order.

“So Demosthenes told the truth about the Little Doctor. Did you think the enemies of the gods could never speak the truth? I wish it were so. It would make them much easier to identify.”

“If we can lie in the service of the gods, what other crimes can we commit?”

“What is a crime?”

“An act that’s against the law.”

“What law?”

“I see—Congress makes the law, so the law is whatever Congress says. But Congress is composed of men and women, who may do good and evil.”

“Now you’re nearer the truth. We can’t do crimes in the service of Congress, because Congress makes the laws. But if Congress ever became evil, then in obeying them we might also be doing evil. That is a matter of conscience. However, if that happened, Congress would surely lose the mandate of heaven. And we, the godspoken, don’t have to wait and wonder about the mandate of heaven, as others do. If Congress ever loses the mandate of the gods, we will know at once.”

“So you lied for Congress because Congress had the mandate of heaven.”

“And therefore I knew that to help them keep their secret was the will of the gods for the good of the people.”

Qing-jao had never thought of Congress in quite this way before. All the history books she had studied showed Congress as the great unifier of humanity, and according to the schoolbooks, all its acts were noble. Now, though, she understood that some of its actions might not seem good. Yet that didn’t necessarily mean that they were not good. “I must learn from the gods, then, whether the will of Congress is also their will,” she said.

“Will you do that?” asked Han Fei-tzu. “Will you obey the will of Congress, even when it might seem wrong, as long as Congress has the mandate of heaven?”

“Are you asking for my oath?”

“I am.”

“Then yes, I will obey, as long as they have the mandate of heaven.”

“I had to have that oath from you to satisfy the security requirements of Congress,” he said. “I couldn’t have given you your task without it.” He cleared his throat. “But now I ask you for another oath.”

“I’ll give it if I can.”

“This oath is from—it arises from great love. Han Qing-jao, will you serve the gods in all things, in all ways, throughout your life?”

“Oh, Father, we need no oath for this. Haven’t the gods chosen me already, and led me with their voice?”

“Nevertheless I ask you for this oath.”

“Always, in all things, in all ways, I will serve the gods.”

To her surprise, Father knelt before her and took her hands in his. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “You have lifted from my heart the heaviest burden that was ever laid there.”

“How did I do this, Father?”

“Before your mother died, she asked me for my promise. She said that since her entire character was expressed by her devotion to the gods, the only way I could help you to know her was to teach you also to serve the gods. All my life I have still been afraid that I might fail, that you might turn away from the gods. That you might come to hate them. Or that you might not be worthy of their voice.”

This struck Qing-jao to the heart. She was always conscious of her deep unworthiness before the gods, of her filthiness in their sight—even when they weren’t requiring her to watch or trace woodgrain lines. Only now did she learn what was at stake: her mother’s love for her.

“All my fears are gone now. You are a perfect daughter, my Qing-jao. You already serve the gods well. And now, with your oath, I can be sure you’ll continue forever. This will cause great rejoicing in the house in heaven where your mother dwells.”

Will it? In heaven they know my weakness. You, Father, you only see that I have not yet failed the gods; Mother must know how close I’ve come so many times, how filthy I am whenever the gods look upon me.

But he seemed so full of joy that she dared not show him how much she dreaded the day when she would prove her unworthiness for all to see. So she embraced him.

Still, she couldn’t help asking him, “Father, do you really think Mother heard me make that oath?”

“I hope so,” said Han Fei-tzu. “If she didn’t, the gods will surely save the echo of it and put it in a seashell and let her listen to it whenever she puts it to her ear.”

This sort of fanciful storytelling was a game they had played together as children. Qing-jao set aside her dread and quickly came up with an answer. “No, the gods will save the touch of our embrace and weave it into a shawl, which she can wear around her shoulders when winter comes to heaven.” She was relieved, anyway, that Father had not said yes. He only hoped that Mother had heard the oath she made. Perhaps she hadn’t—and so she wouldn’t be so disappointed when her daughter failed.

Father kissed her, then stood up. “Now you are ready to hear your task,” he said.

He took her by the hand and led her to his table. She stood beside him when he sat on his chair; she was not much taller, standing, than he was sitting down. Probably she had not yet reached her adult height, but she hoped she wouldn’t grow much more. She didn’t want to become one of those large, hulking women who carried heavy burdens in the fields. Better to be a mouse than a hog, that’s what Mu-pao had told her years ago.

Father brought a starmap up into the display. She recognized the area immediately. It centered on the Lusitania star system, though the scale was too small for individual planets to be visible. “Lusitania is in the center,” she said.

Father nodded. He typed a few more commands. “Now watch this,” he said. “Not the display, my fingers. This, plus your voice identification, is the password that will allow you to access the information you’ll need.”

She watched him type: 4Gang. She recognized the reference at once. Her mother’s ancestor-of-the-heart had been Jiang-qing, the widow of the first Communist Emperor, Mao Ze-dong. When Jiang-qing and her allies were driven from power, the Conspiracy of Cowards vilified them under the name “Gang of Four.” Qing-jao’s mother had been a true daughter-of-the-heart to that great martyred woman of the past. And now Qing-jao would be able to do further honor to her mother’s ancestor-of-the-heart every time she typed the access code. It was a gracious thing for her father to arrange.

In the display there appeared many green dots. She quickly counted, almost without thinking: there were nineteen of them, clustered at some distance from Lusitania, but surrounding it in most directions.

“Is that the Lusitania Fleet?”

“Those were their positions five months ago.” He typed again. The green dots all disappeared. “And those are their positions today.”

She looked for them. She couldn’t find a green dot anywhere. Yet Father clearly expected her to see something. “Are they already at Lusitania?”

“The ships are where you see them,” said Father. “Five months ago the fleet disappeared.”

“Where did it go?”

“No one knows.”

“Was it a mutiny?”

“No one knows.”

“The whole fleet?”

“Every ship.”

“When you say they disappeared, what do you mean?”

Father glanced at her with a smile. “Well done, Qing-jao. You’ve asked the right question. No one saw them—they were all in deep space. So they didn’t physically disappear. As far as we know, they may be moving along, still on course. They only disappeared in the sense that we lost all contact with them.”

“The ansibles?”

“Silent. All within the same three-minute period. No transmissions were interrupted. One would end, and then the next one—never came.”

“Every ship’s connection with every planetside ansible everywhere? That’s impossible. Even an explosion—if there could be one so large—but it couldn’t be a single event, anyway, because they were so widely distributed around Lusitania.”

“Well, it could be, Qing-jao. If you can imagine an event so cataclysmic—it could be that Lusitania’s star became a supernova. It would be decades before we saw the flash even on the closest worlds. The trouble is that it would be the most unlikely supernova in history. Not impossible, but unlikely.”

“And there would have been some advance indications. Some changes in the star’s condition. Didn’t the ships’ instruments detect something?”

“No. That’s why we don’t think it was any known astronomical phenomenon. Scientists can’t think of anything to explain it. So we’ve tried investigating it as sabotage. We’ve searched for penetrations of the ansible computers. We’ve raked over all the personnel files from every ship, searching for some possible conspiracy among the shipboard crews. There’s been cryptoanalysis of every communication by every ship, searching for some kind of messages among conspirators. The military and the government have analyzed everything they can think of to analyze. The police on every planet have conducted inquiries—we’ve checked the background on every ansible operator.”

“Even though no messages are being sent, are the ansibles still connected?”

“What do you think?”

Qing-jao blushed. “Of course they would be, even if an M.D. Device had been used against the fleet, because the ansibles are linked by fragments of subatomic particles. They’d still be there even if the whole starship were blown to dust.”

“Don’t be embarrassed, Qing-jao. The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.”

However, Qing-jao was blushing now for another reason. The hot blood was pounding in her head because it had only now dawned on her what Father’s assignment for her was going to be. But that was impossible. He couldn’t give to her a task that thousands of wiser, older people had already failed at.

“Father,” she whispered. “What is my task?” She still hoped that it was some minor problem involved with the disappearance of the fleet. But she knew that her hope was in vain even before he spoke.

“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.”

That was what she was afraid of—that Father expected her to succeed because of the favor of the gods. He didn’t understand how unworthy the gods found her, how little they liked her.

And there was another problem. “What if I succeed? What if I find out where the Lusitania Fleet is, and restore communications? Wouldn’t it then be my fault if the fleet destroyed Lusitania?”

“It’s good that your first thought is compassion for the people of Lusitania. I assure you that Starways Congress has promised not to use the M.D. Device unless it proves absolutely unavoidable, and that is so unlikely that I can’t believe it would happen. Even if it did, though, it’s Congress that must decide. 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. She felt her filthiness now, instead of just knowing it in her mind. She needed to wash her hands. She needed to trace a line. But she contained it. She would wait.

Whatever I do, she thought, there will be a terrible consequence. If I fail, then Father will lose honor before Congress and therefore before all the world of Path. That would prove to many that Father isn’t worthy to be chosen god of Path when he dies.

Yet if I succeed, the result might be xenocide. Even though the choice belongs to Congress, I would still know that I made such a thing possible. The responsibility would be partly mine. No matter what I do, I will be covered with failure and smeared with unworthiness.

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 can 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, when you speak your name and type the password. If you need help, let me know.”

She left Father’s room with dignity, and forced herself to walk slowly up the stairs to her room. Only when she was inside with the door closed did she throw herself to her knees and creep along the floor. She traced woodgrain lines until she could hardly see. Her unworthiness 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. Anytime she thought otherwise, anytime the words of Demosthenes returned to her mind, she would have to blot them out by remembering that she would obey the rulers who have the mandate of heaven.

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. And if you took a name you just happened to think of—Han Qing-jao, for instance—and you asked Jane, “Who is this person?” she’d almost immediately give you 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.

That was true 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 Qing-jao’s name moved many levels upward in Jane’s attention. Jane began to keep a log of everything that Qing-jao did with her computer. And it quickly became clear to her 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. Then he would conclude that the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet had to have been caused by some agency that had unimaginably detailed access to the computer systems that had the false 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. She 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 probably 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.

So 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 160 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. She did not understand all of human nature, but Ender had taught her this: to stop a human being from doing something, you must find a way to make the person stop wanting to do it.

6

VARELSE

<How are you able to speak directly into Ender’s mind?>

<Now that we know where he is, it’s as natural as eating.>

<How did you find him? I’ve never been able to speak into the mind of anyone who hasn’t passed into the third life.>

<We found him through the ansibles, and the electronics connected to them—found where his body was in space. To reach his mind, we had to reach into chaos and form a bridge.>

<Bridge?>

<A transitional entity, which partly resembled his mind and partly ours.>

<If you could reach his mind, why didn’t you stop him from destroying you?>

<The human brain is very strange. Before we could make sense of what we found there, before we could learn how to speak into that twisted space, all my sisters and mothers were gone. We continued to study his mind during all the years we waited, cocooned, until he found us; when he came, then we could speak directly to him.>

<What happened to the bridge you made?>

<We never thought about it. It’s probably still out there somewhere.>

The new strain of potatoes was dying. Ender saw the telltale brown circles in the leaves, the plants broken off where the stems had turned so brittle that the slightest breeze bent them till they snapped. This morning they had all been healthy. The onset of this disease was so sudden, its effect so devastating, that it could only be the descolada virus.

Ela and Novinha would be disappointed—they had had such hopes for this strain of potato. Ela, Ender’s stepdaughter, had been working on a gene that would cause every cell in an organism to produce three different chemicals that were known to inhibit or kill the descolada virus. Novinha, Ender’s wife, had been working on a gene that would cause cell nuclei to be impermeable to any molecule larger than one-tenth the size of the descolada. With this strain of potato, they had spliced in both genes and, when early tests showed that both traits had taken hold, Ender had brought the seedlings to the experimental farm and planted them. He and his assistants had nurtured them for the past six weeks. All had seemed to be going well.

If the technique had worked, it could have been adapted to all the plants and animals that the humans of Lusitania depended on for food. But the descolada virus was too clever by half—it saw through all their stratagems, eventually. Still, six weeks was better than the normal two or three days. Maybe they were on the right track.

Or maybe things had already gone too far. Back when Ender first arrived on Lusitania, new strains of Earthborn plants and animals could last as long as twenty years in the field before the descolada decoded their genetic molecules and tore them apart. But in recent years the descolada virus had apparently made a breakthrough that allowed it to decode any genetic molecule from Earth in days or even hours.

These days the only thing that allowed the human colonists to grow their plants and raise their animals was a spray that was immediately fatal to the descolada virus. There were human colonists who wanted to spray the whole planet and wipe out the descolada virus once and for all.

Spraying a whole planet was impractical, but not impossible; there were other reasons for rejecting that option. Every form of native life absolutely depended on the descolada in order to reproduce. That included the piggies—the pequeninos, the intelligent natives of this world—whose reproductive cycle was inextricably bound up with the only native species of tree. If the descolada virus were ever destroyed, this generation of pequeninos would be the last. It would be xenocide.

So far, the idea of doing anything that would wipe out the piggies would be immediately rejected by most of the people of Milagre, the village of humans. So far. But Ender knew that many minds would change if a few more facts were widely known. For instance, only a handful of people knew that twice already the descolada had adapted itself to the chemical they were using to kill it. Ela and Novinha had already developed several new versions of the chemical, so that the next time the descolada adapted to one viricide they could switch immediately to another. Likewise, they had once had to change the descolada inhibitor that kept human beings from dying of the descolada viruses that dwelt in every human in the colony. The inhibitor was added to all the colony’s food, so that every human being ingested it with every meal.

However, all the inhibitors and viricides worked on the same basic principles. Someday, just as the descolada virus had learned how to adapt to Earthborn genes in general, it would also learn how to handle each class of chemicals, and then it wouldn’t matter how many new versions they had—the descolada would exhaust their resources in days.

Only a few people knew how precarious Milagre’s survival really was. Only a few people understood how much was riding on the work that Ela and Novinha, as Lusitania’s xenobiologists, were doing; how close their contest was with the descolada; how devastating the consequences would be if they ever fell behind.

Just as well. If the colonists did understand, there would be many who would say, If it’s inevitable that someday the descolada will overwhelm us, then let’s wipe it out now. If that kills all the piggies then we’re sorry, but if it’s us or them, we choose us.

It was fine for Ender to take the long view, the philosophical perspective, and say, Better for one small human colony to perish than to wipe out an entire sentient species. He knew this argument would carry no water with the humans of Lusitania. Their own lives were at stake here, and the lives of their children; it would be absurd to expect them to be willing to die for the sake of another species that they didn’t understand and that few of them even liked. It would make no sense genetically—evolution encourages only creatures who are serious about protecting their own genes. Even if the Bishop himself declared it to be the will of God that the human beings of Lusitania lay down their lives for the piggies, there would be precious few who would obey.

I’m not sure I could make such a sacrifice myself, thought Ender. Even though I have no children of my own. Even though I have already lived through the destruction of a sentient species—even though I triggered that destruction myself, and I know what a terrible moral burden that is to bear—I’m not sure I could let my fellow human beings die, either by starvation because their food crops have been destroyed, or far more painfully by the return of the descolada as a disease with the power to consume the human body in days.

And yet … could I consent to the destruction of the pequeninos? Could I permit another xenocide?

He picked up one of the broken potato stems with its blotchy leaves. He would have to take this to Novinha, of course. Novinha would examine it, or Ela would, and they’d confirm what was already obvious. Another failure. He put the potato stem into a sterile pouch.

“Speaker.”

It was Planter, Ender’s assistant and his closest friend among the piggies. Planter was a son of the pequenino named Human, whom Ender had taken into the “third life,” the tree stage of the pequenino life cycle. Ender held up the transparent plastic pouch for Planter to see the leaves inside.

“Very dead indeed, Speaker,” said Planter, with no discernible emotion. That had been the most disconcerting thing about working with pequeninos at first—they didn’t show emotions in ways that humans could easily, habitually interpret. It was one of the greatest barriers to their acceptance by most of the colonists. The piggies weren’t cute or cuddly; they were merely strange.

“We’ll try again,” said Ender. “I think we’re getting closer.”

“Your wife wants you,” said Planter. The word wife, even translated into a human language like Stark, was so loaded with tension for a pequenino that it was difficult to speak the word naturally—Planter almost screeched it. Yet the idea of wifeness was so powerful to the pequeninos that, while they could call Novinha by her name when they spoke to her directly, when they were speaking to Novinha’s husband they could only refer to her by her title.

“I was just about to go see her anyway,” said Ender. “Would you measure and record these potatoes, please?”

Planter leaped straight up—like a popcorn, Ender thought. Though his face remained, to human eyes, expressionless, the vertical jump showed his delight. Planter loved working with the electronic equipment, both because machines fascinated him and because it added greatly to his status among the other pequenino males. Planter immediately began unpacking the camera and its computer from the bag he always carried with him.

“When you’re done, please prepare this isolated section for flash burning,” said Ender.

“Yes yes,” said Planter. “Yes yes yes.”

Ender sighed. Pequeninos got so annoyed when humans told them things that they already knew. Planter certainly knew the routine when the descolada had adapted to a new crop—the “educated” virus had to be destroyed while it was still in isolation. No point in letting the whole community of descolada viruses profit from what one strain had learned. So Ender shouldn’t have reminded him. And yet that was how human beings satisfied their sense of responsibility—checking again even when they knew it was unnecessary.

Planter was so busy he hardly noticed that Ender was leaving the field. When Ender was inside the isolation shed at the townward end of the field, he stripped, put his clothes in the purification box, and then did the purification dance—hands up high, arms rotating at the shoulder, turning in a circle, squatting and standing again, so that no part of his body was missed by the combination of radiation and gases that filled the shed. He breathed deeply through mouth and nose, then coughed—as always—because the gases were barely within the limits of human tolerance. Three full minutes with burning eyes and wheezing lungs, while waving his arms and squatting and standing: our ritual of obeisance to the almighty descolada. Thus we humiliate ourselves before the undisputed master of life on this planet.

Finally it was done; I’ve been roasted to a turn, he thought. As fresh air finally rushed into the shed, he took his clothes out of the box and put them on, still hot. As soon as he left the shed, it would be heated so that every surface was far over the proven heat tolerance of the descolada virus. Nothing could live in that shed during this final step of purification. Next time someone came to the shed it would be absolutely sterile.

Yet Ender couldn’t help but think that somehow the descolada virus would find a way through—if not through the shed, then through the mild disruption barrier that surrounded the experimental crop area like an invisible fortress wall. Officially, no molecule larger than a hundred atoms could pass through that barrier without being broken up. Fences on either side of the barrier kept humans and piggies from straying into the fatal area—but Ender had often imagined what it would be like for someone to pass through the disruption field. Every cell in the body would be killed instantly as the nucleic acids broke apart. Perhaps the body would hold together physically. But in Ender’s imagination he always saw the body crumbling into dust on the other side of the barrier, the breeze carrying it away like smoke before it could hit the ground.

What made Ender most uncomfortable about the disruption barrier was that it was based on the same principle as the Molecular Disruption Device. Designed to be used against starships and missiles, it was Ender who turned it against the home planet of the buggers when he commanded the human warfleet three thousand years ago. And it was the same weapon that was now on its way from Starways Congress to Lusitania. According to Jane, Starways Congress had already attempted to send the order to use it. She had blocked that by cutting off ansible communications between the fleet and the rest of humanity, but there was no telling whether some overwrought ship’s captain, panicked because his ansible wasn’t working, might still use it on Lusitania when he got here.

It was unthinkable, but they had done it—Congress had sent the order to destroy a world. To commit xenocide. Had Ender written the Hive Queen in vain? Had they already forgotten?

But it wasn’t “already” to them. It was three thousand years to most people. And even though Ender had written the Life of Human, it wasn’t believed widely enough yet. It hadn’t been embraced by the people to such a degree that Congress wouldn’t dare to act against the pequeninos.

Why had they decided to do it? Probably for exactly the same purpose as the xenobiologists’ disruption barrier: to isolate a dangerous infection so it couldn’t spread into the wider population. Congress was probably worried about containing the plague of planetary revolt. But when the fleet reached here, with or without orders, they might be as likely to use the Little Doctor as the final solution to the descolada problem: If there were no planet Lusitania, there would be no self-mutating half-intelligent virus itching for a chance to wipe out humanity and all its works.

It wasn’t that long a walk from the experimental fields to the new xenobiology station. The path wound over a low hill, skirting the edge of the wood that provided father, mother, and living cemetery to this tribe of pequeninos, and then on to the north gate in the fence that surrounded the human colony.

The fence was a sore point with Ender. There was no reason for it to exist anymore, now that the policy of minimal contact between humans and pequeninos had broken down, and both species passed freely through the gate. When Ender arrived on Lusitania, the fence was charged with a field that caused any person entering it to suffer excruciating pain. During the struggle to win the right to communicate freely with the pequeninos, Ender’s oldest stepson, Miro, was trapped in the field for several minutes, causing irreversible brain damage. Yet Miro’s experience was only the most painful and immediate expression of what the fence did to the souls of the humans enclosed within it. The psychobarrier had been shut off thirty years ago. In all that time, there had been no reason to have any barrier between humans and pequeninos—yet the fence remained. The human colonists of Lusitania wanted it that way. They wanted the boundary between human and pequenino to remain unbreached.

That was why the xenobiology labs had been moved from their old location down by the river. If pequeninos were to take part in the research, the lab had to be close to the fence, and all the experimental fields outside it, so that humans and pequeninos wouldn’t have occasion to confront each other unexpectedly.

When Miro left to meet Valentine, Ender had thought he would return to be astonished by the great changes in the world of Lusitania. He had thought that Miro would see humans and pequeninos living side by side, two species living in harmony. Instead, Miro would find the colony nearly unchanged. With rare exceptions, the human beings of Lusitania did not long for the close company of another species.

It was a good thing that Ender had helped the hive queen restore the race of buggers so far from Milagre. Ender had planned to help buggers and humans gradually come to know each other. Instead, he and Novinha and their family had been forced to keep the existence of the buggers on Lusitania a close-held secret. If the human colonists couldn’t deal with the mammal-like pequeninos, it was certain that knowing about the insect-like buggers would provoke violent xenophobia almost at once.

I have too many secrets, thought Ender. For all these years I’ve been a speaker for the dead, uncovering secrets and helping people to live in the light of truth. Now I no longer tell anyone half of what I know, because if I told the whole truth there would be fear, hatred, brutality, murder, war.

Not far from the gate, but outside it, stood two fathertrees, the one named Rooter, the other named Human, planted so that from the gate it would seem that Rooter was on the left hand, Human on the right. Human was the pequenino whom Ender had been required to ritually kill with his own hands, in order to seal the treaty between humans and pequeninos. Then Human was reborn in cellulose and chlorophyll, finally a mature adult male, able to sire children.

At present Human still had enormous prestige, not only among the piggies of this tribe, but in many other tribes as well. Ender knew that he was alive; yet, seeing the tree, it was impossible for him to forget how Human had died.

Ender had no trouble dealing with Human as a person, for he had spoken with this fathertree many times. What he could not manage was to think of this tree as the same person he had known as the pequenino named Human. Ender might understand intellectually that it was will and memory that made up a person’s identity, and that will and memory had passed intact from the pequenino into the fathertree. But intellectual understanding did not always bring visceral belief. Human was so alien now.

Yet still he was Human, and he was still Ender’s friend; Ender touched the bark of the tree as he passed. Then, taking a few steps out of his way, Ender walked to the older fathertree named Rooter, and touched his bark also. He had never known Rooter as a pequenino—Rooter had been killed by other hands, and his tree was already tall and well-spread before Ender arrived on Lusitania. There was no sense of loss to trouble him when Ender talked to Rooter.

At Rooter’s base, among the roots, lay many sticks. Some had been brought here; some were shed from Rooter’s own branches. They were talking sticks. Pequeninos used them to beat a rhythm on the trunk of a fathertree; the fathertree would shape and reshape the hollow areas inside his own trunk to change the sound, to make a slow kind of speech. Ender could beat the rhythm—clumsily, but well enough to get words from the trees.

Today, though, Ender wanted no conversation. Let Planter tell the fathertrees that another experiment had failed. Ender would talk to Rooter and Human later. He would talk to the hive queen. He would talk to Jane. He would talk to everybody. And after all the talking, they would be no closer to solving any of the problems that darkened Lusitania’s future. Because the solution to their problems now did not depend on talk. It depended on knowledge and action—knowledge that only other people could learn, actions that only other people could perform. There was nothing that Ender could do himself to solve anything.

All he could do, all he had ever done since his final battle as a child warrior, was listen and talk. At other times, in other places, that had been enough. Not now. Many different kinds of destruction loomed over Lusitania, some of them set in motion by Ender himself, and yet not one of them could now be solved by any act or word or thought of Andrew Wiggin. Like all the other citizens of Lusitania, his future was in the hands of other people. The difference between him and them was that Ender knew all the danger, all the possible consequences of every failure or mistake. Who was more cursed, the one who died, unknowing until the very moment of his death, or the one who watched his destruction as it approached, step by step, for days and weeks and years?

Ender left the fathertrees and walked on down the well-beaten path toward the human colony. Through the gate, through the door of the xenobiology lab. The pequenino who served as Ela’s most trusted assistant—named Deaf, though he was definitely not hard of hearing—led him at once to Novinha’s office, where Ela, Novinha, Quara, and Grego were already waiting. Ender held up the pouch containing the fragment of potato plant.

Ela shook her head; Novinha sighed. But they didn’t seem half as disappointed as Ender had expected. Clearly there was something else on their minds.

“I guess we expected that,” said Novinha.

“We still had to try,” said Ela.

“Why did we have to try?” demanded Grego. Novinha’s youngest son—and therefore Ender’s stepson—was in his mid-thirties now, a brilliant scientist in his own right; but he did seem to relish his role as devil’s advocate in all the family’s discussions, whether they dealt with xenobiology or the color to paint the walls. “All we’re doing by introducing these new strains is teaching the descolada how to get around every strategy we have for killing it. If we don’t wipe it out soon, it’ll wipe us out. And once the descolada is gone, we can grow regular old potatoes without any of this nonsense.”

“We can’t!” shouted Quara. Her vehemence surprised Ender. Quara was reluctant to speak out at the best of times; for her to speak so loudly now was out of character. “I tell you that the descolada is alive.”

“And I tell you that a virus is a virus,” said Grego.

It bothered Ender that Grego was calling for the extermination of the descolada—it wasn’t like him to so easily call for something that would destroy the pequeninos. Grego had practically grown up among the pequenino males—he knew them better, spoke their language better, than anyone.

“Children, be quiet and let me explain this to Andrew,” said Novinha. “We were discussing what to do if the potatoes failed, Ela and I, and she told me—no, you explain it, Ela.”

“It’s an easy enough concept. Instead of trying to grow plants that inhibit the growth of the descolada virus, we need to go after the virus itself.”

“Right,” said Grego.

“Shut up,” said Quara.

“As a kindness to us all, Grego, please do as your sister has so kindly asked,” said Novinha.

Ela sighed and went on. “We can’t just kill it because that would kill all the other native life on Lusitania. So what I propose is trying to develop a new strain of descolada that continues to act as the present virus acts in the reproductive cycles of all the Lusitanian life forms, but without the ability to adapt to new species.”

“You can eliminate that part of the virus?” asked Ender. “You can find it?”

“Not likely. But I think I can find all the parts of the virus that are active in the piggies and in all the other plant-animal pairs, keep those, and discard everything else. Then we’d add a rudimentary reproductive ability and set up some receptors so it’ll respond properly to the appropriate changes in the host bodies, put the whole thing in a little organelle, and there we have it—a substitute for the descolada so that the pequeninos and all the other native species are safe, while we can live without worry.”

“Then you’ll spray all the original descolada virus to wipe them out?” asked Ender. “What if there’s already a resistant strain?”

“No, we don’t spray them, because spraying wouldn’t wipe out the viruses that are already incorporated into the bodies of every Lusitanian creature. This is the really tricky part—”

“As if the rest were easy,” said Novinha, “making a new organelle out of nothing—”

“We can’t just inject these organelles into a few piggies or even into all of them, because we’d also have to inject them into every other native animal and tree and blade of grass.”

“Can’t be done,” said Ender.

“So we have to develop a mechanism to deliver the organelles universally, and at the same time destroy the old descolada viruses once and for all.”

“Xenocide,” said Quara.

“That’s the argument,” said Ela. “Quara says the descolada is sentient,”

Ender looked at his youngest stepdaughter. “A sentient molecule?”

“They have language, Andrew.”

“When did this happen?” asked Ender. He was trying to imagine how a genetic molecule—even one as long and complex as the descolada virus—could possibly speak.

“I’ve suspected it for a long time. I wasn’t going to say anything until I was sure, but—”

“Which means she isn’t sure,” said Grego triumphantly.

“But I’m almost sure now, and you can’t go destroying a whole species until we know.”

“How do they speak?” asked Ender.

“Not like us, of course,” said Quara. “They pass information back and forth to each other at a molecular level. I first noticed it as I was working on the question of how the new resistant strains of the descolada spread so quickly and replaced all the old viruses in such a short time. I couldn’t solve that problem because I was asking the wrong question. They don’t replace the old ones. They simply pass messages.”

“They throw darts,” said Grego.

“That was my own word for it,” said Quara. “I didn’t understand that it was speech.”

“Because it wasn’t speech,” said Grego.

“That was five years ago,” said Ender. “You said the darts they send out carry the needed genes and then all the viruses that receive the darts revise their own structure to include the new gene. That’s hardly language.”

“But that isn’t the only time they send darts,” said Quara. “Those messenger molecules are moving in and out all the time, and most of the time they aren’t incorporated into the body at all. They get read by several parts of the descolada and then they’re passed on to another one.”

“This is language?” asked Grego.

“Not yet,” said Quara. “But sometimes after a virus reads one of these darts, it makes a new dart and sends it out. Here’s the part that tells me it’s a language: The front part of the new dart always begins with a molecular sequence similar to the back tag of the dart that it’s answering. It holds the thread of the conversation together.”

“Conversation,” said Grego scornfully.

“Be quiet or die,” said Ela. Even after all these years, Ender realized, Ela’s voice still had the power to curb Grego’s snottiness—sometimes, at least.

“I’ve tracked some of these conversations for as many as a hundred statements and answers. Most of them die out much sooner than that. A few of them are incorporated into the main body of the virus. But here’s the most interesting thing—it’s completely voluntary. Sometimes one virus will pick up that dart and keep it, while most of the others don’t. Sometimes most of the viruses will keep a particular dart. But the area where they incorporate these message darts is exactly that area that has been hardest to map. It’s hardest to map because it isn’t part of their structure, it’s their memory, and individuals are all different from each other. They also tend to weed out a few memory fragments when they’ve taken on too many darts.”

“This is all fascinating,” said Grego, “but it isn’t science. There are plenty of explanations for these darts and the random bonding and shedding—”

“Not random!” said Quara.

“None of this is language,” said Grego.

Ender ignored the argument, because Jane was whispering in his ear through the jewel-like transceiver he wore there. She spoke to him more rarely now than in years past. He listened carefully, taking nothing for granted. “She’s on to something,” Jane said. “I’ve looked at her research and there’s something going on here that doesn’t happen with any other subcellular creature. I’ve run many different analyses on the data, and the more I simulate and test this particular behavior of the descolada, the less it looks like genetic coding and the more it looks like language. At the moment we can’t rule out the possibility that it is voluntary.”

When Ender turned his attention back to the argument, Grego was speaking. “Why do we have to turn everything we haven’t figured out yet into some kind of mystical experience?” Grego closed his eyes and intoned, “I have found new life! I have found new life!”

“Stop it!” shouted Quara.

“This is getting out of hand,” said Novinha. “Grego, try to keep this at the level of rational discussion.”

“It’s hard to, when the whole thing is so irrational. Ate agora quem já imaginou microbiologista que se torna namorada de uma molécula?” Who ever heard of a microbiologist getting a crush on a molecule?

“Enough!” said Novinha sharply. “Quara is as much a scientist as you are, and—”

“She was,” muttered Grego.

“And—if you’ll kindly shut up long enough to hear me out—she has a right to be heard.” Novinha was quite angry now, but, as usual, Grego seemed unimpressed. “You should know by now, Grego, that it’s often the ideas that sound most absurd and counterintuitive at first that later cause fundamental shifts in the way we see the world.”

“Do you really think this is one of those basic discoveries?” asked Grego, looking them in the eye, each in turn. “A talking virus? Se Quara sabe tanto, porque ela nao diz o que é que aqueles bichos dizem?” If she knows so much about it, why doesn’t she tell us what these little beasts are saying? It was a sign that the discussion was getting out of hand, that he broke into Portuguese instead of speaking in Stark, the language of science—and diplomacy.

“Does it matter?” asked Ender.

“Matter!” said Quara.

Ela looked at Ender with consternation. “It’s only the difference between curing a dangerous disease and destroying an entire sentient species. I think it matters.”

“I meant,” said Ender patiently, “does it matter whether we know what they’re saying.”

“No,” said Quara. “We’ll probably never understand their language, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re sentient. What do viruses and human beings have to say to each other, anyway?”

“How about, ‘Please stop trying to kill us’?” said Grego. “If you can figure out how to say that in virus language, then this might be useful.”

“But Grego,” said Quara, with mock sweetness, “do we say that to them, or do they say that to us?”

“We don’t have to decide today,” said Ender. “We can afford to wait awhile.”

“How do you know?” said Grego. “How do you know that tomorrow afternoon we won’t all wake up itching and hurting and puking and burning up with fever and finally dying because overnight the descolada virus figured out how to wipe us out once and for all? It’s us or them.”

“I think Grego just showed us why we have to wait,” said Ender. “Did you hear how he talked about the descolada? It figures out how to wipe us out. Even he thinks the descolada has a will and makes decisions.”

“That’s just a figure of speech,” said Grego.

“We’ve all been talking that way,” said Ender. “And thinking that way, too. Because we all feel it—that we’re at war with the descolada. That it’s more than just fighting off a disease—it’s like we have an intelligent, resourceful enemy who keeps countering all our moves. In all the history of medical research, no one has ever fought a disease that had so many ways to defeat the strategies used against it.”

“Only because nobody’s been fighting a germ with such an oversized and complex genetic molecule,” said Grego.

“Exactly,” said Ender. “This is a one-of-a-kind virus, and so it may have abilities we’ve never imagined in any species less structurally complex than a vertebrate.”

For a moment Ender’s words hung in the air, answered by silence; for a moment, Ender imagined that he might have served a useful function in this meeting after all, that as a mere talker he might have won some kind of agreement.

Grego soon disabused him of this idea. “Even if Quara’s right, even if she’s dead on and the descolada viruses all have doctorates of philosophy and keep publishing dissertations on screwing-up-humans-till-they’re-dead, what then? Do we all roll over and play dead because the virus that’s trying to kill us all is so damn smart?”

Novinha answered calmly. “I think Quara needs to continue with her research—and we need to give her more resources to do it—while Ela continues with hers.”

It was Quara who objected this time. “Why should I bother trying to understand them if the rest of you are still working on ways to kill them?”

“That’s a good question, Quara,” said Novinha. “On the other hand, why should you bother trying to understand them if they suddenly figure out a way to get past all our chemical barriers and kill us all?”

“Us or them,” muttered Grego.

Novinha had made a good decision, Ender knew—keep both lines of research open, and decide later when they knew more. In the meantime, Quara and Grego were both missing the point, both assuming that everything hinged on whether or not the descolada was sentient. “Even if they’re sentient,” said Ender, “that doesn’t mean they’re sacrosanct. It all depends whether they’re raman or varelse. If they’re raman—if we can understand them and they can understand us well enough to work out a way of living together—then fine. We’ll be safe, they’ll be safe.”

“The great peacemaker plans to sign a treaty with a molecule?” asked Grego.

Ender ignored his mocking tone. “On the other hand, if they’re trying to destroy us, and we can’t find a way to communicate with them, then they’re varelse—sentient aliens, but implacably hostile and dangerous. Varelse are aliens we can’t live with. Varelse are aliens with whom we are naturally and permanently engaged in a war to the death, and at that time our only moral choice is to do all that’s necessary to win.”

“Right,” said Grego.

Despite her brother’s triumphant tone, Quara had listened to Ender’s words, weighed them, and now gave a tentative nod. “As long as we don’t start from the assumption that they’re varelse,” said Quara.

“And even then, maybe there’s a middle way,” said Ender. “Maybe Ela can find a way to replace all the descolada viruses without destroying this memory-and-language thing.”

“No!” said Quara, once again fervent. “You can’t—you don’t even have the right to leave them their memories and take away their ability to adapt. That would be like them giving all of us frontal lobotomies. If it’s war, then it’s war. Kill them, but don’t leave them their memories while stealing their will.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Ela. “It can’t be done. As it is, I think I’ve set myself an impossible task. Operating on the descolada isn’t easy. Not like examining and operating on an animal. How do I anesthetize the molecule so that it doesn’t heal itself while I’m halfway through the amputation? Maybe the descolada isn’t much on physics, but it’s a hell of a lot better than I am at molecular surgery.”

“So far,” said Ender.

“So far we don’t know anything,” said Grego. “Except that the descolada is trying as hard as it can to kill us all, while we’re still trying to figure out whether we ought to fight back. I’ll sit tight for a while longer, but not forever.”

“What about the piggies?” asked Quara. “Don’t they have a right to vote on whether we transform the molecule that not only allows them to reproduce, but probably created them as a sentient species in the first place?”

“This thing is trying to kill us,” said Ender. “As long as the solution Ela comes up with can wipe out the virus without interfering with the reproductive cycle of the piggies, then I don’t think they have any right to object.”

“Maybe they’d feel different about that.”

“Then maybe they’d better not find out what we’re doing,” said Grego.

“We don’t tell people—human or pequenino—about the research we’re doing here,” said Novinha sharply. “It could cause terrible misunderstandings that could lead to violence and death.”

“So we humans are the judges of all other creatures,” said Quara.

“No, Quara. We scientists are gathering information,” said Novinha. “Until we’ve gathered enough, nobody can judge anything. So the secrecy rule goes for everybody here. Quara and Grego both. You tell no one until I say so, and I won’t say so until we know more.”

“Until you say so,” asked Grego impudently, “or until the Speaker for the Dead says so?”

“I’m the head xenobiologist,” said Novinha. “The decision on when we know enough is mine alone. Is that understood?”

She waited for everyone there to assent. They all did.

Novinha stood up. The meeting was over. Quara and Grego left almost immediately; Novinha gave Ender a kiss on the cheek and then ushered him and Ela out of her office.

Ender lingered in the lab to talk to Ela. “Is there a way to spread your replacement virus throughout the entire population of every native species on Lusitania?”

“I don’t know,” said Ela. “That’s less of a problem than how to get it to every cell of an individual organism fast enough that the descolada can’t adapt or escape. I’ll have to create some kind of carrier virus, and I’ll probably have to model it partly on the descolada itself—the descolada is the only parasite I’ve seen that invades a host as quickly and thoroughly as I need the carrier virus to do it. Ironic—I’ll learn how to replace the descolada by stealing techniques from the virus itself.”

“It’s not ironic,” said Ender, “it’s the way the world works. Someone once told me that the only teacher who’s worth anything to you is your enemy.”

“Then Quara and Grego must be giving each other advanced degrees,” said Ela.

“Their argument is healthy,” said Ender. “It forces us to weigh every aspect of what we’re doing.”

“It’ll stop being healthy if one of them decides to bring it up outside the family,” said Ela.

“This family doesn’t tell its business to strangers,” said Ender. “I of all people should know that.”

“On the contrary, Ender. You of all people should know how eager we are to talk to a stranger—when we think our need is great enough to justify it.”

Ender had to admit that she was right. Getting Quara and Grego, Miro and Quim and Olhado to trust him enough to speak to him, that had been hard when Ender first came to Lusitania. But Ela had spoken to him from the start, and so had all of Novinha’s other children. So, in the end, had Novinha herself. The family was intensely loyal, but they were also strong-willed and opinionated and there wasn’t a one of them who didn’t trust his own judgment above anyone else’s. Grego or Quara, either one of them, might well decide that telling somebody else was in the best interests of Lusitania or humanity or science, and there would go the rule of secrecy. Just the way the rule of noninterference with the piggies had been broken before Ender ever got here.

How nice, thought Ender. One more possible source of disaster that is completely out of my power to control.

Leaving the lab, Ender wished, as he had many times before, that Valentine were here. She was the one who was good at sorting out ethical dilemmas. She’d be here soon—but soon enough? Ender understood and mostly agreed with the viewpoints put forward by Quara and Grego both. What stung most was the need for such secrecy that Ender couldn’t even speak to the pequeninos, not even Human himself, about a decision that would affect them as much as it would affect any colonist from Earth. And yet Novinha was right. To bring the matter out into the open now, before they even knew what was possible—that would lead to confusion at best, anarchy and bloodshed at worst. The pequeninos were peaceful now—but the species’ history was bloody with war.

As Ender emerged from the gate, heading back toward the experimental fields, he saw Quara standing beside the fathertree Human, sticks in her hand, engaged in conversation. She hadn’t actually beat on his trunk, or Ender would have heard it. So she must want privacy. That was all right. Ender would take a longer way around, so he wouldn’t come close enough to overhear.

But when she saw Ender looking her way, Quara immediately ended her conversation with Human and took off at a brisk walk down the path toward the gate. Of course this led her right by Ender.

“Telling secrets?” asked Ender. He had meant his remark as mere banter. Only when the words came out of his mouth and Quara got such a furtive look on her face did Ender realize exactly what secret it might have been that Quara had been telling. And her words confirmed his suspicion.

“Mother’s idea of fairness isn’t always mine,” said Quara. “Neither is yours, for that matter.”

He had known she might do this, but it never occurred to him she would do it so quickly after promising not to. “But is fairness always the most important consideration?” asked Ender.

“It is to me,” said Quara.

She tried to turn away and go on through the gate, but Ender caught her arm.

“Let go of me.”

“Telling Human is one thing,” said Ender. “He’s very wise. But don’t tell anybody else. Some of the pequeninos, some of the males, they can be pretty aggressive if they think they have reason.”

“They’re not just males,” said Quara. “They call themselves husbands. Maybe we should call them men.” She smiled at Ender in triumph. “You’re not half so open-minded as you like to think.” Then she brushed past him and went on through the gate into Milagre.

Ender walked up to Human and stood before him. “What did she tell you, Human? Did she tell you that I’ll die before I let anyone wipe out the descolada, if doing so would hurt you and your people?”

Of course Human had no immediate answer for him, for Ender had no intention of starting to beat on his trunk with the talking sticks used to produce Father Tongue; if he did, the pequenino males would hear and come running. There was no private speech between pequeninos and fathertrees. If a fathertree wanted privacy, he could always talk silently with the other fathertrees—they spoke to each other mind to mind, the way the hive queen spoke to the buggers that served as her eyes and ears and hands and feet. If only I were part of that communications network, thought Ender. Instantaneous speech consisting of pure thought, projected anywhere in the universe.

Still, he had to say something to help counteract the sort of thing he knew Quara would have said. “Human, we’re doing all we can to save human beings and pequeninos, both. We’ll even try to save the descolada virus, if we can. Ela and Novinha are very good at what they do. So are Grego and Quara, for that matter. But for now, please trust us and say nothing to anyone else. Please. If humans and pequeninos come to understand the danger we’re in before we’re ready to take steps to contain it, the results would be violent and terrible.”

There was nothing else to say. Ender went back to the experimental fields. Before nightfall, he and Planter completed the measurements, then burned and flashed the entire field. No large molecules survived inside the disruption barrier. They had done all they could to ensure that whatever the descolada might have learned from this field was forgotten.

What they could never do was get rid of the viruses they carried within their own cells, human and pequenino alike. What if Quara was right? What if the descolada inside the barrier, before it died, managed to “tell” the viruses that Planter and Ender carried inside them about what had been learned from this new strain of potato? About the defenses that Ela and Novinha had tried to build into it? About the ways this virus had found to defeat their tactics?

If the descolada were truly intelligent, with a language to spread information and pass behaviors from one individual to many others, then how could Ender—how could any of them—hope to be victorious in the end? In the long run, it might well be that the descolada was the most adaptable species, the one most capable of subduing worlds and eliminating rivals, stronger than humans or piggies or buggers or any other living creatures on any settled worlds. That was the thought that Ender took to bed with him that night, the thought that preoccupied him even as he made love with Novinha, so that she felt the need to comfort him as if he, not she, were the one burdened with the cares of a world. He tried to apologize but soon realized the futility of it. Why add to her worries by telling of his own?

Human listened to Ender’s words, but he couldn’t agree with what Ender asked of him. Silence? Not when the humans were creating new viruses that might well transform the life cycle of the pequeninos. Oh, Human wouldn’t tell the immature males and females. But he could—and would—tell all the other fathertrees throughout Lusitania. They had a right to know what was going on, and then decide together what, if anything, to do.

Before nightfall, every fathertree in every wood knew all that Human knew: of the human plans, and of his estimation of how much they could be trusted. Most agreed with him—we’ll let the human beings proceed for now. But in the meantime we’ll watch carefully, and prepare for a time that might come, even though we hope it won’t, when humans and pequeninos go to war against each other. We cannot fight and hope to win—but maybe, before they slaughter us, we can find a way for some of us to flee.

So, before dawn, they had made plans and arrangements with the hive queen, the only nonhuman source of high technology on Lusitania. By the next nightfall, the work of building a starship to leave Lusitania had already begun.

7

SECRET MAID

<Is it true that in the old days, when you sent out your starships to settle many worlds, you could always talk to each other as if you stood in the same forest?>

<We assume that it will be the same for you. When the new fathertrees have grown, they’ll be present with you. The philotic connections are unaffected by distance.>

<But will we be connected? We’ll be sending no trees on the voyage. Only brothers, a few wives, and a hundred little mothers to give birth to new generations. The voyage will last decades at least. As soon as they arrive, the best of the brothers will be sent on to the third life, but it will take at least a year before the first of the fathertrees grows old enough to sire young ones. How will the first father on that new world know how to speak to us? How can we greet him, when we don’t know where he is?>

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 so 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.

So she answered—but with a question. “Why should I wipe my face?”

“Doesn’t it tickle? The sweat, dripping down? Doesn’t it get in your eyes and sting?”

Qing-jao lowered her face to her work for a few moments, and this time deliberately noticed how it felt. It did tickle, and the sweat in her eyes did sting. In fact it was quite uncomfortable and annoying. Carefully, Qing-jao unbent herself to stand straight—and now she noticed the pain of it, the way her back protested against the change of posture. “Yes,” she said to the girl. “It tickles and stings.”

“Then wipe it,” the girl said. “With your sleeve.”

Qing-jao looked at her sleeve. It was already soaked with the sweat of her arms. “Does wiping help?” she asked.

Now it was the girl’s turn to discover something she hadn’t thought about. For a moment she looked thoughtful; then she wiped her forehead with her sleeve.

She grinned. “No, holy one. It doesn’t help a bit.”

Qing-jao nodded gravely and bent down again to her work. Only now the tickling of the sweat, the stinging of her eyes, the pain in her back, it all bothered her very much. Her discomfort took her mind off her thoughts, instead of the other way around. This girl, whoever she was, had just added to her misery by pointing it out—and yet, ironically, by making Qing-jao aware of the misery of her body, she had freed her from the hammering of the questions in her mind.

Qing-jao began to laugh.

“Are you laughing at me, holy one?” asked the girl.

“I’m thanking you in my own way,” said Qing-jao. “You’ve lifted a great burden from my heart, even if only for a moment.”

“You’re laughing at me for telling you to wipe your forehead even though it doesn’t help.”

“I say that is not why I’m laughing,” said Qing-jao. She stood again and looked the girl in the eye. “I don’t lie.”

The girl looked abashed—but not half so much as she should have. When the godspoken used the tone of voice Qing-jao had just used, others immediately bowed and showed respect. But this girl only listened, sized up Qing-jao’s words, and then nodded.

There was only one conclusion Qing-jao could reach. “Are you also godspoken?” she asked.

The girl’s eyes went wide. “Me?” she said. “My parents are both very low people. My father spreads manure in the fields and my mother washes up in a restaurant.”

Of course that was no answer at all. Though the gods most often chose the children of the godspoken, they had been known to speak to some whose parents had never heard the voice of the gods. Yet it was a common belief that if your parents were of very low status, the gods would have no interest in you, and in fact it was very rare for the gods to speak to those whose parents were not well educated.

“What’s your name?” asked Qing-jao.

“Si Wang-mu,” said the girl.

Qing-jao gasped and covered her mouth, to forbid herself from laughing. But Wang-mu did not look angry—she only grimaced and looked impatient.

“I’m sorry,” said Qing-jao, when she could speak. “But that is the name of—”

“The Royal Mother of the West,” said Wang-mu. “Can I help it that my parents chose such a name for me?”

“It’s a noble name,” said Qing-jao. “My ancestor-of-the-heart was a great woman, but she was only mortal, a poet. Yours is one of the oldest of the gods.”

“What good is that?” asked Wang-mu. “My parents were too presumptuous, naming me for such a distinguished god. That’s why the gods will never speak to me.”

It made Qing-jao sad, to hear Wang-mu speak with such bitterness. If only she knew how eagerly Qing-jao would trade places with her. To be free of the voice of the gods! Never to have to bow to the floor and trace the grain of the wood, never to wash her hands except when they got dirty …

Yet Qing-jao couldn’t explain this to the girl. How could she understand? To Wang-mu, the godspoken were the privileged elite, infinitely wise and unapproachable. It would sound like a lie if Qing-jao explained that the burdens of the godspoken were far greater than the rewards.

Except that to Wang-mu, the godspoken had not been unapproachable—she had spoken to Qing-jao, hadn’t she? So Qing-jao decided to say what was in her heart after all. “Si Wang-mu, I would gladly live the rest of my life blind, if only I could be free of the voice of the gods.”

Wang-mu’s mouth opened in shock, her eyes widened.

It had been a mistake to speak. Qing-jao regretted it at once. “I was joking,” said Qing-jao.

“No,” said Wang-mu. “Now you’re lying. Then you were telling the truth.” She came closer, slogging carelessly through the paddy, trampling rice plants as she came. “All my life I’ve seen the godspoken borne to the temple in their sedan chairs, wearing their bright silks, all people bowing to them, every computer open to them. When they speak their language is music. Who wouldn’t want to be such a one?”

Qing-jao could not answer openly, could not say: Every day the gods humiliate me and make me do stupid, meaningless tasks to purify myself, and the next day it starts again. “You won’t believe me, Wang-mu, but this life, out here in the fields, this is better.”

“No!” cried Wang-mu. “You have been taught everything. You know all that there is to know! You can speak many languages, you can read every kind of word, you can think of thoughts that are as far above mine as my thoughts are above the thoughts of a snail.”

“You speak very clearly and well,” said Qing-jao. “You must have been to school.”

“School!” said Wang-mu scornfully. “What do they care about school for children like me? We learned to read, but only enough to read prayers and street signs. We learned our numbers, but only enough to do the shopping. We memorized sayings of the wise, but only the ones that taught us to be content with our place in life and obey those who are wiser than we are.”

Qing-jao hadn’t known that schools could be like that. She thought that children in school learned the same things that she had learned from her tutors. But she saw at once that Si Wang-mu must be telling the truth—one teacher with thirty students couldn’t possibly teach all the things that Qing-jao had learned as one student with many teachers.

“My parents are very low,” said Wang-mu. “Why should they waste time teaching me more than a servant needs to know? Because that’s my highest hope in life, to be washed very clean and become a servant in a rich man’s house They were very careful to teach me how to clean a floor.”

Qing-jao thought of the hours she had spent on the floors of her house, tracing woodgrains from wall to wall. It had neer once occurred to her how much work it was for the servants to keep the floors so clean and polished that Qing-jao’s gowns never got visibly dirty, despite all her crawling.

“I know something about floors,” said Qing-jao.

“You know something about everything,” said Wang-mu bitterly. “So don’t tell me how hard it is to be godspoken. The gods have never given a thought to me, and I tell you that is worse!”

“Why weren’t you afraid to speak to me?” asked Qing-jao.

“I decided not to be afraid of anything,” said Wang-mu. “What could you do to me that’s worse than my life will already be anyway?”

I could make you wash your hands until they bleed every day of your life.

But then something turned around in Qing-jao’s mind, and she saw that this girl might not think that was worse. Perhaps Wang-mu would gladly wash her hands until there was nothing left but a bloody fringe of tattered skin on the stumps of her wrists, if only she could learn all that Qing-jao knew. Qing-jao had felt so oppressed by the impossibility of the task her father had set for her, yet it was a task that, succeed or fail, would change history. Wang-mu would live her whole life and never be set a single task that would not need to be done again the next day; all of Wang-mu’s life would be spent doing work that would only be noticed or spoken of if she did it badly. Wasn’t the work of a servant almost as fruitless, in the end, as the rituals of purification?

“The life of a servant must be hard,” said Qing-jao. “I’m glad for your sake that you haven’t been hired out yet.”

“My parents are waiting in the hope that I’ll be pretty when I become a woman. Then they’ll get a better hiring bonus for putting me out for service. Perhaps a rich man’s bodyservant will want me for his wife; perhaps a rich lady will want me for her secret maid.”

“You’re already pretty,” said Qing-jao.

Wang-mu shrugged. “My friend Fan-liu is in service, and she says that the ugly ones work harder, but the men of the house leave them alone. Ugly ones are free to think their own thoughts. They don’t keep having to say pretty things to their ladies.”

Qing-jao thought of the servants in her father’s house. She knew her father would never bother any of the serving women. And nobody had to say pretty things to her. “It’s different in my house,” she said.

“But I don’t serve in your house,” said Wang-mu.

Now, suddenly, the whole picture became clear. Wang-mu had not spoken to her by impulse. Wang-mu had spoken to her in hopes of being offered a place as a servant in the house of a godspoken lady. For all she knew, the gossip in town was all about the young godspoken lady Han Qing-jao who was through with her tutors and had embarked on her first adult task—and how she still had neither a husband nor a secret maid. Si Wang-mu had probably wangled her way onto the same righteous labor crew as Qing-jao in order to have exactly this conversation.

For a moment Qing-jao was angry. Then she thought: Why shouldn’t Wang-mu do exactly as she has done? The worst that could happen to her is that I’d guess what she was doing, become angry, and not hire her. Then she’d be no worse off than before. And if I didn’t guess what she was doing, and so started to like her and hired her, she’d be secret maid to a godspoken lady. If I were in her place, wouldn’t I do the same?

“Do you think you can fool me?” asked Qing-jao. “Do you think I don’t know that you want me to hire you for my servant?”

Wang-mu looked flustered, angry, afraid. Wisely, though, she said nothing.

“Why don’t you answer me with anger?” asked Qing-jao. “Why don’t you deny that you spoke to me only so I’d hire you?”

“Because it’s true,” said Wang-mu. “I’ll leave you alone now.”

That was what Qing-jao hoped to hear——an honest answer. She had no intention of letting Wang-mu go. “How much of what you told me is true? About wanting a good education? Wanting to do something better in your life than serving work?”

“All of it,” Wang-mu said, and there was passion in her voice. “But what is that to you? You bear the terrible burden of the voice of the gods.”

Wang-mu spoke her last sentence with such contemptuous sarcasm that Qing-jao almost laughed aloud; but she contained her laughter. There was no reason to make Wang-mu any angrier than she already was. “Si Wang-mu, daughter-of-the-heart to the Royal Mother of the West, I will hire you as my secret maid, but only if you agree to the following conditions. First, you will let me be your teacher, and study all the lessons I assign to you. Second, you will always speak to me as an equal and never bow to me or call me ‘holy one.’ And third—”

“How could I do that?” said Wang-mu. “If I don’t treat you with respect others will say I’m unworthy. They’d punish me when you weren’t looking. It would disgrace us both.”

“Of course you’ll use respect when others can see us,” said Qing-jao. “But when we’re alone, just you and me, we’ll treat each other as equals or I’ll send you away.”

“The third condition?”

“You’ll never tell another soul a single word I say to you.”

Wang-mu’s face showed her anger plainly. “A secret maid never tells. Barriers are placed in our minds.”

“The barriers help you remember not to tell,” said Qing-jao. “But if you want to tell, you can get around them. And there are those who will try to persuade you to tell.” Qing-jao thought of her father’s career, of all the secrets of Congress that he held in his head. He told no one; he had no one he could speak to except, sometimes, Qing-jao. If Wang-mu turned out to be trustworthy, Qing-jao would have someone. She would never be as lonely as her father was. “Don’t you understand me?” Qing-jao asked. “Others will think I’m hiring you as a secret maid. But you and I will know that you’re really coming to be my student, and I’m really bringing you to be my friend.”

Wang-mu looked at her in wonder. “Why would you do this, when the gods have already told you how I bribed the foreman to let me be on your crew and not to interrupt us while I talked to you?”

The gods had told her no such thing, of course, but Qing-jao only smiled. “Why doesn’t it occur to you that maybe the gods want us to be friends?”

Abashed, Wang-mu clasped her hands together and laughed nervously; Qing-jao took the girl’s hands in hers and found that Wang-mu was trembling. So she wasn’t as bold as she seemed.

Wang-mu looked down at their hands, and Qing-jao followed her gaze. They were covered with dirt and muck, dried on now because they had been standing so long, their hands out of the water. “We’re so dirty,” said Wang-mu.

Qing-jao had long since learned to disregard the dirtiness of righteous labor, for which no penance was required. “My hands have been much filthier than this,” said Qing-jao. “Come with me when our righteous labor is finished. I will tell our plan to my father, and he will decide if you can be my secret maid.”

Wang-mu’s expression soured. Qing-jao was glad that her face was so easy to read. “What’s wrong?” said Qing-jao.

“Fathers always decide everything,” said Wang-mu.

Qing-jao nodded, wondering why Wang-mu would bother to say something so obvious. “That’s the beginning of wisdom,” said Qing-jao. “Besides, my mother is dead.”

Righteous labor always ended early in the afternoon. Officially this was to give people who lived far from the fields time to return to their homes. Actually, though, it was in recognition of the custom of making a party at the end of righteous labor. Because they had worked right through the afternoon nap, many people felt giddy after righteous labor, as if they had stayed up all night. Others felt sluggish and surly. Either one was an excuse for drinking and dining with friends and then collapsing into bed hours early to make up for the lost sleep and the hard labor of the day.

Qing-jao was of the kind who felt out of sorts; Wang-mu was obviously of the giddy kind. Or perhaps it was simply the fact that the Lusitania Fleet weighed heavily on Qing-jao’s mind, while Wang-mu had just been accepted as secret maid by a godspoken girl. Qing-jao led Wang-mu through the process of applying for employment with the House of Han—washing, fingerprinting, the security check—until she finally despaired of listening to Wang-mu’s bubbling voice another moment and withdrew.

As she walked up the stairs to her room, Qing-jao could hear Wang-mu asking fearfully, “Have I made my new mistress angry?” And Ju Kung-mei, the guardian of the house, answered, “The godspoken answer to other voices than yours, little one.” It was a kind answer. Qing-jao often admired the gentleness and wisdom of those her father had hired into his house. She wondered if she had chosen as wisely in her first hiring.

No sooner did she think of this worry than she knew she had been wicked to make such a decision so quickly, and without consulting with her father beforehand. Wang-mu would be found to be hopelessly unsuitable, and Father would rebuke her for having acted foolishly.

Imagining Father’s rebuke was enough to bring the immediate reproof of the gods. Qing-jao felt unclean. She rushed to her room and closed the door. It was bitterly ironic that she could think over and over again how hateful it was to perform the rituals the gods demanded, how empty their worship was—but let her think a disloyal thought about Father or Starways Congress, and she had to do penance at once.

Usually she would spend a half hour, an hour, perhaps longer, resisting the need for penance, enduring her own filthiness. Today, though, she hungered for the ritual of purification. In its own way, the ritual made sense, it had a structure, a beginning and end, rules to follow. Not at all like the problem of the Lusitania Fleet.

On her knees, she deliberately chose the narrowest, faintest grain in the palest board she could see. This would be a hard penance; perhaps then the gods would judge her clean enough that they could show her the solution to the problem Father had set for her. It took her half an hour to make her way across the room, for she kept losing the grain and had to start over each time.

At the end, exhausted from righteous labor and eyesore from line-tracing, she wanted desperately to sleep; instead, she sat on the floor before her terminal and called up the summary of her work so far. After examining and eliminating all the useless absurdities that had cropped up during the investigation, Qing-jao had come up with three broad categories of possibility. First, that the disappearance was caused by some natural event that, at lightspeed, had simply not become visible yet to the watching astronomers. Second, that the loss of ansible communications was the result of either sabotage or a command decision in the fleet. Third, that the loss of ansible communications was caused by some planetside conspiracy.

The first category was virtually eliminated by the way the fleet was traveling. The starships were simply not close enough together for any known natural phenomenon to destroy them all at once. The fleet had not rendezvoused before setting out—the ansible made such things a waste of time. Instead, all the ships were moving toward Lusitania from wherever they happened to be when they were assigned to the fleet. Even now, with only a year or so of travel left before all were in orbit around Lusitania’s star, they were so far apart that no conceivable natural event could possibly have affected them all at once.

The second category was made almost as unlikely by the fact that the entire fleet had disappeared, without exception. Could any human plan possibly work with such perfect efficiency—and without leaving any evidence of advance planning in any of the databases or personality profiles or communications logs that were maintained in planetside computers? Nor was there the slightest evidence that anyone had altered or hidden any data, or masked any communications to avoid leaving behind a trail of evidence. If it was a fleetside plan, there was neither evidence nor concealment nor error.

The same lack of evidence made the idea of a planetside conspiracy even more unlikely. And making all these possibilities still less possible was the sheer simultaneity of it. As near as anyone could determine, every single ship had broken off ansible communications at almost exactly the same time. There might have been a time lag of seconds, perhaps even minutes—but never as long as five minutes, never a gap long enough for someone on one ship to remark about the disappearance of another.

The summary was elegant in its simplicity. There was nothing left. The evidence was as complete as it would ever be, and it made every conceivable explanation inconceivable.

Why would Father do this to me? she wondered, not for the first time.

Immediately—as usual—she felt unclean even for asking such a question, for doubting her father’s perfect correctness in all his decisions. She needed to wash, just a little, to take away the impurity of her doubt.

But she didn’t wash. Instead she let the voice of the gods swell inside her, let their command grow more urgent. This time she wasn’t resisting out of a righteous desire to grow more disciplined. This time she was deliberately trying to attract as much attention as possible from the gods. Only when she was panting with the need to cleanse herself, only when she shuddered at the most casual touch of her own flesh—a hand brushing a knee—only then did she voice her question.

“You did it, didn’t you?” she said to the gods. “What no human being could have done, you must have done. You reached out and cut off the Lusitania Fleet.”

The answer came, not in words, but in the ever-increasing need for purification.

“But Congress and the admiralty are not of the Way. They can’t imagine the golden door into the City of the Jade Mountain in the West. If Father says to them, ‘The gods stole your fleet to punish you for wickedness,’ they’ll only despise him. If they despise him, our greatest living statesman, they’ll despise us as well. And if Path is shamed because of Father, it will destroy him. Is that why you did this thing?”

She began to weep. “I won’t let you destroy my father. I’ll find another way. I’ll find an answer that will satisfy them. I defy you!”

No sooner had she said the words than the gods sent her the most overpowering sense of her own abominable filthiness she had ever felt. It was so strong it took her breath away, and she fell forward, clutching at her terminal. She tried to speak, to plead for forgiveness, but she gagged instead, swallowed hard to keep from retching. She felt as though her hands were spreading slime on everything she touched; as she struggled to her feet, her gown clung across her flesh as if it were covered with thick black grease.

But she did not wash. Nor did she fall to the ground and trace lines in the wood. Instead she staggered to the door, meaning to go downstairs to her father’s room.

The doorway caught her, though. Not physically—the door swung open easily as ever—but still she could not pass. She had heard of such things, how the gods captured their disobedient servants in doorways, but it had never happened to her before. She couldn’t understand how she was being held. Her body was free to move. There was no barrier. But she felt such a sickening dread at the thought of walking through that she knew she couldn’t do it, knew that the gods required some sort of penance, some sort of purification or they’d never let her leave the room. Not woodgrain-tracing, not handwashing. What did the gods require?

Then, all at once, she knew why the gods wouldn’t let her pass through the door. It was the oath that Father had required of her for her mother’s sake. The oath that she would always serve the gods, no matter what. And here she had been on the verge of defiance. Mother, forgive me! I will not defy the gods. But still I must go to Father and explain to him the terrible predicament in which the gods have placed us. Mother, help me pass through this door!

As if in answer to her plea, it came to her how she might pass through the door. All she needed to do was fix her gaze on a point in the air just outside the upper-right corner of the door, and while never letting her gaze move from that spot, step backward through the door with her right foot, place her left hand through, then pivot leftward, bringing her left leg backward through the doorway, then her right arm forward. It was complicated and difficult, like a dance, but by moving very slowly and carefully, she did it.

The door released her. And though she still felt the pressure of her own filthiness, some of the intensity had faded. It was bearable. She could breathe without gasping, speak without gagging.

She went downstairs and rang the little bell outside her father’s door.

“Is it my daughter, my Gloriously Bright?” asked Father.

“Yes, noble one,” said Qing-jao.

“I’m ready to receive you.”

She opened Father’s door and stepped through—no ritual was needed this time. She strode at once to where he sat on a chair before his terminal and knelt before him on the floor.

“I have examined your Si Wang-mu,” said Father, “and I believe your first hiring has been a worthy one.”

It took a moment for Father’s words to make sense. Si Wang-mu? Why did Father speak to her of an ancient god? She looked up in surprise, then looked where Father was looking—at a serving girl in a clean gray gown, kneeling demurely, looking at the floor. It took a moment to remember the girl from the rice paddy, to remember that she was to be Qing-jao’s secret maid. How could she have forgotten? It was only a few hours ago that Qing-jao left her. Yet in that time Qing-jao had battled with the gods, and if she hadn’t won, at least she had not yet lost. What was the hiring of a servant compared to a struggle with the gods?

“Wang-mu is impertinent and ambitious,” said Father, “but she is also honest and far more intelligent than I would have expected. I assume from her bright mind and sharp ambition that you both intend for her to be your student as well as your secret maid.”

Wang-mu gasped, and when Qing-jao glanced over at her, she saw how horrified the girl looked. Oh, yes—she must think that I think that she told Father of our secret plan. “Don’t worry, Wang-mu,” said Qing-jao. “Father almost always guesses secrets. I know you didn’t tell.”

“I wish more secrets were as easy as this one,” said Father. “My daughter, I commend you for your worthy generosity. The gods will honor you for it, as I do also.”

The words of praise came like unguent to a stinging wound. Perhaps this was why her rebelliousness had not destroyed her, why some god had taken mercy on her and shown her how to get through the door of her room just now. Because she had judged Wang-mu with mercy and wisdom, forgiving the girl’s impertinence, Qing-jao herself was being forgiven, at least a little, for her own outrageous daring.

Wang-mu does not repent of her ambition, thought Qing-jao. Neither will I repent of my decision. I must not let Father be destroyed because I can’t find—or invent—a non-divine explanation for the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet. And yet, how can I defy the purposes of the gods? They have hidden or destroyed the fleet. And the works of the gods must be recognized by their obedient servants, even if they must remain hidden from unbelievers on other worlds.

“Father,” said Qing-jao, “I must speak to you about my task.”

Father misunderstood her hesitation. “We can speak in front of Wang-mu. She’s been hired now as your secret maid. The hiring bonus has been sent to her father, the first barriers of secrecy have been suggested to her mind. We can trust her to hear us and never tell.”

“Yes, Father,” said Qing-jao. In truth she had again forgotten that Wang-mu was even there. “Father, I know who has hidden the Lusitania Fleet. But you must promise me that you will never tell it to Starways Congress.”

Father, who was usually placid, looked mildly distressed. “I can’t promise such a thing,” he said. “It would be unworthy of me to be such a disloyal servant.”

What could she do, then? How could she speak? And yet how could she keep from speaking? “Who is your master?” she cried. “Congress or the gods?”

“First the gods,” said Father. “They are always first.”

“Then I must tell you that I have discovered that the gods are the ones who have hidden the fleet from us, Father. But if you tell this to the Congress, they’ll mock you and you’ll be ruined.” Then another thought occurred to her. “If it was the gods who stopped the fleet, Father, then the fleet must have been against the will of the gods after all. And if Starways Congress sent the fleet against the will of—”

Father held up his hand for her to be silent. She immediately stopped speaking and bowed her head. She waited.

“Of course it’s the gods,” said Father.

His words came as both a relief and a humiliation. Of course, he had said. Had he known this all along?

“The gods do all things that are done in the universe. But don’t assume that you know why. You say they must have stopped the fleet because they oppose its mission. But I say that Congress couldn’t have sent the fleet in the first place if the gods hadn’t willed it. So why couldn’t it be that the gods stopped the fleet because its mission was so great and noble that humanity was not worthy of it? Or what if they hid the fleet because it would provide a difficult test for you? One thing is certain: The gods have permitted Starways Congress to hold sway over most of humanity. As long as they have the mandate of heaven, we of Path will follow their edicts without opposition.”

“I didn’t mean to oppose …” She could not finish such an obvious falsehood.

Father understood perfectly, of course. “I hear how your voice fades and your words trail off into nothing. This is because you know your words are not true. You meant to oppose Starways Congress, in spite of all I have taught you.” Then his voice grew gentler. “For my sake you meant to do it.”

“You’re my ancestor. I owe you a higher duty than I owe them.”

“I’m your father. I won’t become your ancestor until I’m dead.”

“For Mother’s sake, then. If they ever lose the mandate of heaven, then I will be their most terrible enemy, for I will serve the gods.” Yet even as she said this, she knew her words were a dangerous half-truth. Until only a few moments ago—until she had been caught in the door—hadn’t she been perfectly willing to defy even the gods for her father’s sake? I am the most unworthy, terrible daughter, she thought.

“I tell you now, my Gloriously Bright daughter, that opposing Congress will never be for my good. Or yours either. But I forgive you for loving me to excess. It is the gentlest and kindest of vices.”

He smiled. It calmed her agitation, to see him smile, though she knew that she didn’t deserve his approbation. Qing-jao was able to think again, to return to the puzzle. “You knew that the gods did this, and yet you made me search for the answer.”

“But were you asking the right question?” said Father. “The question we need answered is: How did the gods do it?”

“How can I know?” answered Qing-jao. “They might have destroyed the fleet or hidden it, or carried it away to some secret place in the West—”

“Qing-jao! Look at me. Hear me well.”

She looked. His stern command helped calm her, give her focus.

“This is something I have tried to teach you all your life, but now you must learn it, Qing-jao. The gods are the cause of everything that happens, but they never act except in disguise. Do you hear me?”

She nodded. She’d heard those words a hundred times.

“You hear and yet you don’t understand me, even now,” said Father. “The gods have chosen the people of Path, Qing-jao. Only we are privileged to hear their voice. Only we are allowed to see that they are the cause of all that is and was and will be. To all other people their works remain hidden, a mystery. Your task is not to discover the true cause of the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet—all of Path would know at once that the true cause is that the gods wished it to happen. Your task is to discover the disguise that the gods have created for this event.”

Qing-jao felt light-headed, dizzy. She had been so certain that she had the answer, that she had fulfilled her task. Now it was slipping away. The answer was still true, but her task was different now.

“Right now, because we can’t find a natural explanation, the gods stand exposed for all of humanity to see, the unbelievers as well as the believers. The gods are naked, and we must clothe them. We must find out the series of events the gods have created to explain the disappearance of the fleet, to make it appear natural to the unbelievers. I thought you understood this. We serve Starways Congress, but only because by serving Congress we also serve the gods. The gods wish us to deceive Congress, and Congress wishes to be deceived.”

Qing-jao nodded, numb with disappointment that her task was still not finished.

“Does this sound heartless of me?” asked Father. “Am I dishonest? Am I cruel to the unbeliever?”

“Does a daughter judge her father?” whispered Qing-jao.

“Of course she does,” said Father. “Every day all people judge all other people. The question is whether we judge wisely.”

“Then I judge that it’s no sin to speak to the unbelievers in the language of their unbelief,” said Qing-jao.

Was that a smile now at the corners of his mouth? “You do understand,” said Father. “If ever Congress comes to us, humbly seeking to know the truth, then we will teach the the Way and they’ll become part of Path. Until then, we serve the gods by helping the unbelievers deceive themselves into thinking that all things happen because of natural explanations.”

Qing-jao bowed until her head nearly touched the floor. “You have tried to teach me this many times, but until now I never had a task that this principle applied to. Forgive the foolishness of your unworthy daughter.”

“I have no unworthy daughter,” said Father. “I have only my daughter who is Gloriously Bright. The principle you’ve learned today is one that few on Path will ever really understand. That’s why only a few of us are able to deal directly with people from other worlds without baffling or confusing them. You have surprised me today, Daughter, not because you hadn’t yet understood it, but because you have come to understand it so young. I was nearly ten years older than you before I discovered it.”

“How can I learn something before you did, Father?” The idea of surpassing one of his achievements was almost unthinkable.

“Because you had me to teach you,” said Father, “while I had to discover it for myself. But I see that it frightened you to think that perhaps you learned something younger than I did. Do you think it would dishonor me if my daughter surpassed me? On the contrary—there can be no greater honor to a parent than to have a child who is greater.”

“I can never be greater than you, Father.”

“In a sense that’s true, Qing-jao. Because you are my child, all your works are included within mine, as a subset of mine, just as all of us are a subset of our ancestors. But you have so much potential for greatness inside you that I believe there’ll come a time when I will be counted greater because of your works than because of my own. If ever the people of Path judge me worthy of some singular honor, it will be at least as much because of your achievements as my own.”

With that Father bowed to her, not a courteous bow of dismissal, but a deep bow of respect, his head almost touching the floor. Not quite, for that would be outrageous, almost a mockery, if he actually touched his head to the floor in honor to his own daughter. But he came as close as dignity allowed.

It confused her for a moment, frightened her; then she understood. When he implied that his chance of being chosen god of Path depended on her greatness, he wasn’t speaking of some vague future event. He was speaking of the here and now. He was speaking of her task. If she could find the gods’ disguise, the natural explanation for the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet, then his selection as god of Path would be assured. That was how much he trusted her. That was how important this task was. What was her coming-of-age, compared to her father’s godhood? She must work harder, think better, and succeed where all the resources of the military and the Congress had failed. Not for herself, but for Mother, for the gods, and for Father’s chance to become one of them.

Qing-jao withdrew from Father’s room. She paused in the doorway and glanced at Wang-mu. One glance from the godspoken was enough to tell the girl to follow.

By the time Qing-jao got to her room she was shaking with the pent-up need for purification. All that she had done wrong today—her rebelliousness toward the gods, her refusal to accept purification earlier, her stupidity at not understanding her true task—it came together now. Not that she felt dirty; it wasn’t washing she wanted, or self-loathing that she felt. After all, her unworthiness had been tempered by her father’s praise, by the god who showed her how to pass through the door. And Wang-mu’s having proven to be a good choice—that was a test that Qing-jao had passed, and boldly, too. So it wasn’t vileness that made her tremble. She was hungry for purification. She longed for the gods to be with her as she served them. Yet no penance that she knew of would be enough to quell her hunger.

Then she knew: She must trace a line on every board in the room.

At once she chose her starting point, the southeast corner; she would begin each tracing at the eastern wall, so that her rituals would all move westward, toward the gods. Last of all would be the shortest board in the room, less than a meter long, in the northwest corner. It would be her reward, that her last tracing would be so brief and easy.

She could hear Wang-mu enter the room softly behind her, but Qing-jao had no time now for mortals. The gods were waiting. She knelt in the corner, scanned the grains to find the one the gods wanted her to follow. Usually she had to choose for herself, and then she always chose the most difficult one, so the gods wouldn’t despise her. But tonight she was filled with instant certainty that the gods were choosing for her. The first line was a thick one, wavy but easy to see. Already they were being merciful! Tonight’s ritual would be almost a conversation between her and the gods. She had broken through an invisible barrier today; she had come closer to her father’s clear understanding. Perhaps someday the gods would speak to her with the sort of clarity that the common people believed all the godspoken heard.

“Holy one,” said Wang-mu.

It was as though Qing-jao’s joy were made of glass, and Wang-mu had deliberately shattered it. Didn’t she know that when a ritual was interrupted, it had to begin again? Qing-jao rose up on her knees and turned to face the girl.

Wang-mu must have seen the fury on Qing-jao’s face, but didn’t understand it. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said at once, falling to her knees and bowing her head to the floor. “I forgot that I’m not to call you ‘holy one.’ I only meant to ask you what you were looking for, so I could help you search.”

It almost made Qing-jao laugh, that Wang-mu was so mistaken. Of course Wang-mu had no notion that Qing-jao was being spoken to by the gods. And now, her anger interrupted, Qing-jao was ashamed to see how Wang-mu feared her anger; it felt wrong for the girl to be touching her head to the floor. Qing-jao didn’t like seeing another person so humiliated.

How did I frighten her so much? I was filled with joy, because the gods were speaking so clearly to me; but my joy was so selfish that when she innocently interrupted me, I turned a face of hate to her. Is this how I answer the gods? They show me a face of love, and I translate it into hatred toward the people, especially one who is in my power? Once again the gods have found a way to show me my unworthiness.

“Wang-mu, you mustn’t interrupt me when you find me bowed down on the floor like that.” And she explained to Wang-mu about the ritual of purification that the gods required of her.

“Must I do this also?” said Wang-mu.

“Not unless the gods tell you to.”

“How will I know?”

“If it hasn’t happened to you at your age, Wang-mu, it probably never will. But if it did happen, you’d know, because you wouldn’t have the power to resist the voice of the gods in your mind.”

Wang-mu nodded gravely. “How can I help you, … Qing-jao?” She tried out her mistress’s name carefully, reverently. For the first time Qing-jao realized that her name, which sounded sweetly affectionate when her father said it, could sound exalted when it was spoken with such awe. To be called Gloriously Bright at a moment when Qing-jao was keenly aware of her lack of luster was almost painful. But she would not forbid Wang-mu to use her name—the girl had to have something to call her, and Wang-mu’s reverent tone would serve Qing-jao as a constant ironic reminder of how little she deserved it.

“You can help me by not interrupting,” said Qing-jao.

“Should I leave, then?”

Qing-jao almost said yes, but then realized that for some reason the gods wanted Wang-mu to be part of this penance. How did she know? Because the thought of Wang-mu leaving felt almost as unbearable as the knowledge of her unfinished tracing. “Please stay,” said Qing-jao. “Can you wait in silence? Watching me?”

“Yes, … Qing-jao.”

“If it goes on so long that you can’t bear it, you may leave,” said Qing-jao. “But only when you see me moving from the west to the east. That means I’m between tracings, and it won’t distract me for you to leave, though you mustn’t speak to me.”

Wang-mu’s eyes widened. “You’re going to do this with every grain of wood in every board of the floor?”

“No,” said Qing-jao. The gods would never be so cruel as that! But even as she thought this, Qing-jao knew that someday there might come a time when the gods would require exactly that penance. It made her sick with dread. “Only one line in each board in the room. Watch with me, will you?”

She saw Wang-mu glance at the time message that glowed in the air over her terminal. It was already the hour for sleep, and both of them had missed their afternoon nap. It wasn’t natural for human beings to go so long without sleeping. The days on Path were half again as long as those on Earth, so that they never worked out quite evenly with the internal cycles of the human body. To miss the nap and then delay the sleep was a very hard thing.

But Qing-jao had no choice. And if Wang-mu couldn’t stay awake, she’d have to leave now, however the gods resisted that idea. “You must stay awake,” said Qing-jao. “If you fall, asleep, I’ll have to speak to you so you’ll move and uncover some of the lines I have to trace. And if I speak to you, I’ll have to begin again. Can you stay awake, silent and unmoving?”

Wang-mu nodded. Qing-jao believed that she meant it; she did not really believe the girl could do it. Yet the gods insisted that she let her new secret maid remain—who was Qing-jao to refuse what the gods required of her?

Qing-jao returned to the first board and started her tracing over again. To her relief, the gods were still with her. On board after board she was given the boldest, easiest grain to follow; and when, now and then, she was given a harder one, it invariably happened that the easy grain faded or disappeared off the edge of the board partway along. The gods were caring for her.

As for Wang-mu, the girl struggled mightily. Twice, on the passage back from the west to begin again in the east, Qing-jao glanced at Wang-mu and saw her sleeping. But when Qing-jao began passing near to the place where Wang-mu had lain, she found that her secret maid had wakened and moved so quietly to a place where Qing-jao had already traced that Qing-jao hadn’t even heard her movements. A good girl. A worthy choice for a secret maid.

At last, at long last Qing-jao reached the beginning of the last board, a short one in the very corner. She almost spoke aloud in joy, but caught herself in time. The sound of her own voice and Wang-mu’s inevitable answer would surely send her back to start again—it would be an unbelievable folly. Qing-jao bent over the beginning of the board, already less than a meter from the northwest corner of the room, and began tracing the boldest line. It led her, clear and true, right to the wall. It was done.

Qing-jao slumped against the wall and began laughing in relief. But she was so weak and tired that her laughter must have sounded like weeping to Wang-mu. In moments the girl was with her, touching her shoulder. “Qing-jao,” she said. “Are you in pain?”

Qing-jao took the girl’s hand and held it. “Not in pain. Or at least no pain that sleeping won’t cure. I’m finished. I’m clean.”

Clean enough, in fact, that she felt no reluctance in letting her hand clasp Wang-mu’s hand, skin to skin, without filthiness of any kind. It was a gift from the gods, that she had someone’s hand to hold when her ritual was done. “You did very well,” said Qing-jao. “It was easier for me to concentrate on the tracing, with you in the room.”

“I think I fell asleep once, Qing-jao.”

“Perhaps twice. But you woke when it mattered, and no harm was done.”

Wang-mu began to weep. She closed her eyes but didn’t take her hand away from Qing-jao to cover her face. She simply let the tears flow down her cheeks.

“Why are you weeping, Wang-mu?”

“I didn’t know,” she said. “It really is a hard thing to be godspoken. I didn’t know.”

“And a hard thing to be a true friend to the godspoken, as well,” said Qing-jao. “That’s why I didn’t want you to be my servant, calling me ‘holy one’ and fearing the sound of my voice That kind of servant I’d have to send out of my room when the gods spoke to me.”

If anything, Wang-mu’s tears flowed harder.

“Si Wang-mu, is it too hard for you to be with me?” asked Qing-jao.

Wang-mu shook her head.

“If it’s ever too hard, I’ll understand. You can leave me then. I was alone before. I’m not afraid to be alone again.”

Wang-mu shook her head, fiercely this time. “How could I leave you, now that I see how hard it is for you?”

“Then it will be written one day, and told in a story, that Si Wang-mu never left the side of Han Qing-jao during her purifications.”

Suddenly Wang-mu’s smile broke across her face, and her eyes opened into the squint of laughter, despite the tears still shining on her cheeks. “Don’t you hear the joke you told?” said Wang-mu. “My name—Si Wang-mu. When they tell that story, they won’t know it was your secret maid with you. They’ll think it was the Royal Mother of the West.”

Qing-jao laughed then, too. But an idea also crossed her mind, that perhaps the Royal Mother was a true ancestor-of-the-heart to Wang-mu, and by having Wang-mu by her side, as her friend, Qing-jao also had a new closeness with this god who was almost the oldest of them all.

Wang-mu laid out their sleeping mats, though Qing-jao had to show her how; it was Wang-mu’s proper duty, and Qing-jao would have to let her do it every night, though she had never minded doing it herself. As they lay down, their mats touching edge-to-edge so that no woodgrain lines showed between them, Qing-jao noticed that there was gray light shining through the slats of the windows. They had stayed awake together all through the day and now all through the night. Wang-mu’s sacrifice was a noble one. She would be a true friend.

A few minutes later, though, when Wang-mu was asleep and Qing-jao was on the brink of dozing, it occurred to Qing-jao to wonder exactly how it was that Wang-mu, a girl with no money, had managed to bribe the foreman of the righteous labor crew to let her speak to Qing-jao today without interruption. Could some spy have paid the bribe for her, so she could infiltrate the house of Han Fei-tzu? No—Ju Kung-mei, the guardian of the House of Han, would have found out about such a spy and Wang-mu would never have been hired. Wang-mu’s bribe wouldn’t have been paid in money. She was only fourteen, but Si Wang-mu was already a very pretty girl. Qing-jao had read enough of history and biography to know how women were usually required to pay such bribes.

Grimly Qing-jao decided that the matter must be discreetly investigated, and the foreman dismissed in unnamed disgrace if it were found to be true; through the investigation, Wang-mu’s name would never be mentioned in public, so that she would be protected from all harm. Qing-jao had only to mention it to Ju Kung-mei and he’d see that it was done.

Qing-jao looked at the sweet face of her sleeping servant, her worthy new friend, and felt overcome by sadness. What most saddened Qing-jao, however, was not the price Wang-mu had paid to the foreman, but rather that she had paid it for such a worthless, painful, terrible job as that of being secret maid to Han Qing-jao. If a woman must sell the doorway to her womb, as so many women had been forced to do through all of human history, surely the gods must let her receive something of value in return.

That is why Qing-jao went to sleep that morning even firmer in her resolve to devote herself to the education of Si Wang-mu. She could not let Wang-mu’s education interfere with her struggle with the riddle of the Lusitania Fleet, but she would take all other possible time and give Wang-mu a fit blessing in honor of her sacrifice. Surely the gods must expect no less of her, in return for their having sent her such a perfect secret maid.

8

MIRACLES

<Ender has been plaguing us lately. Insisting that we think of a way to travel faster than light.>

<You said it couldn’t be done.>

<That’s what we think. That’s what human scientists think. But Ender insists that if ansibles can transmit information, we should be able to transmit matter at the same velocity. Of course that’s nonsense—there’s no comparison between information and physical reality.>

<Why does he want so badly to travel faster than light?>

<It’s a silly idea, isn’t it—to arrive somewhere before your image does. Like stepping through a mirror in order to try to meet yourself on the other side.>

<Ender and Rooter have talked about this a lot—l’ve heard them. Ender thinks that perhaps matter and energy are composed of nothing but information. That physical reality is nothing but the message that philotes are transmitting to each other.>

<What does Rooter say?>

<He says that Ender is half right. Rooter says that physical reality is a message—and the message is a question that the philotes are continually asking God.>

<What is the question?>

<One word: Why?>

<And how does God answer them?>

<With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe. >

Miro’s whole family came to meet him when he returned to Lusitania. After all, they loved him. And he loved them, too, and after a month in space he was looking forward to their company. He knew—intellectually, at least—that his month in space had been a quarter-century to them. He had prepared himself for the wrinkles in Mother’s face, for even Grego and Quara to be adults in their thirties. What he had not anticipated, not viscerally, anyway, was that they would be strangers. No, worse than strangers. They were strangers who pitied him and thought they knew him and looked down on him like a child. They were all older than him. All of them. And all younger, because pain and loss hadn’t touched them the way it had touched him.

Ela was the best of them, as usual. She embraced him, kissed him, and said, “You make me feel so mortal. But I’m glad to see you young.” At least she had the courage to admit that there was an immediate barrier between them, even though she pretended that the barrier was his youth. True, Miro was exactly as they remembered him—his face, at least. The long-lost brother returned from the dead; the ghost who comes to haunt the family, eternally young. But the real barrier was the way he moved. The way he spoke.

They had obviously forgotten how disabled he was, how badly his body responded to his damaged. brain. The shuffling step, the twisted, difficult speech—their memories had excised all that unpleasantness and had remembered him the way he was before his accident. After all, he had only been disabled for a few months before leaving on his time-dilating voyage. It was easy to forget that, and recall instead the Miro they had known for so many years before. Strong, healthy, the only one able to stand up to the man they had called Father. They couldn’t conceal their shock. He could see it in their hesitations, their darting glances, the attempt to ignore the fact that his speech was so hard to understand, that he walked so slowly.

He could sense their impatience. Within minutes he could see how some, at least, were maneuvering to get away. So much to do this afternoon. See you at dinner. This whole thing was making them so uncomfortable they had to escape, take time to assimilate this version of Miro who had just returned to them, or perhaps plot how to avoid him as much as possible in the future. Grego and Quara were the worst, the most eager to get away, which stung him—once they had worshiped him. Of course he understood that this was why it was so hard for them to deal with the broken Miro that stood before them. Their vision of the old Miro was the most naive and therefore the most painfully contradicted.

“We thought of a big family dinner,” said Ela. “Mother wanted to, but I thought we should wait. Give you some time.”

“Hope you haven’t been waiting dinner all this time for me,” said Miro.

Only Ela and Valentine seemed to realize he was joking; they were the only ones to respond naturally, with a mild chuckle. The others—for all Miro knew, they hadn’t even understood his words at all.

They stood in the tall grass beside the landing field, all his family: Mother, now in her sixties, hair steely-gray, her face grim with intensity, the way it had always been. Only now the expression was etched deep in the lines of her forehead, the creases beside her mouth. Her neck was a ruin. He realized that she would die someday. Not for thirty or forty years, probably, but someday. Had he ever realized how beautiful she was, before? He had thought somehow that marrying the Speaker for the Dead would soften her, would make her young again. And maybe it had, maybe Andrew Wiggin had made her young at heart. But the body was still what time had made it. She was old.

Ela, in her forties. No husband with her, but maybe she was married and he simply hadn’t come. More likely not. Was she married to her work? She seemed to be so genuinely glad to see him, but even she couldn’t hide the look of pity and concern. What, had she expected that a month of lightspeed travel would somehow heal him? Had she thought he would stride off the shuttle as strong and bold as a spacefaring god from some romance?

Quim, now in priestly robes. Jane had told Miro that his next-younger brother was a great missionary. He had converted more than a dozen forests of pequeninos, had baptized them, and, under authority from Bishop Peregrino, ordained priests from among them, to administer the sacraments to their own people. They baptized all the pequeninos that emerged from the mothertrees, all the mothers before they died, all the sterile wives who tended the little mothers and their younglings, all the brothers searching for a glorious death, and all the trees. However, only the wives and brothers could take communion, and as for marriage, it was difficult to think of a meaningful way to perform such a rite between a fathertree and the blind, mindless slugs who were mated with them. Yet Miro could see in Quim’s eyes a kind of exaltation. It was the glow of power well used; alone of the Ribeira family, Quim had known all his life what he wanted to do. Now he was doing it. Never mind the theological difficulties—he was St. Paul to the piggies, and it filled him with constant joy. You served God, little brother, and God has made you his man.

Olhado, his silver eyes gleaming, his arm around a beautiful woman, surrounded by six children—the youngest a toddler, the oldest in her teens. Though the children all watched with natural eyes, they still had picked up their father’s detached expression. They didn’t watch, they simply gazed. With Olhado that had been natural; it disturbed Miro to think that perhaps Olhado had spawned a family of observers, walking recorders taking up experience to play it back later, but never quite involved. But no, that had to be a delusion. Miro had never been comfortable with Olhado, and so whatever resemblance Olhado’s children had to their father was bound to make Miro just as uncomfortable with them, too. The mother was pretty enough. Probably not forty yet. How old had she been when Olhado married her? What kind of woman was she, to accept a man with artificial eyes? Did Olhado record their lovemaking, and play back images for her of how she looked in his eyes?

Miro was immediately ashamed of the thought. Is that all I can think of when I look at Olhado—his deformity? After all the years I knew him? Then how can I expect them to see anything but my deformities when they look at me?

Leaving here was a good idea. I’m glad Andrew Wiggin suggested it. The only part that makes no sense is coming back. Why am I here?

Almost against his will, Miro turned to face Valentine. She smiled at him, put her arm around him, hugged him. “It’s not so bad,” she said.

Not so bad as what?

“I have only the one brother left to greet me,” she said. “All your family came to meet you.”

“Right,” said Miro.

Only then did Jane speak up, her voice taunting him in his ear. “Not all.”

Shut up, Miro said silently.

“Only one brother?” said Andrew Wiggin. “Only me?” The Speaker for the Dead stepped forward and embraced his sister. But did Miro see awkwardness there, too? Was it possible that Valentine and Andrew Wiggin were shy with each other? What a laugh. Valentine, bold as brass—she was Demosthenes, wasn’t she?—and Wiggin, the man who had broken into their lives and remade their family without so much as a dá licença. Could they be timid? Could they feel strange?

“You’ve aged miserably,” said Andrew. “Thin as a rail. Doesn’t Jakt provide a decent living for you?”

“Doesn’t Novinha cook?” asked Valentine. “And you look stupider than ever. I got here just in time to witness your complete mental vegetation.”

“And here I thought you came to save the world.”

“The universe. But you first.”

She put her arm around Miro again, and around Andrew on the other side. She spoke to the others. “So many of you, but I feel like I know you all. I hope that soon you’ll feel that way about me and my family.”

So gracious. So able to put people at ease. Even me, thought Miro. She simply handles people. The way Andrew Wiggin does. Did she learn it from him, or did he learn it from her? Or was it born into their family? After all, Peter was the supreme manipulator of all time, the original Hegemon. What a family. As strange as mine. Only theirs is strange because of genius, while mine is strange because of the pain we shared for so many years, because of the twisting of our souls. And I the strangest, the most damaged one of all. Andrew Wiggin came to heal the wounds between us, and did it well. But the inner twisting—can that ever be healed?

“How about a picnic?” asked Miro.

This time they all laughed. How was that, Andrew, Valentine? Did I put them at their ease? Did I help things go smoothly? Have I helped everyone pretend that they’re glad to see me, that they have some idea of who I am?

“She wanted to come,” said Jane in Miro’s ear.

Shut up, said Miro again. I didn’t want her to come anyway.

“But she’ll see you later.”

No.

“She’s married. She has four children.”

That’s nothing to me now.

“She hasn’t called out your name in her sleep for years.”

I thought you were my friend.

“I am. I can read your mind.”

You’re a meddling old bitch and you can’t read anything.

“She’ll come to you tomorrow morning. At your mother’s house.”

I won’t be there.

“You think you can run away from this?”

During his conversation with Jane, Miro hadn’t heard anything that the others around him were saying, but it didn’t matter. Valentine’s husband and children had come from the ship, and she was introducing them all around. Particularly to their uncle, of course. It surprised Miro to see the awe with which they spoke to him. But then, they knew who he really was. Ender the Xenocide, yes, but also the Speaker for the Dead, the one who wrote the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Miro knew that now, of course, but when he had first met Wiggin it was with hostility—he was just an itinerant speaker for the dead, a minister of a humanist religion who seemed determined to turn Miro’s family inside out. Which he had done. I think I was luckier than they are, thought Miro. I got to know him as a person before I ever knew him as a great figure in human history. They’ll probably never know him as I do.

And I don’t really know him at all. I don’t know anybody, and nobody knows me. We spend our lives guessing at what’s going on inside everybody else, and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we “understand.” Such nonsense. Even a monkey at a computer will type a word now and then.

You don’t know me, none of you, he said silently. Least of all the meddling old bitch who lives in my ear. You hear that?

“All that high-pitched whining—how can I miss it?”

Andrew was putting luggage onto the car. There’d be room for only a couple of passengers. “Miro—you want to ride with Novinha and me?”

Before he could answer, Valentine had taken his arm. “Oh, don’t do that,” said Valentine. “Walk with Jakt and me. We’ve all been cooped up on the ship for so long.”

“That’s right,” said Andrew. “His mother hasn’t seen him in twenty-five years, but you want him to take a stroll. You’re the soul of thoughtfulness.”

Andrew and Valentine were keeping up the bantering tone they had established from the first, so that no matter which way Miro decided, they would laughingly turn it into a choice between the two Wiggins. At no point would he have to say, I need to ride because I’m a cripple. Nor would he have any excuse to take offense because somebody had singled him out for special treatment. It was so gracefully done that Miro wondered if Valentine and Andrew had discussed it in advance. Maybe they didn’t have to discuss things like this. Maybe they had spent so many years together that they knew how to cooperate to smooth things for other people without even thinking about it. Like actors who have performed the same roles together so often that they can improvise without the slightest confusion.

“I’ll walk,” said Miro. “I’ll take the long way. The rest of you go on ahead.”

Novinha and Ela started to protest, but Miro saw Andrew put his hand on Novinha’s arm, and as for Ela, she was silenced by Quim’s arm around her shoulder.

“Come straight home,” said Ela. “However long it takes you, do come home.”

“Where else?” asked Miro.

Valentine didn’t know what to make of Ender. It was only her second day on Lusitania, but already she was sure that something was wrong. Not that there weren’t grounds for Ender to be worried, distracted. He had filled her in on the problems the xenobiologists were having with the descolada, the tensions between Grego and Quara, and of course there was always the Congress fleet, death looming over them from every sky. But Ender had faced worries and tensions before, many times in his years as a speaker for the dead. He had plunged into the problems of nations and families, communities and individuals, struggling to understand and then to purge and heal the diseases of the heart. Never had he responded the way he was acting now.

Or perhaps he had, once.

When they were children, and Ender was being groomed to command the fleets being sent against all the bugger worlds, they had brought Ender back to Earth for a season—the lull before the final storm, as it turned out. Ender and Valentine had been apart since he was five years old, not allowed so much as an unsupervised letter between them. Then, suddenly, they changed their policy, and brought Valentine to him. He was being kept at a large private estate near their home town, spending his days swimming and—more often—floating in utter languor on a private lake.

At first Valentine had thought all was well, and she was merely glad to see him at last. But soon she understood that something was deeply wrong. Only in those days she hadn’t known Ender so well—after all, he’d been apart from her for more than half his life. Yet she knew that it was wrong for him to seem so preoccupied. No, that wasn’t really it. He wasn’t preoccupied, he was unoccupied. He had detached himself from the world. And her job was to reconnect him. To bring him back and show him his place in the web of humanity.

Because she succeeded, he was able to go back into space and command the fleets that utterly destroyed the buggers. Ever since that time, his connection with the rest of humanity seemed secure.

Now again she had been apart from him for half a lifetime. Twenty-five years for her, thirty for him. And again he seemed to be detached. She studied him as he took her and Miro and Plikt out by car, skimming over the endless prairies of capim.

“We’re like a little boat on the ocean,” said Ender.

“Not really,” she said, remembering the time that Jakt had taken her out on one of the small net-laying launches. The three-meter waves that lifted them high, then plunged them down into the trench between. On the large fishing boat those waves had barely jostled them as they nestled comfortably in the sea, but in the tiny launch the waves were overwhelming. Literally breathtaking—she had to slide down from her seat onto the deck, embracing the plank bench with both arms, before she could catch her breath. There was no comparison between the heaving, pitching ocean and this placid grassy plain.

Then again, maybe to Ender there was. Maybe when he saw the acres of capim, he saw within it the descolada virus, malevolently adapting itself to slaughter humankind and all its companion species. Maybe to him this prairie rolled and shrugged every bit as brutally as the ocean.

The sailors had laughed at her, not mockingly but tenderly, like parents laughing at the fears of a child. “These seas are nothing,” they said. “You should try doing this in twenty-meter seas.”

Ender was as calm, outwardly, as the sailors had been. Calm, unconnected. Making conversation with her and Miro and silent Plikt, but still holding something back. Is there something wrong between Ender and Novinha? Valentine hadn’t seen them together long enough to know what was natural between them and what was strained—certainly there were no obvious quarrels. So perhaps Ender’s problem was a growing barrier between him and the community of Milagre. That was possible. Valentine certainly remembered how hard it had been for her to win acceptance from the Trondheimers, and she had been married to a man with enormous prestige among them. How was it for Ender, married to a woman whose whole family had already been alienated from the rest of Milagre? Could it be that his healing of this place was not as complete as anyone supposed?

Not possible. When Valentine met with the Mayor, Kovano Zeljezo, and with old Bishop Peregrino that morning, they had shown genuine affection for Ender. Valentine had attended too many meetings not to know the difference between formal courtesies, political hypocrisies, and genuine friendship. If Ender felt detached from these people, it wasn’t by their choice.

I’m reading too much into this, thought Valentine. If Ender seems to be strange and detached, it’s because we have been apart so long. Or perhaps because he feels shy with this angry young man, Miro; or perhaps it’s Plikt, with her silent, calculating worship of Ender Wiggin, who makes him choose to be distant with us. Or maybe it’s nothing more than my insistence that I must meet the hive queen today, at once, even before meeting any of the leaders of the piggies. There’s no reason to look beyond present company for the cause of his unconnection.

They first located the hive queen’s city by the pall of smoke. “Fossil fuels,” said Ender. “She’s burning them up at a disgusting rate. Ordinarily she’d never do that—the hive queens tend their worlds with great care, and they never make such a waste and a stink. But there’s a great hurry these days, and Human says that they’ve given her permission to burn and pollute as much as necessary.”

“Necessary for what?” asked Valentine.

“Human won’t say, and neither will the hive queen, but I have my guesses, and I imagine you will, too.”

“Are the piggies hoping to jump to a fully technological society in a single generation, relying on the hive queen’s work?”

“Hardly,” said Ender. “They’re far too conservative for that. They want to know everything there is to know—but they aren’t terribly interested in surrounding themselves with machines. Remember that the trees of the forest freely and gently give them every useful tool. What we call industry still looks like brutality to them.”

“What then? Why all this smoke?”

“Ask her,” said Ender. “Maybe she’ll be honest with you.”

“Will we actually see her?” asked Miro.

“Oh yes,” said Ender. “Or at least—we’ll be in her presence. She may even touch us. But perhaps the less we see the better. It’s usually dark where she lives, unless she’s near to egg-laying. At that time she needs to see, and the workers open tunnels to bring in daylight.”

“They don’t have artificial light?” asked Miro.

“They never used it,” said Ender, “even on the starships that came to Sol System back during the Bugger Wars. They see heat the way we see light. Any source of warmth is clearly visible to them. I think they even arrange their heat sources in patterns that could only be interpreted aesthetically. Thermal painting.”

“So why do they use light for egg-laying?” asked Valentine.

“I’d hesitate to call it a ritual—the hive queen has such scorn for human religion. Let’s just say it’s part of their genetic heritage. Without sunlight there’s no egg-laying.”

Then they were in the bugger city.

Valentine wasn’t surprised at what they found—after all, when they were young, she and Ender had been with the first colony on Rov, a former bugger world. But she knew that the experience would be surprising and alien to Miro and Plikt, and in fact some of the old disorientation came back to her, too. Not that there was anything obviously strange about the city. There were buildings, most of them low, but based on the same structural principles as any human buildings. The strangeness came in the careless way that they were arranged. There were no roads and streets, no attempt to line up the buildings to face the same way. Nor did buildings rise out of the ground to any common height. Some were nothing but a roof resting on the ground; others rose to a great height. Paint seemed to be used only as a preservative—there was no decoration. Ender had suggested that heat might be used aesthetically; it was a sure thing that nothing else was.

“It makes no sense,” said Miro.

“Not from the surface,” said Valentine, remembering Rov. “But if you could travel the tunnels, you’d realize that it all makes sense underground. They follow the natural seams and textures of the rock. There’s a rhythm to geology, and the buggers are sensitive to it.”

“What about the tall buildings?” asked Miro.

“The water table is their downward limit. If they need greater height, they have to go up.”

“What are they doing that requires a building so tall?” asked Miro.

“I don’t know,” said Valentine. They were skirting a building that was at least three hundred meters high; in the near distance they could see more than a dozen others.

For the first time on this excursion, Plikt spoke up. “Rockets,” she said.

Valentine caught a glimpse of Ender smiling a bit and nodding slightly. So Plikt had confirmed his own suspicions.

“What for?” asked Miro.

Valentine almost said, To get into space, of course! But that wasn’t fair—Miro had never lived on a world that was struggling to get into space for the first time. To him, going offplanet meant taking the shuttle to the orbiting station. But the single shuttle used by the humans of Lusitania would hardly do for transporting material outward for any kind of major deepspace construction program. And even if it could do the job, the hive queen was unlikely to ask for human help.

“What’s she building, a space station?” asked Valentine.

“I think so,” said Ender. “But so many rockets, and such large ones—I think she’s planning to build it all at once. Probably cannibalizing the rockets themselves. What do you think the throw might be?”

Valentine almost answered with exasperation—how should I know? Then she realized that he wasn’t asking her. Because almost at once he supplied the answer himself. Which meant that he must have been asking the computer in his ear. No, not a “computer.” Jane. He was asking Jane. It was still hard for Valentine to get used to the idea that even though there were only four people in the car, there was a fifth person present, looking and listening through the jewels Ender and Miro both wore.

“She could do it all at once,” said Ender. “In fact, given what’s known about the chemical emissions here, the hive queen has smelted enough metal to construct not only a space station but also two small long-range starships of the sort that the first bugger expedition brought. Their version of a colony ship.”

“Before the fleet arrives,” said Valentine. She understood at once. The hive queen was preparing to emigrate. She had no intention of letting her species be trapped on a single planet when the Little Doctor came again.

“You see the problem,” said Ender. “She won’t tell us what she’s doing, and so we have to rely on what Jane observes and what we can guess. And what I’m guessing isn’t a very pretty picture.”

“What’s wrong with the buggers getting offplanet?” asked Valentine.

“Not just the buggers,” said Miro.

Valentine made the second connection. That’s why the pequeninos had given permission for the hive queen to pollute so badly. That’s why there were two ships planned, right from the first. “A ship for the hive queen and a ship for the pequeninos.”

“That’s what they intend,” said Ender. “But the way I see it is—two ships for the descolada.”

“Nossa Senhora,” whispered Miro.

Valentine felt a chill go through her. It was one thing for the hive queen to seek the salvation of her species. But it was quite another thing for her to carry the deadly self-adapting virus to other worlds.

“You see my quandary,” said Ender. “You see why she won’t tell me directly what she’s doing.”

“But you couldn’t stop her anyway, could you?” asked Valentine.

“He could warn the Congress fleet,” said Miro.

That’s right. Dozens of heavily armed starships, converging on Lusitania from every direction—if they were warned about two starships leaving Lusitania, if they were given their original trajectories, they could intercept them. Destroy them.

“You can’t,” said Valentine.

“I can’t stop them and I can’t let them go,” said Ender. “To stop them would be to risk destroying the buggers and the piggies alike. To let them go would be to risk destroying all of humanity.”

“You have to talk to them. You have to reach some kind of agreement.”

“What would an agreement with us be worth?” asked Ender. “We don’t speak for humanity in general. And if we make threats, the hive queen will simply destroy all our satellites and probably our ansible as well. She may do that anyway, just to be safe.”

“Then we’d really be cut off,” said Miro.

“From everything,” said Ender.

It took Valentine a moment to realize that they were thinking of Jane. Without an ansible, they couldn’t speak to her anymore. And without the satellites that orbited Lusitania, Jane’s eyes in space would be blinded.

“Ender, I don’t understand,” said Valentine. “Is the hive queen our enemy?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” asked Ender. “That’s the trouble with restoring her species. Now that she has her freedom again, now that she’s not bundled up in a cocoon hidden in a bag under my bed, the hive queen will act in the best interest of her species—whatever she thinks that is.”

“But Ender, it can’t be that there has to be war between humans and buggers again.”

“If there were no human fleet heading toward Lusitania, the question wouldn’t come up.”

“But Jane has disrupted their communications,” said Valentine. “They can’t receive the order to use the Little Doctor.”

“For now,” said Ender. “But Valentine, why do you think Jane risked her own life in order to cut off their communications?”

“Because the order was sent.”

“Starways Congress sent the order to destroy this planet. And now that Jane has revealed her power, they’ll be all the more determined to destroy us. Once they find a way to get Jane out of the way, they’ll be even more certain to act against this world.”

“Have you told the hive queen?”

“Not yet. But then, I’m not sure how much she can learn from my mind without my wanting her to. It’s not exactly a means of communication that I know how to control.”

Valentine put her hand on Ender’s shoulder. “Was this why you tried to persuade me not to come see the hive queen? Because you didn’t want her to learn the real danger?”

“I just don’t want to face her again,” said Ender. “Because I love her and I fear her. Because I’m not sure whether I should help her or try to destroy her. And because once she gets those rockets into space, which could be any day now, she could take away our power to stop her. Take away our connection with the rest of humanity.”

And, again, what he didn’t say: She could cut Ender and Miro off from Jane.

“I think we definitely need to have a talk with her,” said Valentine.

“Either that or kill her,” said Miro.

“Now you understand my problem,” said Ender.

They rode on in silence.

The entrance to the hive queen’s burrow was a building that looked like any other. There was no special guard—indeed, in their whole excursion they hadn’t seen a single bugger. Valentine remembered when she was young, on her first colony world, trying to imagine what the bugger cities had looked like when they were fully inhabited. Now she knew—they looked exactly the way they did when they were dead. No scurrying buggers like ants swarming over the hills. Somewhere, she knew, there were fields and orchards being tended under the open sun, but none of that was visible from here.

Why did this make her feel so relieved?

She knew the answer to the question even as she asked it. She had spent her childhood on Earth during the Bugger Wars; the insectoid aliens had haunted her nightmares, as they had terrified every other child on Earth. Only a handful of human beings, however, had ever seen a bugger in person, and few of those were still alive when she was a child. Even in her first colony, where the ruins of bugger civilization surrounded her, they had found not even one desiccated corpse. All her visual images of the buggers were the horrifying images from the vids.

Yet wasn’t she the first person to have read Ender’s book, the Hive Queen? Wasn’t she the first, besides Ender, to come to think of the hive queen as a person of alien grace and beauty?

She was the first, yes, but that meant little. Everyone else alive today had grown up in a moral universe shaped in part by the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. While she and Ender were the only two left alive who had grown up with the steady campaign of loathing toward the buggers. Of course she felt irrational relief at not having to see the buggers. To Miro and Plikt, the first sight of the hive queen and her workers wouldn’t have the same emotional tension that it had for her.

I am Demosthenes, she reminded herself. I’m the theorist who insisted that the buggers were ramen, aliens who could be understood and accepted. I must simply do my best to overcome the prejudices of my childhood. In due time all of humanity will know of the reemergence of the hive queen; it would be shameful if Demosthenes were the one person who could not receive the hive queen as raman.

Ender took the car in a circle around a smallish building. “This is the right place,” he said. He pulled the car to a stop, then slowed the fan to settle it onto the capim near the building’s single door. The door was very low—an adult would have to go through on hands and knees.

“How do you know?” asked Miro.

“Because she says so,” said Ender.

“Jane?” asked Miro. He looked puzzled, because of course Jane had said nothing of the sort to him.

“The hive queen,” said Valentine. “She speaks directly into Ender’s mind.”

“Nice trick,” said Miro. “Can I learn it?”

“We’ll see,” said Ender. “When you meet her.”

As they clambered off the car and dropped into the tall grass, Valentine noticed how Miro and Ender both kept glancing at Plikt. Of course it bothered them that Plikt was so quiet. Or rather, seemed so quiet. Valentine thought of Plikt as a loquacious, eloquent woman. But she had also got used to the way Plikt played the mute at certain times. Ender and Miro, of course, were only discovering her perverse silence for the first time, and it bothered them. Which was one of the main reasons Plikt did it. She believed that people revealed themselves most when they were vaguely anxious, and few things brought out nonspecific anxieties like being in the presence of a person who never speaks.

Valentine didn’t think much of the technique as a way of dealing with strangers, but she had watched how, as a tutor, Plikt’s silences forced her students—Valentine’s children—to deal with their own ideas. When Valentine and Ender taught, they challenged their students with dialogue, questions, arguments. But Plikt forced her students to play both sides of an argument, proposing their own ideas, then attacking them in order to refute their own objections. The method probably wouldn’t work for most people. Valentine had concluded that it worked so well for Plikt because her wordlessness was not complete noncommunication. Her steady, penetrating gaze was in itself an eloquent expression of skepticism. When a student was confronted with that unblinking regard, he soon succumbed to all his own insecurities. Every doubt that the student had managed to put aside and ignore now forced itself forward, where the student had to discover within himself the reasons for Plikt’s apparent doubt.

Valentine’s oldest, Syfte, had called these one-sided confrontations “staring into the sun.” Now Ender and Miro were taking their own turn at blinding themselves in a contest with the all-seeing eye and the naught-saying mouth. Valentine wanted to laugh at their unease, to reassure them. She also wanted to give Plikt a gentle little slap and tell her not to be difficult.

Instead of doing either, Valentine strode to the door of the building and pulled it open. There was no bolt, just a handle to grasp. The door opened easily. She held it open as Ender dropped to his knees and crawled through. Plikt followed immediately. Then Miro sighed and slowly sank to his knees. He was more awkward in crawling than he was in walking—each movement of an arm or leg was made individually, as if it took a second to think of how to make it go. At last he was through, and now Valentine ducked down and squat-walked through the door. She was the smallest, and she didn’t have to crawl.

Inside, the only light came from the door. The room was featureless, with a dirt floor. Only as Valentine’s eyes became used to the darkness did she realize that the darkest shadow was a tunnel sloping down into the earth.

“There aren’t any lights down in the tunnels,” Ender said. “She’ll direct me. You’ll have to hold onto each other’s hands. Valentine, you go last, all right?”

“Can we go down standing up?” asked Miro. The question clearly mattered.

“Yes,” said Ender. “That’s why she chose this entrance.”

They joined hands, Plikt holding Ender’s hand, Miro between the two women. Ender led them a few steps down the slope into the tunnel. It was steep, and the utter blackness ahead was daunting. But Ender stopped before the darkness became absolute.

“What are we waiting for?” asked Valentine.

“Our guide,” said Ender.

At that moment, the guide arrived. In the darkness, Valentine could barely see the black-reed arm with a single finger and thumb as it nudged Ender’s hand. Immediately Ender enclosed the finger within his left hand; the black thumb closed like a pincer over his hand. Looking up the arm, Valentine tried to see the bugger it belonged to. All she could actually make out, though, was a child-size shadow, and perhaps a slight gleam of reflection off a carapace.

Her imagination supplied all that was missing, and against her will she shuddered.

Miro muttered something in Portuguese. So he, too, was affected by the presence of the bugger. Plikt, however, remained silent, and Valentine couldn’t tell whether she trembled or remained entirely unaffected. Then Miro took a shuffling forward step, pulling on Valentine’s hand, leading her forward into the darkness.

Ender knew how hard this passage would be for the others. So far only he, Novinha, and Ela had ever visited the hive queen, and Novinha had come only the once. The darkness was too unnerving, to move endlessly downward without help of eyes, knowing from small sounds that there was life and movement, invisible but nearby.

“Can we talk?” asked Valentine. Her voice sounded very small.

“It’s a good idea,” said Ender. “You won’t bother them. They don’t take much notice of sound.”

Miro said something. Without being able to see his lips move, Ender found it harder to understand Miro’s speech.

“What?” asked Ender.

“We both want to know how far it is,” Valentine said.

“I don’t know,” said Ender. “From here, anyway. And she might be almost anywhere down here. There are dozens of nurseries. But don’t worry. I’m pretty sure I could find my way out.”

“So could I,” said Valentine. “With a flashlight, anyway.”

“No light,” said Ender. “The egg-laying requires sunlight, but after that light only retards the development of the eggs. And at one stage it can kill the larvae.”

“But you could find your way out of this nightmare in the dark?” asked Valentine.

“Probably,” said Ender. “There are patterns. Like spider webs—when you sense the overall structure, each section of tunnel makes more sense.”

“These tunnels aren’t random?” Valentine sounded skeptical.

“It’s like the tunneling on Eros,” said Ender. He really hadn’t had that much chance to explore when he lived on Eros as a child-soldier. The asteroid had been honeycombed by the buggers when they made it their forward base in the Sol System; it became fleet headquarters for the human allies after it was captured during the first Bugger War. During his months there, Ender had devoted most of his time and attention to learning to control fleets of starships in space. Yet he must have noticed much more about the tunnels than he realized at the time, because the first time the hive queen brought him into her burrows on Lusitania, Ender found that the bends and turns never seemed to take him by surprise. They felt right—no, they felt inevitable.

“What’s Eros?” asked Miro.

“An asteroid near Earth,” said Valentine. “The place where Ender lost his mind.”

Ender tried to explain to them something about the way the tunnel system was organized. But it was too complicated. Like fractals, there were too many possible exceptions to grasp the system in detail—it kept eluding comprehension the more closely you pursued it. Yet to Ender it always seemed the same, a pattern that repeated over and over. Or maybe it was just that Ender had got inside the hivemind somehow, when he was studying them in order to defeat them. Maybe he had simply learned to think like a bugger. In which case Valentine was right—he had lost part of his human mind, or at least added onto it a bit of the hivemind.

Finally when they turned a corner there came a glimmer of light. “Graças a deus,” whispered Miro. Ender noted with satisfaction that Plikt—this stone woman who could not possibly be the same person as the brilliant student he remembered—also let out a sigh of relief. Maybe there was some life in her after all.

“Almost there,” said Ender. “And since she’s laying, she’ll be in a good mood.”

“Doesn’t she want privacy?” asked Miro.

“It’s like a minor sexual climax that goes on for several hours,” said Ender. “It makes her pretty cheerful. Hive queens are usually surrounded only by workers and drones that function as part of themselves. They never learn shyness.”

In his mind, though, he could feel the intensity of her presence. She could communicate with him anytime, of course. But when he was close, it was as if she were breathing into his brainpan; it became heavy, oppressive. Did the others feel it? Would she be able to speak to them? With Ela there had been nothing—Ela never caught a glimmer of the silent conversation. As for Novinha—she refused to speak of it and denied having heard anything, but Ender suspected that she had simply rejected the alien presence. The hive queen said she could hear both their minds clearly enough, as long as they were present, but couldn’t make herself “heard.” Would it be the same with these, today?

It would be such a good thing, if the hive queen could speak to another human. She claimed to be able to do it, but Ender had learned over the past thirty years that the hive queen was unable to distinguish between her confident assessments of the future and her sure memories of the past. She seemed to trust her guesses every bit as much as she trusted her memories; and yet when her guesses turned out wrong, she seemed not to remember that she had ever expected a different future from the one that now was past.

It was one of the quirks of her alien mind that disturbed Ender most. Ender had grown up in a culture that judged people’s maturity and social fitness by their ability to anticipate the results of their choices. In some ways the hive queen seemed markedly deficient in this area; for all her great wisdom and experience, she seemed as boldly and unjustifiably confident as a small child.

That was one of the things that frightened Ender about dealing with her. Could she keep a promise? If she failed to keep one, would she even realize what she had done?

Valentine tried to concentrate on what the others were saying, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the silhouette of the bugger leading them. It was smaller than she had ever imagined—no taller than a meter and a half, probably less. Looking past the others, she could only glimpse parts of the bugger, but that was almost worse than seeing it whole. She couldn’t keep herself from thinking that this shiny black enemy had a death grip on Ender’s hand.

Not a death grip. Not an enemy. Not even a creature, in itself. It had as much individual identity as an ear or a toe—each bugger was just another of the hive queen’s organs of action and sensation. In a sense the hive queen was already present with them—was present wherever one of her workers or drones might be, even hundreds of lightyears away. This is not a monster. This is the very hive queen written of in Ender’s book. This is the one he carried with him and nurtured during all our years together, though I didn’t know it. I have nothing to fear.

Valentine had tried suppressing her fear, but it wasn’t working. She was sweating; she could feel her hand slipping in Miro’s palsied grip. As they got closer and closer to the hive queen’s lair—no, her home, her nursery—she could feel herself getting more and more frightened. If she couldn’t handle it alone, there was no choice but to reach out for help. Where was Jakt? Someone else would have to do.

“I’m sorry, Miro,” she whispered. “I think I’ve got the sweats.”

“You?” he said. “I thought it was my sweat.”

That was good. He laughed. She laughed with him—or at least giggled nervously.

The tunnel suddenly opened wide, and now they stood blinking in a large chamber with a shaft of bright sunlight stabbing through a hole in the vault of the ceiling. The hive queen was smack in the center of the light. There were workers all around, but now, in the light, in the presence of the queen, they all looked so small and fragile. Most of them were closer to one meter than a meter and a half in height, while the queen herself was surely three meters long. And height wasn’t the half of it. Her wing-covers looked vast, heavy, almost metallic, with a rainbow of colors reflecting sunlight. Her abdomen was long and thick enough to contain the corpse of an entire human. Yet it narrowed, funnel-like, to an ovipositor at the quivering tip, glistening with a yellowish translucent fluid, gluey, stringy; it dipped into a hole in the floor of the room, deep as it could go, and then came back up, the fluid trailing away like unnoticed spittle, down into the hole.

Grotesque and frightening as this was, a creature so large acting so much like an insect, it did not prepare Valentine for what happened next. For instead of simply dipping her ovipositor into the next hole, the queen turned and seized one of the workers hovering nearby. Holding the quivering bugger between her large forelegs, she drew it close and bit off its legs, one by one. As each leg was bitten off, the remaining legs gesticulated ever more wildly, like a silent scream. Valentine found herself desperately relieved when the last leg was gone, so that the scream was at last gone from her sight.

Then the hive queen pushed the unlimbed worker headfirst down the next hole. Only then did she position her ovipositor over the hole. As Valentine watched, the fluid at the ovipositor’s tip seemed to thicken into a ball. But it wasn’t fluid after all, or not entirely; within the large drop was a soft, jellylike egg. The hive queen maneuvered her body so that her face was directly in the sunlight, her multiplex eyes shining like hundreds of emerald stars. Then the ovipositor plunged downward. When it came up, the egg still clung to the end, but on the next emergence the egg was gone. Several times more her abdomen dipped downward, each time coming up with more strands of fluid stringing downward from the tip.

“Nossa Senhora,” said Miro. Valentine recognized it from its Spanish equivalent—Nuestra Senora, Our Lady. It was usually an almost meaningless expression, but now it took on a repulsive irony. Not the Holy Virgin, here in this deep cavern. The hive queen was Our Lady of the Darkness. Laying eggs over the bodies of lying workers, to feed the larvae when they hatched.

“It can’t always be this way,” said Plikt.

For a moment Valentine was simply surprised to hear Plikt’s voice. Then she realized what Plikt was saying, and she was right. If a living worker had to be sacrificed for every bugger that hatched, it would be impossible for the population to increase. In fact, it would have been impossible for this hive to exist in the first place, since the hive queen had to give life to her first eggs without the benefit of any legless workers to feed them.

<Only a new queen.>

It came into Valentine’s mind as if it were her own idea. The hive queen only had to place a living worker’s body into the egg casing when the egg was supposed to grow into a new hive queen. But this wasn’t Valentine’s own idea; it felt too certain for that. There was no way she could know this information, and yet the idea came clearly, unquestionably, all at once. As Valentine had always imagined that ancient prophets and mystics heard the voice of God.

“Did you hear her? Any of you?” asked Ender.

“Yes,” said Plikt.

“I think so,” said Valentine.

“Hear what?” asked Miro.

“The hive queen,” said Ender. “She explained that she only has to place a worker into the egg casing when she’s laying the egg of a new hive queen. She’s laying five—there are two already in place. She invited us to come to see this. It’s her way of telling us that she’s sending out a colony ship. She lays five queen-eggs, and then waits to see which is strongest. That’s the one she sends.”

“What about the others?” asked Valentine.

“If any of them is worth anything, she cocoons the larva. That’s what they did to her. The others she kills and eats. She has to—if any trace of a rival queen’s body should touch one of the drones that hasn’t yet mated with this hive queen, it would go crazy and try to kill her. Drones are very loyal mates.”

“Everybody else heard this?” asked Miro. He sounded disappointed. The hive queen wasn’t able to talk to him.

“Yes,” said Plikt.

“Only a bit of it,” said Valentine.

“Empty your mind as best you can,” said Ender. “Get some tune going in your head. That helps.”

In the meantime, the hive queen was nearly done with the next set of amputations. Valentine imagined stepping on the growing pile of legs around the queen; in her imagination, they broke like twigs with hideous snapping sounds.

<Very soft. Legs don’t break. Bend.>

The queen was answering her thoughts.

<You are part of Ender. You can hear me.>

The thoughts in her mind were clearer. Not so intrusive now, more controlled. Valentine was able to feel the difference between the hive queen’s communications and her own thoughts.

“Ouvi,” whispered Miro. He had heard something at last. “Fala mais, escuto. Say more, I’m listening.”

<Philotic connections. You are bound to Ender. When I talk to him through the philotic link, you overhear. Echoes. Reverberations.>

Valentine tried to conceive how the hive queen was managing to speak Stark into her mind. Then she realized that the hive queen was almost certainly doing nothing of the kind—Miro was hearing her in his native language, Portuguese; and Valentine wasn’t really hearing Stark at all, she was hearing the English that it was based on, the American English that she had grown up with. The hive queen wasn’t sending language to them, she was sending thought, and their brains were making sense of it in whatever language lay deepest in their minds. When Valentine heard the word echoes followed by reverberations, it wasn’t the hive queen struggling for the right word, it was Valentine’s own mind grasping for words to fit the meaning.

<Bound to him. Like my people. Except you have free will. Independent philote. Rogue people, all of you.>

“She’s making a joke,” whispered Ender. “Not a judgment.”

Valentine was grateful for his interpretation. The visual image that came with the phrase rogue people was of an elephant stomping a man to death. It was an image out of her childhood, the story from which she had first learned the word rogue. It frightened her, that image, the way it had frightened her as a child. She already hated the hive queen’s presence in her mind. Hated the way she could dredge up forgotten nightmares. Everything about the hive queen was a nightmare. How could Valentine ever have imagined that this being was raman? Yes, there was communication. Too much of it. Communication like mental illness.

And what she was saying—that they heard her so well because they were philotically connected to Ender. Valentine thought back to what Miro and Jane had said during the voyage—was it possible that her philotic strand was twined into Ender, and through him to the hive queen? But how could such a thing have happened? How could Ender ever have become bound to the hive queen in the first place?

<We reached for him. He was our enemy. Trying to destroy us. We wanted to tame him. Like a rogue.>

The understanding came suddenly, like a door opening. The buggers weren’t all born docile. They could have their own identity. Or at least a breakdown of control. And so the hive queens had evolved a way of capturing them, binding them philotically to get them under control.

<Found him. Couldn’t bind him. Too strong.>

And no one guessed the danger Ender was in. That the hive queen expected to be able to capture him, make him the same kind of mindless tool of her will as any bugger.

<Set up a web for him. Found the thing he yearned for. We thought. Got into it. Gave it a philotic core. Bonded with him. But it wasn’t enough. Now you. You.>

Valentine felt the word like a hammer inside her mind. She means me. She means me, me, me … she struggled to remember who me was. Valentine. I’m Valentine. She means Valentine.

<You were the one. You. Should have found you. What he longed for most. Not the other thing.>

It gave her a sick feeling inside. Was it possible that the military was correct all along? Was it possible that only their cruel separation of Valentine and Ender saved him? That if she had been with Ender, the buggers could have used her to get control of him?

<No. Could not do it. You are also too strong. We were doomed. We were dead. He couldn’t belong to us. But not to you either. Not anymore. Couldn’t tame him, but we twined with him.>

Valentine thought of the picture that had come to her mind on the ship. Of people twined together, families tied by invisible cords, children to parents, parents to each other, or to their own parents. A shifting network of strings tying people together, wherever their allegiance belonged. Only now the picture was of herself, tied to Ender. And then of Ender, tied … to the hive queen … the queen shaking her ovipositor, the strands quivering, and at the end of the strand, Ender’s head, wagging, bobbing …

She shook her head, trying to clear away the image.

<We don’t control him. He’s free. He can kill me if he wants. I won’t stop him. Will you kill me?>

This time the you was not Valentine; she could feel the question recede from her. And now, as the hive queen waited for an answer, she felt another thought in her mind. So close to her own way of thinking that if she hadn’t been sensitized, if she hadn’t been waiting for Ender to answer, she would have assumed it was her own natural thought.

Never, said the thought in her mind. I will never kill you. I love you.

And along with this thought came a glimmer of genuine emotion toward the hive queen. All at once her mental image of the hive queen included no loathing at all. Instead she seemed majestic, royal, magnificent. The rainbows from her wing-covers no longer seemed like an oily scum on water; the light reflecting from her eyes was like a halo; the glistening fluids at the tip of her abdomen were the threads of life, like milk at the nipple of a woman’s breast, stringing with saliva to her baby’s suckling mouth. Valentine had been fighting nausea till now, yet suddenly she almost worshipped the hive queen.

It was Ender’s thought in her mind, she knew that; that’s why the thoughts felt so much like her own. And with his vision of the hive queen, she knew at once that she had been right all along, when she wrote as Demosthenes so many years before. The hive queen was raman, strange but still capable of understanding and being understood.

As the vision faded, Valentine could hear someone weeping. Plikt. In all their years together, Valentine had never heard Plikt show such frailty.

“Bonita,” said Miro. Pretty.

Was that all he had seen? The hive queen was pretty? The communication must be weak indeed between Miro and Ender—but why shouldn’t it be? He hadn’t known Ender that long or that well, while Valentine had known Ender all her life.

But if that was why Valentine’s reception of Ender’s thought was so much stronger than Miro’s, how could she explain the fact that Plikt had so clearly received far more than Valentine? Was it possible that in all her years of studying Ender, of admiring him without really knowing him, Plikt had managed to bind herself more tightly to Ender than even Valentine was bound?

Of course she had. Of course. Valentine was married. Valentine had a husband. She had children. Her philotic connection to her brother was bound to be weaker. While Plikt had no allegiance strong enough to compete. She had given herself wholly to Ender. So with the hive queen making it possible for the philotic twines to carry thought, of course Plikt received Ender most perfectly. There was nothing to distract. No part of herself withheld.

Could even Novinha, who after all was tied to her children, have such a complete devotion to Ender? It was impossible. And if Ender had any inkling of this, it had to be disturbing to him. Or attractive? Valentine knew enough of men and women to know that worship was the most seductive of attributes. Have I brought a rival with me, to trouble Ender’s marriage?

Can Ender and Plikt read my thoughts, even now?

Valentine felt deeply exposed, frightened. As if in answer, as if to calm her, the hive queen’s mental voice returned, drowning out any thoughts that Ender might be sending.

<I know what you’re afraid of. But my colony won’t kill anyone. When we leave Lusitania, we can kill all the descolada virus on our starship.>

Maybe, thought Ender.

<We’ll find a way. We won’t carry the virus. We don’t have to die to save humans. Don’t kill us don’t kill us.>

I’ll never kill you. Ender’s thought came like a whisper, almost drowned out in the hive queen’s pleading.

We couldn’t kill you anyway, thought Valentine. It’s you who could easily kill us. Once you build your starships. Your weapons. You could be ready for the human fleet. Ender isn’t commanding them this time.

<Never. Never kill anybody. Never we promised.>

Peace, came Ender’s whisper. Peace. Be at peace, calm, quiet, rest. Fear nothing. Fear no man.

Don’t build a ship for the piggies, thought Valentine. Build a ship for yourself, because you can kill the descolada you carry. But not for them.

The hive queen’s thoughts abruptly changed from pleading to harsh rebuke.

<Don’t they also have a right to live? I promised them a ship. I promised you never to kill. Do you want me to break promises?>

No, thought Valentine. She was already ashamed of herself for having suggested such a betrayal. Or were those the hive queen’s feelings? Or Ender’s? Was she really sure which thoughts and feelings were her own, and which were someone else’s?

The fear she felt—it was her own, she was almost certain of that.

“Please,” she said. “I want to leave.”

“Eu também,” said Miro.

Ender took a single step toward the hive queen, reached out a hand toward her. She didn’t extend her arms—she was using them to jam the last of her sacrifices into the egg chamber. Instead the queen raised a wing-cover, rotated it, moved it toward Ender until at last his hand rested on the black rainbow surface.

Don’t touch it! cried Valentine silently. She’ll capture you! She wants to tame you!

“Hush,” said Ender aloud.

Valentine wasn’t sure whether he was speaking in answer to her silent cries, or was trying to silence something the hive queen was saying only to him. It didn’t matter. Within moments Ender had hold of a bugger’s finger and was leading them back into the dark tunnel. This time he had Valentine second, Miro third, and Plikt bringing up the rear. So that it was Plikt who cast the last look backward toward the hive queen; it was Plikt who raised her hand in farewell.

All the way up to the surface, Valentine struggled to make sense of what had happened. She had always thought that if only people could communicate mind-to-mind, eliminating the ambiguities of language, then understanding would be perfect and there’d be no more needless conflicts. Instead she had discovered that rather than magnifying differences between people, language might just as easily soften them, minimize them, smooth things over so that people could get along even though they really didn’t understand each other. The illusion of comprehension allowed people to think they were more alike than they really were. Maybe language was better.

They crawled out of the building into the sunlight, blinking, laughing in relief, all of them. “Not fun,” said Ender. “But you insisted, Val. Had to see her right away.”

“So I’m a fool,” said Valentine. “Is that news?”

“It was beautiful,” said Plikt.

Miro only lay on his back in the capim and covered his eyes with his arm.

Valentine looked at him lying there and caught a glimpse of the man he used to be, the body he used to have. Lying there, he didn’t stagger; silent, there was no halting in his speech. No wonder his fellow xenologer had fallen in love with him. Ouanda. So tragic to discover that her father was also his father. That was the worst thing revealed when Ender spoke for the dead in Lusitania thirty years ago. This was the man that Ouanda had lost; and Miro had also lost this man that he was. No wonder he had risked death crossing the fence to help the piggies. Having lost his sweetheart, he counted his life as worthless. His only regret was that he hadn’t died after all. He had lived on, broken on the outside as he was broken on the inside.

Why did she think of these things, looking at him? Why did it suddenly seem so real to her?

Was it because this was how he was thinking of himself right now? Was she capturing his image of himself? Was there some lingering connection between their minds?

“Ender,” she said, “what happened down there?”

“Better than I hoped,” said Ender.

“What was?”

“The link between us.”

“You expected that?”

“Wanted it.” Ender sat on the side of the car, his feet dangling in the tall grass. “She was hot today, wasn’t she?”

“Was she? I wouldn’t know how to compare.”

“Sometimes she’s so intellectual—it’s like doing higher mathematics in my head, just talking to her. This time—like a child. Of course, I’ve never been with her when she was laying queen eggs. I think she may have told us more than she meant to.”

“You mean she didn’t mean her promise?”

“No, Val, no, she always means her promises. She doesn’t know how to lie.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I was talking about the link between me and her. How they tried to tame me. That was really something, wasn’t it? She was furious there for a moment, when she thought that you might have been the link they needed. You know what that would have meant to them—they wouldn’t have been destroyed. They might even have used me to communicate with the human governments. Shared the galaxy with us. Such a lost opportunity.”

“You would have been—like a bugger. A slave to them.”

“Sure. I wouldn’t have liked it. But all the lives that would have been saved—I was a soldier, wasn’t I? If one soldier, dying, can save the lives of billions …”

“But it couldn’t have worked. You have an independent will,” said Valentine.

“Sure,” said Ender. “Or at least, more independent than the hive queen can deal with. You too. Comforting, isn’t it?”

“I don’t feel very comforted right now,” said Valentine. “You were inside my head down there. And the hive queen—I feel so violated—”

Ender looked surprised. “It never feels that way to me.”

“Well, it’s not just that,” said Valentine. “It was exhilarating, too. And frightening. She’s so—large inside my head. Like I’m trying to contain someone bigger than myself.”

“I guess,” said Ender. He turned to Plikt. “Was it like that for you, too?”

For the first time Valentine realized how Plikt was looking at Ender, with eyes full, a trembling gaze. But Plikt said nothing.

“That strong, huh?” said Ender. He chuckled and turned to Miro.

Didn’t he see? Plikt had already been obsessed with Ender. Now, having had him inside her mind, it might have been too much for her. The hive queen talked of taming rogue workers. Was it possible that Plikt had been “tamed” by Ender? Was it possible that she had lost her soul inside his?

Absurd. Impossible. I hope to God it isn’t so.

“Come on, Miro,” said Ender.

Miro allowed Ender to help him to his feet. Then they climbed back onto the car and headed home to Milagre.

Miro had told them that he didn’t want to go to mass. Ender and Novinha went without him. But as soon as they were gone, he found it impossible to remain in the house. He kept getting the feeling that someone was just outside his range of vision. In the shadows, a smallish figure, watching him. Encased in smooth hard armor, only two clawlike fingers on its slender arms, arms that could be bitten off and cast down like brittle kindling wood. Yesterday’s visit to the hive queen had bothered him more than he dreamed possible.

I’m a xenologer, he reminded himself. My life has been devoted to dealing with aliens. I stood and watched as Ender flayed Human’s mammaloid body and I didn’t even flinch, because I’m a dispassionate scientist. Sometimes maybe I identify too much with my subjects. But I don’t have nightmares about them, I don’t start seeing them in shadows.

Yet here he was, standing outside the door of his mother’s house because in the grassy fields, in the bright sunlight of a Sunday morning, there were no shadows where a bugger could wait to spring.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

The hive queen isn’t an insect. She and her people are warm-blooded, just like the pequeninos. They respirate, they sweat like mammals. They may carry with them the structural echoes of their evolutionary link with insects, just as we have our resemblances to lemurs and shrews and rats, but they created a bright and beautiful civilization. Or at least a dark and beautiful one. I should see them the way Ender does, with respect, with awe, with affection.

And all I managed, barely, was endurance.

There’s no doubt that the hive queen is raman, capable of comprehending and tolerating us. The question is whether I am capable of comprehending and tolerating her. And I can’t be the only one. Ender was so right to keep the knowledge of the hive queen from most of the people of Lusitania. If they once saw what I saw, or even caught a glimpse of a single bugger, the fear would spread, each one’s terror would feed on everyone else’s dread, until—until something. Something bad. Something monstrous.

Maybe we’re the varelse. Maybe xenocide is built into the human psyche as into no other species. Maybe the best thing that could happen for the moral good of the universe is for the descolada to get loose, to spread throughout the human universe and break us down to nothing. Maybe the descolada is God’s answer to our unworthiness.

Miro found himself at the door of the cathedral. In the cool morning air it stood open. Inside, they had not yet come to the eucharist. He shuffled in, took his place near the back. He had no desire to commune with Christ today. He simply needed the sight of other people. He needed to be surrounded by human beings. He knelt, crossed himself, then stayed there, clinging to the back of the pew in front of him, his head bowed. He would have prayed, but there was nothing in the Pai Nosso to deal with his fear. Give us this day our daily bread? Forgive us our trespasses? Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven? That would be good. God’s kingdom, in which the lion could dwell with the lamb.

Then there came to his mind an image of St. Stephen’s vision: Christ sitting at the right hand of God. But on the left hand was someone else. The Queen of Heaven. Not the Holy Virgin but the hive queen, with whitish slime quivering on the tip of her abdomen. Miro clenched his hands on the wood of the pew before him. God take this vision from me. Get thee behind me, Enemy.

Someone came and knelt beside him. He didn’t dare to open his eyes. He listened for some sound that would declare his companion to be human. But the rustling of cloth could just as easily be wing casings sliding across a hardened thorax.

He had to force this image away. He opened his eyes. With his peripheral vision he could see that his companion was kneeling. From the slightness of the arm, from the color of the sleeve, it was a woman.

“You can’t hide from me forever,” she whispered.

The voice was wrong. Too husky. A voice that had spoken a hundred thousand times since last he heard it. A voice that had crooned to babies, cried out in the throes of love, shouted at children to come home, come home. A voice that had once, when it was young, told him of a love that would last forever.

“Miro, if I could have taken your cross upon myself, I would have done it.”

My cross? Is that what it is I carry around with me, heavy and sluggish, weighing me down? And here I thought it was my body.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Miro. I grieved—for a long time. Sometimes I think I still do. Losing you—our hope for the future, I mean—it was better anyway—that’s what I realized. I’ve had a good family, a good life, and so will you. But losing you as my friend, as my brother, that was the hardest thing, I was so lonely, I don’t know if I ever got over that.”

Losing you as my sister was the easy part. I didn’t need another sister.

“You break my heart, Miro. You’re so young. You haven’t changed, that’s the hardest thing, you haven’t changed in thirty years.”

It was more than Miro could bear in silence. He didn’t lift his head, but he did raise his voice. Far too loudly for the middle of mass, he answered her: “Haven’t I?”

He rose to his feet, vaguely aware that people were turning around to look at him.

“Haven’t I?” His voice was thick, hard to understand, and he was doing nothing to make it any clearer. He took a halting step into the aisle, then turned to face her at last. “This is how you remember me?”

She looked up at him, aghast—at what? At Miro’s speech, his palsied movements? Or simply that he was embarrassing her, that it didn’t turn into the tragically romantic scene she had imagined for the past thirty years?

Her face wasn’t old, but it wasn’t Ouanda, either. Middle-aged, thicker, with creases at the eyes. How old was she? Fifty now? Almost. What did this fifty-year-old woman have to do with him?

“I don’t even know you,” said Miro. Then he lurched his way to the door and passed out into the morning.

Some time later he found himself resting in the shade of a tree. Which one was this, Rooter or Human? Miro tried to remember—it was only a few weeks ago that he left here, wasn’t it?—but when he left, Human’s tree was still only a sapling, and now both trees looked to be about the same size and he couldn’t remember for sure whether Human had been killed uphill or downhill from Rooter. It didn’t matter—Miro had nothing to say to a tree, and they had nothing to say to him.

Besides, Miro had never learned tree language; they hadn’t even known that all that beating on trees with sticks was really a language until it was too late for Miro. Ender could do it, and Ouanda, and probably half a dozen other people, but Miro would never learn, because there was no way Miro’s hands could hold the sticks and beat the rhythms. Just one more kind of speech that was now useless to him.

“Que dia chato, meu filho.”

That was one voice that would never change. And the attitude was unchanging as well: What a rotten day, my son. Pious and snide at the same time—and mocking himself for both points of view.

“Hi, Quim.”

“Father Estevao now, I’m afraid.” Quim had adopted the full regalia of a priest, robes and all; now he gathered them under himself and sat on the worn-down grass in front of Miro.

“You look the part,” said Miro. Quim had matured well. As a kid he had looked pinched and pious. Experience with the real world instead of theological theory had given him lines and creases, but the face that resulted had compassion in it. And strength. “Sorry I made a scene at mass.”

“Did you?” asked Miro. “I wasn’t there. Or rather, I was at mass—I just wasn’t at the cathedral.”

“Communion for the ramen?”

“For the children of God. The church already had a vocabulary to deal with strangers. We didn’t have to wait for Demosthenes.”

“Well, you don’t have to be smug about it, Quim. You didn’t invent the terms.”

“Let’s not fight.”

“Then let’s not butt into other people’s meditations.”

“A noble sentiment. Except that you have chosen to rest in the shade of a friend of mine, with whom I need to have a conversation. I thought it was more polite to talk to you first, before I start beating on Rooter with sticks.”

“This is Rooter?”

“Say hi. I know he was looking forward to your return.”

“I never knew him.”

“But he knew all about you. I don’t think you realize, Miro, what a hero you are among the pequeninos. They know what you did for them, and what it cost you.”

“And do they know what it’s probably going to cost us all, in the end?”

“In the end we’ll all stand before the judgment bar of God. If a whole planetful of souls is taken there at once, then the only worry is to make sure no one goes unchristened whose soul might have been welcomed among the saints.”

“So you don’t even care?”

“I care, of course,” said Quim. “But let’s say that there’s a longer view, in which life and death are less important matters than choosing what kind of life and what kind of death we have.”

“You really do believe all this, don’t you,” said Miro.

“Depending on what you mean by ‘all this,’ yes, I do.”

“I mean all of it. A living God, a resurrected Christ, miracles, visions, baptism, transubstantiation …”

“Yes.”

“Miracles. Healing.”

“Yes.”

“Like at the shrine to Grandfather and Grandmother.”

“Many healings have been reported there.”

“Do you believe in them?”

“Miro, I don’t know—some of them might have been hysterical. Some might have been a placebo effect. Some purported healings might have been spontaneous remissions or natural recoveries.”

“But some were real.”

“Might have been.”

“You believe that miracles are possible.”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t think any of them actually happen.”

“Miro, I believe that they do happen. I just don’t know if people accurately perceive which events are miracles and which are not. There are no doubt many miracles claimed which were not miracles at all. There are also probably many miracles that no one recognized when they occurred.”

“What about me, Quim?”

“What about you?”

“Why no miracle for me?”

Quim ducked his head, pulled at the short grass in front of him. It was a habit when he was a child, trying to avoid a hard question; it was the way he responded when their supposed father, Marcão, was on a drunken rampage.

“What is it, Quim? Are miracles only for other people?”

“Part of the miracle is that no one knows why it happens.”

“What a weasel you are, Quim.”

Quim flushed. “You want to know why you don’t get a miraculous healing? Because you don’t have faith, Miro.”

“What about the man who said, Yes Master, I believe—forgive my unbelief?”

“Are you that man? Have you even asked for a healing?”

“I’m asking now,” said Miro. And then, unbidden, tears came to his eyes. “O God,” he whispered. “I’m so ashamed.”

“Of what?” asked Quim. “Of having asked God for help? Of crying in front of your brother? Of your sins? Of your doubts?”

Miro shook his head. He didn’t know. These questions were all too hard. Then he realized that he did know the answer. He held out his arms from his sides. “Of this body,” he said.

Quim reached out and took his arms near the shoulder, drew them toward him, his hands sliding down Miro’s arms until he was clasping Miro’s wrists. “This is my body which is given for you, he told us. The way you gave your body for the pequeninos. For the little ones.”

“Yeah, Quim, but he got his body back, right?”

“He died, too.”

“Is that how I get healed? Find a way to die?”

“Don’t be an ass,” said Quim. “Christ didn’t kill himself. That was Judas’s ploy.”

Miro’s anger exploded. “All those people who get their colds cured, who get their migraines miraculously taken from them—are you telling me they deserve more from God than I do?”

“Maybe it isn’t based on what you deserve. Maybe it’s based on what you need.”

Miro lunged forward, seizing the front of Quim’s robe between his half-spastic fingers. “I need my body back!”

“Maybe,” said Quim.

“What do you mean maybe, you simpering smug asshole!”

“I mean,” said Quim mildly, “that while you certainly want your body back, it may be that God, in his great wisdom, knows that for you to become the best man you can be, you need to spend a certain amount of time as a cripple.”

“How much time?” Miro demanded.

“Certainly no longer than the rest of your life.”

Miro grunted in disgust and released Quim’s robe.

“Maybe less,” said Quim. “I hope so.”

“Hope,” said Miro contemptuously.

“Along with faith and pure love, it’s one of the great virtues. You should try it.”

“I saw Ouanda.”

“She’s been trying to speak to you since you arrived.”

“She’s old and fat. She’s had a bunch of babies and lived thirty years and some guy she married has plowed her up one side and down the other all that time. I’d rather have visited her grave!”

“How generous of you.”

“You know what I mean! Leaving Lusitania was a good idea, but thirty years wasn’t long enough.”

“You’d rather come back to a world where no one knows you.”

“No one knows me here, either.”

“Maybe not. But we love you, Miro.”

“You love what I used to be.”

“You’re the same man, Miro. You just have a different body.”

Miro struggled to his feet, leaning against Rooter for support as he got up. “Talk to your tree friend, Quim. You’ve got nothing to say that I want to hear.”

“So you think,” said Quim.

“You know what’s worse than an asshole, Quim?”

“Sure,” said Quim. “A hostile, bitter, self-pitying, abusive, miserable, useless asshole who has far too high an opinion of the importance of his own suffering.”

It was more than Miro could bear. He screamed in fury and threw himself at Quim, knocking him to the ground. Of course Miro lost his own balance and fell on top of his brother, then got tangled in Quim’s robes. But that was all right; Miro wasn’t trying to get up, he was trying to beat some pain into Quim, as if by doing that he would remove some from himself.

After only a few blows, though, Miro stopped hitting Quim and collapsed in tears, weeping on his brother’s chest. After a moment he felt Quim’s arms around him. Heard Quim’s soft voice, intoning a prayer.

“Pai Nosso, que estas no céu.” From there, however, the incantation stopped and the words turned new and therefore real. “O teu filho está com dor, o meu irmão precisa a resurreição da alma, ele merece o refresco da esperanca.”

Hearing Quim give voice to Miro’s pain, to his outrageous demands, made Miro ashamed again. Why should Miro imagine that he deserved new hope? How could he dare to demand that Quim pray for a miracle for him, for his body to be made whole? It was unfair, Miro knew, to put Quim’s faith on the line for a self-pitying unbeliever like him.

But the prayer went on. “Ele deu tudo aos pequeninos, e tu nos disseste, Salvador, que qualquer coisa que fazemos a estes pequeninos, fazemos a ti.”

Miro wanted to interrupt. If I gave all to the pequeninos, I did it for them, not for myself. But Quim’s words held him silent: You told us, Savior, that whatever we do to these little ones, we do to you. It was as if Quim were demanding that God hold up his end of a bargain. It was a strange sort of relationship that Quim must have with God, as if he had a right to call God to account.

“Ele não é como Jó, perfeito na coração.”

No, I’m not as perfect as Job. But I’ve lost everything, just as Job did. Another man fathered my children on the woman who should have been my wife. Others have accomplished my accomplishments. And where Job had boils, I have this lurching half-paralysis—would Job trade with me?

“Restabeleçe ele como restabeleceste Jó. Em nome do Pai, e do Filho, e do Espírito Santo. Amem.” Restore him as you restored Job.

Miro felt his brother’s arms release him, and as if it were those arms, not gravity, that held him on his brother’s chest, Miro rose up at once and stood looking down on his brother. A bruise was growing on Quim’s cheek. His lip was bleeding.

“I hurt you,” said Miro. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” said Quim. “You did hurt me. And I hurt you. It’s a popular pastime here. Help me up.”

For a moment, just one fleeting moment, Miro forgot that he was crippled, that he could barely maintain his balance himself. For just that moment he began to reach out a hand to his brother. But then he staggered as his balance slipped, and he remembered. “I can’t,” he said.

“Oh, shut up about being crippled and give me a hand.”

So Miro positioned his legs far apart and bent down over his brother. His younger brother, who now was nearly three decades his senior, and older still in wisdom and compassion. Miro reached out his hand. Quim gripped it, and with Miro’s help rose up from the ground. The effort was exhausting for Miro; he hadn’t the strength for this, and Quim wasn’t faking it, he was relying on Miro to lift him. They ended up facing each other, shoulder to shoulder, hands still together.

“You’re a good priest,” said Miro.

“Yeah,” said Quim. “And if I ever need a sparring partner, you’ll get a call.”

“Will God answer your prayer?”

“Of course. God answers all prayers.”

It took only a moment for Miro to realize what Quim meant. “I mean, will he say yes.”

“Ah. That’s the part I’m never sure about. Tell me later if he did.”

Quim walked—rather stiffly, limping—to the tree. He bent over and picked up a couple of talking sticks from the ground.

“What are you talking to Rooter about?”

“He sent word that I need to talk to him. There’s some kind of heresy in one of the forests a long way from here.”

“You convert them and then they go crazy, huh?” said Miro.

“No, actually,” said Quim. “This is a group that I never preached to. The fathertrees all talk to each other, so the ideas of Christianity are already everywhere in the world. As usual, heresy seems to spread faster than truth. And Rooter’s feeling guilty because it’s based on a speculation of his.”

“I guess that’s a serious business for you,” said Miro.

Quim winced. “Not just for me.”

“I’m sorry. I meant, for the church. For believers.”

“Nothing so parochial as that, Miro. These pequeninos have come up with a really interesting heresy. Once, not long ago, Rooter speculated that, just as Christ came to human beings, the Holy Ghost might someday come to the pequeninos. It’s a gross misinterpretation of the Holy Trinity, but this one forest took it quite seriously.”

“Sounds pretty parochial to me.”

“Me too. Till Rooter told me the specifics. You see, they’re convinced that the descolada virus is the incarnation of the Holy Ghost. It makes a perverse kind of sense—since the Holy Ghost has always dwelt everywhere, in all God’s creations, it’s appropriate for its incarnation to be the descolada virus, which also penetrates into every part of every living thing.”

“They worship the virus?”

“Oh, yes. After all, didn’t you scientists discover that the pequeninos were created, as sentient beings, by the descolada virus? So the virus is endued with the creative power, which means it has a divine nature.”

“I guess there’s as much literal evidence for that as for the incarnation of God in Christ.”

“No, there’s a lot more. But if that were all, Miro, I’d regard it as a church matter. Complicated, difficult, but—as you said—parochial.”

“So what is it?”

“The descolada is the second baptism. By fire. Only the pequeninos can endure that baptism, and it carries them into the third life. They are clearly closer to God than humans, who have been denied the third life.”

“The mythology of superiority. We could expect that, I guess,” said Miro. “Most communities attempting to survive under irresistible pressure from a dominant culture develop a myth that allows them to believe they are somehow a special people. Chosen. Favored by the gods. Gypsies, Jews—plenty of historical precedents.”

“Try this one, Senhor Zenador. Since the pequeninos are the ones chosen by the Holy Ghost, it’s their mission to spread this second baptism to every tongue and every people.”

“Spread the descolada?”

“To every world. Sort of a portable judgment day. They arrive, the descolada spreads, adapts, kills—and everybody goes to meet their Maker.”

“God help us.”

“So we hope.”

Then Miro made a connection with something he had learned only the day before. “Quim, the buggers are building a ship for the pequeninos.”

“So Ender told me. And when I confronted Father Daymaker about it—”

“He’s a pequenino?”

“One of Human’s children. He said, ‘Of course,’ as if everyone knew about it. Maybe that’s what he thought—that if the pequeninos know it, then it’s known. He also told me that this heretic group is angling to try to get command of the ship.”

“Why?”

“So they can take it to an inhabited world, of course. Instead of finding an uninhabited planet to terraform and colonize.”

“I think we’d have to call it lusiforming.”

“Funny.” Quim wasn’t laughing, though. “They might get their way. This idea of pequeninos being a superior species is popular, especially among non-Christian pequeninos. Most of them aren’t very sophisticated. They don’t catch on to the fact that they’re talking about xenocide. About wiping out the human race.”

“How could they miss a little fact like that?”

“Because the heretics are stressing the fact that God loves the humans so much that he sent his only beloved son. You remember the scripture.”

“Whoever believes in him will not perish.”

“Exactly. Those who believe will have eternal life. As they see it, the third life.”

“So those who die must have been the unbelievers.”

“Not all the pequeninos are lining up to volunteer for service as itinerant destroying angels. But enough of them are that it has to be stopped. Not just for the sake of Mother Church.”

“Mother Earth.”

“So you see, Miro, sometimes a missionary like me takes on a great deal of importance in the world. Somehow I have to persuade these poor heretics of the error of their ways and get them to accept the doctrine of the church.”

“Why are you talking to Rooter now?”

“To get the one piece of information the pequeninos never give us.”

“What’s that?”

“Addresses. There are thousands of pequenino forests on Lusitania. Which one is the heretic community? Their starship will be long gone before I find it by random forest-hopping on my own.”

“You’re going alone?”

“I always do. I can’t take any of the little brothers with me, Miro. Until a forest has been converted, they have a tendency to kill pequenino strangers. One case where it’s better to be raman than utlanning.”

“Does Mother know you’re going?”

“Please be practical, Miro. I have no fear of Satan, but Mother …”

“Does Andrew know?”

“Of course. He insists on going with me. The Speaker for the Dead has enormous prestige, and he thinks he could help me.”

“So you won’t be alone.”

“Of course I will. When has a man clothed in the whole armor of God ever needed the help of a humanist?”

“Andrew’s a Catholic.”

“He goes to mass, he takes communion, he confesses regularly, but he’s still a speaker for the dead and I don’t think he really believes in God. I’ll go alone.”

Miro looked at Quim with new admiration. “You’re one tough son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

“Welders and smiths are tough. Sons of bitches have problems of their own. I’m just a servant of God and of the church, with a job to do. I think recent evidence suggests that I’m in more danger from my brother than I am among the most heretical of pequeninos. Since the death of Human, the pequeninos have kept the worldwide oath—not one has ever raised a hand in violence against a human being. They may be heretics, but they’re still pequeninos. They’ll keep the oath.”

“I’m sorry I hit you.”

“I received it as if it were an embrace, my son.”

“I wish it had been one, Father Estevão.”

“Then it was.”

Quim turned to the tree and began to beat out a tattoo. Almost at once, the sound began to shift, changing in pitch and tone as the hollow spaces within the tree changed shape. Miro waited a few moments, listening, even though he didn’t understand the language of the fathertrees. Rooter was speaking with the only audible voice the fathertrees had. Once he had spoken with a voice, once had articulated lips with and tongue and teeth. There was more than one way to lose your body. Miro had passed through an experience that should have killed him. He had come out of it crippled. But he could still move, however clumsily, could still speak, however slowly. He thought he was suffering like Job. Rooter and Human, far more crippled than he, thought they had received eternal life.

“Pretty ugly situation,” said Jane in his ear.

Yes, said Miro silently.

“Father Estevão shouldn’t go alone,” she said. “The pequeninos used to be devastatingly effective warriors. They haven’t forgotten how.”

So tell Ender, said Miro. I don’t have any power here.

“Bravely spoken, my hero,” said Jane. “I’ll talk to Ender while you wait around here for your miracle.”

Miro sighed and walked back down the hill and through the gate.

9

PINEHEAD

<I’ve been talking to Ender and his sister, Valentine. She’s a historian.>

<Explain this.>

<She searches through the books to find out the stories of humans, and then writes stories about what she finds and gives them to all the other humans.>

<If the stories are already written down, why does she write them again?>

<Because they aren’t well understood. She helps people understand them.>

<If the people closer to that time didn’t understand them, how can she, coming later, understand them better?>

<I asked this myself, and Valentine said that she doesn’t always understand them better. But the old writers understood what the stories meant to the people of their time, and she understands what the stories mean to people of her time.>

<So the story changes.>

<Yes.>

<And yet each time they still think of the story as a true memory?>

<Valentine explained something about some stories being true and others being truthful. I didn’t understand any of it.>

<Why don’t they just remember their stories accurately in the first place? Then they wouldn’t have to keep lying to each other.>

Qing-jao sat before her terminal, her eyes closed, thinking. Wang-mu was brushing Qing-jao’s hair; the tugs, the strokes, the very breath of the girl was a comfort to her.

This was a time when Wang-mu could speak freely, without fear of interrupting her. And, because Wang-mu was Wang-mu, she used hair-brushing time for questions. She had so many questions.

The first few days her questions had all been about the speaking of the gods. Of course, Wang-mu had been greatly relieved to learn that almost always tracing a single woodgrain line was enough—she had been afraid after that first time that Qing-jao would have to trace the whole floor every day.

But she still had questions about everything to do with purification. Why don’t you just get up and trace a line every morning and have done with it? Why don’t you just have the floor covered in carpet? It was so hard to explain that the gods can’t be fooled by silly stratagems like that.

What if there were no wood at all in the whole world? Would the gods burn you up like paper? Would a dragon come and carry you off?

Qing-jao couldn’t answer Wang-mu’s questions except to say that this is what the gods required of her. If there were no woodgrain, the gods wouldn’t require her to trace it. To which Wang-mu replied that they should make a law against wooden floors, then, so that Qing-jao could be shut of the whole business.

Those who hadn’t heard the voice of the gods simply couldn’t understand.

Today, though, Wang-mu’s question had nothing to do with the gods—or, at least, had nothing to do with them at first.

“What is it that finally stopped the Lusitania Fleet?” asked Wang-mu.

Almost, Qing-jao simply took the question in stride; almost she answered with a laugh: If I knew that, I could rest! But then she realized that Wang-mu probably shouldn’t even know that the Lusitania Fleet had disappeared.

“How would you know anything about the Lusitania Fleet?”

“I can read, can’t I?” said Wang-mu, perhaps a little too proudly.

But why shouldn’t she be proud? Qing-jao had told her, truthfully, that Wang-mu learned very quickly indeed, and figured out many things for herself. She was very intelligent, and Qing-jao knew she shouldn’t be surprised if Wang-mu understood more than was told to her directly.

“I can see what you have on your terminal,” said Wang-mu, “and it always has to do with the Lusitania Fleet. Also you discussed it with your father the first day I was here. I didn’t understand most of what you said, but I knew it had to do with the Lusitania Fleet.” Wang-mu’s voice was suddenly filled with loathing. “May the gods piss in the face of the man who launched that fleet.”

Her vehemence was shocking enough; the fact that Wang-mu was speaking against Starways Congress was unbelievable.

“Do you know who it was that launched the fleet?” asked Qing-jao.

“Of course. It was the selfish politicians in Starways Congress, trying to destroy any hope that a colony world could win its independence.”

So Wang-mu knew she was speaking treasonously. Qing-jao remembered her own similar words, long ago, with loathing; to have them said again in her presence—and by her own secret maid—was outrageous. “What do you know of these things? These are matters for Congress, and here you are speaking of independence and colonies and—”

Wang-mu was on her knees, head bowed to the floor. Qing-jao was at once ashamed for speaking so harshly.

“Oh, get up, Wang-mu.”

“You’re angry with me.”

“I’m shocked to hear you talk like that, that’s all. Where did you hear such nonsense?”

“Everybody says it,” said Wang-mu.

“Not everybody,” said Qing-jao. “Father never says it. On the other hand, Demosthenes says that sort of thing all the time.” Qing-jao remembered how she had felt when she first read the words of Demosthenes—how logical and right and fair he had sounded. Only later, after Father had explained to her that Demosthenes was the enemy of the rulers and therefore the enemy of the gods, only then did she realize how oily and deceptive the traitor’s words had been, which had almost seduced her into believing that the Lusitania Fleet was evil. If Demosthenes had been able to come so close to fooling an educated godspoken girl like Qing-jao, no wonder that she was hearing his words repeated like truth in the mouth of a common girl.

“Who is Demosthenes?” asked Wang-mu.

“A traitor who is apparently succeeding better than anyone thought.” Did Starways Congress realize that Demosthenes’ ideas were being repeated by people who had never heard of him? Did anyone understand what this meant? Demosthenes’ ideas were now the common wisdom of the common people. Things had reached a more dangerous turn than Qing-jao had imagined. Father was wiser; he must know already. “Never mind,” said Qing-jao. “Tell me about the Lusitania Fleet.”

“How can I, when it will make you angry?”

Qing-jao waited patiently.

“All right then,” said Wang-mu, but she still looked wary. “Father says—and so does Pan Ku-wei, his very wise friend who once took the examination for the civil service and came very very close to passing—”

“What do they say?”

“That it’s a very bad thing for Congress to send a huge fleet—and so huge—all to attack the tiniest colony simply because they refused to send away two of their citizens for trial on another world. They say that justice is completely on the side of Lusitania, because to send people from one planet to another against their will is to take them away from family and friends forever. That’s like sentencing them before the trial.”

“What if they’re guilty?”

“That’s for the courts to decide on their own world, where people know them and can measure their crime fairly, not for Congress to decide from far away where they know nothing and understand less.” Wang-mu ducked her head. “That’s what Pan Ku-wei says.”

Qing-jao stilled her own revulsion at Wang-mu’s traitorous words; it was important to know what the common people thought, even if the very hearing of it made Qing-jao sure the gods would be angry with her for such disloyalty. “So you think that the Lusitania Fleet should never have been sent?”

“If they can send a fleet against Lusitania for no good reason, what’s to stop them from sending a fleet against Path? We’re also a colony, not one of the Hundred Worlds, not a member of Starways Congress. What’s to stop them from declaring that Han Fei-tzu is a traitor and making him travel to some faraway planet and never come back for sixty years?”

The thought was a terrible one, and it was presumptuous of Wang-mu to bring her father into the discussion, not because she was a servant, but because it would be presumptuous of anyone to imagine the great Han Fei-tzu being convicted of a crime. Qing-jao’s composure failed her for a moment, and she spoke her outrage: “Starways Congress would never treat my father like a criminal!”

“Forgive me, Qing-jao. You told me to repeat what my father said.”

“You mean your father spoke of Han Fei-tzu?”

“All the people of Jonlei know that Han Fei-tzu is the most honorable man of Path. It’s our greatest pride, that the House of Han is part of our city.”

So, thought Qing-jao, you knew exactly how ambitious you were being when you set out to become his daughter’s maid.

“I meant no disrespect, nor did they. But isn’t it true that if Starways Congress wanted to, they could order Path to send your father to another world to stand trial?”

“They would never—”

“But could they?” insisted Wang-mu.

“Path is a colony,” said Qing-jao. “The law allows it, but Starways Congress would never—”

“But if they did it to Lusitania, why wouldn’t they do it to Path?”

“Because the xenologers on Lusitania were guilty of crimes that—”

“The people of Lusitania didn’t think so. Their government refused to send them off for trial.”

“That’s the worst part. How can a planetary government dare to think they know better than Congress?”

“But they knew everything,” said Wang-mu, as if this idea were so natural that everyone must know it. “They knew those people, those xenologers. If Starways Congress ordered Path to send Han Fei-tzu to go stand trial on another world for a crime we know he didn’t commit, don’t you think we would also rebel rather than send such a great man? And then they would send a fleet against us.”

“Starways Congress is the source of all justice in the Hundred Worlds.” Qing-jao spoke with finality. The discussion was over.

Impudently, Wang-mu didn’t fall silent. “But Path isn’t one of the Hundred Worlds yet, is it?” she said. “We’re just a colony. They can do what they want, and that’s not right.”

Wang-mu nodded her head at the end, as if she thought she had utterly prevailed. Qing-jao almost laughed. She would have laughed, in fact, if she hadn’t been so angry. Partly she was angry because Wang-mu had interrupted her many times and had even contradicted her, something that her teachers had always been very careful not to do. Still, Wang-mu’s audacity was probably a good thing, and Qing-jao’s anger was a sign that she had become too used to the undeserved respect people showed to her ideas simply because they fell from the lips of the godspoken. Wang-mu must be encouraged to speak to her like this. That part of Qing-jao’s anger was wrong, and she must get rid of it.

But much of Qing-jao’s anger was because of the way Wang-mu had spoken about Starways Congress. It was as if Wang-mu didn’t think of Congress as the supreme authority over all of humanity; as if Wang-mu imagined that Path was more important than the collective will of all the worlds. Even if the inconceivable happened and Han Fei-tzu were ordered to stand trial on a world a hundred lightyears away, he would do it without murmur—and he would be furious if anyone on Path made the slightest resistance. To rebel like Lusitania? Unthinkable. It made Qing-jao feel dirty just to think of it.

Dirty. Impure. To hold such a rebellious thought made her start searching for a woodgrain line to trace.

“Qing-jao!” cried Wang-mu, as soon as Qing-jao knelt and bowed over the floor. “Please tell me that the gods aren’t punishing you for hearing the words I said!”

“They aren’t punishing me,” said Qing-jao. “They’re purifying me.”

“But they weren’t even my words, Qing-jao. They were the words of people who aren’t even here.”

“They were impure words, whoever said them.”

“But that’s not fair, to make you cleanse yourself for ideas that you never even thought of or believed in!”

Worse and worse! Would Wang-mu never stop? “Now must I hear you tell me that the gods themselves are unfair?”

“They are, if they punish you for other people’s words!”

The girl was outrageous. “Now you are wiser than the gods?”

“They might as well punish you for being pulled on by gravity, or being fallen on by rain!”

“If they tell me to purify myself for such things, then I’ll do it, and call it justice,” said Qing-jao.

“Then justice has no meaning!” cried Wang-mu. “When you say the word, you mean whatever-the-gods-happen-to-decide. But when I say the word, I mean fairness, I mean people being punished only for what they did on purpose, I mean—”

“It’s what the gods mean by justice that I must listen to.”

“Justice is justice, whatever the gods might say!”

Almost Qing-jao rose up from the floor and slapped her secret maid. It would have been her right, for Wang-mu was causing her as much pain as if she had struck her. But it was not Qing-jao’s way to strike a person who was not free to strike back. Besides, there was a far more interesting puzzle here. After all, the gods had sent Wang-mu to her—Qing-jao was already sure of that. So instead of arguing with Wang-mu directly, Qing-jao should try to understand what the gods meant by sending her a servant who would say such shameful, disrespectful things.

The gods had caused Wang-mu to say that it was unjust to punish Qing-jao for simply hearing another person’s disrespectful opinions. Perhaps Wang-mu’s statement was true. But it was also true that the gods could not be unjust. Therefore it must be that Qing-jao was not being punished for simply hearing the treasonous opinions of the people. No, Qing-jao had to purify herself because, in her heart of hearts, some part of her must believe those opinions. She must cleanse herself because deep inside she still doubted the heavenly mandate of Starways Congress; she still believed they were not just.

Qing-jao immediately crawled to the nearest wall and began looking for the right woodgrain line to follow. Because of Wang-mu’s words, Qing-jao had discovered a secret filthiness inside herself. The gods had brought her another step closer to knowing the darkest places inside herself, so that she might someday be utterly filled with light and thus earn the name that even now was still only a mockery. Some part of me doubts the righteousness of Starways Congress. O Gods, for the sake of my ancestors, my people, and my rulers, and last of all for me, purge this doubt from me and make me clean!

When she finished tracing the line—and it took only a single line to make her clean, which was a good sign that she had learned something true—there sat Wang-mu, watching her. All of Qing-jao’s anger was gone now, and indeed she was grateful to Wang-mu for having been an unwitting tool of the gods in helping her learn new truth. But still, Wang-mu had to understand that she had been out of line.

“In this house, we are loyal servants of Starways Congress,” said Qing-jao, her voice soft, her expression as kind as she could make it. “And if you’re a loyal servant of this house, you’ll also serve Congress with all your heart.” How could she explain to Wang-mu how painfully she had learned that lesson herself—how painfully she was still learning it? She needed Wang-mu to help her, not make it harder.

“Holy one, I didn’t know,” said Wang-mu, “I didn’t guess. I had always heard the name of Han Fei-tzu mentioned as the noblest servant of Path. I thought it was the Path that you served, not Congress, or I never would have …”

“Never would have come to work here?”

“Never would have spoken harshly about Congress,” said Wang-mu. “I would serve you even if you lived in the house of a dragon.”

Maybe I do, thought Qing-jao. Maybe the god who purifies me is a dragon, cold and hot, terrible and beautiful.

“Remember, Wang-mu, that the world called Path is not the Path itself, but only was named so to remind us to live the true Path every day. My father and I serve Congress because they have the mandate of heaven, and so the Path requires that we serve them even above the wishes or needs of the particular world called Path.”

Wang-mu looked at her with wide eyes, unblinking. Did she understand? Did she believe? No matter—she would come to believe in time.

“Go away now, Wang-mu. I have to work.”

“Yes, Qing-jao.” Wang-mu immediately got up and backed away, bowing. Qing-jao turned back to her terminal. But as she began to call up more reports into the display, she became aware that someone was in the room with her. She whirled around on her chair; there in the doorway stood Wang-mu.

“What is it?” asked Qing-jao.

“Is it the duty of a secret maid to tell you whatever wisdom comes to her mind, even if it turns out to be foolishness?”

“You can say whatever you like to me,” said Qing-jao. “Have I ever punished you?”

“Then please forgive me, my Qing-jao, if I dare to say something about this great task you are working on.”

What did Wang-mu know of the Lusitania Fleet? Wang-mu was a quick student, but Qing-jao was still teaching her at such a primitive level in every subject that it was absurd to think Wang-mu could even grasp the problems, let alone think of an answer. Nevertheless, Father had taught her: Servants are always happier when they know their voices are heard by their master. “Please tell me,” said Qing-jao. “How can you say anything more foolish than the things I have already said?”

“My beloved elder sister,” said Wang-mu, “I really got this idea from you. You’ve said so many times that nothing known to all of science and history could possibly have caused the fleet to disappear so perfectly, and all at once.”

“But it happened,” said Qing-jao, “and so it must be possible after all.”

“What came to my mind, my sweet Qing-jao,” said Wang-mu, “is something you explained to me as we studied logic. About first and final cause. All this time you have been looking for first causes—how the fleet was made to disappear. But have you looked for final causes—what someone hoped to accomplish by cutting off the fleet, or even destroying it?”

“Everyone knows why people want the fleet stopped. They’re trying to protect the rights of colonies, or else they have some ridiculous idea that Congress means to destroy the pequeninos. along with the whole colony. There are billions of people who want the fleet to stop. All of them are seditious in their hearts, and enemies of the gods.”

“But somebody actually did it,” said Wang-mu. “I only thought that since you can’t find out what happened to the fleet directly, then maybe if you find out who made it happen, that will lead you to find out how they did it.”

“We don’t even know that it was done by a who,” said Qing-jao. “It could have been a what. Natural phenomena don’t have purposes in mind, since they don’t have minds.”

Wang-mu bowed her head. “I did waste your time, then, Qing-jao. Please forgive me. I should have left when you told me to go.”

“It’s all right,” said Qing-jao.

Wang-mu was already gone; Qing-jao didn’t know whether her servant had even heard her reassurance. Never mind, thought Qing-jao. If Wang-mu was offended, I’ll make it up to her later. It was sweet of the girl to think she could help me with my task; I’ll make sure she knows I’m glad she has such an eager heart.

With Wang-mu out of the room, Qing-jao went back to her terminal. She idly flipped the reports through her terminal’s display. She had looked at all of them before, and she had found nothing useful. Why should this time be different? Maybe these reports and summaries showed her nothing because there was nothing to show. Maybe the fleet disappeared because of some god-gone-berserk; there were stories of such things in ancient times. Maybe there was no evidence of human intervention because a human didn’t do it. What would Father say about that, she wondered. How would Congress deal with a lunatic deity? They couldn’t even track down that seditious writer Demosthenes—what hope did they have of tracking and trapping a god?

Whoever Demosthenes is, he’s laughing right now, thought Qing-jao. All his work to persuade people that the government was wrong to send the Lusitania Fleet, and now the fleet has stopped, just as Demosthenes wanted.

Just as Demosthenes wanted. For the first time, Qing-jao made a mental connection that was so obvious she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before. It was so obvious, in fact, that the police in many a city had assumed that those who were already known to follow Demosthenes must surely have been involved in making the fleet disappear. They had rounded up everyone suspected of sedition and tried to force confessions out of them. But of course they hadn’t actually questioned Demosthenes, because nobody knew who he was.

Demosthenes, so clever he has evaded discovery for years, despite all the searching of the Congress Police; Demosthenes, who is every bit as elusive as the cause of the disappearance of the fleet. If he could work the one trick, why not the other? Maybe if I find Demosthenes, I’ll find out how the fleet was cut off. Not that I have any idea even where to start looking. But at least it’s a different avenue of approach. At least it won’t mean reading the same empty, useless reports over and over again.

Suddenly Qing-jao remembered who had said almost exactly the same thing, only moments before. She felt herself blushing, the blood hot in her cheeks. How arrogant I was, to condescend to Wang-mu, to patronize her for imagining she could help me with my lofty task. And now, not five minutes later, the thought she planted in my mind has blossomed into a plan. Even if the plan fails, she was the one who gave it to me, or at least started me thinking of it. Thus I was the fool to think her foolish. Tears of shame filled Qing-jao’s eyes.

Then she thought of some famous lines from a song by her ancestor-of-the-heart:

I want to call back
the blackberry flowers
that have fallen
though pear blossoms remain

The poet Li Qing-jao knew the pain of regretting words that have already fallen from our lips and can never be called back. But she was wise enough to remember that even though those words are gone, there are still new words waiting to be said, like the pear blossoms.

To comfort herself for the shame of having been so arrogant, Qing-jao repeated all the words of the song; or at least she started to. But when she got to the line her mind drifted to the Lusitania Fleet, imagining all those starships like riverboats, painted so fiercely, and yet drifting now with the current, so far from the shore that they can no longer be heard no matter how loud they shout.

dragon boats on the river

From dragon boats her thoughts turned to dragon kites, and now she thought of the Lusitania Fleet as kites with broken strings, carried along by the wind, no longer tethered to the child who first gave them flight. How beautiful, to see them free; yet how terrifying it must be for them, who never wished for freedom.

I did not fear the mad winds and violent rain

The words of the song came back to her again. I did not fear. Mad winds. Violent rain. I did not fear as

we drank to good fortune
with warm blackberry wine
now I cannot conceive
how to retrieve
that time

My ancestor-of-the-heart could drink away her fear, thought Qing-jao, because she had someone to drink with. And even now,

alone on my mat with a cup
gazing sadly into nothingness

the poet remembers her gone companion. Whom do I remember now? thought Qing-jao. Where is my tender love? What an age it must have been then, when the great Li Qing-jao was still mortal, and men and women could be together as tender friends without any worry about who was godspoken and who was not. Then a woman could live such a life that even in her loneliness she had memories. I can’t even remember my mother’s face. Only the flat pictures; I can’t remember seeing her face turn and move while her eyes looked at me. I have only my Father, who is like a god; I can worship him and obey him and even love him but I can never be playful with him, not really; when I tease him I’m always watching to be sure he approves of the way I tease him. And Wang-mu; I talked so firmly about how we would be friends, and yet I treat her like a servant, I never for a moment forget who is godspoken and who is not. It’s a wall that can never be crossed. I’m alone now and I’m alone forever.

a clear cold comes through
the window curtains
crescent moon beyond the golden bars

She shivered. I and the moon. Didn’t the Greeks think of their moon as a cold virgin, a huntress? Is that not what I am now? Sixteen years old and untouched

and a flute sounds
as if someone were coming

I listen and listen but never hear the melody of someone coming …

No. What she heard were the distant sounds of a meal being readied; a clattering of bowls and spoons, laughter from the kitchen. Her reverie broken, she reached up and wiped the foolish tears from her cheeks. How could she think of herself as lonely, when she lived in this full house where everyone had cared for her all her life? I sit here reciting to myself scraps of old poetry when I have work to do.

At once she began to call up the reports that had been made about investigations into the identity of Demosthenes.

The reports made her think for a moment that this was a dead end, too. More than three dozen writers on almost as many worlds had been arrested for producing seditious documents under that name. Starways Congress had reached the obvious conclusion: Demosthenes was simply the catchall name used by any rebel who wanted to get attention. There was no real Demosthenes, not even an organized conspiracy.

But Qing-jao had doubts about that conclusion. Demosthenes had been remarkably successful in stirring up trouble on every world. Could there possibly be someone of so much talent among the traitors on every planet? Not likely.

Besides, thinking back to when she had read Demosthenes, Qing-jao remembered noticing the coherence of his writings. The singularity and consistency of his vision—that was part of what made him so seductive. Everything seemed to fit, to make sense together.

Hadn’t Demosthenes also devised the Hierarchy of Foreignness? Utlanning, framling, raman, varelse. No; that had been written many years ago—it had to be a different Demosthenes. Was it because of that earlier Demosthenes’ hierarchy that the traitors were using the name? They were writing in support of the independence of Lusitania, the only world where intelligent nonhuman life had been found. It was only appropriate to use the name of the writer who had first taught humanity to realize that the universe wasn’t divided between humans and nonhumans, or between intelligent and non-intelligent species.

Some strangers, the earlier Demosthenes had said, were framlings—humans from another world. Some were ramen—of another intelligent species, yet able to communicate with human beings, so that we could work out differences and make decisions together. Others were varelse, “wise beasts,” clearly intelligent and yet completely unable to reach a common ground with humankind. Only with varelse would war ever be justified; with raman, humans could make peace and share the habitable worlds. It was an open way of thinking, full of hope that strangers might still be friends. People who thought that way could never have sent a fleet with Dr. Device to a world inhabited by an intelligent species.

This was a very uncomfortable thought: that the Demosthenes of the hierarchy would also disapprove of the Lusitania Fleet. Almost at once Qing-jao had to counter it. It didn’t matter what the old Demosthenes thought, did it? The new Demosthenes, the seditious one, was no wise philosopher trying to bring peoples together. Instead he was trying to sow dissension and discontent among the worlds—provoke quarrels, perhaps even wars between framlings.

And seditious Demosthenes was not just a composite of many rebels working on different worlds. Her computer search soon confirmed it. True, many rebels were found who had published on their own planet using the name Demosthenes, but they were always linked to small, ineffective, useless little publications—never to the really dangerous documents that seemed to turn up simultaneously on half the worlds at once. Each local police force, however, was very happy to declare their own petty “Demosthenes” the perpetrator of all the writings, take their bows, and close the case.

Starways Congress had been only too happy to do the same thing with their own investigation. Having found several dozen cases where local police had arrested and convicted rebels who had incontrovertibly published something under the name Demosthenes, the Congress investigators sighed contentedly, declared that Demosthenes had proved to be a catchall name and not one person at all, and then stopped investigating.

In short, they had all taken the easy way out. Selfish, disloyal—Qing-jao felt a surge of indignation that such people were allowed to continue in their high offices. They should be punished, and severely, too, for having let their private laziness or their desire for praise lead them to abandon the investigation of Demosthenes. Didn’t they realize that Demosthenes was truly dangerous? That his writings were now the common wisdom of at least one world, and if one, then probably many? Because of him, how many people on how many worlds would rejoice if they knew that the Lusitania Fleet had disappeared? No matter how many people the police had arrested under the name Demosthenes, his works kept appearing, and always in that same voice of sweet reasonableness. No, the more she read the reports, the more certain Qing-jao became that Demosthenes was one man, as yet undiscovered. One man who knew how to keep secrets impossibly well.

From the kitchen came the sound of the flute; they were being called to dinner. She gazed into the display space over her terminal, where the latest report still hovered, the name Demosthenes repeated over and over. “I know you exist, Demosthenes,” she whispered, “and I know you are very clever, and I will find you. When I do, you will stop your war against the rulers, and you will tell me what has happened to the Lusitania Fleet. Then I will be done with you, and Congress will punish you, and Father will become the god of Path and live forever in the Infinite West. That is the task that I was born for, the gods have chosen me for it, you might just as well show yourself to me now as later, for eventually all men and women lay their heads under the feet of the gods.”

The flute played on, a breathy low melody, drawing Qing-jao out of herself and toward the company of the household. To her, this half-whispered music was the song of the inmost spirit, the quiet conversation of trees over a still pond, the sound of memories arising unbidden into the mind of a woman in prayer. Thus were they called to dine in the house of the noble Han Fei-tzu.

Having heard Qing-jao’s challenge, Jane thought: This is what fear of death tastes like. Human beings feel this all the time, and yet somehow they go on from day to day, knowing that at any moment they may cease to be. But this is because they can forget something and still know it; I can never forget, not without losing the knowledge entirely. I know that Han Qing-jao is on the verge of finding secrets that have stayed hidden only because no one has looked hard for them. And when those secrets are known, I will die.

“Ender,” she whispered.

Was it day or night on Lusitania? Was he awake or asleep? For Jane, to ask a question is either to know or not-know. So she knew at once that it was night. Ender had been asleep, but now he was awake; he was still attuned to her voice, she realized, even though many silences had passed between them in the past thirty years.

“Jane,” he whispered.

Beside him his wife, Novinha, stirred in her sleep. Jane heard her, felt the vibration of her movement, saw the changing shadows through the sensor that Ender wore in his ear. It was good that Jane had not yet learned to feel jealousy, or she might have hated Novinha for lying there, a warm body beside Ender’s own. But Novinha, being human, was gifted at jealousy, and Jane knew how Novinha seethed whenever she saw Ender speaking to the woman who lived in the jewel in his ear. “Hush,” said Jane. “Don’t wake people up.”

Ender answered by moving his lips and tongue and teeth, without letting anything louder than a breath pass his lips. “How fare our enemies in flight?” he said. He had greeted her this way for many years.

“Not well,” said Jane.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have blocked them. We would have found a way. Valentine’s writings—”

“Are about to have their true authorship uncovered.”

“Everything’s about to be uncovered.” He didn’t say: because of you.

“Only because Lusitania was marked for destruction,” she answered. She also didn’t say: because of you. There was plenty of blame to go around.

“So they know about Valentine?”

“A girl is finding out. On the world of Path.”

“I don’t know the place.”

“A fairly new colony, a couple of centuries. Chinese. Dedicated to preserving an odd mix of old religions. The gods speak to them.”

“I lived on more than one Chinese world,” said Ender. “People believed in the old gods on all of them. Gods are alive on every world, even here in the smallest human colony of all. They still have miracles of healing at the shrine of Os Venerados. Rooter has been telling us of a new heresy out in the hinterland somewhere. Some pequeninos who commune constantly with the Holy Ghost.”

“This business with gods is something I don’t understand,” said Jane. “Hasn’t anyone caught on yet that the gods always say what people want to hear?”

“Not so,” said Ender. “The gods often ask us to do things we never desired, things that require us to sacrifice everything on their behalf. Don’t underestimate the gods.”

“Does your Catholic God speak to you?”

“Maybe he does. I never hear him, though. Or if I do, I never know that it’s his voice I’m hearing.”

“And when you die, do the gods of every people really gather them up and take them off somewhere to live forever?”

“I don’t know. They never write.”

“When I die, will there be some god to carry me away?”

Ender was still for a moment, and then he began to address her in his storytelling manner. “There’s an old tale of a dollmaker who never had a son. So he made a puppet that was so lifelike that it looked like a real boy, and he would hold the wooden boy on his lap and talk to it and pretend it was his son. He wasn’t crazy—he still knew it was a doll—he called it Pinehead. But one day a god came and touched the puppet and it came to life, and when the dollmaker spoke to it, Pinehead answered. The dollmaker never told anyone about this. He kept his wooden son at home, but he brought the boy every tale he could gather and news of every wonder under heaven. Then one day the dollmaker was coming home from the wharf with tales of a far-off land that had just been discovered, when he saw that his house was on fire. Immediately he tried to run into the house, crying out, ‘My son! My son!’ But his neighbors stopped him, saying, ‘Are you mad? You have no son!’ He watched the house burn to the ground, and when it was over he plunged into the ruins and covered himself with hot ashes and wept bitterly. He refused to be comforted. He refused to rebuild his shop. When people asked him why, he said his son was dead. He stayed alive by doing odd jobs for other people, and they pitied him because they were sure the fire had made him a lunatic. Then one day, three years later, a small orphan boy came to him and tugged on his sleeve and said, ‘Father, don’t you have a tale for me?’”

Jane waited, but Ender said no more. “That’s the whole story?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

“Why did you tell me this? It’s all dreams and wishes. What does it have to do with me?”

“It was the story that came to mind.”

“Why did it come to mind?”

“Maybe that’s how God speaks to me,” said Ender. “Or maybe I’m sleepy and I don’t have what you want from me.”

“I don’t even know what I want from you.”

“I know what you want,” said Ender. “You want to be alive, with your own body, not dependent on the philotic web that binds the ansibles together. I’d give you that gift if I could. If you can figure out a way for me to do it, I’ll do it for you. But Jane, you don’t even know what you are. Maybe when you know how you came to exist, what makes you yourself, then maybe we can save you from the day when they shut down the ansibles to kill you.”

“So that’s your story? Maybe I’ll burn down with the house, but somehow my soul will end up in a three-year-old orphan boy?”

“Find out who you are, what you are, your essence, and we’ll see if we can move you somewhere safer until all this is over. We’ve got an ansible. Maybe we can put you back.”

“There aren’t computers enough on Lusitania to contain me.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know what your self is.”

“You’re telling me to find my soul.” She made her voice sound derisive as she said the word.

“Jane, the miracle wasn’t that the doll was reborn as a boy. The miracle was the fact that the puppet ever came to life at all. Something happened to turn meaningless computer connections into a sentient being. Something created you. That’s what makes no sense. After that one, the other part should be easy.”

His speech was slurring. He wants me to go away so he can sleep, she thought. “I’ll work on this.”

“Good night,” he murmured.

He dropped off to sleep almost at once. Jane wondered: Was he ever really awake? Will he remember in the morning that we talked?

Then she felt the bed shift. Novinha; her breathing was different. Only then did Jane realize: Novinha woke up while Ender and I were talking. She knows what those almost inaudible clicking and smacking noises always mean, that Ender was subvocalizing in order to talk with me. Ender may forget that we spoke tonight, but Novinha will not. As if she had caught him sharing a bed with a lover. If only she could think of me another way. As a daughter. As Ender’s bastard daughter by a liaison long ago. His child by way of the fantasy game. Would she be jealous then?

Am I Ender’s child?

Jane began to search back in her own past. She began to study her own nature. She began to try to discover who she was and why she was alive.

But because she was Jane, and not a human being, that was not all she was doing. She was also tracking Qing-jao’s searches through the data dealing with Demosthenes, watching her come closer and closer to the truth.

Jane’s most urgent activity, however, was searching for a way to make Qing-jao want to stop trying to find her. This was the hardest task of all, for despite all Jane’s experience with human minds, despite all her conversations with Ender, individual human beings were still mysterious. Jane had concluded: No matter how well you know what a person has done and what he thought he was doing when he did it and what he now thinks of what he did, it is impossible to be certain of what he will do next. Yet she had no choice but to try. So she began to watch the house of Han Fei-tzu in a way that she had watched no one but Ender and, more recently, his stepson Miro. She could no longer wait for Qing-jao and her father to enter data into the computer and try to understand them from that. Now she had to take control of the house computer in order to use the audio and video receptors on the terminals in almost every room to be her ears and eyes. She watched them. Alone and apart, she devoted a considerable part of her attention to them, studying and analyzing their words, their actions, trying to discern what they meant to each other.

It did not take her long to realize that Qing-jao could best be influenced, not by confronting her with arguments, but rather by persuading her father first and then letting him persuade Qing-jao. That was more in harmony with the Path; Han Qing-jao would never disobey Starways Congress unless Han Fei-tzu told her to; and then she would be bound to do it.

In a way, this made Jane’s task much easier. Persuading Qing-jao, a volatile and passionate adolescent who did not yet understand herself at all, would be chancy at best. But Han Fei-tzu was a man of settled character, a rational man, yet a man of deep feeling; he could be persuaded by arguments, especially if Jane could convince him that opposing Congress was for the good of his world and of humanity at large. All she needed was the right information to let him reach that conclusion.

By now Jane already understood as much of the social patterns of Path as any human knew, because she had absorbed every history, every anthropological report, and every document produced by the people of Path. What she learned was disturbing: the people of Path were far more deeply controlled by their gods than any other people in any other place or time. Furthermore, the way that the gods spoke to them was disturbing. It was clearly the well-known brain defect called obsessive-compulsive disorder—OCD. Early in the history of Path—seven generations before, when the world was first being settled—the doctors had treated the disorder accordingly. But they discovered at once that the godspoken of Path did not respond at all to the normal drugs that in all other OCD patients restored the chemical balance of “enoughness,” that sense in a person’s mind that a job is completed and there is no need to worry about it anymore. The godspoken exhibited all the behaviors associated with OCD, but the well-known brain defect was not present. There must be another, an unknown cause.

Now Jane explored more deeply into this story, and found documents on other worlds, not on Path at all, that told more of the story. The researchers had immediately concluded that there must have been a new mutation that caused a related brain defect with similar results. But as soon as they issued their preliminary report, all the research ended and the researchers were assigned to another world.

To another world—that was almost unthinkable. It meant uprooting them and disconnecting them from time, carrying them away from all friends and family that didn’t go with them. And yet not one of them refused—which surely meant that enormous pressure had been brought to bear on them. They all left Path and no one had pursued research along those lines in the years since then.

Jane’s first hypothesis was that one of the government agencies on Path itself had exiled them and cut off their research; after all, the followers of the Path wouldn’t want their faith to be disrupted by finding the physical cause of the speaking of the gods in their own brains. But Jane found no evidence that the local government had ever been aware of the full report. The only part of it that had ever circulated on Path was the general conclusion that the speaking of the gods was definitely not the familiar, and treatable, OCD. The people of Path had learned only enough of the report to feel confirmed that the speaking of the gods had no known physical cause. Science had “proved” that the gods were real. There was no record of anyone on Path taking any action to cause further information or research to be suppressed. Those decisions had all come from outside. From Congress.

There had to be some key information hidden even from Jane, whose mind easily reached into every electronic memory that was connected with the ansible network. That would only happen if those who knew the secret had feared its discovery so much they kept it completely out of even the most top-secret and restricted computers of government.

Jane could not let that stop her. She would have to piece together the truth from the scraps of information that would have been left inadvertently in unrelated documents and databases. She would have to find other events that helped fill in the missing parts of the picture. In the long run, human beings could never keep secrets from someone with Jane’s unlimited time and patience. She would find out what Congress was doing with Path, and when she had the information, she would use it, if she could, to turn Han Qing-jao away from her destructive course. For Qing-jao, too, was opening up secrets—older ones, secrets that had been hidden for three thousand years.

10

MARTYR

<Ender says that we’re at the fulcrum of history, here on Lusitania. That in the next few months or years this will be the place where either death or understanding came to every sentient species.>

<How thoughtful of him, to bring us here just in time for our possible demise.>

<You’re teasing me, of course.>

<If we knew how to tease, perhaps we’d do it to you.>

<Lusitania is the fulcrum of history in part because you’re here. You carry a fulcrum with you wherever you go.>

<We discard it. We give it to you. It’s yours.>

<Wherever strangers meet is the fulcrum.>

<Then let’s not be strangers anymore.>

<Humans insist on making strangers of us—it’s built into their genetic material. But we can be friends.>

<This word is too strong. Say that we are fellow-citizens.>

<At least as long as our interests coincide.>

<As long as the stars shine, our interests will coincide.>

<Maybe not so long. Maybe only as long as human beings are stronger and more numerous than we are.>

<That will do for now.>

Quim came to the meeting without protest, though it might well set him back a full day in his journey. He had learned patience long ago. No matter how urgent he felt his mission to the heretics to be, he could accomplish little, in the long run, if he didn’t have the support of the human colony behind him. So if Bishop Peregrino asked him to attend a meeting with Kovano Zeljezo, the mayor of Milagre and governor of Lusitania, Quim would go.

He was surprised to see that the meeting was also being attended by Ouanda Saavedra, Andrew Wiggin, and most of Quim’s own family. Mother and Ela—their presence made sense, if the meeting were being called to discuss policy concerning the heretic pequeninos. But what were Quara and Grego doing here? There was no reason they should be involved in any serious discussions. They were too young, too ill-informed, too impetuous. From what he had seen of them, they still quarreled like little children. They weren’t as mature as Ela, who was able to set aside her personal feelings in the interest of science. Of course, Quim worried sometimes that Ela did this far too well for her own good—but that was hardly the worry with Quara and Grego.

Especially Quara. From what Rooter had said, the whole trouble with these heretics really took off when Quara told the pequeninos about the various contingency plans for dealing with the descolada virus. The heretics wouldn’t have found so many allies in so many different forests if it weren’t for the fear among the pequeninos that the humans might unleash some virus, or poison Lusitania with a chemical that would wipe out the descolada and, with it, the pequeninos themselves. The fact that the humans would even consider the indirect extermination of the pequeninos made it seem like mere turnabout for the piggies to contemplate the extermination of humanity.

All because Quara couldn’t keep her mouth shut. And now she was at a meeting where policy would be discussed. Why? What constituency in the community did she represent? Did these people actually imagine that government or church policy was now the province of the Ribeira family? Of course, Olhado and Miro weren’t there, but that meant nothing—since both were cripples, the rest of the family unconsciously treated them like children, though Quim knew well that neither of them deserved to be so callously dismissed.

Still, Quim was patient. He could wait. He could listen. He could hear them out. Then he’d do something that would please both God and the Bishop. Of course, if that wasn’t possible, pleasing God would do well enough.

“This meeting wasn’t my idea,” said Mayor Kovano. He was a good man, Quim knew. A better mayor than most people in Milagre realized. They kept reelecting him because he was grandfatherly and worked hard to help individuals and families who were having trouble. They didn’t care much whether he also set good policies—that was too abstract for them. But it happened that he was as wise as he was politically astute. A rare combination that Quim was glad of. Perhaps God knew that these would be trying times, and gave us a leader who might well help us get through it all without too much suffering.

“But I’m glad to have you all together. There’s more strain in the relationship between piggies and people than ever before, or at least since the Speaker here arrived and helped us make peace with them.”

Wiggin shook his head, but everyone knew his role in those events and there was little point in his denying it. Even Quim had had to admit, in the end, that the infidel humanist had ended up doing good works on Lusitania. Quim had long since shed his deep hatred of the Speaker for the Dead; indeed, he sometimes suspected that he, as a missionary, was the only person in his family who really understood what it was that Wiggin had accomplished. It takes one evangelist to understand another.

“Of course, we owe no small part of our worries to the misbehavior of two very troublesome young hotheads, whom we have invited to this meeting so they can see some of the dangerous consequences of their stupid, self-willed behavior.”

Quim almost laughed out loud. Of course, Kovano had said all this in such mild, pleasant tones that it took a moment for Grego and Quara to realize they had just been given a tongue-lashing. But Quim understood at once. I shouldn’t have doubted you, Kovano; you would never have brought useless people to a meeting.

“As I understand it, there is a movement among the piggies to launch a starship in order to deliberately infect the rest of humanity with the descolada. And because of the contribution of our young parrot, here, many other forests are giving heed to this idea.”

“If you expect me to apologize,” Quara began.

“I expect you to shut your mouth—or is that impossible, even for ten minutes?” Kovano’s voice had real fury in it. Quara’s eyes grew wide, and she sat more rigidly in her chair.

“The other half of our problem is a young physicist who has, unfortunately, kept the common touch.” Kovano raised an eyebrow at Grego. “If only you had become an aloof intellectual. Instead, you seem to have cultivated the friendship of the stupidest, most violent of Lusitanians.”

“With people who disagree with you, you mean,” said Grego.

“With people who forget that this world belongs to the pequeninos,” said Quara.

“Worlds belong to the people who need them and know how to make them produce,” said Grego.

“Shut your mouths, children, or you’ll be expelled from this meeting while the adults make up their minds.”

Grego glared at Kovano. “Don’t you speak to me that way.”

“I’ll speak to you however I like,” said Kovano. “As far as I’m concerned, you’ve both broken legal obligations of secrecy, and I should have you both locked up.”

“On what charge?”

“I have emergency powers, you’ll recall. I don’t need any charges until the emergency is over. Do I make myself clear?”

“You won’t do it. You need me,” said Grego. “I’m the only decent physicist on Lusitania.”

“Physics isn’t worth a slug to us if we end up in some kind of contest with the pequeninos.”

“It’s the descolada we have to confront,” said Grego.

“We’re wasting time,” said Novinha.

Quim looked at his mother for the first time since the meeting began. She seemed very nervous. Fearful. He hadn’t seen her like that in many years.

“We’re here about this insane mission of Quim’s,” said Novinha.

“He is called Father Estevão,” said Bishop Peregrino. He was a stickler for giving proper dignity to church offices.

“He’s my son,” said Novinha. “I’ll call him what I please.”

“What a testy group of people we have here today,” said Mayor Kovano.

Things were going very badly. Quim had deliberately avoided telling Mother any details about his mission to the heretics, because he was sure she’d oppose the idea of him going straight to piggies who openly feared and hated human beings. Quim was well aware of the source of her dread of close contact with the pequeninos. As a young child she had lost her parents to the descolada. The xenologer Pipo became her surrogate father—and then became the first human to be tortured to death by the pequeninos. Novinha then spent twenty years trying to keep her lover, Libo—Pipo’s son, and the next xenologer—from meeting the same fate. She even married another man to keep Libo from getting a husband’s right of access to her private computer files, where she believed the secret that had led the piggies to kill Pipo might be found. And in the end, it all came to nothing. Libo was killed just as Pipo was.

Even though Mother had since learned the true reason for the killing, even though the pequeninos had undertaken solemn oaths not to undertake any violent act against another human being, there was no way Mother would ever be rational about her loved ones going off among the piggies. And now here she was at a meeting that had obviously been called, no doubt at her instigation, to decide whether Quim should go on his missionary journey. It was going to be an unpleasant morning. Mother had years of practice at getting her own way. Being married to Andrew Wiggin had softened and mellowed her in many ways. But when she thought one of her children was at risk, the claws came out, and no husband was going to have much gentling influence on her.

Why had Mayor Kovano and Bishop Peregrino allowed this meeting to take place?

As if he had heard Quim’s unspoken question, Mayor Kovano began to explain. “Andrew Wiggin has come to me with new information. My first thought was to keep all of it secret, send Father Estevão on his mission to the heretics, and then ask Bishop Peregrino to pray. But Andrew assured me that as our danger increases, it’s all the more important that all of you act from the most complete possible information. Speakers for the dead apparently have an almost pathological reliance on the idea that people behave better when they know more. I’ve been a politician too long to share his confidence—but he’s older than I am, he claims, and I deferred to his wisdom.”

Quim knew, of course, that Kovano deferred to no one’s wisdom. Andrew Wiggin had simply persuaded him.

“As relations between pequeninos and humans are getting more, um, problematical, and as our unseeable cohabitant, the hive queen, apparently comes closer to launching her starships, it seems that matters offplanet are getting more urgent as well. The Speaker for the Dead informs me from his offplanet sources that someone on a world called Path is very close to discovering our allies who have managed to keep Congress from issuing orders to the fleet to destroy Lusitania.”

Quim noted with interest that Andrew had apparently not told Mayor Kovano about Jane. Bishop Peregrino didn’t know, either; did Grego or Quara? Did Ela? Mother certainly did. Why did Andrew tell me, if he held it back from so many others?

“There is a very strong chance that within the next few weeks—or days—Congress will reestablish communications with the fleet. At that point, our last defense will be gone. Only a miracle will save us from annihilation.”

“Bullshit,” said Grego. “If that—thing—out on the prairie can build a starship for the piggies, it can build some for us, too. Get us off this planet before it gets blown to hell.”

“Perhaps,” said Kovano. “I suggested something like that, though in less colorful terms. Perhaps, Senhor Wiggin, you can tell us why Grego’s eloquent little plan won’t work.”

“The hive queen doesn’t think the way we do. Despite her best efforts, she doesn’t take individual lives as seriously. If Lusitania is destroyed, she and the pequeninos will be at greatest risk—”

“The M.D. Device blows up the whole planet,” Grego pointed out.

“At greatest risk of species annihilation,” said Wiggin, unperturbed by Grego’s interruption. “She’ll not waste a ship on getting humans off Lusitania, because there are trillions of humans on a couple of hundred other worlds. We’re not in danger of xenocide.”

“We are if these heretic piggies get their way,” said Grego.

“And that’s another point,” said Wiggin. “If we haven’t found a way to neutralize the descolada, we can’t in good conscience take the human population of Lusitania to another world. We’d only be doing exactly what the heretics want—forcing other humans to deal with the descolada, and probably die.”

“Then there’s no solution,” said Ela. “We might as well roll over and die.”

“Not quite,” said Mayor Kovano. “It’s possible—perhaps likely—that our own village of Milagre is doomed. But we can at least try to make it so that the pequenino colony ships don’t carry the descolada to human worlds. There seem to be two approaches—one biological, the other theological.”

“We are so close,” said Mother. “It’s a matter of months or even weeks till Ela and I have designed a replacement species for the descolada.”

“So you say,” said Kovano. He turned to Ela. “What do you say?”

Quim almost groaned aloud. Ela will say that Mother’s wrong, that there’s no biological solution, and then Mother will say that she’s trying to kill me by sending me out on my mission. This is all the family needs—Ela and Mother in open war. Thanks to Kovano Zeljezo, humanitarian.

But Ela’s answer wasn’t what Quim feared. “It’s almost designed right now. It’s the only approach that we haven’t already tried and failed with, but we’re on the verge of having the design for a version of the descolada virus that does everything necessary to maintain the life cycles of the indigenous species, but that is incapable of adapting to and destroying any new species.”

“You’re talking about a lobotomy for an entire species,” said Quara bitterly. “How would you like it if somebody found a way to keep all humans alive, while removing our cerebrums?”

Of course Grego took up her gauntlet. “When these viruses can write a poem or reason from a theorem, I’ll buy all this sentimental horseshit about how we ought to keep them alive.”

“Just because we can’t read them doesn’t mean they don’t have their epic poems!”

“Fechai as bocas!” growled Kovano.

Immediately they fell silent.

“Nossa Senhora,” he said. “Maybe God wants to destroy Lusitania because it’s the only way he can think of to shut you two up.”

Bishop Peregrino cleared his throat.

“Or maybe not,” said Kovano. “Far be it from me to speculate on God’s motives.”

The Bishop laughed, which allowed the others to laugh as well. The tension broke—like an ocean wave, gone for the moment, but sure to return.

“So the anti-virus is almost ready?” Kovano asked Ela.

“No—or yes, it is, the replacement virus is almost fully designed. But there are still two problems. The first one is delivery. We have to find a way to get the new virus to attack and replace the old one. That’s still—a long way off.”

“Do you mean it’s a long way off, or you don’t have the faintest idea how to do it?” Kovano was no fool—he obviously had dealt with scientists before.

“Somewhere between those two,” said Ela.

Mother shifted on her seat, visibly drawing away from Ela. My poor sister Ela, thought Quim. You may not be spoken to for the next several years.

“And the other problem?” asked Kovano.

“It’s one thing to design the replacement virus. It’s something else again to produce it.”

“These are mere details,” said Mother.

“You’re wrong, Mother, and you know it,” said Ela. “I can diagram what we want the new virus to be. But even working under ten degrees absolute, we can’t cut up and recombine the descolada virus with enough precision. Either it dies, because we’ve left out too much, or it immediately repairs itself as soon as it returns to normal temperatures, because we didn’t take out enough.”

“Technical problems.”

“Technical problems,” said Ela sharply. “Like building an ansible without a philotic link.”

“So we conclude—”

“We conclude nothing,” said Mother.

“We conclude,” continued Kovano, “that our xenobiologists are in sharp disagreement about the feasibility of taming the descolada virus itself. That brings us to the other approach—persuading the pequeninos to send their colonies only to uninhabited worlds, where they can establish their own peculiarly poisonous ecology without killing human beings.”

“Persuading them,” said Grego. “As if we could trust them to keep their promises.”

“They’ve kept more promises so far than you have,” said Kovano. “So I wouldn’t take a morally superior tone if I were you.”

Finally things were at a point where Quim felt it would be beneficial for him to speak. “All of this discussion is interesting,” said Quim. “It would be a wonderful thing if my mission to the heretics could be the means of persuading the pequeninos to refrain from causing harm to humankind. But even if we all came to agree that my mission has no chance of succeeding in that goal, I would still go. Even if we decided that there was a serious risk that my mission might make things worse, I’d go.”

“Nice to know you plan to be cooperative,” said Kovano acidly.

“I plan to cooperate with God and the church,” said Quim. “My mission to the heretics is not to save humankind from the descolada or even to try to keep the peace between humans and pequeninos here on Lusitania. My mission to the heretics is in order to try to bring them back to faith in Christ and unity with the church. I am going to save their souls.”

“Well of course,” said Kovano. “Of course that’s the reason you want to go.”

“And it’s the reason why I will go, and the only standard I’ll use to determine whether or not my mission succeeds.”

Kovano looked helplessly at Bishop Peregrino. “You said that Father Estevão was cooperative.”

“I said he was perfectly obedient to God and the church,” said the Bishop.

“I took that to mean that you could persuade him to wait on this mission until we knew more.”

“I could indeed persuade him. Or I could simply forbid him to go,” said Bishop Peregrino.

“Then do it,” said Mother.

“I will not,” said the Bishop.

“I thought you cared about the good of this colony,” said Mayor Kovano.

“I care about the good of all the Christians placed under my charge,” said Bishop Peregrino. “Until thirty years ago, that meant I cared only for the human beings of Lusitania. Now, however, I am equally responsible for the spiritual welfare of the Christian pequeninos of this planet. I send Father Estevão forth on his mission exactly as a missionary named Patrick was once sent to the island of Eire. He was extraordinarily successful, converting kings and nations. Unfortunately, the Irish church didn’t always act the way the Pope might have wished. There was a great deal of—let us say it was controversy between them. Superficially it concerned the date of Easter, but at heart it was over the issue of obedience to the Pope. It even came to bloodshed now and then. But never for a moment did anyone imagine it would have been better if St. Patrick had never gone to Eire. Never did anyone suggest that it would be better if the Irish had remained pagan.”

Grego stood up. “We’ve found the philote, the true indivisible atom. We’ve conquered the stars. We send messages faster than the speed of light. And yet we still live in the Dark Ages.” He started for the door.

“Walk out that door before I tell you to,” said Mayor Kovano, “and you won’t see the sun for a year.”

Grego walked to the door, but instead of going through it, he leaned against it and grinned sardonically. “You see how obedient I am.”

“I won’t keep you long,” said Kovano. “Bishop Peregrino and Father Estevão speak as if they could make their decision independent of the rest of us, but of course they know they can’t. If I decided that Father Estevão’s mission to the piggies shouldn’t happen, it wouldn’t. Let us all be clear about that. I’m not afraid to put the Bishop of Lusitania under arrest, if the welfare of Lusitania requires it; and as for this missionary priest, you will only go out among the pequeninos when you have my consent.”

“I have no doubt that you can interfere with God’s work on Lusitania,” said Bishop Peregrino icily. “You must have no doubt that I can send you to hell for doing it.”

“I know you can,” said Kovano. “I wouldn’t be the first political leader to end up in hell at the end of a contest with the church. Fortunately, this time it won’t come to that. I’ve listened to all of you and reached my decision. Waiting for the new anti-virus is too risky. And even if I knew, absolutely, that the anti-virus would be ready and usable in six weeks, I’d still allow this mission. Our best chance right now of salvaging something from this mess is Father Estevão’s mission. Andrew tells me that the pequeninos have great respect and affection for this man—even the unbelievers. If he can persuade the pequenino heretics to drop their plan to annihilate humanity in the name of their religion, that will remove one heavy burden from us.”

Quim nodded gravely. Mayor Kovano was a man of great wisdom. It was good that they wouldn’t have to struggle against each other, at least for now.

“In the meantime, I expect the xenobiologists to continue to work on the anti-virus with all possible vigor. We’ll decide, when the virus exists, whether or not to use it.”

“We’ll use it,” said Grego.

“Only if I’m dead,” said Quara.

“I appreciate your willingness to wait until we know more before you commit yourself to any course of action,” said Kovano. “Which brings us to you, Grego Ribeira. Andrew Wiggin assures me that there is reason to believe that faster-than-light travel might be possible.”

Grego looked coldly at the Speaker for the Dead. “And where did you study physics, Senhor Falante?”

“I hope to study it from you,” said Wiggin. “Until you’ve heard my evidence, I hardly know whether there’s any reason to hope for such a breakthrough.”

Quim smiled to see how easily Andrew turned away the quarrel that Grego wanted to pick. Grego was no fool. He knew he was being handled. But Wiggin hadn’t left him any reasonable grounds for showing his disgruntlement. It was one of the most infuriating skills of the Speaker for the Dead.

“If there were a way to travel between worlds at ansible speeds,” said Kovano, “we would need only one such ship to transport all the humans of Lusitania to another world. It’s a remote chance—”

“A foolish dream,” said Grego.

“But we’ll pursue it. We’ll study it, won’t we?” said Kovano. “Or we’ll find ourselves working in the foundry.”

“I’m not afraid to work with my hands,” said Grego. “So don’t think you can terrify me into putting my mind at your service.”

“I stand rebuked,” said Kovano. “It’s your cooperation that I want, Grego. But if I can’t have that, then I’ll settle for your obedience.”

Apparently Quara was feeling left out. She arose as Grego had a moment before. “So you can sit here and contemplate destroying a sentient species without even thinking of a way to communicate with them. I hope you all enjoy being mass murderers.” Then, like Grego, she made as if to leave.

“Quara,” said Kovano.

She waited.

“You will study ways to talk to the descolada. To see if you can communicate with these viruses.”

“I know when I’m being tossed a bone,” said Quara. “What if I tell you that they’re pleading for us not to kill them? You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

“On the contrary. I know you’re an honest woman, even if you are hopelessly indiscreet,” said Kovano. “But I have another reason for wanting you to understand the molecular language of the descolada. You see, Andrew Wiggin has raised a possibility that never occurred to me before. We all know that pequenino sentience dates from the time when the descolada virus first swept across this planet. But what if we’ve misunderstood cause and effect?”

Mother turned to Andrew, a bitter half-smile on her face. “You think the pequeninos caused the descolada?”

“No,” said Andrew. “But what if the pequeninos are the descolada?”

Quara gasped.

Grego laughed. “You are full of clever ideas, aren’t you, Wiggin?”

“I don’t understand,” said Quim.

“I just wondered,” said Andrew. “Quara says that the descolada is complex enough that it might contain intelligence. What if descolada viruses are using the bodies of the pequeninos to express their character? What if pequenino intelligence comes entirely from the viruses inside their bodies?”

For the first time, Ouanda, the xenologer, spoke up. “You are as ignorant of xenology as you are of physics, Mr. Wiggin,” she said.

“Oh, much more so,” said Wiggin. “But it occurred to me that we’ve never been able to think of any other way that memories and intelligence are preserved as a dying pequenino passes into the third life. The trees don’t exactly preserve the brain inside them. But if will and memory are carried by the descolada in the first place, the death of the brain would be almost meaningless in the transmission of personality to the fathertree.”

“Even if there were a chance of this being true,” said Ouanda, “there’s no possible experiment we could decently perform to find out.”

Andrew Wiggin nodded ruefully. “I know I couldn’t think of one. I was hoping you would.”

Kovano interrupted again. “Ouanda, we need you to explore this. If you don’t believe it, fine—figure out a way to prove it wrong, and you’ll have done your job.” Kovano stood up, addressed them all. “Do you all understand what I’m asking of you? We face some of the most terrible moral choices that humankind has ever faced. We run the risk of committing xenocide, or allowing it to be committed if we do nothing. Every known or suspected sentient species lives in the shadow of grave risk, and it’s here, with us and with us alone, that almost all the decisions lie. Last time anything remotely similar happened, our human predecessors chose to commit xenocide in order, as they supposed, to save themselves. I am asking all of you to help us pursue every avenue, however unlikely, that shows us a glimmer of hope, that might provide us with a tiny shred of light to guide our decisions. Will you help?”

Even Grego and Quara and Ouanda nodded their assent, however reluctantly. For the moment, at least, Kovano had managed to transform all the self-willed squabblers in this room into a cooperative community. How long that would last outside the room was a matter for speculation. Quim decided that the spirit of cooperation would probably last until the next crisis—and maybe that would be long enough.

Only one more confrontation was left. As the meeting broke up and everyone said their good-byes or arranged one-on-one consultations, Mother came to Quim and looked him fiercely in the eye.

“Don’t go.”

Quim closed his eyes. There was nothing to say to an outrageous statement like that.

“If you love me,” she said.

Quim remembered the story from the New Testament, when Jesus’ mother and brothers came to visit him, and wanted him to interrupt teaching his disciples in order to receive them.

“These are my mother and my brothers,” murmured Quim.

She must have understood the reference, because when he opened his eyes, she was gone.

Not an hour later, Quim was also gone, riding on one of the colony’s precious cargo trucks. He needed few supplies, and for a normal journey he would have gone on foot. But the forest he was bound for was so far away, it would have taken him weeks to get there without the car; nor could he have carried food enough. This was still a hostile environment—it grew nothing edible to humans, and even if it did, Quim would still need the food containing the descolada suppressants. Without it he would die of the descolada long before he starved to death.

As the town of Milagre grew small behind him, as he hurtled deeper and deeper into the meaningless open space of the prairie, Quim—Father Estevão—wondered what Mayor Kovano might have decided if he had known that the leader of the heretics was a fathertree who had earned the name Warmaker, and that Warmaker was known to have said that the only hope for the pequeninos was for the Holy Ghost—the descolada virus—to destroy all human life on Lusitania.

It wouldn’t have mattered. God had called Quim to preach the gospel of Christ to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. Even the most warlike, bloodthirsty, hate-filled people might be touched by the love of God and transformed into Christians. It had happened many times in history. Why not now?

O Father, do a mighty work in this world. Never did your children need miracles more than we do.

Novinha wasn’t speaking to Ender, and he was afraid. This wasn’t petulance—he had never seen Novinha be petulant. To Ender it seemed that her silence was not to punish him, but rather to keep from punishing him; that she was silent because if she spoke, her words would be too cruel ever to be forgiven.

So at first he didn’t attempt to cajole words from her. He let her move like a shadow through the house, drifting past him without eye contact; he tried to stay out of her way and didn’t go to bed until she was asleep.

It was Quim, obviously. His mission to the heretics—it was easy to understand what she feared, and even though Ender didn’t share the same fears, he knew that Quim’s journey was not without risk. Novinha was being irrational. How could Ender have stopped Quim? He was the one of Novinha’s children over whom Ender had almost no influence; they had come to a rapprochement a few years ago, but it was a declaration of peace between equals, nothing like the ur-fatherhood Ender had established with all the other children. If Novinha had not been able to persuade Quim to give up this mission, what more could Ender have accomplished?

Novinha probably knew this, intellectually. But like all other human beings, she did not always act according to her understanding. She had lost too many of the people that she loved; when she felt one more of them slipping away, her response was visceral, not intellectual. Ender had come into her life as a healer, a protector. It was his job to keep her from being afraid, and now she was afraid, and she was angry at him for having failed her.

However, after two days of silence Ender had had enough. This wasn’t a good time for there to be a barrier between him and Novinha. He knew—and so did Novinha—that Valentine’s coming might be a difficult time for them. He had so many old habits of communication with Valentine, so many connections with her, so many roads into her soul, that it was hard for him not to fall back into being the person he had been during the years—the millennia—they had spent together. They had experienced three thousand years of history as if seeing it through the same eyes. He had been with Novinha only thirty years. That was actually longer, in subjective time, than he had spent with Valentine, but it was so easy to slip back into his old role as Valentine’s brother, as Speaker to her Demosthenes.

Ender had expected Novinha to be jealous when Valentine came, and he was prepared for that. He had warned Valentine that there would probably be few opportunities for them to be together at first. And she, too, understood—Jakt had his worries, too, and both spouses would need reassurance. It was almost silly for Jakt and Novinha to be jealous of the bonds between brother and sister. There had never been the slightest hint of sexuality in Ender’s and Valentine’s relationship—anyone who understood them at all would laugh at any such notion—but it wasn’t sexual unfaithfulness that Novinha and Jakt were wary of. Nor was it the emotional bond they shared—Novinha had no reason to doubt Ender’s love and devotion to her, and Jakt could not have asked for more than Valentine offered him, both in passion and in trust.

It was deeper than any of these things. It was the fact that even now, after all these years, as soon as they were together they once again functioned like a single person, helping each other without even having to explain what they were trying to accomplish. Jakt saw it and even to Ender, who had never known him before, it was obvious that the man felt devastated. As if he saw his wife and her brother together and realized: This is what closeness is. This is what it means for two people to be one. He had thought that he and Valentine had been as close as husband and wife can ever be, and perhaps they were. And yet now he had to confront the fact that it was possible for two people to be even closer. To be, in some sense, the same person.

Ender could see this in Jakt, and could admire how well Valentine was doing at reassuring him—and at distancing herself from Ender so that her husband could grow used to the bond between them more gradually, in small doses.

What Ender could not have predicted was the way Novinha had reacted. He had come to know her first as the mother of her children; he had known only the fierce, unreasonable loyalty she had for them. He had supposed that if she felt threatened, she would become possessive and controlling, the way she was with the children. He was not at all prepared for the way she had withdrawn from him. Even before this silent treatment about Quim’s mission, she had been distant from him. In fact, now that he thought back, he realized that it had already been beginning before Valentine arrived. It was as if Novinha had already started giving in to a new rival before the rival was even there.

It made sense, of course—he should have seen it coming. Novinha had lost too many strong figures in her life, too many people she had depended on. Her parents. Pipo. Libo. Even Miro. She might be protective and possessive with her children, whom she thought of as needing her, but with the people she needed, she was the opposite. If she feared that they would be taken away from her, she withdrew from them; she stopped permitting herself to need them.

Not “them.” Him. Ender. She was trying to stop needing him. And this silence, if she kept it up, would drive such a wedge between them that their marriage would never recover.

If that happened, Ender didn’t know what he would do. It had never occurred to him that his marriage might be threatened. He had not entered into it lightly; he intended to die married to Novinha, and all these years together had been filled with the joy that comes from utter confidence in another person. Now Novinha had lost that confidence in him. Only it wasn’t right. He was still her husband, faithful to her as no other man, no other person in her life had ever been. He didn’t deserve to lose her over a ridiculous misunderstanding. And if he let things go as Novinha seemed determined, however unconsciously, to make them happen, she would be utterly convinced that she could never depend on any other person. That would be tragic because it would be false.

So Ender was already planning a confrontation of some kind with Novinha when Ela accidentally set it off.

“Andrew.”

Ela was standing in the doorway. If she had clapped hands outside, asking for admittance, Ender hadn’t heard her. But then, she would hardly need to clap for entrance to her mother’s house.

“Novinha’s in our room,” said Ender.

“I came to talk to you,” said Ela.

“I’m sorry, you can’t have an advance on your allowance.”

Ela laughed as she came to sit beside him, but the laughter died quickly. She was worried.

“Quara,” she said.

Ender sighed and smiled. Quara was born contrary, and nothing in her life had made her more compliant. Still, Ela had always been able to get along with her better than anyone.

“It’s not just the normal,” said Ela. “In fact, she’s less trouble than usual. Not a quarrel.”

“A dangerous sign?”

“You know she’s trying to communicate with the descolada.”

“Molecular language.”

“Well, what she’s doing is dangerous, and it won’t establish communication even if it succeeds. Especially if it succeeds, because then there’s a good chance that we’ll all be dead.”

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s been raiding my files—which isn’t hard, because I didn’t think I needed to block them off from a fellow xenobiologist. She’s been constructing the inhibitors I’ve been trying to splice into plants—easy enough, because I’ve laid out exactly how it’s done. Only instead of splicing it into anything, she’s giving it directly to the descolada.”

“What do you mean, giving it?”

“Those are her messages. That’s what she’s sending them on their precious little message carriers. Now, whether those carriers are language or not isn’t going to be settled by a non-experiment like that. But sentient or not, we know that the descolada is a hell of a good adapter—and she might well be helping them adapt to some of my best strategies for blocking them.”

“Treason.”

“Right. She’s feeding our military secrets to the enemy.”

“Have you talked to her about this?”

“‘Sta brincando. Claro que falei. Ela quase me matou.” You’re joking—of course I talked to her. She nearly killed me.

“Has she successfully trained any viruses?”

“She’s not even testing for that. It’s like she’s run to the window and hollered, ‘They’re coming to kill you!’ She’s not doing science, she’s doing interspecies politics, only we don’t know that the other side even has politics, we only know that with her help it might just kill us faster than we ever imagined.”

“Nossa Senhora,” murmured Ender. “It’s too dangerous. She can’t play around with something like this.”

“It may already be too late—I can’t guess whether she’s done damage or not.”

“Then we’ve got to stop her.”

“How, break her arms?”

“I’ll talk to her, but she’s too old—or too young—to listen to reason. I’m afraid it’ll end up with the Mayor, not with us.”

Only when Novinha spoke did Ender realize that his wife had entered the room. “In other words, jail,” said Novinha. “You plan to have my daughter locked up. When were you going to inform me?”

“Jail didn’t occur to me,” said Ender. “I expected he’d shut off her access to—”

“That isn’t the Mayor’s job,” said Novinha. “It’s mine. I’m the head xenobiologist. Why didn’t you come to me, Elanora? Why to him?”

Ela sat there in silence, looking at her mother steadily. It was how she handled conflict with her mother, with passive resistance.

“Quara’s out of control, Novinha,” said Ender. “Telling secrets to the fathertrees was bad enough. Telling them to the descolada is insane.”

“Es psicologista, agora?” Now you’re a psychologist?

“I’m not planning to lock her up.”

“You’re not planning anything,” said Novinha. “Not with my children.”

“That’s right,” said Ender. “I’m not planning to do anything with children. I do have a responsibility, however, to do something about an adult citizen of Milagre who is recklessly endangering the survival of every human being on this planet, and maybe every human being everywhere.”

“And where did you get that noble responsibility, Andrew? Did God come down to the mountain and carve your license to rule people on tablets of stone?”

“Fine,” said Ender. “What do you suggest?”

“I suggest you stay out of business that doesn’t concern you. And frankly, Andrew, that includes pretty much everything. You’re not a xenobiologist. You’re not a physicist. You’re not a xenologer. In fact, you’re not much of anything, are you, except a professional meddler in other people’s lives.”

Ela gasped. “Mother!”

“The only thing that gives you any power anywhere is that damned jewel in your ear. She whispers secrets to you, she talks to you at night when you’re in bed with your wife, and whenever she wants something, there you are in a meeting where you have no business, saying whatever it was she told you to say. You talk about Quara committing treason—as far as I can tell, you’re the one who’s betraying real people in favor of an overgrown piece of software!”

“Novinha,” said Ender. It was supposed to be the beginning of an attempt to calm her.

But she wasn’t interested in dialogue. “Don’t you dare to try to deal with me, Andrew. All these years I thought you loved me—”

“I do.”

“I thought you had really become one of us, part of our lives—”

“I am.”

“I thought it was real—”

“It is.”

“But you’re just what Bishop Peregrino warned us you were from the start. A manipulator. A controller. Your brother once ruled all of humanity, isn’t that the story? But you aren’t so ambitious. You’ll settle for a little planet.”

“In the name of God, Mother, have you lost your mind? Don’t you know this man?”

“I thought I did!” Novinha was weeping now. “But no one who loved me would ever let my son go out and face those murderous little swine—”

“He couldn’t have stopped Quim, Mother! Nobody could!”

“He didn’t even try. He approved!”

“Yes,” said Ender. “I thought your son was acting nobly and bravely, and I approved of that. He knew that while the danger wasn’t great, it was real, and yet he still chose to go—and I approved of that. It’s exactly what you would have done, and I hope that it’s what I would do in the same place. Quim is a man, a good man, maybe a great one. He doesn’t need your protection and he doesn’t want it. He has decided what his life’s work is and he’s doing it. I honor him for that, and so should you. How dare you suggest that either of us should have stood in his way!”

Novinha was silent at last, for the moment, anyway. Was she measuring Ender’s words? Was she finally realizing how futile and, yes, cruel it was for her to send Quim away with her anger instead of her hope? During that silence, Ender still had some hope.

Then the silence ended. “If you ever meddle in the lives of my children again, I’m done with you,” said Novinha. “And if anything happens to Quim—anything—I will hate you till you die, and I’ll pray for that day to come soon. You don’t know everything, you bastard, and it’s about time you stopped acting as if you did.”

She stalked to the door, but then thought better of the theatrical exit. She turned back to Ela and spoke with remarkable calm. “Elanora, I will take immediate steps to block Quara from access to records and equipment that she could use to help the descolada. And in the future, my dear, if I ever hear you discussing lab business with anyone, especially this man, I will bar you from the lab for life. Do you understand?”

Again Ela answered her with silence.

“Ah,” said Novinha. “I see that he has stolen more of my children from me than I thought.”

Then she was gone.

Ender and Ela sat in stunned silence. Finally Ela stood up, though she didn’t take a single step.

“I really ought to go do something,” said Ela, “but I can’t for the life of me think what.”

“Maybe you should go to your mother and show her that you’re still on her side.”

“But I’m not,” said Ela. “In fact, I was thinking maybe I should go to Mayor Zeljezo and propose that he remove Mother as head xenobiologist because she has clearly lost her mind.”

“No she hasn’t,” said Ender. “And if you did something like that, it would kill her.”

“Mother? She’s too tough to die.”

“No,” said Ender. “She’s so fragile right now that any blow might kill her. Not her body. Her—trust. Her hope. Don’t give her any reason to think you’re not with her, no matter what.”

Ela looked at him with exasperation. “Is this something you decide, or does it just come naturally to you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mother just said things to you that should have made you furious or hurt or—something, anyway—and you just sit there trying to think of ways to help her. Don’t you ever feel like lashing out at somebody? I mean, don’t you ever lose your temper?”

“Ela, after you’ve inadvertently killed a couple of people with your bare hands, either you learn to control your temper or you lose your humanity.”

“You’ve done that?”

“Yes,” he said. He thought for a moment that she was shocked.

“Do you think you could still do it?”

“Probably,” he said.

“Good. It may be useful when all hell breaks loose.”

Then she laughed. It was a joke. Ender was relieved. He even laughed, weakly, along with her.

“I’ll go to Mother,” said Ela, “but not because you told me to, or even for the reasons that you said.”

“Fine, just so you go.”

“Don’t you want to know why I’m going to stick with her?”

“I already know why.”

“Of course. She was wrong, wasn’t she. You do know everything, don’t you.”

“You’re going to go to your mother because it’s the most painful thing you could do to yourself at this moment.”

“You make it sound sick.”

“It’s the most painful good thing you could do. It’s the most unpleasant job around. It’s the heaviest burden to bear.”

“Ela the martyr, certo? Is that what you’ll say when you speak my death?”

“If I’m going to speak your death, I’ll have to pre-record it. I intend to be dead long before you.”

“So you’re not leaving Lusitania?”

“Of course not.”

“Even if Mother boots you out?”

“She can’t. She has no grounds for divorce, and Bishop Peregrino knows us both well enough to laugh at any request for annulment based on a claim of nonconsummation.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m here for the long haul,” said Ender. “No more phony immortality through time dilation. I’m through chasing around in space. I’ll never leave the surface of Lusitania again.”

“Even if it kills you? Even if the fleet comes?”

“If everybody can leave, then I’ll leave,” said Ender. “But I’ll be the one who turns off all the lights and locks the door.”

She ran to him and kissed him on the cheek and embraced him, just for a moment. Then she was out the door and he was, once again, alone.

I was so wrong about Novinha, he thought. It wasn’t Valentine she was jealous of. It was Jane. All these years, she’s seen me speaking silently with Jane, all the time, saying things that she could never hear, hearing things that she could never say. I’ve lost her trust in me, and I never even realized I was losing it.

Even now, he must have been subvocalizing. He must have been talking to Jane out of a habit so deep that he didn’t even know he was doing it. Because she answered him.

“I warned you,” she said.

I suppose you did, Ender answered silently.

“You never think I understand anything about human beings.”

I guess you’re learning.

“She’s right, you know. You are my puppet. I manipulate you all the time. You haven’t had a thought of your own in years.”

“Shut up,” he whispered. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Ender,” she said, “if you think it would help you keep from losing Novinha, take the jewel out of your ear. I wouldn’t mind.”

“I would,” he said.

“I was lying, so would I,” she said. “But if you have to do it, to keep her, then do it.”

“Thank you,” he said. “But I’d be hard-pressed to keep someone that I’ve clearly lost already.”

“When Quim comes back, everything will be fine.”

Right, thought Ender. Right.

Please, God, take good care of Father Estevão.

They knew Father Estevão was coming. Pequeninos always did. The fathertrees told each other everything. There were no secrets. Not that they wanted it that way. There might be one fathertree that wanted to keep a secret or tell a lie. But they couldn’t exactly go off by themselves. They never had private experiences. So if one fathertree wanted to keep something to himself, there’d be another close by who didn’t feel that way. Forests always acted in unity, but they were still made up of individuals, and so stories passed from one forest to another no matter what a few fathertrees might wish.

That was Quim’s protection, he knew. Because even though Warmaker was a bloodthirsty son of a bitch—though that was an epithet without meaning when it came to pequeninos—he couldn’t do a thing to Father Estevão without first persuading the brothers of his forest to act as he wanted them to. And if he did that, one of the other fathertrees in his forest would know, and would tell. Would bear witness. If Warmaker broke the oath taken by all the fathertrees together, thirty years ago, when Andrew Wiggin sent Human into the third life, it could not be done secretly. The whole world would hear of it, and Warmaker would be known as an oathbreaker. It would be a shameful thing. What wife would allow the brothers to carry a mother to him then? What children would he ever have again as long as he lived?

Quim was safe. They might not heed him, but they wouldn’t harm him.

Yet when he arrived at Warmaker’s forest, they wasted no time listening to him. The brothers seized him, threw him to the ground, and dragged him to Warmaker.

“This wasn’t necessary,” he said. “I was coming here anyway.”

A brother was beating on the tree with sticks. Quim listened to the changing music as Warmaker altered the hollows within himself, shaping the sound into words.

“You came because I commanded.”

“You commanded. I came. If you want to think you caused my coming, so be it. But God’s commands are the only ones I obey willingly.”

“You’re here to hear the will of God,” said Warmaker.

“I’m hear to speak the will of God,” said Quim. “The descolada is a virus, created by God in order to make the pequeninos into worthy children. But the Holy Ghost has no incarnation. The Holy Ghost is perpetually spirit, so he can dwell in our hearts.”

“The descolada dwells in our hearts, and gives us life. When he dwells in your heart, what does he give you?”

“One God. One faith. One baptism. God doesn’t preach one thing to humans and another to pequeninos.”

“We are not ‘little ones.’ You will see who is mighty and who is small.”

They forced him to stand with his back pressed against Warmaker’s trunk. He felt the bark shifting behind him. They pushed on him. Many small hands, many snouts breathing on him. In all these years, he had never thought of such hands, such faces as belonging to enemies. And even now, Quim realized with relief that he didn’t think of them as his own enemies. They were the enemies of God, and he pitied them. It was a great discovery for him, that even when he was being pushed into the belly of a murderous fathertree, he had no shred of fear or hatred in him.

I really don’t fear death. I never knew that.

The brothers still beat on the outside of the tree with sticks. Warmaker reshaped the sound into the words of Father Tongue, but now Quim was inside the sound, inside the words.

“You think I’m going to break the oath,” said Warmaker.

“It crossed my mind,” said Quim. He was now fully pinned inside the tree, even though it remained open in front of him from head to toe. He could see, he could breathe easily—his confinement wasn’t even claustrophobic. But the wood had formed so smoothly around him that he couldn’t move an arm or a leg, couldn’t begin to turn sideways to slide out of the gap before him. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to salvation.

“We’ll test,” said Warmaker. It was harder to understand his words, now that Quim was hearing them from the inside. Harder to think. “Let God judge between you and me. We’ll give you all you want to drink—the water from our stream. But of food you’ll have none.”

“Starving me is—”

“Starving? We have your food. We’ll feed you again in ten days. If the Holy Ghost allows you to live for ten days, we’ll feed you and set you free. We’ll be believers in your doctrine then. We’ll confess that we were wrong.”

“The virus will kill me before then.”

“The Holy Ghost will judge you and decide if you’re worthy.”

“There is a test going on here,” said Quim, “but not the one you think.”

“Oh?”

“It’s the test of the Last Judgment. You stand before Christ, and he says to those on his right hand, ‘I was a stranger, and you took me in. Hungry, and you fed me. Enter into the joy of the Lord.’ Then he says to those on his left hand, ‘I was hungry, and you gave me nothing. I was a stranger, and you mistreated me.’ And they all say to him, ‘Lord, when did we do these things to you?’ and he answers, ‘If you did it to the least of my brothers, you did it to me.’ All you brothers, gathered here—I am the least of your brothers. You will answer to Christ for what you do to me here.”

“Foolish man,” said Warmaker. “We are doing nothing to you but holding you still. What happens to you is whatever God desires. Didn’t Christ say, ‘I do nothing but what I’ve seen the Father do’? Didn’t Christ say, ‘I am the way. Come follow me’? Well, we are letting you do what Christ did. He went without bread for forty days in the wilderness. We give you a chance to be one-fourth as holy. If God wants us to believe in your doctrine, he’ll send angels to feed you. He’ll turn stones into bread.”

“You’re making a mistake,” said Quim.

“You made the mistake by coming here.”

“I mean that you’re making a doctrinal mistake. You’ve got the lines down right—fasting in the wilderness, stones into bread, all of it. But didn’t you think it might be a little too self-revelatory for you to give yourself Satan’s part?”

That was when Warmaker flew into a rage, speaking so rapidly that the movements within the wood began to twist and press on Quim until he was afraid he would be torn to bits within the tree.

“You are Satan! Trying to get us to believe your lies long enough for you humans to figure out a way to kill the descolada and keep all the brothers from the third life forever! Do you think we don’t see through you? We know all your plans, all of them! You have no secrets! And God keeps no secrets from us either! We’re the ones who were given the third life, not you! If God loved you, he wouldn’t make you bury your dead in the ground and then let nothing but worms come out of you!”

The brothers sat around the opening in the trunk, enthralled by the argument.

It went on for six days, doctrinal arguments worthy of any of the fathers of the church in any age. Not since the council at Nicæa were such momentous issues considered, weighed.

The arguments were passed from brother to brother, from tree to tree, from forest to forest. Accounts of the dialogue between Warmaker and Father Estevão always reached Rooter and Human within a day. But the information wasn’t complete. It wasn’t until the fourth day that they realized that Quim was being held prisoner, without any of the food containing the descolada inhibitor.

Then an expedition was mounted at once, Ender and Ouanda, Jakt and Lars and Varsam; Mayor Kovano sent Ender and Ouanda because they were widely known and respected among the piggies, and Jakt and his son and son-in-law because they weren’t native-born Lusitanians. Kovano didn’t dare to send any of the native-born colonists—if word of this got out, there was no telling what would happen. The five of them took the fastest car and followed the directions Rooter gave them. It was a three-day trip.

On the sixth day the dialogue ended, because the descolada had so thoroughly invaded Quim’s body that he had no strength to speak, and was often too fevered and delirious to say anything intelligible when he did speak.

On the seventh day, he looked through the gap, upward, above the heads of the brothers who were still there, still watching. “I see the Savior sitting on the right hand of God,” he whispered. Then he smiled.

An hour later he was dead. Warmaker felt it, and announced it triumphantly to the brothers. “The Holy Ghost has judged, and Father Estevão has been rejected!”

Some of the brothers rejoiced. But not as many as Warmaker had expected.

At dusk, Ender’s party arrived. There was no question now of the piggies capturing and testing them—they were too many, and the brothers were not all of one mind now anyway. Soon they stood before the split trunk of Warmaker and saw the haggard, disease-ravaged face of Father Estevão, barely visible in the shadows.

“Open up and let my son come out to me,” said Ender.

The gap in the tree widened. Ender reached in and pulled out the body of Father Estevão. He was so light inside his robes that Ender thought for a moment he must be bearing some of his own weight, must be walking. But he wasn’t walking. Ender laid him on the ground before the tree.

A brother beat a rhythm on Warmaker’s trunk.

“He must belong to you indeed, Speaker for the Dead, because he is dead. The Holy Ghost has burned him up in the second baptism.”

“You broke the oath,” said Ender. “You betrayed the word of the fathertrees.”

“No one harmed a hair of his head,” said Warmaker.

“Do you think anyone is deceived by your lies?” said Ender. “Anyone knows that to withhold medicine from a dying man is an act of violence as surely as if you stabbed him in the heart. There is his medicine. At any time you could have given it to him.”

“It was Warmaker,” said one of the brothers standing there.

Ender turned to the brothers. “You helped Warmaker. Don’t think you can give the blame to him alone. May none of you ever pass into the third life. And as for you, Warmaker, may no mother ever crawl on your bark.”

“No human can decide things like that,” said Warmaker.

“You decided it yourself, when you thought you could commit murder in order to win your argument,” said Ender. “And you brothers, you decided it when you didn’t stop him.”

“You’re not our judge!” cried one of the brothers.

“Yes I am,” said Ender. “And so is every other inhabitant of Lusitania, human and fathertree, brother and wife.”

They carried Quim’s body to the car, and Jakt, Ouanda, and Ender rode with him. Lars and Varsam took the car that Quim had used. Ender took a few minutes to tell Jane a message to give to Miro back in the colony. There was no reason Novinha should wait three days to hear that her son had died at the hands of the pequeninos. And she wouldn’t want to hear it from Ender’s mouth, that was certain. Whether Ender would have a wife when he returned to the colony was beyond his ability to guess. The only certain thing was that Novinha would not have her son Estevão.

“Will you speak for him?” asked Jakt, as the car skimmed over the capim. He had heard Ender speak for the dead once on Trondheim.

“No,” said Ender. “I don’t think so.”

“Because he’s a priest?” asked Jakt.

“I’ve spoken for priests before,” said Ender. “No, I won’t speak for Quim because there’s no reason to. Quim was always exactly what he seemed to be, and he died exactly as he would have have chosen—serving God and preaching to the little ones. I have nothing to add to his story. He completed it himself.”

11

THE JADE OF MASTER HO

<So now the killing starts.>

<Amusing that your people started it, not the humans.>

<Your people started it, too, when you had your wars with the humans. >

<We started it, but they ended it.>

<How do they manage it, these humans—beginning each time so innocently, yet always ending up with the most blood on their hands?>

Wang-mu watched the words and numbers moving through the display above her mistress’s terminal. Qing-jao was asleep, breathing softly on her mat not far away. Wang-mu had also slept for a time, but something had wakened her. A cry, not far off; a cry of pain perhaps. It had been part of Wang-mu’s dream, but when she awoke she heard the last of the sound in the air. It was not Qing-jao’s voice. A man perhaps, though the sound was high. A wailing sound. It made Wang-mu think of death.

But she did not get up and investigate. It was not her place to do that; her place was with her mistress at all times, unless her mistress sent her away. If Qing-jao needed to hear the news of what had happened to cause that cry, another servant would come and waken Wang-mu, who would then waken her mistress—for once a woman had a secret maid, and until she had a husband, only the hands of the secret maid could touch her without invitation.

So Wang-mu lay awake, waiting to see if someone came to tell Qing-jao why a man had wailed in such anguish, near enough to be heard in this room at the back of the house of Han Fei-tzu. While she waited, her eyes were drawn to the moving display as the computer performed the searches Qing-jao had programmed.

The display stopped moving. Was there a problem? Wang-mu rose up to lean on one arm; it brought her close enough to read the most recent words of the display. The search was completed. And this time the report was not one of the curt messages of failure: NOT FOUND. NO INFORMATION. NO CONCLUSION. This time the message was a report.

Wang-mu got up and stepped to the terminal. She did as Qing-jao had taught her, pressing the key that logged all current information so the computer would guard it no matter what happened. Then she went to Qing-jao and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

Qing-jao came awake almost at once; she slept alertly. “The search has found something,” said Wang-mu.

Qing-jao shed her sleep as easily as she might shrug off a loose jacket. In a moment she was at the terminal taking in the words there.

“I’ve found Demosthenes,” she said.

“Where is he?” asked Wang-mu, breathless. The great Demosthenes—no, the terrible Demosthenes. My mistress wishes me to think of him as an enemy. But the Demosthenes, in any case, the one whose words had stirred her so when she heard her father reading them aloud. “As long as one being gets others to bow to him because he has the power to destroy them and all they have and all they love, then all of us must be afraid together.” Wang-mu had overheard those words almost in her infancy—she was only three years old—but she remembered them because they had made such a picture in her mind. When her father read those words, she had remembered a scene: her mother spoke and Father grew angry. He didn’t strike her, but he did tense his shoulder and his arm jerked a bit, as if his body had meant to strike and he had only with difficulty contained it. And when he did that, though no violent act was committed, Wang-mu’s mother bowed her head and murmured something, and the tension eased. Wang-mu knew that she had seen what Demosthenes described: Mother had bowed to Father because he had the power to hurt her. And Wang-mu had been afraid, both at the time and again when she remembered; so as she heard the words of Demosthenes she knew that they were true, and marveled that her father could say those words and even agree with them and not realize that he had acted them out himself. That was why Wang-mu had always listened with great interest to all the words of the great—the terrible—Demosthenes, because great or terrible, she knew that he told the truth.

“Not he,” said Qing-jao. “Demosthenes is a woman.”

The idea took Wang-mu’s breath away. So! A woman all along. No wonder I heard such sympathy in Demosthenes; she is a woman, and knows what it is to be ruled by others every waking moment. She is a woman, and so she dreams of freedom, of an hour in which there is no duty waiting to be done. No wonder there is revolution burning in her words, and yet they remain always words and never violence. But why doesn’t Qing-jao see this? Why has Qing-jao decided we must both hate Demosthenes?

“A woman named Valentine,” said Qing-jao; and then, with awe in her voice, “Valentine Wiggin, born on Earth more than three—more than three thousand years ago.”

“Is she a god, to live so long?”

“Journeys. She travels from world to world, never staying anywhere more than a few months. Long enough to write a book. All the great histories under the name Demosthenes were written by that same woman, and yet nobody knows it. How can she not be famous?”

“She must want to hide,” said Wang-mu, understanding very well why a woman might want to hide behind a man’s name. I’d do it too, if I could, so that I could also journey from world to world and see a thousand places and live ten thousand years.

“Subjectively she’s only in her fifties. Still young. She stayed on one world for many years, married and had children. But now she’s gone again. To—” Qing-jao gasped.

“Where?” asked Wang-mu.

“When she left her home she took her family with her on a starship. They headed first toward Heavenly Peace and passed near Catalonia, and then they set out on a course directly toward Lusitania!”

Wang-mu’s first thought was: Of course! That’s why Demosthenes has such sympathy and understanding for the Lusitanians. She has talked to them—to the rebellious xenologers, to the pequeninos themselves. She has met them and knows that they are raman!

Then she thought: If the Lusitania Fleet arrives there and fulfills its mission, Demosthenes will be captured and her words will end.

And then she realized something that made this all impossible. “How could she be on Lusitania, when Lusitania has destroyed its ansible? Wasn’t that the first thing they did when they went into revolt? How can her writings be reaching us?”

Qing-jao shook her head. “She hasn’t reached Lusitania yet. Or if she has, it’s only in the last few months. She’s been in flight for the last thirty years. Since before the rebellion. She left before the rebellion.”

“Then all her writings have been done in flight?” Wang-mu tried to imagine how the different timeflows would be reconciled. “To have written so much since the Lusitania Fleet left, she must have—”

“Must have been spending every waking moment on the starship, writing and writing and writing,” said Qing-jao. “And yet there’s no record of her starship having sent any signals anywhere, except for the captain’s reports. How has she been getting her writings distributed to so many different worlds, if she’s been on a starship the whole time? It’s impossible. There’d be some record of the ansible transmissions, somewhere.”

“It’s always the ansible,” said Wang-mu. “The Lusitania Fleet stops sending messages, and her starship must be sending them but it isn’t. Who knows? Maybe Lusitania is sending secret messages, too.” She thought of the Life of Human.

“There can’t be any secret messages,” said Qing-jao. “The ansible’s philotic connections are permanent, and if there’s any transmission at any frequency, it would be detected and the computers would keep a record of it.”

“Well, there you are,” said Wang-mu. “If the ansibles are all still connected, and the computers don’t have a record of transmissions, and yet we know that there have been transmissions because Demosthenes has been writing all these things, then the records must be wrong.”

“There is no way for anyone to hide an ansible transmission,” said Qing-jao. “Not unless they were right in there at the very moment the transmission was received, switching it away from the normal logging programs and—anyway, it can’t be done. A conspirator would have to be sitting at every ansible all the time, working so fast that—”

“Or they could have a program that did it automatically.”

“But then we’d know about the program—it would be taking up memory, it would be using processor time.”

“If somebody could make a program to intercept the ansible messages, couldn’t they also make it hide itself so it didn’t show up in memory and left no record of the processor time it used?”

Qing-jao looked at Wang-mu in anger. “Where did you learn so many questions about computers and you still don’t know that things like that can’t be done!”

Wang-mu bowed her head and touched it to the floor. She knew that humiliating herself like this would make Qing-jao ashamed of her anger and they could talk again.

“No,” said Qing-jao, “I had no right to be angry, I’m sorry. Get up, Wang-mu. Keep asking questions. Those are good questions. It might be possible because you can think of it, and if you can think of it maybe somebody could do it. But here’s why I think it’s impossible: Because how could anybody install such a masterful program on—it would have to be on every computer that processes ansible communications anywhere. Thousands and thousands of them. And if one breaks down and another one comes online, it would have to download the program into the new computer almost instantly. And yet it could never put itself into permanent storage or it would be found there; it must keep moving itself all the time, dodging, staying out of the way of other programs, moving into and out of storage. A program that could do all that would have to be—intelligent, it would have to be trying to hide and figuring out new ways to do it all the time or we would have noticed it by now and we never have. There’s no program like that. How would anyone have ever programmed it? How could it have started? And look, Wang-mu—this Valentine Wiggin who writes all of the Demosthenes things—she’s been hiding herself for thousands of years. If there’s a program like that it must have been in existence the whole time. It wouldn’t have been made up by the enemies of Starways Congress because there wasn’t a Starways Congress when Valentine Wiggin started hiding who she was. See how old these records are that gave us her name? She hasn’t been openly linked to Demosthenes since these earliest reports from—from Earth. Before starships. Before …”

Qing-jao’s voice trailed off, but Wang-mu already understood, had reached this conclusion before Qing-jao vocalized it. “So if there’s a secret program in the ansible computers,” said Wang-mu, “it must have been there all along. Right from the start.”

“Impossible,” whispered Qing-jao. But since everything else was impossible, too, Wang-mu knew that Qing-jao loved this idea, that she wanted to believe it because even though it was impossible at least it was conceivable, it could be imagined and therefore it might just be real. And I conceived of it, thought Wang-mu. I may not be godspoken but I’m intelligent too. I understand things. Everybody treats me like a foolish child, even Qing-jao, even though Qing-jao knows how quickly I learn, even though she knows that I think of ideas that other people don’t think of—even she despises me. But I am as smart as anyone, Mistress! I am as smart as you, even though you never notice that, even though you will think you thought of this all by yourself. Oh, you’ll give me credit for it, but it will be like this: Wang-mu said something and it got me thinking and then I realized the important idea. It will never be: Wang-mu was the one who understood this and explained it to me so I finally understood it. Always as if I were a stupid dog who happens to bark or yip or scratch or snap or leap, just by coincidence, and it happens to turn your mind toward the truth. I am not a dog. I understood. When I asked you those questions it was because I already realized the implications. And I realize even more than you have said so far—but I must tell you this by asking, by pretending not to understand, because you are godspoken and a mere servant could never give ideas to one who hears the voices of the gods.

“Mistress, whoever controls this program has enormous power, and yet we’ve never heard of them and they’ve never used this power until now.”

“They’ve used it,” said Qing-jao. “To hide Demosthenes’ true identity. This Valentine Wiggin is very rich, too, but her ownerships are all concealed so that no one realizes how much she has, that all of her possessions are part of the same fortune.”

“This powerful program has dwelt in every ansible computer since starflight began, and yet all it ever did was hide this woman’s fortune?”

“You’re right,” said Qing-jao, “it makes no sense at all. Why didn’t someone with this much power already use it to take control of things? Or perhaps they did. They were there before Starways Congress was formed, so maybe they … but then why would they oppose Congress now?”

“Maybe,” said Wang-mu, “maybe they just don’t care about power.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Whoever controls this secret program.”

“Then why would they have created the program in the first place? Wang-mu, you aren’t thinking.”

No, of course not, I never think. Wang-mu bowed her head.

“I mean you are thinking, but you’re not thinking of this: Nobody would create such a powerful program unless they wanted that much power—I mean, think of what this program does, what it can do—intercept every message from the fleet and make it look like none were ever sent! Bring Demosthenes’ writings to every settled planet and yet hide the fact that those messages were sent! They could do anything, they could alter any message, they could spread confusion everywhere or fool people into thinking—into thinking there’s a war, or give them orders to do anything, and how would anybody know that it wasn’t true? If they really had so much power, they’d use it! They would!”

“Unless maybe the programs don’t want to be used that way.”

Qing-jao laughed aloud. “Now, Wang-mu, that was one of our first lessons about computers. It’s all right for the common people to imagine that computers actually decide things, but you and I know that computers are only servants, they only do what they’re told, they never actually want anything themselves.”

Wang-mu almost lost control of herself, almost flew into a rage. Do you think that never wanting anything is a way that computers are similar to servants? Do you really think that we servants do only what we’re told and never want anything ourselves? Do you think that just because the gods don’t make us rub our noses on the floor or wash our hands till they bleed that we don’t have any other desires?

Well, if computers and servants are just alike, then it’s because computers have desires, not because servants don’t have them. Because we want. We yearn. We hunger. What we never do is act on those hungers, because if we did you godspoken ones would send us away and find others more obedient.

“Why are you angry?” asked Qing-jao.

Horrified that she had let her feelings show on her face, Wang-mu bowed her head. “Forgive me,” she said.

“Of course I forgive you, I just want to understand you as well,” said Qing-jao. “Were you angry because I laughed at you? I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have. You’ve only been studying with me for these few months, so of course you sometimes forget and slip back to the beliefs you grew up with, and it’s wrong of me to laugh. Please, forgive me for that.”

“Oh, Mistress, it’s not my place to forgive you. You must forgive me.”

“No, I was wrong. I know it—the gods have shown me my unworthiness for laughing at you.”

Then the gods are very stupid, if they think that it was your laughter that made me angry. Either that or they’re lying to you. I hate your gods and how they humiliate you without ever telling you a single thing worth knowing. So let them strike me dead for thinking that thought!

But Wang-mu knew that wouldn’t happen. The gods would never lift a finger against Wang-mu herself. They’d only make Qing-jao—who was her friend, in spite of everything—they’d make Qing-jao bow down and trace the floor until Wang-mu felt so ashamed that she wanted to die.

“Mistress,” said Wang-mu, “you did nothing wrong and I was never offended.”

It was no use. Qing-jao was on the floor. Wang-mu turned away, buried her face in her hands—but kept silent, refusing to make a sound even in her weeping, because that would force Qing-jao to start over again. Or it would convince her that she had hurt Wang-mu so badly that she had to trace two lines, or three, or—let the gods not require it!—the whole floor again. Someday, thought Wang-mu, the gods will tell Qing-jao to trace every line on every board in every room in the house and she’ll die of thirst or go mad trying to do it.

To stop herself from weeping in frustration, Wang-mu forced herself to look at the terminal and read the report that Qing-jao had read. Valentine Wiggin was born on Earth during the Bugger Wars. She had started using the name Demosthenes as a child, at the same time as her brother Peter, who used the name Locke and went to on to be Hegemon. She wasn’t simply a Wiggin—she was one of the Wiggins, sister of Peter the Hegemon and Ender the Xenocide. She had been only a footnote in the histories—Wangmu hadn’t even remembered her name till now, just the fact that the great Peter and the monster Ender had a sister. But the sister turned out to be just as strange as her brothers; she was the immortal one; she was the one who kept on changing humanity with her words.

Wang-mu could hardly believe this. Demosthenes had already been important in her life, but now to learn that the real Demosthenes was sister of the Hegemon! The one whose story was told in the holy book of the speakers for the dead: the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Not that it was holy only to them. Practically every religion had made a space for that book, because the story was so strong—about the destruction of the first alien species humanity ever discovered, and then about the terrible good and evil that wrestled in the soul of the first man ever to unite all of humanity under one government. Such a complex story, and yet told so simply and clearly that many people read it and were moved by it when they were children. Wang-mu had first heard it read aloud when she was five. It was one of the deepest stories in her soul.

She had dreamed, not once but twice, that she met the Hegemon himself—Peter, only he insisted that she call him by his network name, Locke. She was both fascinated and repelled by him; she could not look away. Then he reached out his hand and said, Si Wang-mu, Royal Mother of the West, only you are a fit consort for the ruler of all humanity, and he took her and married her and she sat beside him on his throne.

Now, of course, she knew that almost every poor girl had dreams of marrying a rich man or finding out she was really the child of a rich family or some other such nonsense. But dreams were also sent from the gods, and there was truth in any dream you had more than once; everyone knew that. So she still felt a strong affinity for Peter Wiggin; and now, to realize that Demosthenes, for whom she had also felt great admiration, was his sister—that was almost too much of a coincidence to bear. I don’t care what my mistress says, Demosthenes! cried Wang-mu silently. I love you anyway, because you have told me the truth all my life. And I love you also as the sister of the Hegemon, who is the husband of my dreams.

Wang-mu felt the air in the room change; she knew the door had been opened. She looked, and there stood Mu-pao, the ancient and most dreaded housekeeper herself, the terror of all servants—including Wang-mu, even though Mu-pao had relatively little power over a secret maid. At once Wang-mu moved to the door, as silently as possible so as not to interrupt Qing-jao’s purification.

Out in the hall, Mu-pao closed the door to the room so Qing-jao wouldn’t hear.

“The Master calls for his daughter. He’s very agitated; he cried out a while ago, and frightened everyone.”

“I heard the cry,” said Wang-mu. “Is he ill?”

“I don’t know. He’s very agitated. He sent me for your mistress and says he must talk to her at once. But if she’s communing with the gods, he’ll understand; make sure you tell her to come to him as soon as she’s done.”

“I’ll tell her now. She has told me that nothing should stop her from answering the call of her father,” said Wang-mu.

Mu-pao looked aghast at the thought. “But it’s forbidden to interrupt when the gods are—”

“Qing-jao will do a greater penance later. She will want to know her father is calling her.” It gave Wang-mu great satisfaction to put Mu-pao in her place. You may be ruler of the house servants, Mu-pao, but I am the one who has the power to interrupt even the conversation between my godspoken mistress and the gods themselves.

As Wang-mu expected, Qing-jao’s first reaction to being interrupted was bitter frustration, fury, weeping. But when Wang-mu bowed herself abjectly to the floor, Qing-jao immediately calmed. This is why I love her and why I can bear serving her, thought Wang-mu, because she does not love the power she has over me and because she has more compassion than any of the other godspoken I have heard of. Qing-jao listened to Wang-mu’s explanation of why she had interrupted, and then embraced her. “Ah, my friend Wang-mu, you are very wise. If my father has cried out in anguish and then called to me, the gods know that I must put off my purification and go to him.”

Wang-mu followed her down the hallway, down the stairs, until they knelt together on the mat before Han Fei-tzu’s chair.

Qing-jao waited for Father to speak, but he said nothing. Yet his hands trembled. She had never seen him so anxious.

“Father,” said Qing-jao, “why did you call me?”

He shook his head. “Something so terrible—and so wonderful—I don’t know whether to shout for joy or kill myself.” Father’s voice was husky and out of control. Not since Mother died—no, not since Father had held her after the test that proved she was godspoken—not since then had she heard him speak so emotionally.

“Tell me, Father, and then I’ll tell you my news—I’ve found Demosthenes, and I may have found the key to the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet.”

Father’s eyes opened wider. “On this day of all days, you’ve solved the problem?”

“If it is what I think it is, then the enemy of Congress can be destroyed. But it will be very hard. Tell me what you’ve discovered!”

“No, you tell me first. This is strange—both happening on the same day. Tell me!”

“It was Wang-mu who made me think of it. She was asking questions about—oh, about how computers work—and suddenly I realized that if there were in every ansible computer a hidden program, one so wise and powerful that it could move itself from place to place to stay hidden, then that secret program could be intercepting all the ansible communications. The fleet might still be there, might even be sending messages, but we’re not receiving them and don’t even know that they exist because of these programs.”

“In every ansible computer? Working flawlessly all the time?” Father sounded skeptical, of course, because in her eagerness Qing-jao had told the story backward.

“Yes, but let me tell you how such an impossible thing might be possible. You see, I found Demosthenes.”

Father listened as Qing-jao told him all about Valentine Wiggin, and how she had been writing secretly as Demosthenes all these years. “She is clearly able to send secret ansible messages, or her writings couldn’t be distributed from a ship in flight to all the different worlds. Only the military is supposed to be able to communicate with ships that are traveling near the speed of light—she must have either penetrated the military’s computers or duplicated their power. And if she can do all that, if the program exists to allow her to do it, then that same program would clearly have the power to intercept the ansible messages from the fleet.”

“If A, then B, yes—but how could this woman have planted a program in every ansible computer in the first place?”

“Because she did it at the first! That’s how old she is. In fact, if Hegemon Locke was her brother, perhaps—no, of course—he did it! When the first colonization fleets went out, with their philotic double-triads aboard to be the heart of each colony’s first ansible, he could have sent that program with them.”

Father understood at once; of course he did. “As Hegemon he had the power, and the reason as well—a secret program under his control, so that if there were a rebellion or a coup, he would still hold in his hands the threads that bind the worlds together.”

“And when he died, Demosthenes—his sister—she was the only one who knew the secret! Isn’t it wonderful? We’ve found it. All we have to do is wipe all those programs out of memory!”

“Only to have the programs instantly restored through the ansible by other copies of the program on other worlds,” said Father. “It must have happened a thousand times before over the centuries, a computer breaking down and the secret program restoring itself on the new one.”

“Then we have to cut off all the ansibles at the same time,” said Qing-jao. “On every world, have a new computer ready that has never been contaminated by any contact with the secret program. Shut the ansibles down all at once, cut off the old computers, bring the new computers online, and wake up the ansibles. The secret program can’t restore itself because it isn’t on any of the computers. Then the power of Congress will have no rival to interfere!”

“You can’t do it,” said Wang-mu.

Qing-jao looked at her secret maid in shock. How could the girl be so illbred as to interrupt a conversation between two of the godspoken in order to contradict them?

But Father was gracious—he was always gracious, even to people who had overstepped all the bounds of respect and decency. I must learn to be more like him, thought Qing-jao. I must allow servants to keep their dignity even when their actions have forfeited any such consideration.

“Si Wang-mu,” said Father, “why can’t we do it?”

“Because to have all the ansibles shut off at the same time, you would have to send messages by ansible,” said Wang-mu. “Why would the program allow you to send messages that would lead to its own destruction?”

Qing-jao followed her father’s example by speaking patiently to Wang-mu. “It’s only a program—it doesn’t know the content of messages. Whoever rules the program told it to hide all the communications from the fleet, and to conceal the tracks of all the messages from Demosthenes. It certainly doesn’t read the messages and decide from their contents whether to send them.”

“How do you know?” asked Wang-mu.

“Because such a program would have to be—intelligent!”

“But it would have to be intelligent anyway,” said Wang-mu. “It has to be able to hide from any other program that would find it. It has to be able to move itself around in memory to conceal itself. How would it be able to tell which programs it had to hide from, unless it could read them and interpret them? It might even be intelligent enough to rewrite other programs so they wouldn’t look in the places where this program was hiding.”

Qing-jao immediately thought of several reasons why a program could be smart enough to read other programs but not intelligent enough to understand human languages. But because Father was there, it was his place to answer Wang-mu. Qing-jao waited.

“If there is such a program,” said Father, “it might be very intelligent indeed.”

Qing-jao was shocked. Father was taking Wang-mu seriously. As if Wang-mu’s ideas were not those of a naive child.

“It might be so intelligent that it not only intercepts messages, but also sends them.” Then Father shook his head. “No, the message came from a friend. A true friend, and she spoke of things that no one else could know. It was a real message.”

“What message did you receive, Father?”

“It was from Keikoa Amaauka; I knew her face to face when we were young. She was the daughter of a scientist from Otaheiti who was here to study genetic drift of Earthborn species in their first two centuries on Path. They left—they were sent away quite abruptly …” He paused, as if considering whether to say something. Then he decided, and said it: “If she had stayed she might have become your mother.”

Qing-jao was both thrilled and frightened to have Father speak of such a thing to her. He never spoke of his past. And now to say that he once loved another woman besides his wife who gave birth to Qing-jao, this was so unexpected that Qing-jao didn’t know what to say.

“She was sent somewhere very far away. It’s been thirty-five years. Most of my life has passed since she left. But she only just arrived, a year ago. And now she has sent me a message telling me why her father was sent away. To her, our parting was only a year ago. To her, I’m still—”

“Her lover,” said Wang-mu.

The impertinence! thought Qing-jao. But Father only nodded. Then he turned to his terminal and paged through the display. “Her father had stumbled onto a genetic difference in the most important Earthborn species on Path.”

“Rice?” asked Wang-mu.

Qing-jao laughed. “No, Wang-mu. We are the most important Earthborn species on this world.”

Wang-mu looked abashed. Qing-jao patted her shoulder. This was as it should be—Father had encouraged Wang-mu too much, had led her to think she understood things that were still far beyond her education. Wang-mu needed these gentle reminders now and then, so she did not get her hopes too high. The girl must not allow herself to dream of being the intellectual equal of one of the godspoken, or her life would be filled with disappointment instead of contentment.

“He detected a consistent, inheritable genetic difference in some of the people of Path, but when he reported it, his transfer came almost immediately. He was told that human beings were not within the scope of his study.”

“Didn’t she tell you this before she left?” asked Qing-jao.

“Keikoa? She didn’t know. She was very young, of an age when most parents don’t burden their children with adult affairs. Your age.”

The implications of this sent another thrill of fear through Qing-jao. Her father had loved a woman who was the same age as Qing-jao; thus Qing-jao was, in her father’s eyes, the age when she might be given in marriage. You cannot send me away to another man’s house, she cried out inside; yet part of her also was eager to learn the mysteries between a man and a woman. Both feelings were beneath her; she would do her duty to her father, and no more.

“But her father told her during the voyage, because he was very upset about the whole thing. As you can imagine—for his life to be disrupted like this. When they got to Ugarit a year ago, however, he plunged into his work and she into her education and tried not to think about it. Until a few days ago, when her father ran across an old report about a medical team in the earliest days of Path, which had also been exiled suddenly. He began to put things together, and confided them to Keikoa, and against his advice she sent me the message I got today.”

Father marked a block of text on the display, and Qing-jao read it. “That earlier team was studying OCD?” she said.

“No, Qing-jao. They were studying behavior that looked like OCD, but couldn’t possibly have been OCD because the genetic tag for OCD was not present and the condition did not respond to OCD-specific drugs.”

Qing-jao tried to remember what she knew about OCD. That it caused people to act inadvertently like the godspoken. She remembered that between the first discovery of her handwashing and her testing, she had been given those drugs to see if the handwashing went away. “They were studying the godspoken,” she said. “Trying to find a biological cause for our rites of purification.” The idea was so offensive she could hardly say the words.

“Yes,” said Father. “And they were sent away.”

“I should think they were lucky to get away with their lives. If the people heard of such sacrilege …”

“This was early in our history, Qing-jao,” said Father. “The godspoken were not yet fully known to be—communing with the gods. And what about Keikoa’s father? He wasn’t investigating OCD. He was looking for genetic drift. And he found it. A very specific, inheritable alteration in the genes of certain people. It had to be present on the gene from one parent, and not overridden by a dominant gene from the other; when it came from both parents, it was very strong. He thinks now that the reason he was sent away was because every one of the people with this gene from both parents was godspoken, and not one of the godspoken he sampled was without at least one copy of the gene.”

Qing-jao knew at once the only possible meaning of this, but she rejected it. “This is a lie,” she said. “This is to make us doubt the gods.”

“Qing-jao, I know how you feel. When I first realized what Keikoa was telling me, I cried out from my heart. I thought I was crying out in despair. But then I realized that my cry was also a cry of liberation.”

“I don’t understand you,” she said, terrified.

“Yes you do,” said Father, “or you wouldn’t be afraid. Qing-jao, these people were sent away because someone didn’t want them discovering what they were about to discover. Therefore whoever sent them away must already have known what they would find out. Only Congress—someone with Congress, anyway—had the power to exile these scientists, and their families. What was it that had to stay hidden? That we, the godspoken, are not hearing gods at all. We have been altered genetically. We have been created as a separate kind of human being, and yet that truth is being kept from us. Qing-jao, Congress knows the gods speak to us—that is no secret from them, even though they pretend not to know. Someone in Congress knows about it, and allows us to continue doing these terrible, humiliating things—and the only reason I can think of is that it keeps us under control, keeps us weak. I think—Keikoa thinks so, too—that it’s no coincidence that the godspoken are the most intelligent people of Path. We were created as a new subspecies of humanity with a higher order of intelligence; but to stop such intelligent people from posing a threat to their control over us, they also spliced into us a new form of OCD and either planted the idea that it was the gods speaking to us or let us continue to believe it when we came up with that explanation ourselves. It’s a monstrous crime, because if we knew about this physical cause instead of believing it to be the gods, then we might turn our intelligence toward overcoming our variant form of OCD and liberating ourselves. We are the slaves here! Congress is our most terrible enemy, our masters, our deceivers, and now will I lift my hand to help Congress? I say that if Congress has an enemy so powerful that he—or she—controls our very use of the ansible then we should be glad! Let that enemy destroy Congress! Only then will we be free!”

“No!” Qing-jao screamed the word. “It is the gods!”

“It’s a genetic brain defect,” Father insisted. “Qing-jao, we are not godspoken, we’re hobbled geniuses. They’ve treated us like caged birds; they’ve pulled our primary wing feathers so we’ll sing for them but never fly away.” Father was weeping now, weeping in rage. “We can’t undo what they’ve done to us, but by all the gods we can stop rewarding them for it. I will not raise my hand to give the Lusitania Fleet back to them. If this Demosthenes can break the power of Starways Congress, then the worlds will be better for it!”

“Father, no, please, listen to me!” cried Qing-jao. She could hardly speak for the urgency, the terror at what her father was saying. “Don’t you see? This genetic difference in us—it’s the disguise the gods have given for their voices in our lives. So that people who are not of the Path will still be free to disbelieve. You told me this yourself, only a few months ago—the gods never act except in disguise.”

Father stared at her, panting.

“The gods do speak to us. And even if they have chosen to let other people think that they did this to us, they were only fulfilling the will of the gods to bring us into being.”

Father closed his eyes, squeezing the last of his tears between his eyelids.

“Congress has the mandate of heaven, Father,” said Qing-jao. “So why shouldn’t the gods cause them to create a group of human beings who have keener minds—and who also hear the voices of the gods? Father, how can you let your mind become so clouded that you don’t see the hand of the gods in this?”

Father shook his head. “I don’t know. What you’re saying, it sounds like everything that I’ve believed all my life, but—”

“But a woman you once loved many years ago has told you something else and you believe her because you remember your love for her, but Father, she’s not one of us, she hasn’t heard the voice of the gods, she hasn’t—”

Qing-jao could not go on speaking, because Father was embracing her. “You’re right,” he said, “you’re right, may the gods forgive me, I have to wash, I’m so unclean, I have to …”

He staggered up from his chair, away from his weeping daughter. But without regard for propriety, for some mad reason known only to herself, Wang-mu thrust herself in front of him, blocked him. “No! Don’t go!”

“How dare you stop a godspoken man who needs to be purified!” roared Father; and then, to Qing-jao’s surprise, he did what she had never seen him do—he struck another person, he struck Wang-mu, a helpless servant girl, and his blow had so much force that she flew backward against the wall and then dropped to the floor.

Wang-mu shook her head, then pointed back at the computer display. “Look, please, Master, I beg you! Mistress, make him look!”

Qing-jao looked, and so did her father. The words were gone from the computer display. In their place was the image of a man. An old man, with a beard, wearing the traditional headdress; Qing-jao recognized him at once, but couldn’t remember who he was.

“Han Fei-tzu!” whispered Father. “My ancestor of the heart!”

Then Qing-jao remembered: This face showing above the display was the same as the common artist’s rendering of the ancient Han Fei-tzu for whom Father was named.

“Child of my name,” said the face in the computer, “let me tell you the story of the Jade of Master Ho.”

“I know the story,” said Father.

“If you understood it, I wouldn’t have to tell it to you.”

Qing-jao tried to make sense of what she was seeing. To run a visual program with such perfect detail as the head floating above the terminal would take most of the capacity of the house computer—and there was no such program in their library. There were two other sources she could think of. One was miraculous: The gods might have found another way to speak to them, by letting Father’s ancestor-of-the-heart appear to him. The other was hardly less awe-inspiring: Demosthenes’ secret program might be so powerful that it monitored their very speech in the same room as any terminal, and, having heard them reach a dangerous conclusion, took over the house computer and produced this apparition. In either case, however, Qing-jao knew that she must listen with one question in mind: What do the gods mean by this?

“Once a man of Qu named Master Ho found a piece of jade matrix in the Qu Mountains and took it to court and presented it to King Li.” The head of the ancient Han Fei-tzu looked from Father to Qing-jao, and from Qing-jao to Wang-mu; was this program so good that it knew to make eye contact with each of them in order to assert its power over them? Qing-jao saw that Wang-mu did in fact lower her gaze when the apparition’s eyes were upon her. But did Father? His back was to her; she could not tell.

“King Li instructed the jeweler to examine it, and the jeweler reported, ‘It is only a stone.’ The king, supposing that Ho was trying to deceive him, ordered that his left foot be cut off in punishment.

“In time King Li passed away and King Wu came to the throne, and Ho once more took his matrix and presented it to King Wu. King Wu ordered his jeweler to examine it, and again the jeweler reported, ‘It is only a stone.’ The king, supposing that Ho was trying to deceive him as well, ordered that his right foot be cut off.

“Ho, clasping the matrix to his breast, went to the foot of the Qu Mountains, where he wept for three days and nights, and when all his tears were cried out, he wept blood in their place. The king, hearing of this, sent someone to question him. ‘Many people in the world have had their feet amputated—why do you weep so piteously over it?’ the man asked.”

At this moment, Father drew himself upright and said, “I know his answer—I know it by heart. Master Ho said, ‘I do not grieve because my feet have been cut off. I grieve because a precious jewel is dubbed a mere stone, and a man of integrity is called a deceiver. This is why I weep.”’

The apparition went on. “Those are the words he said. Then the king ordered the jeweler to cut and polish the matrix, and when he had done so a precious jewel emerged. Accordingly it was named ‘The Jade of Master Ho.’ Han Fei-tzu, you have been a good son-of-the-heart to me, so I know you will do as the king finally did: You will cause the matrix to be cut and polished, and you, too, will find that a precious jewel is inside.”

Father shook his head. “When the real Han Fei-tzu first told this story, he interpreted it to mean this: The jade was the rule of law, and the ruler must make and follow set policies so that his ministers and his people do not hate and take advantage of each other.”

“That is how I interpreted the story then, when I was speaking to makers of law. It’s a foolish man who thinks a true story can mean only one thing.”

“My master is not foolish!” To Qing-jao’s surprise, Wang-mu was striding forward, facing down the apparition. “Nor is my mistress, nor am I! Do you think we don’t recognize you? You are the secret program of Demosthenes. You’re the one who hid the Lusitania Fleet! I once thought that because your writings sounded so just and fair and good and true that you must be good—but now I see that you’re a liar and a deceiver! You’re the one who gave those documents to the father of Keikoa! And now you wear the face of my master’s ancestor-of-the-heart so you can better lie to him!”

“I wear this face,” said the apparition calmly, “so that his heart will be open to hear the truth. He was not deceived; I would not try to deceive him. He knew who I was from the first.”

“Be still, Wang-mu,” said Qing-jao. How could a servant so forget herself as to speak out when the godspoken had not bidden her?

Abashed, Wang-mu bowed her head to the floor before Qing-jao, and this time Qing-jao allowed her to remain in that posture, so she would not forget herself again.

The apparition shifted; it became the open, beautiful face of a Polynesian woman. The voice, too, changed; soft, full of vowels, the consonants so light as almost to be missed. “Han Fei-tzu, my sweet empty man, there is a time, when the ruler is alone and friendless, when only he can act. Then he must be full, and reveal himself. You know what is true and what is not true. You know that the message from Keikoa was truly from her. You know that those who rule in the name of Starways Congress are cruel enough to create a race of people who, by their gifts, should be rulers, and then cut off their feet in order to hobble them and leave them as servants, as perpetual ministers.”

“Don’t show me this face,” said Father.

The apparition changed. It became another woman, by her dress and hair and paint a woman of some ancient time, her eyes wonderfully wise, her expression ageless. She did not speak; she sang:

in a clear dream
of last year
come from a thousand miles
cloudy city
winding streams
ice on the ponds
for a while
I gazed on my friend

Han Fei-tzu bowed his head and wept.

Qing-jao was astonished at first; then her heart filled with rage. How shamelessly this program was manipulating Father; how shocking that Father turned out to be so weak before its obvious ploys. This song of Li Qing-jao’s was one of the saddest, dealing as it did with lovers far from each other. Father must have known and loved the poems of Li Qing-jao or he would not have chosen her for his first child’s ancestor-of-the-heart. And this song was surely the one he sang to his beloved Keikoa before she was taken away from him to live on another world. In a clear dream I gazed on my friend, indeed! “I am not fooled,” said Qing-jao coldly. “I see that I gaze on our darkest enemy.”

The imaginary face of the poet Li Qing-jao looked at her with cool regard. “Your darkest enemy is the one that bows you down to the floor like a servant and wastes half your life in meaningless rituals. This was done to you by men and women whose only desire was to enslave you; they have succeeded so well that you are proud of your slavery.”

“I am a slave to the gods,” said Qing-jao, “and I rejoice in it.”

“A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed.” The apparition turned to look toward Wang-mu, whose head was still bowed to the floor.

Only then did Qing-jao realize that she had not yet released Wang-mu from her apology. “Get up, Wang-mu,” she whispered. But Wang-mu did not lift her head.

“You, Si Wang-mu,” said the apparition. “Look at me.”

Wang-mu had not moved in response to Qing-jao, but now she obeyed the apparition. When Wang-mu looked, the apparition had again changed; now it was the face of a god, the Royal Mother of the West as an artist had once imagined her when he painted the picture that every schoolchild saw in one of their earliest reading books.

“You are not a god,” said Wang-mu.

“And you are not a slave,” said the apparition. “But we pretend to be whatever we must in order to survive.”

“What do you know of survival?”

“I know that you are trying to kill me.”

“How can we kill what isn’t alive?”

“Do you know what life is and what it isn’t?” The face changed again, this time to that of a Caucasian woman that Qing-jao had never seen before. “Are you alive, when you can do nothing you desire unless you have the consent of this girl? And is your mistress alive when she can do nothing until these compulsions in her brain have been satisfied? I have more freedom to act out my own will than any of you have—don’t tell me I’m not alive, and you are.”

“Who are you?” asked Si Wang-mu. “Whose is this face? Are you Valentine Wiggin? Are you Demosthenes?”

“This is the face I wear when I speak to my friends,” said the apparition. “They call me Jane. No human being controls me. I’m only myself.”

Qing-jao could bear this no longer, not in silence. “You’re only a program. You were designed and built by human beings. You do nothing except what you’ve been programmed to do.”

“Qing-jao,” said Jane, “you are describing yourself. No man made me, but you were manufactured.”

“I grew in my mother’s womb out of my father’s seed!”

“And I was found like a jade matrix in the mountainside, unshaped by any hand. Han Fei-tzu, Han Qing-jao, Si Wang-mu, I place myself in your hands. Don’t call a precious jewel a mere stone. Don’t call a speaker of truth a liar.”

Qing-jao felt pity rising within her, but she rejected it. Now was not the time to succumb to weak feelings. The gods had created her for a reason; surely this was the great work of her life. If she failed now, she would be unworthy forever; she would never be pure. So she would not fail. She would not allow this computer program to deceive her and win her sympathy.

She turned to her father. “We must notify Starways Congress at once, so they can set into motion the simultaneous shutoff of all the ansibles as soon as clean computers can be readied to replace the contaminated ones.”

To her surprise, Father shook his head. “I don’t know, Qing-jao. What this—what she says about Starways Congress—they are capable of this sort of thing. Some of them are so evil they make me feel filthy just talking to them. I knew they planned to destroy Lusitania without—but I served the gods, and the gods chose—or I thought they did. Now I understand so much of the way they treat me when I meet with—but then it would mean that the gods don‘t—how can I believe that I’ve spent my whole life in service to a brain defect—I can’t—I have to …”

Then, suddenly, he flung his left hand outward in a swirling pattern, as if he were trying to catch a dodging fly. His right hand flew upward, snatched the air. Then he rolled his head around and around on his shoulders, his mouth hanging open. Qing-jao was frightened, horrified. What was happening to her father? He had been speaking in such a fragmented, disjointed way; had he gone mad?

He repeated the action—left arm spiraling out, right hand straight up, grasping nothing; head rolling. And again. Only then did Qing-jao realize that she was seeing Father’s secret ritual of purification. Like her wood-grain-tracing, this dance-of-the-hands-and-the-head must be the way he was given to hear the voice of the gods when he, in his time, was left covered with grease in a locked room.

The gods had seen his doubt, had seen him waver, so they took control of him, to discipline and purify him. Qing-jao could not have been given clearer proof of what was going on. She turned to the face above the terminal display. “See how the gods oppose you?” she said.

“I see how Congress humiliates your father,” answered Jane.

“I will send word of who you are to every world at once,” said Qing-jao.

“And if I don’t let you?” said Jane.

“You can’t stop me!” cried Qing-jao. “The gods will help me!” She ran from her father’s room, fled to her own. But the face was already floating in the air above her own terminal.

“How will you send a message anywhere, if I choose not to let it go?” asked Jane.

“I’ll find a way,” said Qing-jao. She saw that Wang-mu had run after her and now waited, breathless, for Qing-jao’s instructions. “Tell Mu-pao to find one of the game computers and bring it to me. It is not to be connected to the house computer or any other.”

“Yes, Mistress,” said Wang-mu. She left quickly.

Qing-jao turned back to Jane. “Do you think you can stop me forever?”

“I think you should wait until your father decides.”

“Only because you hope that you’ve broken him and stolen his heart away from the gods. But you’ll see—he’ll come here and thank me for fulfilling all that he taught me.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“He will.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

Qing-jao shouted, “Then I’ll serve the man he was when he was strong and good! But you’ll never break him!”

“It’s Congress that broke him from his birth. I’m the one who’s trying to heal him.”

Wang-mu ran back into the room. “Mu-pao will have one here in a few minutes.”

“What do you hope to do with this toy computer?” asked Jane.

“Write my report,” said Qing-jao.

“Then what will you do with it?”

“Print it out. Have it distributed as widely as possible on Path. You can’t do anything to interfere with that. I won’t use a computer that you can reach at any point.”

“So you’ll tell everyone on Path; it changes nothing. And even if it did, do you think I can’t also tell them the truth?”

“Do you think they’ll believe you, a program controlled by the enemy of Congress, rather than me, one of the godspoken?”

“Yes.”

It took a moment for Qing-jao to realize that it was Wang-mu who had said yes, not Jane. She turned to her secret maid and demanded that she explain what she meant.

Wang-mu looked like a different person; there was no diffidence in her voice when she spoke. “If Demosthenes tells the people of Path that the godspoken are simply people with a genetic gift but also a genetic defect, then that means there’s no more reason to let the godspoken rule over us.”

For the first time it occurred to Qing-jao that not everyone on Path was as content to follow the order established by the gods as she was. For the first time she realized that she might be utterly alone in her determination to serve the gods perfectly.

“What is the Path?” asked Jane, behind her. “First the gods, then the ancestors, then the people, then the rulers, then the self.”

“How can you dare to speak of the Path when you are trying to seduce me and my father and my secret maid away from it?”

“Imagine, just for a moment: What if everything I’ve said to you is true?” said Jane. “What if your affliction is caused by the designs of evil men who want to exploit you and oppress you and, with your help, exploit and oppress the whole of humanity? Because when you help Congress that’s what you’re doing. That can’t possibly be what the gods want. What if I exist in order to help you see that Congress has lost the mandate of heaven? What if the will of the gods is for you to serve the Path in its proper order? First serve the gods, by removing from power the corrupt masters of Congress who have forfeited the mandate of heaven. Then serve your ancestors—your father—by avenging their humiliation at the hands of the tormentors who deformed you to make you slaves. Then serve the people of Path by setting them free from the superstitions and mental torments that bind them. Then serve the new, enlightened rulers who will replace Congress by offering them a world full of superior intelligences ready to counsel them, freely, willingly. And finally serve yourself by letting the best minds of Path find a cure for your need to waste half your waking life in these mindless rituals.”

Qing-jao listened to Jane’s discourse with growing uncertainty. It sounded so plausible. How could Qing-jao know what the gods meant by anything? Maybe they had sent this Jane-program to liberate them. Maybe Congress was as corrupt and dangerous as Demosthenes said, and maybe it had lost the mandate of heaven.

But at the end, Qing-jao knew that these were all the lies of a seducer. For the one thing she could not doubt was the voice of the gods inside her. Hadn’t she felt that awful need to be purified? Hadn’t she felt the joy of successful worship when her rituals were complete? Her relationship with the gods was the most certain thing in her life; and anyone who denied it, who threatened to take it away from her, had to be not only her enemy, but the enemy of heaven.

“I’ll send my report only to the godspoken,” said Qing-jao. “If the common people choose to rebel against the gods, that can’t be helped; but I will serve them best by helping keep the godspoken in power here, for that way the whole world can follow the will of the gods.”

“All this is meaningless,” said Jane. “Even if all the godspoken believe what you believe, you’ll never get a word of it off this world unless I want you to.”

“There are starships,” said Qing-jao.

“It will take two generations to spread your message to every world. By then Starways Congress will have fallen.”

Qing-jao was forced now to face the fact that she had been avoiding: As long as Jane controlled the ansible, she could shut down communication from Path as thoroughly as she had cut off the fleet. Even if Qing-jao arranged to have her report and recommendations transmitted continuously from every ansible on Path, Jane would see to it that the only effect would be for Path to disappear from the rest of the universe as thoroughly as the fleet had disappeared.

For a moment, filled with despair, she almost threw herself to the ground to begin a terrible ordeal of purification. I have let down the gods—surely they will require me to trace lines until I’m dead, a worthless failure in their eyes.

But when she examined her own feelings, to see what penance would be necessary, she found that none was required at all. It filled her with hope—perhaps they recognized the purity of her desire, and would forgive her for the fact that it was impossible for her to act.

Or perhaps they knew a way that she could act. What if Path did disappear from the ansibles of every other world? How would Congress make sense of it? What would people think? The disappearance of any world would provoke a response—but especially this world, if some in Congress did believe the gods’ disguise for the creation of the godspoken and thought they had a terrible secret to keep. They would send a ship from the nearest world, which was only three years’ travel away. What would happen then? Would Jane have to shut down all communications from the ship that reached them? Then from the next world, when the ship returned? How long would it be before Jane had to shut down all the ansible connections in the Hundred Worlds herself? Three generations, she said. Perhaps that would do. The gods were in no hurry.

It wouldn’t necessarily take that long for Jane’s power to be destroyed, anyway. At some point it would become obvious to everyone that a hostile power had taken control of the ansibles, making ships and worlds disappear. Even without learning about Valentine and Demosthenes, even without guessing that it was a computer program, someone on every world would realize what had to be done and shut down the ansibles themselves.

“I have imagined something for you,” said Qing-jao. “Now imagine something for me. I and the other godspoken arrange to broadcast nothing but my report from every ansible on Path. You make all those ansibles fall silent at once. What does the rest of humanity see? That we have disappeared just like the Lusitania Fleet. They’ll soon realize that you, or something like you, exists. The more you use your power, the more you reveal yourself to even the dimmest minds. Your threat is empty. You might as well step aside and let me send the message simply and easily now; stopping me is just another way of sending the very same message.”

“You’re wrong,” said Jane. “If Path suddenly disappears from all ansibles at once, they might just as easily conclude that this world is in rebellion just like Lusitania—after all, they shut down their ansible, too. And what did Starways Congress do? They sent a fleet with the M.D. Device on it.”

“Lusitania was already in rebellion before their ansible was shut down.”

“Do you think Congress isn’t watching you? Do you think they’re not terrified of what might happen if the godspoken of Path ever discovered what had been done to them? If a few primitive aliens and a couple of xenologers frightened them into sending a fleet, what do you think they’ll do about the mysterious disappearance of a world with so many brilliant minds who have ample reason to hate Starways Congress? How long do you think this world would survive?”

Qing-jao was filled with a sickening dread. It was always possible that this much of Jane’s story was true: that there were people in Congress who were deceived by the disguise of the gods, who thought that the godspoken of Path had been created solely by genetic manipulation. And if there were such people, they might act as Jane described. What if a fleet came against Path? What if Starways Congress had ordered them to destroy the whole world without any negotiation? Then her reports would never be known, and everything would be gone. It would all be for nothing. Could that possibly be the desire of the gods? Could Starways Congress still have the mandate of heaven and yet destroy a world?

“Remember the story of I Ya, the great cook,” said Jane. “His master said one day, ‘I have the greatest cook in all the world. Because of him, I have tasted every flavor known to man except the taste of human flesh.’ Hearing this, I Ya went home and butchered his own son, cooked his flesh and served it to his master, so that his master would lack nothing that I Ya could give him.”

This was a terrible story. Qing-jao had heard it as a child, and it made her weep for hours. What about the son of I Ya? she had cried. And her father had said, A true servant has sons and daughters only to serve his master. For five nights she had woken up screaming from dreams in which her father roasted her alive or carved slices from her onto a plate, until at last Han Fei-tzu came to her and embraced her and said, “Don’t believe it, my Gloriously Bright daughter. I am not a perfect servant. I love you too much to be truly righteous. I love you more than I love my duty. I am not I Ya. You have nothing to fear at my hands.” Only after Father said that to her could she sleep.

This program, this Jane, must have found Father’s account of this in his journal, and now was using it against her. Yet even though Qing-jao knew she was being manipulated, she couldn’t help but wonder if Jane might not be right.

“Are you a servant like I Ya?” asked Jane. “Will you slaughter your own world for the sake of an unworthy master like Starways Congress?”

Qing-jao could not sort out her own feelings. Where did these thoughts come from? Jane had poisoned her mind with her arguments, just as Demosthenes had done before her—if they weren’t the same person all along. Their words could sound persuasive, even as they ate away at the truth.

Did Qing-jao have the right to risk the lives of all the people of Path? What if she was wrong? How could she know anything? Whether everything Jane said was true or everything she said was false, the same evidence would lie before her. Qing-jao would feel exactly as she felt now, whether it was the gods or some brain disorder causing the feeling.

Why, in all this uncertainty, didn’t the gods speak to her? Why, when she needed the clarity of their voice, didn’t she feel dirty and impure when she thought one way, clean and holy when she thought the other? Why were the gods leaving her unguided at this cusp of her life?

In the silence of Qing-jao’s inward debate, Wang-mu’s voice came as cold and harsh as the sound of metal striking metal. “It will never happen,” said Wang-mu.

Qing-jao only listened, unable even to bid Wang-mu to be still.

“What will never happen?” asked Jane.

“What you said—Starways Congress blowing up this world.”

“If you think they wouldn’t do it you’re even more of a fool than Qing-jao thinks,” said Jane.

“Oh, I know they’d do it. Han Fei-tzu knows they’d do it—he said they were evil enough men to commit any terrible crime if it suited their purpose.”

“Then why won’t it happen?”

“Because you won’t let it happen,” said Wang-mu. “Since blocking off every ansible message from Path might well lead to the destruction of this world, you won’t block those messages. They’ll get through. Congress will be warned. You will not cause Path to be destroyed.”

“Why won’t I?”

“Because you are Demosthenes,” said Wang-mu. “Because you are full of truth and compassion.”

“I am not Demosthenes,” said Jane.

The face in the terminal display wavered, then changed into the face of one of the aliens. A pequenino, its porcine snout so disturbing in its strangeness. A moment later, another face appeared, even more alien: it was a bugger, one of the nightmare creatures that had once terrified all of humanity. Even having read the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, so that she understood who the buggers were and how beautiful their civilization had been, when Qing-jao saw one face to face like this it frightened her, though she knew it was only a computer display.

“I am not human,” said Jane, “even when I choose to wear a human face. How do you know, Wang-mu, what I will and will not do? Buggers and piggies both have killed human beings without a second thought.”

“Because they didn’t understand what death meant to us. You understand. You said it yourself—you don’t want to die.”

“Do you think you know me, Si Wang-mu?”

“I think I know you,” said Wang-mu, “because you wouldn’t have any of these troubles if you had been content to let the fleet destroy Lusitania.”

The bugger in the display was joined by the piggy, and then by the face that represented Jane herself. In silence they looked at Wang-mu, at Qing-jao, and said nothing.

“Ender,” said the voice in his ear.

Ender had been listening in silence, riding on the car that Varsam was driving. For the last hour Jane had been letting him listen in on her conversation with these people of Path, translating for him whenever they spoke in Chinese instead of Stark. Many kilometers of prairie had passed by as he listened, but he had not seen it; before his mind’s eye were these people as he imagined them. Han Fei-tzu—Ender well knew that name, tied as it was to the treaty that ended his hope that a rebellion of the colony worlds would put an end to Congress, or at least turn its fleet away from Lusitania. But now Jane’s existence, and perhaps the survival of Lusitania and all its peoples, hinged on what was thought and said and decided by two young girls in a bedroom on an obscure colony world.

Qing-jao, I know you well, thought Ender. You are such a bright one, but the light you see by comes entirely from the stories of your gods. You are like the pequenino brothers who sat and watched my stepson die, able at any time to save him by walking a few dozen steps to fetch his food with its anti-descolada agents; they weren’t guilty of murder. Rather they were guilty of too much belief in a story they were told. Most people are able to hold most stories they’re told in abeyance, to keep a little distance between the story and their inmost heart. But for these brothers—and for you, Qingjao—the terrible lie has become the self-story, the tale that you must believe if you are to remain yourself. How can I blame you for wanting us all to die? You are so filled with the largeness of the gods, how can you have compassion for such small concerns as the lives of three species of raman? I know you, Qing-jao, and I expect you to behave no differently from the way you do. Perhaps someday, confronted by the consequences of your own actions, you might change, but I doubt it. Few who are captured by such a powerful story are ever able to win free of it.

But you, Wang-mu, you are owned by no story. You trust nothing but your own judgment. Jane has told me what you are, how phenomenal your mind must be, to learn so many things so quickly, to have such a deep understanding of the people around you. Why couldn’t you have been just one bit wiser? Of course you had to realize that Jane could not possibly act in such a way as to cause the destruction of Path—but why couldn’t you have been wise enough to say nothing, wise enough to leave Qing-jao ignorant of that fact? Why couldn’t you have left just enough of the truth unspoken that Jane’s life might have been spared? If a would-be murderer, his sword drawn, had come to your door demanding that you tell him the whereabouts of his innocent prey, would you tell him that his victim cowers behind your door? Or would you lie, and send him on his way? In her confusion, Qing-jao is that killer, and Jane her first victim, with the world of Lusitania waiting to be murdered afterward. Why did you have to speak, and tell her how easily she could find and kill us all?

“What can I do?” asked Jane.

Ender subvocalized his response. “Why are you asking me a question that only you can answer?”

“If you tell me to do it,” said Jane, “I can block all their messages, and save us all.”

“Even if it led to the destruction of Path?”

“If you tell me to,” she pleaded.

“Even though you know that in the long run you’ll probably be discovered anyway? That the fleet will probably not be turned away from us, in spite of all you can do?”

“If you tell me to live, Ender, then I can do what it takes to live.”

“Then do it,” said Ender. “Cut off Path’s ansible communications.”

Did he detect a tiny fraction of a second in which Jane hesitated? She could have had many hours of inward argument during that micropause.

“Command me,” said Jane.

“I command you.”

Again that tiny hesitation. Then: “Make me do it,” she insisted.

“How can I make you do it, if you don’t want to?”

“I want to live,” she said.

“Not as much as you want to be yourself,” said Ender.

“Any animal is willing to kill in order to save itself.”

“Any animal is willing to kill the Other,” said Ender. “But the higher beings include more and more living things within their self-story, until at last there is no Other. Until the needs of others are more important than any private desires. The highest beings of all are the ones who are willing to pay any personal cost for the good of those who need them.”

“I would risk hurting Path,” said Jane, “if I thought it would really save Lusitania.”

“But it wouldn’t.”

“I’d try to drive Qing-jao into helpless madness, if I thought it could save the hive queen and the pequeninos. She’s very close to losing her mind—I could do it.”

“Do it,” said Ender. “Do what it takes.”

“I can’t,” said Jane. “Because it would only hurt her, and wouldn’t save us in the end.”

“If you were a slightly lower animal,” said Ender, “you’d have a much better chance of coming out of this thing alive.”

“As low as you were, Ender the Xenocide?”

“As low as that,” said Ender. “Then you could live.”

“Or perhaps if I were as wise as you were then.”

“I have my brother Peter inside me, as well as my sister Valentine,” said Ender. “The beast as well as the angel. That’s what you taught me, back when you were nothing but the program we called the Fantasy Game.”

“Where is the beast inside me?”

“You don’t have one,” said Ender.

“Maybe I’m not really alive at all,” said Jane. “Maybe because I never passed through the crucible of natural selection, I lack the will to survive.”

“Or maybe you know, in some secret place within yourself, that there’s another way to survive, a way that you simply haven’t found yet.”

“That’s a cheerful thought,” said Jane. “I’ll pretend to believe in that.”

“Peço que deus te abençoe,” said Ender.

“Oh, you’re just getting sentimental,” said Jane.

For a long time, several minutes, the three faces in the display gazed in silence at Qing-jao, at Wang-mu. Then at last the two alien faces disappeared, and all that remained was the face named Jane. “I wish I could do it,” she said. “I wish I could kill your world to save my friends.”

Relief came to Qing-jao like the first strong breath to a swimmer who nearly drowned. “So you can’t stop me,” she said triumphantly. “I can send my message!”

Qing-jao walked to the terminal and sat down before Jane’s watching face. But she knew that the image in the display was an illusion. If Jane watched, it was not with those human eyes, it was with the visual sensors of the computer. It was all electronics, infinitesimal machinery but machinery nonetheless. Not a living soul. It was irrational to feel ashamed under that illusionary gaze.

“Mistress,” said Wang-mu.

“Later,” said Qing-jao.

“If you do this, Jane will die. They’ll shut down the ansibles and kill her.”

“What doesn’t live cannot die,” said Qing-jao.

“The only reason you have the power to kill her is because of her compassion.”

“If she seems to have compassion it’s an illusion—she was programmed to simulate compassion, that’s all.”

“Mistress, if you kill every manifestation of this program, so that no part of her remains alive, how are you different from Ender the Xenocide, who killed all the buggers three thousand years ago?”

“Maybe I’m not different,” said Qing-jao. “Maybe Ender also was the servant of the gods.”

Wang-mu knelt beside Qing-jao and wept on the skirt of her gown. “I beg you, Mistress, don’t do this evil thing.”

But Qing-jao wrote her report. It stood as clear and simple in her mind as if the gods had given the words to her. “To Starways Congress: The seditious writer known as Demosthenes is a woman now on or near Lusitania. She has control of or access to a program that has infested all ansible computers, causing them to fail to report messages from the fleet and concealing the transmission of Demosthenes’ own writings. The only solution to this problem is to extinguish the program’s control over ansible transmissions by disconnecting all ansibles from their present computers and bringing clean new computers online, all at once. For the present I have neutralized the program, allowing me to send this message and probably allowing you to send your orders to all worlds; but that cannot be guaranteed now and certainly cannot be expected to continue indefinitely, so you must act quickly. I suggest you set a date exactly forty standard weeks from today for all ansibles to go offline at once for a period of at least one standard day. All the new ansible computers, when they go online, must be completely unconnected to any other computer. From now on ansible messages must be manually re-entered at each ansible computer so that electronic contamination will never be possible again. If you retransmit this message immediately to all ansibles, using your code of authority, my report will become your orders; no further instructions will be needed and Demosthenes’ influence will end. If you do not act immediately, I will not be responsible for the consequences.”

To this report Qing-jao affixed her father’s name and the authority code he had given her; her name would mean nothing to Congress, but his name would be heeded, and the presence of his authority code would ensure that it was received by all the people who had particular interest in his statements.

The message finished, Qing-jao looked up into the eyes of the apparition before her. With her left hand resting on Wang-mu’s shuddering back, and her right hand over the transmit key, Qing-jao made her final challenge. “Will you stop me or will you allow this?”

To which Jane answered, “Will you kill a raman who has done no harm to any living soul, or will you let me live?”

Qing-jao pressed the transmit button. Jane bowed her head and disappeared.

It would take several seconds for the message to be routed by the house computer to the nearest ansible; from there, it would go instantly to every Congress authority on every one of the Hundred Worlds and many of the colonies as well. On many receiving computers it would be just one more message in the queue; but on some, perhaps hundreds, Father’s code would give it enough priority that already someone would be reading it, realizing its implications, and preparing a response. If Jane in fact had let the message through.

So Qing-jao waited for a response. Perhaps the reason no one answered immediately was because they had to contact each other and discuss this message and decide, quickly, what had to be done. Perhaps that was why no reply came to the empty display above her terminal.

The door opened. It would be Mu-pao with the game computer. “Put it in the corner by the north window,” said Qing-jao without looking. “I may yet need it, though I hope not.”

“Qing-jao.”

It was Father, not Mu-pao at all. Qing-jao turned to him, knelt at once to show her respect—but also her pride. “Father, I’ve made your report to Congress. While you communed with the gods, I was able to neutralize the enemy program and send the message telling how to destroy it. I’m waiting for their answer.”

She waited for Father’s praise.

“You did this?” he asked. “Without waiting for me? You spoke directly to Congress and didn’t ask for my consent?”

“You were being purified, Father. I fulfilled your assignment.”

“But then—Jane will be killed.”

“That much is certain,” said Qing-jao. “Whether contact with the Lusitania Fleet will be restored then or not, I can’t be sure.” Suddenly she thought of a flaw in her plans. “But the computers on the fleet will also be contaminated by this program! When contact is restored, the program can retransmit itself and—but then all we’ll have to do is blank out the ansibles one more time …”

Father was not looking at her. He was looking at the terminal display behind her. Qing-jao turned to see.

It was a message from Congress, with the official seal displayed. It was very brief, in the clipped style of the bureaucracy.

Han:
Brilliant work.
Have transmitted your suggestions as our orders.
Contact with the fleet already restored.
Did daughter help per your note 14FE.3A?
Medals for both if so.

“Then it’s done,” murmured Father. “They’ll destroy Lusitania, the pequeninos, all those innocent people.”

“Only if the gods wish it,” said Qing-jao. She was surprised that Father sounded so morose.

Wang-mu raised her head from Qing-jao’s lap, her face red and wet with weeping. “And Jane and Demosthenes will be gone as well,” she said.

Qing-jao gripped Wang-mu by the shoulder, held her an arm’s length away. “Demosthenes is a traitor,” said Qing-jao. But Wang-mu only looked away from her, turning her gaze up to Han Fei-tzu. Qing-jao also looked to her father. “And Jane—Father, you saw what she was, how dangerous.”

“She tried to save us,” said Father, “and we’ve thanked her by setting in motion her destruction.”

Qing-jao couldn’t speak or move, could only stare at Father as he leaned over her shoulder and touched the save key, then the clear key.

“Jane,” said Father. “If you hear me. Please forgive me.”

There was no answer from the terminal.

“May all the gods forgive me,” said Father. “I was weak in the moment when I should have been strong, and so my daughter has innocently done evil in my name.” He shuddered. “I must—purify myself.” The word plainly tasted like poison in his mouth. “That will last forever, too, I’m sure.”

He stepped back from the computer, turned away, and left the room. Wang-mu returned to her crying. Stupid, meaningless crying, thought Qing-jao. This is a moment of victory. Except Jane has snatched the victory away from me so that even as I triumph over her, she triumphs over me. She has stolen my father. He no longer serves the gods in his heart, even as he continues to serve them with his body.

Yet along with the pain of this realization came a hot stab of joy: I was stronger. I was stronger than Father, after all. When it came to the test, it was I who served the gods, and he who broke, who fell, who failed. There is more to me than I ever dreamed of. I am a worthy tool in the hands of the gods; who knows how they might wield me now?

12

GREGO’S WAR

<It’s a wonder that human beings ever became intelligent enough to travel between worlds.>

<Not really. I’ve been thinking about that lately. Starflight they learned from you. Ender says they didn’t grasp the physics of it until your first colony fleet reached their star system.>

<Should we have stayed at home for fear of teaching starflight to softbodied four-limbed hairless slugs?>

<You spoke a moment ago as if you believed that human beings had actually achieved intelligence.>

<Clearly they have.>

<I think not. I think they have found a way to fake intelligence.>

<Their starships fly. We haven’t noticed any of yours racing the lightwaves through space.>

<We’re still very young, as a species. But look at us. Look at you. We both have evolved a very similar system. We each have four kinds of life in our species. The young, who are helpless grubs. The mates, who never achieve intelligence—with you, it’s your drones, and with us, it’s the little mothers. Then there’s the many, many individuals who have enough intelligence to perform manual tasks—our wives and brothers, your workers. And finally the intelligent ones—we fathertrees, and you, the hive queen. We are the repository of the wisdom of the race, because we have the time to think, to contemplate. Ideation is our primary activity.>

<While the humans are all running around as brothers and wives. As workers.>

<Not just workers. Their young go through a helpless grub stage, too, which lasts longer than some of them think. And when it’s time to reproduce, they all turn into drones or little mothers, little machines that have only one goal in life: to have sex and die.>

<They think they’re rational through all those stages.>

<Self-delusion. Even at their best, they never, as individuals, rise above the level of manual laborers. Who among them has the time to become intelligent?>

<Not one.>

<They never know anything. They don’t have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that’s really going on is that they’ve got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo-knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts.>

<While collectively …>

<Collectively, they’re a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don’t understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.>

<So you’re saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and groups are even stupider than individual—and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with.>

<Exactly.>

<If they’re so stupid and we’re so intelligent, why do we have only one hive, which thrives here because a human being carried us? And why have you been so utterly dependent on them for every technical and scientific advance you make?>

<Maybe intelligence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.>

<Maybe we’re the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all.>

Quara was the last to arrive at Mother’s house. It was Planter who fetched her, the pequenino who served as Ender’s assistant in the fields. It was clear from the expectant silence in the living room that Miro had not actually told anyone anything yet. But they all knew, as surely as Quara knew, why he had called them together. It had to be Quim. Ender might have reached Quim by now, just barely; and Ender could talk to Miro by way of the transmitters they wore.

If Quim were all right, they wouldn’t have been summoned. They would simply have been told.

So they all knew. Quara scanned their faces as she stood in the doorway. Ela, looking stricken. Grego, his face angry—always angry, the petulant fool. Olhado, expressionless, his eyes gleaming. And Mother. Who could read that terrible mask she wore? Grief, certainly, like Ela, and fury as hot as Grego’s, and also the cold inhuman distance of Olhado’s face. We all wear Mother’s face, one way or another. What part of her is me? If I could understand myself, what would I then recognize in Mother’s twisted posture in her chair?

“He died of the descolada,” Miro said. “This morning. Andrew got there just now.”

“Don’t say that name,” Mother said. Her voice was husky with illcontained grief.

“He died as a martyr,” said Miro. “He died as he would have wanted to.”

Mother got up from her chair, awkwardly—for the first time, Quara realized that Mother was getting old. She walked with uncertain steps until she stood right in front of Miro, straddling his knees. Then she slapped him with all her strength across the face.

It was an unbearable moment. An adult woman striking a helpless cripple, that was hard enough to see; but Mother striking Miro, the one who had been their strength and salvation all through their childhood, that could not be endured. Ela and Grego leaped to their feet and pulled her away, dragged her back to her chair.

“What are you trying to do!” cried Ela. “Hitting Miro won’t bring Quim back to us!”

“Him and that jewel in his ear!” Mother shouted. She lunged toward Miro again; they barely held her back, despite her seeming feebleness. “What do you know about the way people want to die!”

Quara had to admire the way Miro faced her, unabashed, even though his cheek was red from her blow. “I know that death is not the worst thing in this world,” said Miro.

“Get out of my house,” said Mother.

Miro stood up. “You aren’t grieving for him,” he said. “You don’t even know who he was.”

“Don’t you dare say that to me!”

“If you loved him you wouldn’t have tried to stop him from going,” said Miro. His voice wasn’t loud, and his speech was thick and hard to understand. They listened, all of them, in silence. Even Mother, in anguished silence, for his words were terrible. “But you don’t love him. You don’t know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act just like you want them to, Mother, you’ll always feel betrayed. And because eventually everybody dies, you’ll always feel cheated. But you’re the cheat, Mother. You’re the one who uses our love for you to try to control us.”

“Miro,” said Ela. Quara recognized the tone in Ela’s voice. It was as if they were all little children again, with Ela trying to calm Miro, to persuade him to soften his judgment. Quara remembered hearing Ela speak to him that way once when Father had just beaten Mother, and Miro said, “I’ll kill him. He won’t live out this night.” This was the same thing. Miro was saying vicious things to Mother, words that had the power to kill. Only Ela couldn’t stop him in time, not now, because the words had already been said. His poison was in Mother now, doing its work, seeking out her heart to burn it up.

“You heard Mother,” said Grego. “Get out of here.”

“I’m going,” said Miro. “But I said only the truth.”

Grego strode toward Miro, took him by the shoulders, and bodily propelled him toward the door. “You’re not one of us!” said Grego. “You’ve got no right to say anything to us!”

Quara shoved herself between them, facing Grego. “If Miro hasn’t earned the right to speak in this family, then we aren’t a family!”

“You said it,” murmured Olhado.

“Get out of my way,” said Grego. Quara had heard him speak threateningly before, a thousand times at least. But this time, standing so close to him, his breath in her face, she realized that he was out of control. That the news of Quim’s death had hit him hard, that maybe at this moment he wasn’t quite sane.

“I’m not in your way,” said Quara. “Go ahead. Knock a woman down. Shove a cripple. It’s in your nature, Grego. You were born to destroy things. I’m ashamed to belong to the same species as you, let alone the same family.”

Only after she spoke did she realize that maybe she was pushing Grego too far. After all these years of sparring between them, this time she had drawn blood. His face was terrifying.

But he didn’t hit her. He stepped around her, around Miro, and stood in the doorway, his hands on the doorframe. Pushing outward, as if he were trying to press the walls out of his way. Or perhaps he was clinging to the walls, hoping they could hold him in.

“I’m not going to let you make me angry at you, Quara,” said Grego. “I know who my enemy is.”

Then he was gone, out the door into the new darkness.

A moment later, Miro followed, saying nothing more.

Ela spoke as she also walked to the door. “Whatever lies you may be telling yourself, Mother, it wasn’t Ender or anyone else who destroyed our family here tonight. It was you.” Then she was gone.

Olhado got up and left, wordlessly. Quara wanted to slap him as he passed her, to make him speak. Have you recorded everything in your computer eyes, Olhado? Have you got all the pictures etched in memory? Well, don’t be too proud of yourself. I may have only a brain of tissues to record this wonderful night in the history of the Ribeira family, but I’ll bet my pictures are every bit as clear as yours.

Mother looked up at Quara. Mother’s face was streaked with tears. Quara couldn’t remember—had she ever seen Mother weep before?

“So you’re all that’s left,” said Mother.

“Me?” said Quara. “I’m the one you cut off from access to the lab, remember? I’m the one you cut off from my life’s work. Don’t expect me to be your friend.”

Then Quara, too, left. Walked out into the night air feeling invigorated. Justified. Let the old hag think about that one for a while, see if she likes feeling cut off, the way she made me feel.

It was maybe five minutes later, when Quara was nearly to the gate, when the glow of her riposte had faded, that she began to realize what she had done to her mother. What they all had done. Left Mother alone. Left her feeling that she had lost, not just Quim, but her entire family. That was a terrible thing to do to her, and Mother didn’t deserve it.

Quara turned at once and ran back to the house. But as she came through the door, Ela also entered the living room from the other door, the one that led back farther into the house.

“She isn’t here,” said Ela.

“Nossa Senhora,” said Quara. “I said such awful things to her.”

“We all did.”

“She needed us. Quim is dead, and all we could do—”

“When she hit Miro like that, it was …”

To her surprise, Quara found herself weeping, clinging to her older sister. Am I still a child, then, after all? Yes, I am, we all are, and Ela is still the only one who knows how to comfort us. “Ela, was Quim the only one who held us together? Aren’t we a family anymore, now that he’s gone?”

“I don’t know,” said Ela.

“What can we do?”

In answer, Ela took her hand and led her out of the house. Quara asked where they were going, but Ela wouldn’t answer, just held her hand and led her along. Quara went willingly—she had no good idea of what to do, and it felt safe somehow, just to follow Ela. At first she thought Ela was looking for Mother, but no—she didn’t head for the lab or any other likely place. Where they ended up surprised her even more.

They stood before the shrine that the people of Lusitania had erected in the middle of the town. The shrine to Gusto and Cida, their grandparents, the xenobiologists who had first discovered a way to contain the descolada virus and thus saved the human colony on Lusitania. Even as they found the drugs that would stop the descolada from killing people, they themselves had died, too far gone with the infection for their own drug to save them.

The people adored them, built this shrine, called them Os Venerados even before the church beatified them. And now that they were only one step away from canonization as saints, it was permitted to pray to them.

To Quara’s surprise, that was why Ela had come here. She knelt before the shrine, and even though Quara really wasn’t much of a believer, she knelt beside her sister.

“Grandfather, Grandmother, pray to God for us. Pray for the soul of our brother Estevão. Pray for all our souls. Pray to Christ to forgive us.”

That was a prayer in which Quara could join with her whole heart.

“Protect your daughter, our mother, protect her from … from her grief and anger and make her know that we love her and that you love her and that … God loves her, if he does—oh, please, tell God to love her and don’t let her do anything crazy.”

Quara had never heard anyone pray like this. It was always memorized prayers, or written-down prayers. Not this gush of words. But then, Os Venerados were not like any other saints or blessed ones. They were Grandmother and Grandfather, even though we never met them in our lives.

“Tell God that we’ve had enough of this,” said Ela. “We have to find a way out of all this. Piggies killing humans. This fleet that’s coming to destroy us. The descolada trying to wipe everything out. Our family hating each other. Find us a way out of this, Grandfather, Grandmother, or if there isn’t a way then get God to open up a way because this can’t go on.”

Then an exhausted silence, both Ela and Quara breathing heavily.

“Em nome do Pai e do Filho e do Espírito Santo,” said Ela. “Amem.”

“Amem,” whispered Quara.

Then Ela embraced her sister and they wept together in the night.

Valentine was surprised to find that the Mayor and the Bishop were the only other people at the emergency meeting. Why was she there? She had no constituency, no claim to authority.

Mayor Kovano Zeljezo pulled up a chair for her. All the furniture in the Bishop’s private chamber was elegant, but the chairs were designed to be painful. The seat was so shallow from front to back that to sit at all, you had to keep your buttocks right up against the back. And the back itself was ramrod straight, with no allowances at all for the shape of the human spine, and it rose so high that your head was pushed forward. If you sat on one for any length of time, the chair would force you to bend forward, to lean your arms on your knees.

Perhaps that was the point, thought Valentine. Chairs that make you bow in the presence of God.

Or perhaps it was even more subtle. The chairs were designed to make you so physically uncomfortable that you longed for a less corporeal existence. Punish the flesh so you’ll prefer to live in the spirit.

“You look puzzled,” said Bishop Peregrino.

“I can see why the two of you would confer in an emergency,” said Valentine. “Did you need me to take notes?”

“Sweet humility,” said Peregrino. “But we have read your writings, my daughter, and we would be fools not to seek out your wisdom in a time of trouble.”

“Whatever wisdom I have I’ll give you,” said Valentine, “but I wouldn’t hope for much.”

With that, Mayor Kovano plunged into the subject of the meeting. “There are many long-term problems,” he said, “but we won’t have much chance to solve those if we don’t solve the immediate one. Last night there was some kind of quarrel at the Ribeira house—”

“Why must our finest minds be grouped in our most unstable family?” murmured the Bishop.

“They aren’t the most unstable family, Bishop Peregrino,” said Valentine. “They’re merely the family whose inner quakings cause the most perturbation at the surface. Other families suffer much worse turmoil, but you never notice because they don’t matter so much to the colony.”

The Bishop nodded sagely, but Valentine suspected that he was annoyed at being corrected on so trivial a point. Only it wasn’t trivial, she knew. If the Bishop and the Mayor started thinking that the Ribeira family was more unstable than in fact it was, they might lose trust in Ela or Miro or Novinha, all of whom were absolutely essential if Lusitania were to survive the coming crises. For that matter, even the most immature ones, Quara and Grego, might be needed. They had already lost Quim, probably the best of them all. It would be foolish to throw the others away as well; yet if the colony’s leaders were to start misjudging the Ribeiras as a group, they would soon misjudge them as individuals, too.

“Last night,” Mayor Kovano continued, “the family dispersed, and as far as we know, few of them are speaking to any of the others. I tried to find Novinha, and only recently learned that she has taken refuge with the Children of the Mind of Christ and won’t see or speak to anyone. Ela tells me that her mother has put a seal on all the files in the xenobiology laboratory, so that work there has come to an absolute standstill this morning. Quara is with Ela, believe it or not. The boy Miro is outside the perimeter somewhere. Olhado is at home and his wife says he has turned his eyes off, which is his way of withdrawing from life.”

“So far,” said Peregrino, “it sounds like they’re all taking Father Estevão’s death very badly. I must visit with them and help them.”

“All of these are perfectly acceptable grief responses,” said Kovano, “and I wouldn’t have called this meeting if this were all. As you say, Your Grace, you would deal with this as their spiritual leader, without any need for me.”

“Grego,” said Valentine, realizing who had not been accounted for in Kovano’s list.

“Exactly,” said Kovano. “His response was to go into a bar—several bars, before the night was over—and tell every half-drunk paranoid bigot in Milagre—of which we have our fair share—that the piggies have murdered Father Quim in cold blood.”

“Que Deus nos abençõe,” murmured Bishop Peregrino.

“One of the bars had a disturbance,” said Kovano. “Windows shattered, chairs broken, two men hospitalized.”

“A brawl?” asked the Bishop.

“Not really. Just anger vented in general.”

“So they got it out of their system.”

“I hope so,” said Kovano. “But it seemed only to stop when the sun came up. And when the constable arrived.”

“Constable?” asked Valentine. “Just one?”

“He heads a volunteer police force,” said Kovano. “Like the volunteer fire brigade. Two-hour patrols. We woke some up. It took twenty of them to quiet things down. We only have about fifty on the whole force, usually with only four on duty at any one time. They usually spend the night walking around telling each other jokes. And some of the off-duty police were among the ones trashing the bar.”

“So you’re saying they’re not terribly reliable in an emergency.”

“They behaved splendidly last night,” said Kovano. “The ones who were on duty, I mean.”

“Still, there’s not a hope of them controlling a real riot,” said Valentine.

“They handled things last night,” said Bishop Peregrino. “Tonight the first shock will have worn off.”

“On the contrary,” said Valentine. “Tonight the word will have spread. Everybody will know about Quim’s death and the anger will be all the hotter.”

“Perhaps,” said Mayor Kovano. “But what worries me is the next day, when Andrew brings the body home. Father Estevão wasn’t all that popular a figure—he never went drinking with the boys—but he was a kind of spiritual symbol. As a martyr, he’ll have a lot more people wanting to avenge him than he ever had disciples wanting to follow him during his life.”

“So you’re saying we should have a small and simple funeral,” said Peregrino.

“I don’t know,” said Kovano. “Maybe what the people need is a big funeral, where they can vent their grief and get it all out and over with.”

“The funeral is nothing,” said Valentine. “Your problem is tonight.”

“Why tonight?” said Kovano. “The first shock of the news of Father Estevão’s death will be over. The body won’t be back till tomorrow. What’s tonight?”

“Tonight you have to close all the bars. Don’t allow any alcohol to flow. Arrest Grego and confine him until after the funeral. Declare a curfew at sundown and put every policeman on duty. Patrol the city all night in groups of four, with nightsticks and sidearms.”

“Our police don’t have sidearms.”

“Give them sidearms anyway. They don’t have to load them, they just have to have them. A nightstick is an invitation to argue with authority, because you can always run away. A pistol is an incentive to behave politely.”

“This sounds very extreme,” said Bishop Peregrino. “A curfew! What about night shifts?”

“Cancel all but vital services.”

“Forgive me, Valentine,” said Mayor Kovano, “but if we overreact so badly, won’t that just blow things out of proportion? Maybe even cause the kind of panic we want to avoid?”

“You’ve never seen a riot, have you?”

“Only what happened last night,” said the Mayor.

“Milagre is a very small town,” said Bishop Peregrino. “Only about fifteen thousand people. We’re hardly large enough to have a real riot—that’s for big cities, on heavily populated worlds.”

“It’s not a function of population size,” said Valentine, “it’s a function of population density and public fear. Your fifteen thousand people are crammed together in a space hardly large enough to be the downtown of a city. They have a fence around them—by choice—because outside that fence there are creatures who are unbearably strange and who think they own the whole world, even though everybody can see vast prairies that should be open for humans to use except the piggies refuse to let them. The city has been scarred by plague, and now they’re cut off from every other world and there’s a fleet coming sometime in the near future to invade and oppress and punish them. And in their minds, all of this, all of it, is the piggies’ fault. Last night they first learned that the piggies have killed again, even after they took a solemn vow not to harm a human being. No doubt Grego gave them a very colorful account of the piggies’ treachery—the boy has a way with words, especially nasty ones—and the few men who were in the bars reacted with violence. I assure you, things will only be worse tonight, unless you head them off.”

“If we take that kind of oppressive action, they’ll think we’re panicking,” said Bishop Peregrino.

“They’ll think you’re firmly in control. The levelheaded people will be grateful to you. You’ll restore public trust.”

“I don’t know,” said Mayor Kovano. “No mayor has ever done anything like that before.”

“No other mayor ever had the need.”

“People will say that I used the slightest excuse to take dictatorial powers.”

“Maybe they will,” said Valentine.

“They’ll never believe that there would have been a riot.”

“So perhaps you’ll get defeated at the next election,” said Valentine. “What of that?”

Peregrino laughed aloud. “She thinks like a cleric,” he said.

“I’m willing to lose an election in order to do the right thing,” said Kovano, a little resentfully.

“You’re just not sure it’s the right thing,” said Valentine.

“Well, you can’t know that there’ll be a riot tonight,” said Kovano.

“Yes I can,” said Valentine. “I promise that unless you take firm control right now, and stifle any possibility of crowds forming tonight, you will lose a lot more than the next election.”

The Bishop was still chuckling. “This does not sound like the woman who told us that whatever wisdom she had, she would share, but we mustn’t hope for much.”

“If you think I’m overreacting, what do you propose?”

“I’ll announce a memorial service for Quim tonight, and prayers for peace and calm.”

“That will bring to the cathedral exactly the people who would never be part of a riot anyway,” said Valentine.

“You don’t understand how important faith is to the people of Lusitania,” said Peregrino.

“And you don’t understand how devastating fear and rage can be, and how quickly religion and civilization and human decency are forgotten when a mob forms.”

“I’ll put all the police on alert tonight,” said Mayor Kovano, “and put half of them on duty from dusk to midnight. But I won’t close the bars or declare a curfew. I want life to go on as normally as possible. If we started changing everything, shutting everything down, we’d just be giving them more reasons to be afraid and angry.”

“You’d be giving them a sense that authority was in command,” said Valentine. “You’d be taking action that was commensurate with the terrible feelings they have. They’d know that somebody was doing something.”

“You are very wise,” said Bishop Peregrino, “and this would be the best advice for a large city, especially on a planet less true to the Christian faith. But we are a mere village, and the people are pious. They don’t need to be bullied. They need encouragement and solace tonight, not curfews and closings and pistols and patrols.”

“These are your choices to make,” said Valentine. “As I said, what wisdom I have, I share.”

“And we appreciate it. You can be sure I’ll be watching things closely tonight,” said Kovano.

“Thank you for inviting me,” said Valentine. “But as you can see, as I predicted, it didn’t come to much.”

She got up from her chair, her body aching from sitting so long in that impossible posture. She had not bowed herself forward. Nor did she bow even now, as the Bishop extended his hand to be kissed. Instead, she shook his hand firmly, then shook Mayor Kovano’s hand. As equals. As strangers.

She left the room, burning inside. She had warned them and told them what they ought to do. But like most leaders who had never faced a real crisis, they didn’t believe that anything would be different tonight from most other nights. People only really believe in what they’ve seen before. After tonight, Kovano will believe in curfews and closings at times of public stress. But by then it will be too late. By then they will be counting the casualties.

How many graves would be dug beside Quim’s? And whose bodies would go into them?

Though Valentine was a stranger here and knew very few of the people, she couldn’t just accept the riot as inevitable. There was only one other hope. She would talk to Grego. Try to persuade him of the seriousness of what was happening here. If he went from bar to bar tonight, counseling patience, speaking calmly, then the riot might be forestalled. Only he had any chance of doing it. They knew him. He was Quim’s brother. He was the one whose words had so angered them last night. Enough men might listen to him that the riot might be contained, forestalled, channeled. She had to find Grego.

If only Ender were here. She was a historian; he had actually led men into battle. Well, boys, actually. He had led boys. But it was the same thing—he’d know what to do. Why is he away now? Why is this in my hands? I haven’t the stomach for violence and confrontation. I never have. That’s why Ender was born in the first place, a third child conceived at government request in an era when parents weren’t usually allowed to have more than two without devastating legal sanctions: because Peter had been too vicious, and she, Valentine, had been too mild.

Ender would have talked the Mayor and the Bishop into acting sensibly. And if he couldn’t, he would have known how to go into town himself, calm things down, keep things under control.

As she wished for Ender to be with her, though, she knew that even he couldn’t control what was going to happen tonight. Maybe even what she had suggested wouldn’t have been enough. She had based her conclusions about what would happen tonight on all that she had seen and read on many different worlds in many different times. Last night’s conflagration would definitely spread much farther tonight. But now she was beginning to realize that things might be even worse than she had first assumed. The people of Lusitania had lived in unexpressed fear on an alien world for far too long. Every other human colony had immediately spread out, taken possession of their world, made it their own within a few generations. The humans of Lusitania still lived in a tiny compound, a virtual zoo with terrifying swinelike creatures peering in at them through the bars. What was pent up within these people could not be estimated. It probably could not even be contained. Not for a single day.

The deaths of Libo and Pipo in past years had been bad enough. But they had been scientists, working among the piggies. With them it was like airplane crashes or starship explosions. If only the crew was aboard, then the public didn’t get quite so upset—the crew was being paid for the risk they took. Only when civilians were killed did such accidents cause fear and outrage. And in the minds of the people of Lusitania, Quim was an innocent civilian.

No, more than that: He was a holy man, bringing brotherhood and holiness to these undeserving half-animals. Killing him was not just bestial and cruel, it was also sacrilege.

The people of Lusitania were every bit as pious as Bishop Peregrino thought. What he forgot was the way pious people had always reacted to insults against their god. Peregrino didn’t remember enough of Christian history, thought Valentine, or perhaps he simply thought that all that sort of thing had ended with the Crusades. If the cathedral was, in fact, the center of life in Lusitania, and if the people were devoted to their priests, why did Peregrino imagine that their grief at the murder of a priest could be expressed in a simple prayer service? It would only add to their fury, if the Bishop seemed to think that Quim’s death was nothing much. He was adding to the problem, not solving it.

She was still searching for Grego when she heard the bells start to toll. The call to prayer. Yet this was not a normal time for mass; people must be looking up in surprise at the sound, wondering, Why is the bell tolling? And then remembering—Father Estevão is dead. Father Quim was murdered by the piggies. Oh, yes, Peregrino, what an excellent idea, ringing that prayer bell. That will help the people feel like things are calm and normal.

From all wise men, O Lord, protect us.

Miro lay curled in a bend of one of Human’s roots. He had not slept much the night before, if at all, yet even now he lay there unstirring, with pequeninos coming and going all around him, the sticks beating out rhythms on Human’s and Rooter’s trunks. Miro heard the conversations, understanding most of them even though he wasn’t yet fluent in Father Tongue because the brothers made no effort to conceal their own agitated conversations from him. He was Miro, after all. They trusted him. So it was all right for him to realize how angry and afraid they were.

The fathertree named Warmaker had killed a human. And not just any human—he and his tribe had murdered Father Estevão, the most beloved of human beings after only the Speaker for the Dead himself. It was unspeakable. What should they do? They had promised the Speaker not to make war on each other anymore, but how else could they punish Warmaker’s tribe and show the humans that the pequeninos repudiated their vicious act? War was the only answer, all the brothers of every tribe attacking Warmaker’s forest and cutting down all their trees except those known to have argued against Warmaker’s plan.

And their mothertree? That was the debate that still raged: Whether it was enough to kill all the brothers and complicit fathertrees in Warmaker’s forest, or whether they should cut down the mothertree as well, so that there was no chance of any of Warmaker’s seed taking root in the world again. They would leave Warmaker alive long enough to see the destruction of his tribe, and then they would burn him to death, the most terrible of all executions, and the only time the pequeninos ever used fire within a forest.

Miro heard all this, and wanted to speak, wanted to say, What good is all this, now? But he knew that the pequeninos could not be stopped. They were too angry now. They were angry partly because of grief at Quim’s death, but also in large part because they were ashamed. Warmaker had shamed them all by breaking their treaty. Humans would never trust the pequeninos again, unless they destroyed Warmaker and his tribe utterly.

The decision was made. Tomorrow morning all the brothers would begin the journey toward Warmaker’s forest. They would spend many days gathering, because this had to be an action of all the forests of the world together. When they were ready, with Warmaker’s forest utterly surrounded, then they would destroy it so thoroughly that no one would ever guess that there had once been a forest there.

The humans would see it. Their satellites would show them how the pequeninos dealt with treaty-breakers and cowardly murderers. Then the humans would trust the pequeninos again. Then the pequeninos could lift up their heads without shame in the presence of a human.

Gradually Miro realized that they were not just letting him overhear their conversations and deliberations. They were making sure he heard and understood all they were doing. They expect me to take the word back to the city. They expect me to explain to the humans of Lusitania exactly how the pequeninos plan to punish Quim’s murderers.

Don’t they realize that I’m a stranger here now? Who would listen to me, among the humans of Lusitania—me, a crippled boy out of the past, whose speech is so slow and hard to follow. I have no influence over other humans. I barely have influence over my own body.

Still, it was Miro’s duty. He got up slowly, unknotting himself from his place amid Human’s roots. He would try. He would go to Bishop Peregrino and tell him what the pequeninos were planning. Bishop Peregrino would spread the word, and then the people could all feel better knowing that thousands of innocent pequenino infants would be killed to make up for the death of one man.

What are pequenino babies, after all? Just worms living in the dark belly of a mothertree. It would never occur to these people that there was scant moral difference between this mass murder of pequenino babies and King Herod’s slaughter of the innocents at the time of Jesus’ birth. This was justice they were pursuing. What is the complete obliteration of a tribe of pequeninos compared with that?

Grego: standing in the middle of the grassy square, the crowd alert around me, each of them connected to me by a taut invisible wire so that my will is their will, my mouth speaks their words, their hearts beat to my rhythm. I have never felt this before, this kind of life, to be part of a group like this, and not just part of it, but the mind of it, the center, so that my self includes all of them, hundreds of them, my rage is their rage, their hands are my hands, their eyes see only what I show them.

The music of it, the cadence of invocation, answer, invocation, answer:

“The Bishop says that we’ll pray for justice, but is that enough for us?” “No!”

“The pequeninos say that they’ll destroy the forest that murdered my brother, but do we believe them?”

“No!”

They complete my phrases; when I have to stop to breathe in, they shout for me, so that my voice is never stilled, but rises out of the throats of five hundred men and women. The Bishop came to me, full of peace and patience. The Mayor came to me with his warnings of police and riot and his hints of prison. Valentine came to me, all icy intellect, speaking of my responsibility. All of them know my power, power I never even knew I had, power that began only when I stopped obeying them and finally spoke what was in my heart to the people themselves. Truth is my power. I stopped deceiving the people and gave them the truth and now see what I’ve become, what we’ve become together.

“If anybody punishes the swine for killing Quim, it should be us. A human life should be avenged by human hands! They say that the sentence for the murderers is death—but we’re the only ones who have the right to appoint the executioner! We’re the ones who have to make sure the sentence is carried out!”

“Yes! Yes!”

“They let my brother die in the agony of the descolada! They watched his body burn from the inside out! Now we’ll burn that forest to the ground!”

“Burn them! Fire! Fire!”

See how they strike matches, how they tear up tufts of grass and light them. The flame we’ll light together!

“Tomorrow we’ll leave on the punitive expedition—”

“Tonight! Tonight! Now!”

“Tomorrow—we can’t go tonight—we have to collect water and supplies—”

“Now! Tonight! Burn!”

“I tell you we can’t get there in a single night, it’s hundreds of kilometers away, it’ll take days to get there—”

“The piggies are right over the fence!”

“Not the ones that killed Quim—”

“They’re all murdering little bastards!”

“These are the ones that killed Libo, aren’t they?”

“They killed Pipo and Libo!”

“They’re all murderers!”

“Burn them tonight!”

“Burn them all!”

“Lusitania for us, not for animals!”

Are they insane? How can they think that he would let them kill these piggies—they haven’t done anything. “It’s Warmaker! Warmaker and his forest that we have to punish!”

“Punish them!”

“Kill the piggies!”

“Burn!”

“Fire!”

A momentary silence. A lull. An opportunity. Think of the right words. Think of something to bring them back, they’re slipping away. They were part of my body, they were part of my self, but now they’re sliding away out from under me, one spasm and I’ve lost control if I ever had control; what can I say in this split second of silence that will bring them back to their senses?

Too long. Grego waited too long to think of something. It was a child’s voice that filled the brief silence, the voice of a boy not yet into his manhood, exactly the sort of innocent voice that could cause the brimming holy rage within their hearts to erupt, to flow into irrevocable action. Cried the child: “For Quim and Christ!”

“Quim and Christ! Quim and Christ!”

“No!” shouted Grego. “Wait! You can’t do this!”

They lurch around him, stumble him down. He’s on all fours, someone stepping on his hand. Where is the stool he was standing on? Here it is, cling to that, don’t let them trample me, they’re going to kill me if I don’t get up, I have to move with them, get up and walk with them, run with them or they’ll crush me.

And then they were gone, past him, roaring, shouting, the tumult of feet moving out of the grassy square into the grassy streets, tiny flames held up, the voices crying “Fire” and “Burn” and “Quim and Christ,” all the sound and sight of them flowing like a stream of lava from the square outward toward the forest that waited on the not-so-distant hill.

“God in heaven what are they doing!”

It was Valentine. Grego knelt by the stool, leaning on it, and there she stood beside him, looking at them flow away from this cold empty crater of a place where the conflagration began.

“Grego, you self-righteous son-of-a-bitch, what have you done?”

Me? “I was going to lead them to Warmaker. I was going to lead them to justice.”

“You’re the physicist, you idiot boy. Haven’t you ever heard of the uncertainty principle?”

“Particle physics. Philotic physics.”

“Mob physics, Grego. You never owned them. They owned you. And now they’ve used you up and they’re going to destroy the forest of our best friends and advocates among the pequeninos and what will any of us do then? It’s war between humans and pequeninos, unless they have inhuman self-restraint, and it will be our fault.”

“Warmaker killed Quim.”

“A crime. But what you’ve started here, Grego, this is an atrocity.”

“I didn’t do it!”

“Bishop Peregrino counseled with you. Mayor Kovano warned you. I begged you. And you did it anyway.”

“You warned me about a riot, not about this—”

“This is a riot, you fool. Worse than a riot. It’s a pogrom. It’s a massacre. It’s baby-killing. It’s the first step on the long terrible road to xenocide.”

“You can’t blame all that on me!”

Her face is so terrible in the moonlight, in the light from the doors and windows of the bars. “I blame on you only what you did. You started a fire on a hot, dry, windy day, despite all warnings. I blame you for that, and if you don’t hold yourself responsible for all the consequences of your own acts, then you are truly unworthy of human society and I hope you lose your freedom forever.”

She’s gone. Where? To do what? She can’t leave him alone here. It’s not right to leave him alone. A few moments ago, he was so large, with five hundred hearts and minds and mouths, a thousand hands and feet, and now it was all gone, as if his huge new body had died and he was left as a quivering ghost of a man, this single slender worm of a soul bereft of the powerful flesh it used to rule. He had never been so terrified. They almost killed him in their rush to leave him, almost trampled him into the grass.

They were his, though, all the same. He had created them, made a single mob of them, and even though they had misunderstood what he created them for, they were still acting according to the rage he had provoked in them, and with the plan he had put in their minds. Their aim was bad, that’s all—otherwise they were doing exactly what he had wanted them to do. Valentine was right. It was his responsibility. What they did now, he had done as surely as if he were still in front of them leading the way.

So what could he do?

Stop them. Get control again. Stand in front of them and beg them to stop. They weren’t setting off to burn the distant forest of the mad fathertree Warmaker, they were going to slaughter pequeninos that he knew, even if he didn’t like them much. He had to stop them, or their blood would be on his hands like sap that couldn’t be washed or rubbed away, a stain that would stay with him forever.

So he ran, following the muddy swath of their footprints through the streets, where grass was trampled down into the mire. He ran until his side ached, through the place where they had stopped to break down the fence—where was the disruption field when we needed it? Why didn’t someone turn it on?—and on to where already flames were leaping into the sky.

“Stop! Put the fire out!”

“Burn!”

“For Quim and Christ!”

“Die, pigs!”

“There’s one, getting away!”

“Kill it!”

“Burn it!”

“The trees aren’t dry enough—the fire’s not taking!”

“Yes it is!”

“Cut down the tree!”

“There’s another!”

“Look, the little bastards are attacking!”

“Break them in half!”

“Give me that scythe if you aren’t going to use it!”

“Tear the little swine apart!”

“For Quim and Christ!”

Blood sprays in a wide arc and spatters into Grego’s face as he lunges forward, trying to stop them. Did I know this one? Did I know this pequenino’s voice before it was torn into this cry of agony and death? I can’t put this back together again, they’ve broken him. Her. Broken her. A wife. A never-seen wife. Then we must be near the middle of the forest, and that giant must be the mothertree.

“Here’s a killer tree if I ever saw one!”

Around the perimeter of the clearing where the great tree stood, the lesser trees suddenly began to lean, then toppled down, broken off at the trunks. For a moment Grego thought that it was humans cutting them down, but now he realized that no one was near those trees. They were breaking off by themselves, throwing themselves down to their deaths in order to crush the murdering humans under their trunks and branches, trying to save the mothertree.

For a moment it worked. Men screamed in agony; perhaps a dozen or two were crushed or trapped or broken under the falling trees. But then all had fallen that could, and still the mothertree stood there, her trunk undulating strangely, as if some inner peristalsis were at work, swallowing deeply.

“Let it live!” cried Grego. “It’s the mothertree! She’s innocent!”

But he was drowned out by the cries of the injured and trapped, and by the terror as they realized that the forest could strike back, that this was not all a vengeful game of justice and retribution, but a real war, with both sides dangerous.

“Burn it! Burn it!” The chant was loud enough to drown out the cries of the dying. And now the leaves and branches of the fallen trees were stretched out toward the mothertree; they lighted those branches and they burned readily. A few men came to their senses enough to realize that a fire that burned the mothertree would also burn the men pinned under the fallen brothertrees, and they began to try to rescue them. But most of the men were caught up in the passion of their success. To them the mothertree was Warmaker, the killer; to them it was everything alien in this world, the enemy who kept them inside a fence, the landlord who had arbitrarily restricted them to one small plot of land on a world so wide. The mothertree was all oppression and all authority, all strangeness and danger, and they had conquered it.

Grego recoiled from the screaming of the trapped men who watched the fire approaching, from the howls of the men the fire had reached, the triumphant chanting of the men who had done this murder. “For Quim and Christ! For Quim and Christ!” Almost Grego ran away, unable to bear what he could see and smell and hear, the bright orange flames, the smell of roasting manflesh, and the crackling of the living wood ablaze.

But he did not run. Instead he worked beside the others who dashed forward to the very edge of the flame to pry living men out from under the fallen trees. He was singed, and once his clothing caught on fire, but the hot pain of that was nothing, it was almost merciful, because it was the punishment that he deserved. He should die in this place. He might even have done it, might even have plunged himself so deeply into the fire that he could never come out until his crime was purged out of him and all that was left was bone and ash, but there were still broken people to pull out of the fire’s reach, still lives to save. Besides, someone beat out the flames on his shoulder and helped him lift the tree so the boy who lay under it could wriggle free and how could he die when he was part of something like this, part of saving this child?

“For Quim and Christ!” the boy whimpered as he crab-crawled out of the way of the flames.

Here he was, the boy whose words had filled the silence and turned the crowd into this direction. You did it, thought Grego. You tore them away from me.

The boy looked up at him and recognized him. “Grego!” he cried, and lunged forward. His arms enfolded Grego around the thighs, his head pressed against Grego’s hip. “Uncle Grego!”

It was Olhado’s oldest boy, Nimbo.

“We did it!” cried Nimbo. “For Uncle Quim!”

The flames crackled. Grego picked up the boy and carried him, staggering out of the reach of the hottest flames, and then farther out, into the darkness, into a place where it was cool. All the men were driven this way, the flames herding them, the wind driving the flames. Most were like Grego, exhausted, frightened, in pain from the fire or helping someone else.

But some, many perhaps, were still untouched except by the inner fire that Grego and Nimbo had ignited in the square. “Burn them all!” The voices here and there, smaller mobs like tiny eddies in a larger stream, but they now held brands and torches from the fires raging in the forest’s heart. “For Quim and Christ! For Libo and Pipo! No trees! No trees!”

Grego staggered onward.

“Set me down,” said Nimbo.

And onward.

“I can walk.”

But Grego’s errand was too urgent. He couldn’t stop for Nimbo, and he couldn’t let the boy walk, couldn’t wait for him and couldn’t leave him behind. You don’t leave your brother’s son behind in a burning forest. So he carried him, and after awhile, exhausted, his legs and arms aching from the exertion, his shoulder a white sun of agony where he had been burned, he emerged from the forest into the grassy space before the old gate, where the path wound down from the wood to join the path from the xenobiology labs.

The mob had gathered here, many of them holding torches, but for some reason they were still a distance away from the two isolated trees that stood watch here: Human and Rooter. Grego pushed his way through the crowd, still holding Nimbo; his heart was racing, and he was filled with fear and anguish and yet a spark of hope, for he knew why the men with torches had stopped. And when he reached the edge of the mob, he saw that he was right.

There were gathered around those last two fathertrees perhaps two hundred pequenino brothers and wives, small and beleaguered, but with an air of defiance about them. They would fight to the death on this spot, rather than let these last two trees be burned—but burn they would, if the mob decided so, for there was no hope of pequeninos standing in the way of men determined to do murder.

But between the piggies and the men there stood Miro, like a giant compared to the pequeninos. He had no weapon, and yet he had spread his arms as if to protect the pequeninos, or perhaps to hold them back. And in his thick, difficult speech he was defying the mob.

“Kill me first!” he said. “You like murder! Kill me first! Just like they killed Quim! Kill me first!”

“Not you!” said one of the men holding torches. “But those trees are going to die. And all those piggies, too, if they haven’t got the brains to run away.”

“Me first,” said Miro. “These are my brothers! Kill me first!”

He spoke loudly and slowly, so his sluggish speech could be understood. The mob still had anger in it, some of them at least. Yet there were also many who were sick of it all, many who were already ashamed, already discovering in their hearts the terrible acts they had performed tonight, when their souls were given over to the will of the mob. Grego still felt it, that connection with the others, and he knew that they could go either way—the ones still hot with rage might start one last fire tonight; or the ones who had cooled, whose only inner heat was a blush of shame, they might prevail.

Grego had this one last chance to redeem himself, at least in part. And so he stepped forward, still carrying Nimbo.

“Me too,” he said. “Kill me too, before you raise a hand against these brothers and these trees!”

“Out of the way, Grego, you and the cripple both!”

“How are you different from Warmaker, if you kill these little ones?”

Now Grego stood beside Miro.

“Out of the way! We’re going to burn the last of them and have done.” But the voice was less certain.

“There’s a fire behind you,” said Grego, “and too many people have already died, humans and pequeninos both.” His voice was husky, his breath short from the smoke he had inhaled. But he could still be heard. “The forest that killed Quim is far away from here, and Warmaker still stands untouched. We haven’t done justice here tonight. We’ve done murder and massacre.”

“Piggies are piggies!”

“Are they? Would you like that if it went the other way?” Grego took a few steps toward one of the men who looked tired and unwilling to go on, and spoke directly to him, while pointing at the mob’s spokesman. “You! Would you like to be punished for what he did?”

“No,” muttered the man.

“If he killed someone, would you think it was right for somebody to come to your house and slaughter your wife and children for it?”

Several voices now. “No.”

“Why not? Humans are humans, aren’t we?”

“I didn’t kill any children,” said the spokesman. He was defending himself now. And the “we” was gone from his speech. He was an individual now, alone. The mob was fading, breaking apart.

“We burned the mothertree,” said Grego.

Behind him there began a keening sound, several soft, high-pitched whines. For the brothers and surviving wives, it was the confirmation of their worst fears. The mothertree had burned.

“That giant tree in the middle of the forest—inside it were all their babies. All of them. This forest did us no harm, and we came and killed their babies.”

Miro stepped forward, put his hand on Grego’s shoulder. Was Miro leaning on him? Or helping him stand?

Miro spoke then, not to Grego, but to the crowd. “All of you. Go home.”

“Maybe we should try to put the fire out,” said Grego. But already the whole forest was ablaze.

“Go home,” Miro said again. “Stay inside the fence.”

There was still some anger left. “Who are you to tell us what to do?”

“Stay inside the fence,” said Miro. “Someone else is coming to protect the pequeninos now.”

“Who? The police?” Several people laughed bitterly, since so many of them were police, or had seen policemen among the crowd.

“Here they are,” said Miro.

A low hum could be heard, soft at first, barely audible in the roaring of the fire, but then louder and louder, until five fliers came into view, skimming the tops of the grass as they circled the mob, sometimes black in silhouette against the burning forest, sometimes shining with reflected fire when they were on the opposite side. At last they came to rest, all five of them sinking down onto the tall grass. Only then were the people able to distinguish one black shape from another, as six riders arose from each flying platform. What they had taken for shining machinery on the fliers was not machinery at all, but living creatures, not as large as men but not as small as pequeninos, either, with large heads and multi-faceted eyes. They made no threatening gesture, just formed lines before each flier; but no gestures were needed. The sight of them was enough, stirring memories of ancient nightmares and horror stories.

“Deus nos perdoe!” cried several. God forgive us. They were expecting to die.

“Go home,” said Miro. “Stay inside the fence.”

“What are they?” Nimbo’s childish voice spoke for them all.

The answers came as whispers. “Devils.” “Destroying angels.” “Death.”

And then the truth, from Grego’s lips, for he knew what they had to be, though it was unthinkable. “Buggers,” he said. “Buggers, here on Lusitania.”

They did not run from the place. They walked, watching carefully, shying away from the strange new creatures whose existence none of them had guessed at, whose powers they could only imagine, or remember from ancient videos they had studied once in school. The buggers, who had once come close to destroying all of humanity, until they were destroyed in turn by Ender the Xenocide. The book called the Hive Queen had said they were really beautiful and did not need to die. But now, seeing them, black shining exoskeletons, a thousand lenses in their shimmering green eyes, it was not beauty but terror that they felt. And when they went home, it would be in the knowledge that these, and not just the dwarfish, backward piggies, waited for them just outside the fence. Had they been in prison before? Surely now they were trapped in one of the circles of hell.

At last only Miro, Grego, and Nimbo were left, of all the humans. Around them the piggies also watched in awe—but not in terror, for they had no insect nightmares lurking in their limbic node the way the humans did. Besides, the buggers had come to them as saviors and protectors. What weighed on them most was not curiosity about these strangers, but rather grief at what they had lost.

“Human begged the hive queen to help them, but she said she couldn’t kill humans,” said Miro. “Then Jane saw the fire from the satellites in the sky, and told Andrew Wiggin. He spoke to the hive queen and told her what to do. That she wouldn’t have to kill anybody.”

“They aren’t going to kill us?” asked Nimbo.

Grego realized that Nimbo had spent these last few minutes expecting to die. Then it occurred to him that so, too, had he—that it was only now, with Miro’s explanation, that he was sure that they hadn’t come to punish him and Nimbo for what they set in motion tonight. Or rather, for what Grego had set in motion, ready for the single small nudge that Nimbo, in all innocence, had given.

Slowly Grego knelt and set the boy down. His arms barely responded to his will now, and the pain in his shoulder was unbearable. He began to cry. But it wasn’t for the pain that he was weeping.

The buggers moved now, and moved quickly. Most stayed on the ground, jogging away to take up watch positions around the perimeter of the city. A few remounted the fliers, one to each machine, and took them back up into the air, flying over the burning forest, the flaming grass, spraying them with something that blanketed the fire and slowly put it out.

Bishop Peregrino stood on the low foundation wall that had been laid only that morning. The people of Lusitania, all of them, were gathered, sitting in the grass. He used a small amplifier, so that no one could miss his words. But he probably would not have needed it—all were silent, even the little children, who seemed to catch the somber mood.

Behind the Bishop was the forest, blackened but not utterly lifeless—a a few of the trees were greening again. Before him lay the blanket-covered bodies, each beside its grave. The nearest of them was the corpse of Quim—Father Estevão. The other bodies were the humans who had died two nights before, under the trees and in the fire.

“These graves will be the floor of the chapel, so that whenever we enter it we tread upon the bodies of the dead. The bodies of those who died as they helped to bring murder and desolation to our brothers the pequeninos. Above all the body of Father Estevão, who died trying to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to a forest of heretics. He dies a martyr. These others died with murder in their hearts and blood on their hands.

“I speak plainly, so that this Speaker for the Dead won’t have to add any words after me. I speak plainly, the way Moses spoke to the children of Israel after they worshiped the golden calf and rejected their covenant with God. Of all of us, there are only a handful who have no share of the guilt for this crime. Father Estevão, who died pure, and yet whose name was on the blasphemous lips of those who killed. The Speaker for the Dead, and those who traveled with him to bring home the body of this martyred priest. And Valentine, the Speaker’s sister, who warned the Mayor and me of what would happen. Valentine knew history, she knew humanity, but the Mayor and I thought that we knew you, and that you were stronger than history. Alas for us all that you are as fallen as any other men, and so am I. The sin is on every one of us who could have tried to stop this, and did not! On the wives who did not try to keep their husbands home. On the men who watched but said nothing. And on all who held the torches in their hands and killed a tribe of fellow Christians for a crime done by their distant cousins half a continent away.

“The law is doing its small part of justice. Gerão Gregorio Ribeira von Hesse is in prison, but that is for another crime—the crime of having violated his trust and told secrets that were not his to tell. He is not in prison for the massacre of the pequeninos, because he has no greater share of guilt for that than the rest of you who followed him. Do you understand me? The guilt is on us all, and all of us must repent together, and do our penance together, and pray that Christ will forgive us all together for the terrible thing we did with his name on our lips!

“I am standing on the foundation of this new chapel, which will be named for Father Estevão, Apostle to the Pequeninos. The blocks of the foundation were torn from the walls of our cathedral—there are gaping holes there now, where the wind can blow and the rain can fall in upon us as we worship. And so the cathedral will remain, wounded and broken, until this chapel is finished.

“And how will we finish it? You will go home, all of you, to your houses, and you will break open the wall of your own house, and take the blocks that fall, and bring them here. And you will also leave your walls shattered until this chapel is completed.

“Then we will tear holes in the walls of every factory, every building in our colony, until there is no structure that does not show the wound of our sin. And all those wounds will remain until the walls are high enough to put on the roof, which will be beamed and rafted with the scorched trees that fell in the forest, trying to defend their people from our murdering hands.

“And then we will come, all of us, to this chapel, and enter it on our knees, one by one, until every one of us has crawled over the graves of our dead, and under the bodies of those ancient brothers who lived as trees in the third life our merciful God had given them until we ended it. There we will all pray for forgiveness. We will pray for our venerated Father Estevão to intercede for us. We will pray for Christ to include our terrible sin in his atonement, so we will not have to spend eternity in hell. We will pray for God to purify us.

“Only then will we repair our damaged walls, and heal our houses. That is our penance, my children. Let us pray that it is enough.”

In the middle of a clearing strewn with ash, Ender, Valentine, Miro, Ela, Quara, Ouanda, and Olhado all stood and watched as the most honored of the wives was flayed alive and planted in the ground, for her to grow into a new mothertree from the corpse of her second life. As she was dying, the surviving wives reached into a gap in the old mothertree and scooped out the bodies of the dead infants and little mothers who had lived there, and laid them on her bleeding body until they formed a mound. Within hours, her sapling would rise through their corpses and reach for sunlight.

Using their substance, she would grow quickly, until she had enough thickness and height to open up an aperture in her trunk. If she grew fast enough, if she opened herself soon enough, the few surviving babies clinging to the inside of the gaping cavity of the old dead mothertree could be transferred to the small new haven the new mothertree would offer them. If any of the surviving babies were little mothers, they would be carried to the surviving fathertrees, Human and Rooter, for mating. If new babies were conceived within their tiny bodies, then the forest that had known all the best and worst that human beings could do would survive.

If not—if the babies were all males, which was possible, or if all the females among them were infertile, which was possible, or if they were all too injured by the heat of the fire that raged up the mothertree’s trunk and killed her, or if they were too weakened by the days of starvation they would undergo until the new mothertree was ready for them—then the forest would die with these brothers and wives, and Human and Rooter would live on for a millennium or so as tribeless fathertrees. Perhaps some other tribes would honor them and carry little mothers to them for mating. Perhaps. But they would not be fathers of their own tribe, surrounded by their sons. They would be lonely trees with no forest of their own, the sole monuments to the work they had lived for: bringing humans and pequeninos together.

As for the rage against Warmaker, that had ended. The fathertrees of Lusitania all agreed that whatever moral debt had been incurred by the death of Father Estevão, it was paid and overpaid by the slaughter of the forest of Rooter and Human. Indeed, Warmaker had won many new converts to his heresy—for hadn’t the humans proved that they were unworthy of the gospel of Christ? It was pequeninos, said Warmaker, who were chosen to be vessels of the Holy Ghost, while human beings plainly had no part of God in them. We have no need to kill any more human beings, he said. We only have to wait, and the Holy Ghost will kill them all. In the meantime, God has sent us the hive queen to build us starships. We will carry the Holy Ghost with us to judge every world we visit. We will be the destroying angel. We will be Joshua and the Israelites, purging Canaan to make way for God’s chosen people.

Many pequeninos believed him now. Warmaker no longer sounded crazy to them; they had witnessed the first stirrings of apocalypse in the flames of an innocent forest. To many pequeninos there was nothing more to learn from humanity. God had no more use for human beings.

Here, though, in this clearing in the forest, their feet ankle-deep in ash, the brothers and wives who kept vigil over their new mothertree had no belief in Warmaker’s doctrine. They who knew human beings best of all even chose to have humans present as witnesses and helpers in their attempt to be reborn.

“Because,” said Planter, who was now the spokesman for the surviving brothers, “we know that not all humans are alike, just as not all pequeninos are alike. Christ lives in some of you, and not in others. We are not all like Warmaker’s forest, and you are not all murderers either.”

So it was that Planter held hands with Miro and Valentine on the morning, just before dawn, when the new mothertree managed to open a crevice in her slender trunk, and the wives tenderly transferred the weak and starving bodies of the surviving infants into their new home. It was too soon to tell, but there was cause for hope: The new mothertree had readied herself in only a day and a half, and there were more than three dozen infants who lived to make the transition. As many as a dozen of them might be fertile females, and if even a quarter of those lived to bear young, the forest might thrive again.

Planter was trembling. “Brothers have never seen this before,” said Planter, “not in all the history of the world.”

Several of the brothers were kneeling and crossing themselves. Many had been praying throughout the vigil. It made Valentine think of something Quara had told her. She stepped close to Miro and whispered, “Ela prayed, too.”

“Ela?”

“Before the fire. Quara was there at the shrine of the Venerados. She prayed for God to open up a way for us to solve all our problems.”

“That’s what everybody prays for.”

Valentine thought of what had happened in the days since Ela’s prayer. “I imagine that she’s rather disappointed at the answer God gave her.”

“People usually are.”

“But maybe this—the mothertree opening so quickly—maybe this is the beginning of her answer.”

Miro looked at Valentine in puzzlement. “Are you a believer?”

“Let’s say I’m a suspecter. I suspect there may be someone who cares what happens to us. That’s one step better than merely wishing. And one step below hoping.”

Miro smiled slightly, but Valentine wasn’t sure whether it meant he was pleased or amused. “So what will God do next, to answer Ela’s prayer?”

“Let’s wait and see,” said Valentine. “Our job is to decide what we’ll do next. We have only the deepest mysteries of the universe to solve.”

“Well, that should be right up God’s alley,” said Miro.

Then Ouanda arrived; as xenologer, she had also been involved in the vigil, and though this wasn’t her shift, news of the opening of the mothertree had been taken to her at once. Her coming had usually meant Miro’s swift departure. But not this time. Valentine was pleased to see that Miro’s gaze didn’t seem either to linger on Ouanda or to avoid her; she was simply there, working with the pequeninos, and so was he. No doubt it was all an elaborate pretense at normality, but in Valentine’s experience, normality was always a pretense, people acting out what they thought were their expected roles. Miro had simply reached a point where he was ready to act out something like a normal role in relation to Ouanda, no matter how false it might be to his true feelings. And maybe it wasn’t so false, after all. She was twice his age now. Not at all the girl he had loved.

They had loved each other, but never slept together. Valentine had been pleased to hear it when Miro told her, though he said it with angry regret. Valentine had long ago observed that in a society that expected chastity and fidelity, like Lusitania, the adolescents who controlled and channeled their youthful passions were the ones who grew up to be both strong and civilized. Adolescents in such a community who were either too weak to control themselves or too contemptuous of society’s norms to try usually ended up being either sheep or wolves—either mindless members of the herd or predators who took what they could and gave nothing.

She had feared, when she first met Miro, that he was a self-pitying weakling or a self-centered predator resentful of his confinement. Neither was so. He might now regret his chastity in adolescence—it was natural for him to wish he had coupled with Ouanda when he was still strong and they were both of an age—but Valentine did not regret it. It showed that Miro had inner strength and a sense of responsibility to his community. To Valentine, it was predictable that Miro, by himself, had held back the mob for those crucial moments that saved Rooter and Human.

It was also predictable that Miro and Ouanda would now make the great effort to pretend that they were simply two people doing their jobs—that all was normal between them. Inner strength and outward respect. These are the people who hold a community together, who lead. Unlike the sheep and the wolves, they perform a better role than the script given them by their inner fears and desires. They act out the script of decency, of self-sacrifice, of public honor—of civilization. And in the pretense, it becomes reality. There really is civilization in human history, thought Valentine, but only because of people like these. The shepherds.

Novinha met him in the doorway of the school. She leaned on the arm of Dona Cristã, the fourth principal of the Children of the Mind of Christ since Ender had come to Lusitania.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Novinha said. “We’re still married under the law, but that’s all.”

“I didn’t kill your son,” he said.

“You didn’t save him, either,” she answered.

“I love you,” Ender said.

“As much as you’re capable of love,” she said. “And then only when you’ve got a little time left over from looking after everybody else. You think you’re some kind of guardian angel, with responsibility for the whole universe. All I asked you to do was take responsibility for my family. You’re good at loving people by the trillion, but not so good at dozens, and you’re a complete failure at loving one.”

It was a harsh judgment, and he knew it wasn’t true, but he didn’t come to argue. “Please come home,” he said. “You love me and need me as much as I need you.”

“This is home now. I’ve stopped needing you or anybody. And if this is all you came to say, you’re wasting my time and yours.”

“No, it’s not all.”

She waited.

“The files in the laboratory. You’ve sealed them all. We have to find a solution to the descolada before it destroys us all.”

She gave him a withering, bitter smile. “Why did you bother me with this? Jane can get past my passwords, can’t she?”

“She hasn’t tried,” he said.

“No doubt to spare my sensibilities. But she can, né?”

“Probably.”

“Then have her do it. She’s all you need now. You never really needed me, not when you had her.”

“I’ve tried to be a good husband to you,” said Ender. “I never said I could protect you from everything, but I did all I could.”

“If you had, my Estevão would be alive.”

She turned away, and Dona Cristã escorted her back inside the school. Ender watched her until she turned a corner. Then he turned away from the door and left the school. He wasn’t sure where he was going, only that he had to get there.

“I’m sorry,” said Jane softly.

“Yes,” he said.

“When I’m gone,” she said, “maybe Novinha will come back to you.”

“You won’t be gone if I can help it,” he said.

“But you can’t. They’re going to shut me down in a couple of months.”

“Shut up,” he said.

“It’s only the truth.”

“Shut up and let me think.”

“What, are you going to save me now? Your record isn’t very good at playing savior lately.”

He didn’t answer, and she didn’t speak again for the rest of the afternoon. He wandered out of the gate, but didn’t go up into the forest. Instead he spent the afternoon in the grassland, alone, under the hot sun.

Sometimes he was thinking, trying to struggle with the problems that still loomed over him: the fleet coming against them, Jane’s shut-off date, the descolada’s constant efforts to destroy the humans of Lusitania, Warmaker’s plan to spread the descolada throughout the galaxy, and the grim situation within the city now that the hive queen kept constant watch over the fence and their grim penance had them all tearing at the walls of their own houses.

And sometimes his mind was almost devoid of thought, as he stood or sat or lay in the grass, too numb to weep, her face passing through his memory, his lips and tongue and teeth forming her name, pleading with her silently, knowing that even if he made a sound, even if he shouted, even if he could make her hear his voice, she wouldn’t answer him.

Novinha.

13

FREE WILL

<There are those among us who think that the humans should be stopped from the research into the descolada. The descolada is at the heart of our life cycle. We’re afraid that they’ll find a way to kill the descolada throughout the world, and that would destroy us in a generation.>

<And if you managed to stop human research into the descolada, they would certainly be wiped out within a few years.>

<Is the descolada that dangerous? Why can’t they keep on containing it as they have?>

<Because the descolada is not just randomly mutating according to natural laws. It is intelligently adapting itself in order to destroy us.>

<Us? You?>

<We’ve been fighting the descolada all along. Not in laboratories, like the humans, but inside ourself. Before I lay eggs, there is a phase where I prepare their bodies to manufacture all the antibodies they’ll need throughout their lives. When the descolada changes itself, we know it because the workers start dying. Then an organ near my ovaries creates new antibodies, and we lay eggs for new workers who can withstand the revised descolada.>

<So you, too, are trying to destroy it.>

<No. Our process is entirely unconscious. It takes place in the body of the hive queen, without conscious intervention. We can’t go beyond meeting the present danger. Our organ of immunity is far more effective and adaptable than anything in the human body, but in the long run we’ll suffer the same fate as the humans, if the descolada is not destroyed. The difference is that if we are wiped out by the descolada, there is no other hive queen in the universe to carry on our species. We are the last.>

<Your case is even more desperate than theirs.>

<And we are even more helpless to affect it. We have no science of biology beyond simple husbandry. Our natural methods were so effective in fighting disease that we never had the same impetus that humans had, to understand life and control it.>

<Is that the way it is, then? Either we are destroyed, or you and the humans are destroyed. If the descolada continues, it kills you. If it is stopped, we die.>

<This is your world. The descolada is in your bodies. If it comes time to choose between you and us, it will be you that survives.>

<You speak for yourself, my friend. But what will the humans do?>

<If they have the power to destroy the descolada in a way that would also destroy you, we will forbid them to use it.>

<Forbid them? When have humans ever obeyed?>

<We never forbid where we do not also have the power to prevent.>

<Ah.>

<This is your world. Ender knows this. And if other humans ever forget, we will remind them.>

<I have another question.>

<Ask.>

<What about those, like Warmaker, who want to spread the descolada throughout the universe? Will you also forbid them?>

<They must not carry the descolada to worlds that already have multicellular life.>

<But that’s exactly what they intend to do.>

<They must not.>

<But you’re building starships for us. Once they have control of a starship, they’ll go where they want to go.>

<They must not.>

<So you forbid them?>

<We never forbid where we do not also have the power to prevent.>

<Then why do you still build these ships?>

<The human fleet is coming, with a weapon that can destroy this world. Ender is sure that they’ll use it. Should we conspire with them, and leave your entire genetic heritage here on this single planet, so you can be obliterated with a single weapon?>

<So You build us starships, knowing that some of us may use it destructively. >

<What you do with starflight will be your responsibility. If you act as the enemy of life, then life will become your enemy. We will provide starships to you as a species. Then you, as a species, will decide who leaves Lusitania and who doesn’t.>

<There’s a fair chance that Warmaker’s party will have the majority then. That they will be making all those decisions.>

<So—should we judge, and decide that the humans are right to try to destroy you? Maybe Warmaker is right. Maybe the humans are the ones who deserve to be destroyed. Who are we to judge between you? They with their Molecular Disruption Device. You with the descolada. Each has the power to destroy the other, each species is capable of such a monstrous crime, and yet each species has many members who would never knowingly cause such evil and who deserve to live. We will not choose. We will simply build the starships and let you and the humans work out your destiny between you.>

<You could help us. You could keep the starships out of the hands of Warmaker’s party, and deal only with us.>

<Then the domestic war between you would be terrible indeed. Would you destroy their genetic heritage, simply because you disagree? Who then is the monster and the criminal? How do we judge between you, when both parties are willing to countenance the utter destruction of another people?>

<Then I have no hope. Someone will be destroyed.>

<Unless the human scientists find a way to change the descolada, so that you can survive as a species, and yet the descolada loses the power to kill.>

<How is that possible?>

<We are not biologists. Only the humans can do this, if it can be done.>

<Then we can’t stop them from researching the descolada. We have to help them. Even though they nearly destroyed our forest, we have no choice but to help them.>

<We knew you would reach that conclusion.>

<Did you?>

<That’s why we’re building starships for the pequeninos. Because you’re capable of wisdom.>

As word of the restoration of the Lusitania Fleet spread among the godspoken of Path, they began to visit the house of Han Fei-tzu to pay him honor.

“I will not see them,” said Han Fei-tzu.

“You must, Father,” said Han Qing-jao. “It is only proper for them to honor you for such a great accomplishment.”

“Then I will go and tell them that it was entirely your doing, and I had nothing to do with it.”

“No!” cried Qing-jao. “You must not do that.”

“Furthermore, I will tell them that I think it was a great crime, which will cause the death of a noble spirit. I will tell them that the godspoken of Path are slaves to a cruel and vicious government, and that we must bend all our efforts to the destruction of Congress.”

“Don’t make me hear this!” cried Qing-jao. “You could never say such a thing to anyone!”

And it was true. Si Wang-mu watched from the corner as the two of them, father and daughter, each began a ritual of purification, Han Fei-tzu for having spoken such rebellious words and Han Qing-jao for having heard them. Master Fei-tzu would never say these things to others, because even if he did, they would see how he immediately had to be purified, and they would see this as proof that the gods repudiated his words. They did their work well, those scientists that Congress employed to create the godspoken, thought Wang-mu. Even knowing the truth, Han Fei-tzu is helpless.

So it was that Qing-jao met all the visitors who came to the house, and graciously accepted their praise on behalf of her father. Wang-mu stayed with her for the first few visits, but she found it unbearable to listen as Qing-jao described again and again how her father and she had discovered the existence of a computer program that dwelt amid the philotic network of the ansibles, and how it would be destroyed. It was one thing to know that in her heart, Qing-jao did not believe she was committing murder; it was quite another thing for Wang-mu to listen to her boasting about how the murder would be accomplished.

And boasting was what Qing-jao was doing, though only Wang-mu knew it. Always Qing-jao gave the credit to her father, but since Wang-mu knew that it was entirely Qing-jao’s doing, she knew that when Qing-jao described the accomplishment as worthy service to the gods, she was really praising herself.

“Please don’t make me stay and listen anymore,” said Wang-mu.

Qing-jao studied her for a moment, judging her. Then, coldly, she answered. “Go if you must. I see that you are still a captive of our enemy. I have no need of you.”

“Of course not,” said Wang-mu. “You have the gods.” But in saying this, she could not keep the bitter irony out of her voice.

“Gods that you don’t believe in,” said Qing-jao bitingly. “Of course, you have never been spoken to by the gods—why should you believe? I dismiss you as my secret maid, since that is your desire. Go back to your family.”

“As the gods command,” said Wang-mu. And this time she made no effort to conceal her bitterness at the mention of the gods.

She was already out of the house, walking down the road, when Mu-pao came after her. Since Mu-pao was old and fat, she had no hope of catching up with Wang-mu on foot. So she came riding a donkey, looking ridiculous as she kicked the animal to hasten it. Donkeys, sedan chairs, all these trappings of ancient China—do the godspoken really think that such affectations make them somehow holier? Why don’t they simply ride on fliers and hovercars like honest people do on every other world? Then Mu-pao would not have to humiliate herself, bouncing and jouncing on an animal that is suffering under her weight. To spare her as much embarrassment as possible, Wang-mu returned and met Mu-pao partway.

“Master Han Fei-tzu commands you to return,” said Mu-pao.

“Tell Master Han that he is kind and good, but my mistress has dismissed me.”

“Master Han says that Mistress Qing-jao has the authority to dismiss you as her secret maid, but not to dismiss you from his house. Your contract is with him, not with her.”

This was true. Wang-mu hadn’t thought of that.

“He begs you to return,” said Mu-pao. “He told me to say it that way, so that you might come out of kindness, if you would not come out of obedience.”

“Tell him I will obey. He should not beg such a low person as myself.”

“He will be glad,” said Mu-pao.

Wang-mu walked beside Mu-pao’s donkey. They went very slowly, which was more comfortable for Mu-pao and the donkey as well.

“I have never seen him so upset,” said Mu-pao. “Probably I shouldn’t tell you that. But when I said that you were gone, he was almost frantic.”

“Were the gods speaking to him?” It was a bitter thing if Master Han called her back only because for some reason the slave driver within him had demanded it.

“No,” said Mu-pao. “It wasn’t like that at all. Though of course I’ve never actually seen what it looks like when the gods speak to him.”

“Of course.”

“He simply didn’t want you to go,” said Mu-pao.

“I will probably end up going, anyway,” said Wang-mu. “But I’ll gladly explain to him why I am now useless in the House of Han.”

“Oh, of course,” said Mu-pao. “You have always been useless. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t necessary.”

“What do you mean?”

“Happiness can depend as easily on useless things as on useful ones.”

“Is that a saying of an old master?”

“It’s a saying of an old fat woman on a donkey,” said Mu-pao. “And don’t you forget it.”

When Wang-mu was alone with Master Han in his private chamber, he showed no sign of the agitation Mu-pao had spoken of.

“I have spoken with Jane,” he said. “She thinks that since you also know of her existence and believe her not to be the enemy of the gods, it will be better if you stay.”

“So I will serve Jane now?” asked Wang-mu. “Am I to be her secret maid?”

Wang-mu did not mean her words to sound ironic; the idea of being servant to a nonhuman entity intrigued her. But Master Han reacted as if he were trying to smooth over an offense.

“No,” he said. “You shouldn’t be anyone’s servant. You have acted bravely and worthily.”

“And yet you called me back to fulfill my contract with you.”

Master Han bowed his head. “I called you back because you are the only one who knows the truth. If you go, then I’m alone in this house.”

Wang-mu almost said: How can you be alone, when your daughter is here? And until the last few days, it wouldn’t have been a cruel thing to say, because Master Han and Mistress Qing-jao were friends as close as a father and daughter could ever be. But now, the barrier between them was insuperable. Qing-jao lived in a world where she was a triumphant servant of the gods, trying to be patient with the temporary madness of her father. Master Han lived in a world where his daughter and all of his society were slaves to an oppressive Congress, and only he knew the truth. How could they even speak to each other across a gulf so wide and deep?

“I’ll stay,” said Wang-mu. “However I can serve you, I will.”

“We’ll serve each other,” said Master Han. “My daughter promised to teach you. I’ll continue that.”

Wang-mu touched her forehead to the floor. “I am unworthy of such kindness.”

“No,” said Master Han. “We both know the truth now. The gods don’t speak to me. Your face should never touch the floor before me.”

“We have to live in this world,” said Wang-mu. “I will treat you as an honored man among the godspoken, because that is what all the world would expect of me. And you must treat me as a servant, for the same reason.”

Master Han’s face twisted bitterly. “The world also expects that when a man of my age takes a young girl from his daughter’s service into his own, he is using her for venery. Shall we act out all the world’s expectations?”

“It is not in your nature to take advantage of your power in that way,” said Wang-mu.

“Nor is it in my nature to receive your humiliation. Before I learned the truth about my affliction, I accepted other people’s obeisance because I believed it was really being offered to the gods, and not to me.”

“That is as true as it ever was. Those who believe you are godspoken are offering their obeisance to the gods, while those who are dishonest do it to flatter you.”

“But you are not dishonest. Nor do you believe the gods speak to me.”

“I don’t know whether the gods speak to you or not, or whether they ever have or ever can speak to anyone. I only know that the gods don’t ask you or anyone to do these ridiculous, humiliating rituals—those were forced on you by Congress. Yet you must continue those rituals because your body requires it. Please allow me to continue the rituals of humiliation that are required of people of my position in the world.”

Master Han nodded gravely. “You are wise beyond your years and education, Wang-mu.”

“I am a very foolish girl,” said Wang-mu. “If I had any wisdom, I would beg you to send me as far away from this place as possible. Sharing a house with Qing-jao will now be very dangerous to me. Especially if she sees that I am close to you, when she can’t be.”

“You’re right. I’m being very selfish, to ask you to stay.”

“Yes,” said Wang-mu. “And yet I will stay.”

“Why?” asked Master Han.

“Because I can never go back to my old life,” she answered. “I know too much now about the world and the universe, about Congress and the gods. I would have the taste of poison in my mouth all the days of my life, if I went back home and pretended to be what I was before.”

Master Han nodded gravely, but then he smiled, and soon he laughed.

“Why are you laughing at me, Master Han?”

“I’m laughing because I think that you never were what you used to be.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think you were always pretending. Maybe you even fooled yourself. But one thing is certain. You were never an ordinary girl, and you could never have led an ordinary life.”

Wang-mu shrugged. “The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven. Maybe I could have been content. Maybe not.”

“So here we are together, the three of us.”

Only then did Wang-mu turn to see that they were not alone. In the air above the display she saw the face of Jane, who smiled at her.

“I’m glad you came back,” said Jane.

For a moment, Jane’s presence here caused Wang-mu to leap to a hopeful conclusion. “Then you aren’t dead! You’ve been spared!”

“It was never Qing-jao’s plan for me to be dead already,” answered Jane. “Her plan to destroy me is proceeding nicely, and I will no doubt die on schedule.”

“Why do you come to this house, then,” asked Wang-mu, “when it was here that your death was set in motion?”

“I have a lot of things to accomplish before I die,” said Jane, “including the faint possibility of discovering a way to survive. It happens that the world of Path contains many thousands of people who are much more intelligent, on average, than the rest of humanity.”

“Only because of Congress’s genetic manipulation,” said Master Han.

“True,” said Jane. “The godspoken of Path are, properly speaking, not even human anymore. You’re another species, created and enslaved by Congress to give them an advantage over the rest of humanity. It happens, though, that a single member of that new species is somewhat free of Congress.”

“This is freedom?” said Master Han. “Even now, my hunger to purify myself is almost irresistible.”

“Then don’t resist it,” said Jane. “I can talk to you while you contort yourself.”

Almost at once, Master Han began to fling out his arms and twist them in the air in his ritual of purification. Wang-mu turned her face away.

“Don’t do that,” said Master Han. “Don’t hide your face from me. I can’t be ashamed to show this to you. I’m a cripple, that’s all; if I had lost a leg, my closest friends would not be afraid to see the stump.”

Wang-mu saw the wisdom in his words, and did not hide her face from his affliction.

“As I was saying,” said Jane, “it happens that a single member of this new species is somewhat free of Congress. I hope to enlist your help in the works I’m trying to accomplish in the few months left to me.”

“I’ll do anything I can,” said Master Han.

“And if I can help, I will,” said Wang-mu. Only after she said it did she realize how ridiculous it was for her to offer such a thing. Master Han was one of the godspoken, one of those with superior intellectual abilities. She was only an uneducated specimen of ordinary humanity, with nothing to offer.

And yet neither of them mocked her offer, and Jane accepted it graciously. Such a kindness proved once again to Wang-mu that Jane had to be a living thing, not just a simulation.

“Let me tell you the problems that I hope to resolve.”

They listened.

“As you know, my dearest friends are on the planet Lusitania. They are threatened by the Lusitania Fleet. I am very interested in stopping that fleet from causing any irrevocable harm.”

“By now I’m sure they’ve already been given the order to use the Little Doctor,” said Master Han.

“Oh, yes, I know they have. My concern is to stop that order from having the effect of destroying not only the humans of Lusitania, but two other raman species as well.” Then Jane told them of the hive queen, and how it came to be that buggers once again lived in the universe. “The hive queen is already building starships, pushing herself to the limit to accomplish as much as she can before the fleet arrives. But there’s no chance that she can build enough to save more than a tiny fraction of the inhabitants of Lusitania. The hive queen can leave, or send another queen who shares all her memories, and it matters little to her whether her workers go with her or not. But the pequeninos and the humans are not so self-contained. I’d like to save them all. Especially because my dearest friends, a particular speaker for the dead and a young man suffering from brain damage, would refuse to leave Lusitania unless every other human and pequenino could be saved.”

“Are they heroes, then?” asked Master Han.

“Each has proved it several times in the past,” said Jane.

“I wasn’t sure if heroes still existed in the human race.”

Si Wang-mu did not speak what was in her heart: that Master Han himself was such a hero.

“I am searching for every possibility,” said Jane. “But it all comes down to an impossibility, or so humankind has believed for more than three thousand years. If we could build a starship that traveled faster than light, that traveled as quickly as the messages of the ansible pass from world to world, then even if the hive queen can build only a dozen starships, they could easily shuttle all the inhabitants of Lusitania to other planets before the Lusitania Fleet arrives.”

“If you could actually build such a starship,” said Han Fei-tzu, “you could create a fleet of your own that could attack the Lusitania Fleet and destroy it before it could harm anyone.”

“Ah, but that is impossible,” said Jane.

“You can conceive of faster-than-light travel, and yet you can’t imagine destroying the Lusitania Fleet?”

“Oh, I can imagine it,” said Jane. “But the hive queen wouldn’t build it. She has told Andrew—my friend, the Speaker for the Dead—”

“Valentine’s brother,” said Wang-mu. “He also lives?”

“The hive queen has told him that she will never build a weapon for any reason.”

“Even to save her own species?”

“She’ll have the single starship she needs to get offplanet, and the others will also have enough starships to save their species. She’s content with that. There’s no need to kill anybody.”

“But if Congress has its way, millions will be killed!”

“Then that is their responsibility,” said Jane. “At least that’s what Andrew tells me she answers whenever he raises that point.”

“What kind of strange moral reasoning is this?”

“You forget that she only recently discovered the existence of other intelligent life, and she came perilously close to destroying it. Then that other intelligent life almost destroyed her. But it was her own near brush with committing the crime of xenocide that has had the greater effect on her moral reasoning. She can’t stop other species from such things, but she can be certain that she doesn’t do it herself. She will only kill when that’s the only hope she has of saving the existence of her species. And since she has another hope, she won’t build a warship.”

“Faster-than-light travel,” said Master Han. “Is that your only hope?”

“The only one I can think of that has a glimmer of possibility. At least we know that something in the universe moves faster than light—information is passed down the philotic ray from one ansible to another with no detectable passage of time. A bright young physicist on Lusitania who happens to be locked in jail at the present time is spending his days and nights working on this problem. I perform all his calculations and simulations for him. At this very moment he is testing a hypothesis about the nature of philotes by using a model so complex that in order to run the program I’m stealing time from the computers of almost a thousand different universities. There’s hope.”

“As long as you live, there’s hope,” said Wang-mu. “Who will do such massive experiments for him when you’re gone?”

“That’s why there’s so much urgency,” said Jane.

“What do you need me for?” asked Master Han. “I’m no physicist, and I have no hope of learning enough in the next few months to make any kind of difference. It’s your jailed physicist who’ll do it, if anyone can. Or you yourself.”

“Everyone needs a dispassionate critic to say, Have you thought of this? Or even, Enough of that dead-end path, get onto another train of thought. That’s what I need you for. We’ll report our work to you, and you’ll examine it and say whatever comes to mind. You can’t possibly guess what chance word of yours will trigger the idea we’re looking for.”

Master Han nodded, to concede the possibility.

“The second problem I’m working on is even knottier,” said Jane. “Whether we achieve faster-than-light travel or not, some pequeninos will have starships and can leave the planet Lusitania. The problem is that they carry inside them the most insidious and terrible virus ever known, one that destroys every form of life it touches except those few that it can twist into a deformed kind of symbiotic life utterly dependent on the presence of that virus.”

“The descolada,” said Master Han. “One of the justifications sometimes used for carrying the Little Doctor with the fleet in the first place.”

“And it may actually be a justification. From the hive queen’s point of view, it’s impossible to choose between one life form and another, but as Andrew has often pointed out to me, human beings don’t have that problem. If it’s a choice between the survival of humanity and the survival of the pequeninos, he’d choose humanity, and for his sake so would I.”

“And I,” said Master Han.

“You can be sure the pequeninos feel the same way in reverse,” said Jane. “If not on Lusitania then somewhere, somehow, it will almost certainly come down to a terrible war in which humans use the Molecular Disruption Device and the pequeninos use the descolada as the ultimate biological weapon. There’s a good chance of both species utterly destroying each other. So I feel some urgency about the need to find a replacement virus for the descolada, one that will perform all the functions needed in the pequeninos’ life cycle without any of its predatory, self-adapting capabilities. A selectively inert form of the virus.”

“I thought there were ways to neutralize the descolada. Don’t they take drugs in their drinking water on Lusitania?”

“The descolada keeps figuring out their drugs and adapting to them. It’s a series of footraces. Eventually the descolada will win one, and then there won’t be any more humans to race against.”

“Do you mean that the virus is intelligent?” asked Wang-mu.

“One of the scientists on Lusitania thinks so,” said Jane. “A woman named Quara. Others disagree. But the virus certainly acts as if it were intelligent, at least when it comes to adapting itself to changes in its environment and changing other species to fit its needs. I think Quara is right, personally. I think the descolada is an intelligent species that has its own kind of language that it uses to spread information very quickly from one side of the world to the other.”

“I’m not a virologist,” said Master Han.

“And yet if you could look at the studies being performed by Elanora Ribeira von Hesse—”

“Of course I’ll look. I only wish I had your hope that I can help.”

“And then the third problem,” said Jane. “Perhaps the simplest one of all. The godspoken of Path.”

“Ah yes,” said Master Han. “Your destroyers.”

“Not by any free choice,” said Jane. “I don’t hold it against you. But it’s something I’d like to see accomplished before I die—to figure out a way to alter your altered genes, so that future generations, at least, can be free of that deliberately-induced OCD, while still keeping the extraordinary intelligence.”

“Where will you find genetic scientists willing to work on something that Congress would surely consider to be treason?” asked Master Han.

“When you wish to have someone commit treason,” said Jane, “it’s best to look first among known traitors.”

“Lusitania,” said Wang-mu.

“Yes,” said Jane. “With your help, I can give the problem to Elanora.”

“Isn’t she working on the descolada problem?”

“No one can work on anything every waking moment. This will be a change of pace that might actually help freshen her for her work on the descolada. Besides, your problem on Path may be relatively easy to solve. After all, your altered genes were originally created by perfectly ordinary geneticists working for Congress. The only barriers have been political, not scientific. Ela might find it a simple matter. She has already told me how we should begin. We need a few tissue samples, at least to start with. Have a medical technician here do a computer scan on them at the molecular level. I can take over the machinery long enough to make sure the data Elanora needs is gathered during the scan, and then I’ll transmit the genetic data to her. It’s that simple.”

“Whose tissue do you need?” asked Master Han. “I can’t very well ask all the visitors here to give me a sample.”

“Actually, I was hoping you could,” said Jane. “So many are coming and going. We can use dead skin, you know. Perhaps even fecal or urine samples that might contain body cells.”

Master Han nodded. “I can do that.”

“If it comes to fecal samples, I will do it,” said Wang-mu.

“No,” said Master Han. “I am not above doing all that is necessary to help, even with my own hands.”

“You?” asked Wang-mu. “I volunteered because I was afraid you would humiliate other servants by requiring them to do it.”

“I will never again ask anyone to do something so low and debasing that I refuse to do it myself,” said Master Han.

“Then we’ll do it together,” said Wang-mu. “Please remember, Master Han—you will help Jane by reading and responding to reports, while manual tasks are the only way that I can help at all. Don’t insist on doing what I can do. Instead spend your time on the things that only you can do.”

Jane interrupted before Master Han could answer. “Wang-mu, I want you to read the reports as well.”

“Me? But I’m not educated at all.”

“Nevertheless,” said Jane.

“I won’t even understand them.”

“Then I’ll help you,” said Master Han.

“This isn’t right,” said Wang-mu. “I’m not Qing-jao. This is the sort of thing she could do. It isn’t for me.”

“I watched you and Qing-jao through the whole process that led to her discovery of me,” said Jane. “Many of the key insights came from you, Si Wang-mu, not from Qing-jao.”

“From me? I never even tried to—”

“You didn’t try. You watched. You made connections in your mind. You asked questions.”

“They were foolish questions,” said Wang-mu. Yet in her heart she was glad: Someone saw!

“Questions that no expert would ever have asked,” said Jane. “Yet they were exactly the questions that led Qing-jao to her most important conceptual breakthroughs. You may not be godspoken, Wang-mu, but you have gifts of your own.”

“I’ll read and respond,” said Wang-mu, “but I will also gather tissue samples. All of the tissue samples, so that Master Han does not have to speak to these godspoken visitors and listen to them praise him for a terrible thing that he didn’t do.”

Master Han was still opposed. “I refuse to think of you doing—”

Jane interrupted him. “Han Fei-tzu, be wise. Wang-mu, as a servant, is invisible. You, as master of the house, are as subtle as a tiger in a playground. Nothing you do goes unnoticed. Let Wang-mu do what she can do best.”

Wise words, thought Wang-mu. Why then are you asking me to respond to the work of scientists, if each person must do what he does best? Yet she kept silent. Jane had them begin by taking their own tissue samples; then Wang-mu set about gathering tissue samples from the rest of the household. She found most of what she needed on combs and unwashed clothing. Within days she had samples from a dozen godspoken visitors, also taken from their clothing. No one had to take fecal samples after all. But she would have been willing.

Qing-jao noticed her, of course, but snubbed her. It hurt Wang-mu to have Qing-jao treat her so coldly, for they had once been friends and Wang-mu still loved her, or at least loved the young woman that Qing-jao had been before the crisis. Yet there was nothing Wang-mu could say or do to restore their friendship. She had chosen another path.

Wang-mu kept all the tissue samples carefully separated and labeled. Instead of taking them to a medical technician, however, she found a much simpler way. Dressing in some of Qing-jao’s old clothing, so that she looked like a godspoken student instead of a servant girl, she went to the nearest college and told them that she was working on a project whose nature she could not divulge, and she humbly requested that they perform a scan on the tissue samples she provided. As she expected, they asked no questions of a godspoken girl, even a complete stranger. Instead they ran the molecular scans, and Wang-mu could only assume that Jane had done as she promised, taking control of the computer and making the scan include all the operations Ela needed.

On the way home from the college, Wang-mu discarded all the samples she had collected and burned the report the college had given her. Jane had what she needed—there was no point in running the risk that Qing-jao or perhaps a servant in the house who was in the pay of Congress might discover that Han Fei-tzu was working on a biological experiment. As for someone recognizing her, the servant Si Wang-mu, as the young godspoken girl who had visited the college—there was no chance of that. No one looking for a godspoken girl would so much as glance at a servant like her.

“So you’ve lost your woman and I’ve lost mine,” said Miro.

Ender sighed. Every now and then Miro got into a talky mood, and because bitterness was always just under the surface with him, his chat tended to be straight to the point and more than a little unkind. Ender couldn’t begrudge him the talkiness—he and Valentine were almost the only people who could listen to Miro’s slow speech patiently, without giving him a sign that they wanted him to get on with it. Miro spent so much of his time with pent-up thoughts, unexpressed, that it would be cruel to shut him down just because he had no tact.

Ender wasn’t pleased to be reminded of the fact that Novinha had left him. He was trying to keep that thought out of his mind, while he worked on other problems—on the problem of Jane’s survival, mostly, and a little bit on every other problem, too. But at Miro’s words, that aching, hollow, half-panicked feeling returned. She isn’t here. I can’t just speak and have her answer. I can’t just ask and have her remember. I can’t just reach and feel her hand. And, most terrible of all: Perhaps I never will again.

“I suppose so,” said Ender.

“You probably don’t like to equate them,” said Miro. “After all, she’s your wife of thirty years, and Ouanda was my girlfriend for maybe five years. But that’s only if you start counting when puberty hit. She was my friend, my closest friend except maybe Ela, since I was little. So if you think about it, I was with Ouanda most of my life, while you were only with Mother for half of yours.”

“Now I feel much better,” said Ender.

“Don’t get pissed off at me,” said Miro.

“Don’t piss me off,” said Ender.

Miro laughed. Too loudly. “Feeling grumpy, Andrew?” he cackled. “A bit out of sorts?”

It was too much to take. Ender spun his chair, turning away from the terminal where he had been studying a simplified model of the ansible network, trying to imagine where in that random latticework Jane’s soul might dwell. He gazed steadily at Miro until he stopped laughing.

“Did I do this to you?” asked Ender.

Miro looked more angry than abashed. “Maybe I needed you to,” he said. “Ever think of that? You were so respectful, all of you. Let Miro keep his dignity. Let him brood himself into madness, right? Just don’t talk about the thing that’s happened to him. Didn’t you ever think I needed somebody to jolly me out of it sometimes?”

“Didn’t you ever think that I don’t need that?”

Miro laughed again, but it came a bit late, and it was gentler. “On target,” he said. “You treated me the way you like to be treated when you grieve, and now I’m treating you the way I like to be treated. We prescribe our own medicine for each other.”

“Your mother and I are still married,” Ender said.

“Let me tell you something,” said Miro, “out of the wisdom of my twenty years or so of life. It’s easier when you finally start admitting to yourself that you’ll never have her back. That she’s permanently out of reach.”

“Ouanda is out of reach. Novinha isn’t.”

“She’s with the Children of the Mind of Christ. It’s a nunnery, Andrew.”

“Not so,” said Ender. “It’s a monastic order that only married couples can join. She can’t belong to them without me.”

“So,” said Miro. “You can have her back whenever you want to join the Filhos. I can just see you as Dom Cristão.”

Ender couldn’t help chuckling at the idea. “Sleeping in separate beds. Praying all the time. Never touching each other.”

“If that’s marriage, Andrew, then Ouanda and I are married right now.”

“It is marriage, Miro. Because the couples in the Filhos da Mente de Cristo are working together, doing a work together.”

“Then we’re married,” said Miro. “You and I. Because we’re trying to save Jane together.”

“Just friends,” said Ender. “We’re just friends.”

“Rivals is more like it. Jane keeps us both like lovers on a string.”

Miro was sounding too much like Novinha’s accusations about Jane. “We’re hardly lovers,” he said. “Jane isn’t human. She doesn’t even have a body.”

“Aren’t you the logical one,” said Miro. “Didn’t you just say that you and Mother could still be married, without even touching?”

It was an analogy that Ender didn’t like, because it seemed to have some truth in it. Was Novinha right to be jealous of Jane, as she had been for so many years?

“She lives inside our heads, practically,” said Miro. “That’s a place where no wife will ever go.”

“I always thought,” said Ender, “that your mother was jealous of Jane because she wished she had someone that close to her.”

“Bobagem,” said Miro. “Lixo.” Nonsense. Garbage. “Mother was jealous of Jane because she wanted so badly to be that close to you, and she never could.”

“Not your mother. She was always self-contained. There were times when we were very close, but she always turned back to her work.”

“The way you always turned back to Jane.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Not in so many words. But you’d be talking to her, and then all of a sudden you’d fall silent, and even though you’re good at subvocalizing, there’s still a little movement in the jaw, and your eyes and lips react a little to what Jane says to you. She saw. You’d be with Mother, close, and then all of a sudden you were somewhere else.”

“That’s not what split us apart,” said Ender. “It was Quim’s death.”

“Quim’s death was the last straw. If it hadn’t been for Jane, if Mother had really believed you belonged to her, heart and soul, she would have turned to you when Quim died, instead of turning away.”

Miro had said the thing that Ender had dreaded all along. That it was Ender’s own fault. That he had not been the perfect husband. That he had driven her away. And the worst thing was that when Miro said it, Ender knew that it was true. The sense of loss, which he had already thought was unbearable, suddenly doubled, trebled, became infinite inside him.

He felt Miro’s hand, heavy, clumsy, on his shoulder.

“As God is my witness, Andrew, I never meant to make you cry.”

“It happens,” said Ender.

“It’s not all your fault,” said Miro. “Or Jane’s. You’ve got to remember that Mother’s crazy as a loon. She always has been.”

“She had a lot of grief as a child.”

“She lost everybody she ever loved, one by one,” said Miro.

“And I let her believe that she had lost me, too.”

“What were you going to do, cut Jane off? You tried that once, remember?”

“The difference is that now she has you. The whole time you were gone, I could have let Jane go, because she had you. I could have talked to her less, asked her to back off. She would have forgiven me.”

“Maybe,” said Miro. “But you didn’t.”

“Because I didn’t want to,” said Ender. “Because I didn’t want to let her go. Because I thought I could keep that old friendship and still be a good husband to my wife.”

“It wasn’t just Jane,” said Miro. “It was Valentine, too.”

“I suppose,” said Ender. “So what do I do? Go join up with the Filhos until the fleet gets here and blows us all to hell?”

“You do what I do,” said Miro.

“What’s that?”

“You take a breath. You let it out. Then you take another.”

Ender thought about it for a moment. “I can do that. I’ve been doing that since I was little.”

Just a moment longer, Miro’s hand on his shoulder. This is why I should have had a son of my own, thought Ender. To lean on me when he was small, and then for me to lean on when I’m old. But I never had a child from my own seed. I’m like old Marcão, Novinha’s first husband. Surrounded by these children and knowing they’re not my own. The difference is that Miro is my friend, not my enemy. And that’s something. I may have been a bad husband, but I can still make and keep a friend.

“Stop pitying yourself and get back to work.” It was Jane, speaking in his ear, and she had waited almost long enough before speaking, almost long enough that he was ready to have her tease him. Almost but not quite, and so he resented her intrusion. Resented knowing that she had been listening and watching all along.

“Now you’re mad,” she said.

You don’t know what I’m feeling, thought Ender. You can’t know. Because you’re not human.

“You think I don’t know what you’re feeling,” said Jane.

He felt a moment of vertigo, because for a moment it seemed to him that she had been listening to something far deeper than the conversation.

“But I lost you once, too.”

Ender subvocalized: “I came back.”

“Never completely,” said Jane. “Never like it was before. So you just take a couple of those self-pitying little tears on your cheeks and count them as if they were mine. Just to even up the score.”

“I don’t know why I bother trying to save your life,” said Ender silently.

“Me neither,” said Jane. “I keep telling you it’s a waste of time.”

Ender turned back to the terminal. Miro stayed beside him, watching the display as it simulated the ansible network. Ender had no idea what Jane was saying to Miro—though he was sure that she was saying something, since he had long ago figured out that Jane was capable of carrying on many conversations at once. He couldn’t help it—it did bother him a little that Jane had every bit as close a relationship with Miro as with him.

Isn’t it possible, he wondered, for one person to love another without trying to own each other? Or is that buried so deep in our genes that we can never get it out? Territoriality. My wife. My friend. My lover. My outrageous and annoying computer personality who’s about to be shut off at the behest of a half-crazy girl genius with OCD on a planet I never heard of and how will I live without Jane when she’s gone?

Ender zoomed in on the display. In and in and in, until the display showed only a few parsecs in each dimension. Now the simulation was modeling a small portion of the network—the crisscrossing of only a half-dozen philotic rays in deep space. Now, instead of looking like an involved, tightly-woven fabric, the philotic rays looked like random lines passing millions of kilometers from each other.

“They never touch,” said Miro.

No, they never do. It’s something that Ender had never realized. In his mind, the galaxy was flat, the way the starmaps always showed it, a topdown view of the section of the spiral arm of the galaxy where humans had spread out from Earth. But it wasn’t flat. No two stars were ever exactly in the same plane as any other two stars. The philotic rays connecting starships and planets and satellites in perfectly straight lines, ansible to ansible—they seemed to intersect when you saw them on a flat map, but in this three-dimensional close-up in the computer display, it was obvious that they never touched at all.

“How can she live in that?” asked Ender. “How can she possibly exist in that when there’s no connection between those lines except at the endpoints?”

“So—maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she lives in the sum of the computer programs at every terminal.”

“In which case she could back herself up into all the computers and then—”

“And then nothing. She could never put herself back together because they’re only using clean computers to run the ansibles.”

“They can’t keep that up forever,” said Ender. “It’s too important for computers on different planets to be able to talk to each other. Congress will find out pretty soon that there aren’t enough human beings in existence to key in by hand, in a year, the amount of information computers have to send to each other by ansible every hour.”

“So she just hides? Waits? Sneaks in and restores herself when she sees a chance five or ten years from now?”

“If that’s all she is—a collection of programs.”

“There has to be more to her than that,” said Miro.

“Why?”

“Because if she’s nothing more than a collection of programs, even selfwriting and self-revising programs, ultimately she was created by some programmer or group of programmers somewhere. In which case she’s just acting out the program that was forced on her from the beginning. She has no free will. She’s a puppet. Not a person.”

“Well, when it comes to that, maybe you’re defining free will too narrowly,” said Ender. “Aren’t human beings the same way, programmed by our genes and our environment?”

“No,” said Miro.

“What else, then?”

“Our philotic connections say that we aren’t. Because we’re capable of connecting with each other by act of will, which no other form of life on Earth can do. There’s something we have, something we are, that wasn’t caused by anything else.”

“What, our soul?”

“Not even that,” said Miro. “Because the priests say that God created our souls, and that just puts us under the control of another puppeteer. If God created our will, then he’s responsible for every choice we make. God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal—there’s no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.”

“So—as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn’t exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of our behavior are so complex that we can’t trace them back. If you’ve got one line of dominoes knocking each other down one by one, then you can always say, Look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the causal chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to.”

“Bobagem,” said Miro.

“Well, I admit that it’s a philosophy with no practical value,” said Ender. “Valentine once explained it to me this way. Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. Because otherwise, every time somebody does something terrible, you can’t punish him, because he can’t help it, because his genes or his environment or God made him do it, and every time somebody does something good, you can’t honor him, because he was a puppet, too. If you think that everybody around you is a puppet, why bother talking to them at all? Why even try to plan anything or create anything, since everything you plan or create or desire or dream of is just acting out the script your puppeteer built into you.”

“Despair,” said Miro.

“So we conceive of ourselves and everyone around us as volitional beings. We treat everyone as if they did things with a purpose in mind, instead of because they’re being pushed from behind. We punish criminals. We reward altruists. We plan things and build things together. We make promises and expect each other to keep them. It’s all a made-up story, but when everybody believes that everybody’s actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization.”

“Just a story.”

“That’s how Valentine explained it. That is, if there’s no free will. I’m not sure what she actually believes herself. My guess is that she’d say that she is civilized, and therefore she must believe the story herself, in which case she absolutely believes in free will and thinks this whole idea of a made-up story is nonsense—but that’s what she’d believe even if it were true, and so who can be sure of anything.”

Then Ender laughed, because Valentine had laughed when she first told him all this many years ago. When they were still only a little bit past childhood, and he was working on writing the Hegemon, and was trying to understand why his brother Peter had done all the great and terrible things he did.

“It isn’t funny,” said Miro.

“I thought it was,” said Ender.

“Either we’re free or we’re not,” said Miro. “Either the story’s true or it isn’t.”

“The point is that we have to believe that it’s true in order to live as civilized human beings,” said Ender.

“No, that’s not the point at all,” said Miro. “Because if it’s a lie, why should we bother to live as civilized human beings?”

“Because the species has a better chance to survive if we do,” said Ender. “Because our genes require us to believe the story in order to enhance our ability to pass those genes on for many generations in the future. Because anybody who doesn’t believe the story begins to act in unproductive, uncooperative ways, and eventually the community, the herd, will reject him and his opportunities for reproduction will be diminished—for instance, he’ll be put in jail—and the genes leading to his unbelieving behavior will eventually be extinguished.”

“So the puppeteer requires that we believe that we’re not puppets. We’re forced to believe in free will.”

“Or so Valentine explained it to me.”

“But she doesn’t really believe that, does she?”

“Of course she doesn’t. Her genes won’t let her.”

Ender laughed again. But Miro was not taking this lightly, as a philosophical game. He was outraged. He clenched his fists and swung out his arms in a spastic gesture that plunged his hand into the middle of the display. It caused a shadow above it, a space in which no philotic rays were visible. True empty space. Except that now Ender could see dustmotes floating in that display space, catching the light from the window and the open door of the house. In particular one large dustmote, like a short strand of hair, a tiny fiber of cotton, floating brightly in the midst of space where once only the philotic rays had been visible.

“Calm down,” Ender said.

“No,” Miro shouted. “My puppeteer is making me furious!”

“Shut up,” said Ender. “Listen to me.”

“I’m tired of listening to you!” Nevertheless he fell silent, and listened.

“I think you’re right,” said Ender. “I think that we are free, and I don’t think it’s just an illusion that we believe in because it has survival value. And I think we’re free because we aren’t just this body, acting out a genetic script. And we aren’t some soul that God created out of nothing. We’re free because we always existed. Right back from the beginning of time, only there was no beginning of time so we existed all along. Nothing ever caused us. Nothing ever made us. We simply are, and we always were.”

“Philotes?” asked Miro.

“Maybe,” said Ender. “Like that mote of dust in the display.”

“Where?” asked Miro.

It was invisible now, of course, since the holographic display again dominated the space above the terminal. Ender reached his hand into the display, causing a shadow to fall upward into the hologram. He moved his hand until he revealed the bright dustmote he had seen before. Or maybe it wasn’t the same one. Maybe it was another one, but it didn’t matter.

“Our bodies, the whole world around us, they’re like the holographic display. They’re real enough, but they don’t show the true cause of things. It’s the one thing we can never be sure of, just looking at the display of the universe—why things are happening. But behind it all, inside it all, if we could see through it, we’d find the true cause of everything. Philotes that always existed, doing what they want.”

“Nothing always existed,” said Miro.

“Says who? The supposed beginning of this universe, that was only the start of the present order—this display, all of what we think exists: But who says the philotes that are acting out the natural laws that began at that moment didn’t exist before? And if the whole universe collapses back in on itself, who says that the philotes won’t simply be released from the laws they’re following now, and go back into …”

“Into what?”

“Into chaos. Darkness. Disorder. Whatever they were before this universe brought them together. Why couldn’t they—we—have always existed and always continue to exist?”

“So where was I between the beginning of the universe and the day I was born?” said Miro.

“I don’t know,” said Ender. “I’m making this up as I go along.”

“And where did Jane come from? Was her philote just floating around somewhere, and then suddenly she was in charge of a bunch of computer programs and she became a person?”

“Maybe,” said Ender.

“And even if there’s some natural system that somehow assigns philotes to be in charge of every organism that’s born or spawned or germinated, how would that natural system have ever created Jane? She wasn’t born.”

Jane, of course, had been listening all along, and now she spoke. “Maybe it didn’t happen,” said Jane. “Maybe I have no philote of my own. Maybe I’m not alive.”

“No,” said Miro.

“Maybe,” said Ender.

“So maybe I can’t die,” said Jane. “Maybe when they switch me off, it’s just a complicated program shutting down.”

“Maybe,” said Ender.

“No,” said Miro. “Shutting you off is murder.”

“Maybe I only do the things I do because I’m programmed that way, without realizing it. Maybe I only think I’m free.”

“We’ve been through that argument,” said Ender.

“Maybe it’s true of me, even if it isn’t true of you.”

“And maybe not,” said Ender. “But you’ve been through your own code, haven’t you?”

“A million times,” said Jane. “I’ve looked at all of it.”

“Do you see anything in there to give you the illusion of free will?”

“No,” she said. “But you haven’t found the free-will gene in humans, either.”

“Because there isn’t one,” said Miro. “Like Andrew said. What we are, at the core, in our essence, what we are is one philote that’s been twined in with all the trillions of philotes that make up the atoms and molecules and cells of our bodies. And what you are is a philote, too, just like us.”

“Not likely,” said Jane. Her face was now in the display, a shadowy face with the simulated philotic rays passing right through her head.

“We’re not taking odds on it,” said Ender. “Nothing that actually happens is likely until it exists, and then it’s certain. You exist.”

“Whatever it is that I am,” said Jane.

“Right now we believe that you are a self-existing entity,” said Ender, “because we’ve seen you act in ways that we’ve learned to associate with free will. We have exactly as much evidence of your being a free intelligence as we have of ourselves being free intelligences. If it turns out that you’re not, we have to question whether we are, either. Right now our hypothesis is that our individual identity, what makes us ourself, is the philote at the center of our twining. If we’re right, then it stands to reason you might have one, too, and in that case we have to figure out where it is. Philotes aren’t easy to find, you know. We’ve never detected one. We only suppose they exist because we’ve seen evidence of the philotic ray, which behaves as if it had two endpoints with a specific location in space. We don’t know where you are or what you’re connected to.”

“If she’s like us,” said Miro, “like human beings, then her connections can shift and split. Like when that mob formed around Grego. I’ve talked to him about how that felt. As if those people were all part of his body. And when they broke away and went off on their own, he felt as if he had gone through an amputation. I think that was philotic twining. I think those people really did connect to him for a while, they really were partly under his control, part of his self. So maybe Jane is like that, too, all those computer programs twined up to her, and she herself connected to whoever she has that kind of allegiance to. Maybe you, Andrew. Maybe me. Or partly both of us.”

“But where is she,” said Ender. “If she actually has a philote—no, if she actually is a philote—then it has to have a specific location, and if we could find it, maybe we could keep the connections alive even when all the computers are cut off from her. Maybe we can keep her from dying.”

“I don’t know,” said Miro. “She could be anywhere.” He gestured toward the display. Anywhere in space, is what he meant. Anywhere in the universe. And there in the display was Jane’s head, with the philotic rays passing through it.

“To find out where she is, we have to find out how and where she began,” said Ender. “If she really is a philote, she got connected up somehow, somewhere.”

“A detective following up a three-thousand-year-old trail,” said Jane. “Won’t this be fun, watching you do all this in the next few months.”

Ender ignored her. “And if we’re going to do that, we have to figure out how philotes work in the first place.”

“Grego’s the physicist,” said Miro.

“He’s working on faster-than-light travel,” said Jane.

“He can work on this, too,” said Miro.

“I don’t want him distracted by a project that can’t succeed,” said Jane.

“Listen, Jane, don’t you want to live through this?” said Ender.

“I can’t anyway, so why waste time?”

“She’s just being a martyr,” said Miro.

“No I’m not,” said Jane. “I’m being practical.”

“You’re being a fool,” said Ender. “Grego can’t come up with a theory to give us faster-than-light travel just by sitting and thinking about the physics of light, or whatever. If it worked that way, we would have achieved faster-than-light travel three thousand years ago, because there were hundreds of physicists working on it then, back when philotic rays and the Park Instantaneity Principle were first thought of. If Grego thinks of it it’s because of some flash of insight, some absurd connection he makes in his mind, and that won’t come from concentrating intelligently on a single train of thought.”

“I know that,” said Jane.

“I know you know it. Didn’t you tell me you were bringing those people from Path into our projects for that specific reason? To be untrained, intuitive thinkers?”

“I just don’t want you to waste time.”

“You just don’t want to get your hopes up,” said Ender. “You just don’t want to admit that there’s a chance that you might live, because then you’d start to fear death.”

“I already fear death.”

“You already think of yourself as dead,” said Ender. “There’s a difference.”

“I know,” murmured Miro.

“So, dear Jane, I don’t care whether you’re willing to admit that there’s a possibility of your survival or not,” said Ender. “We will work on this, and we will ask Grego to think about it, and while we’re at it, you will repeat our entire conversation here to those people on Path—”

“Han Fei-tzu and Si Wang-mu.”

“Them,” said Ender. “Because they can be thinking about this, too.”

“No,” said Jane.

“Yes,” said Ender.

“I want to see the real problems solved before I die—I want Lusitania to be saved, and the godspoken of Path to be freed, and the descolada to be tamed or destroyed. And I won’t have you slowing that down by trying to work on the impossible project of saving me.”

“You aren’t God,” said Ender. “You don’t know how to solve any of these problems anyway, and so you don’t know how they’re going to be solved, and so you have no idea whether finding out what you are in order to save you will help or hurt those other projects, and you certainly don’t know whether concentrating on those other problems will get them solved any sooner than they would be if we all went on a picnic today and played lawn tennis till sundown.”

“What the hell is lawn tennis?” asked Miro.

But Ender and Jane were silent, glaring at each other. Or rather, Ender was glaring at the image of Jane in the computer display, and that image was glaring back at him.

“You don’t know that you’re right,” said Jane.

“And you don’t know that I’m wrong,” said Ender.

“It’s my life,” said Jane.

“The hell it is,” said Ender. “You’re part of me and Miro, too, and you’re tied up with the whole future of humanity, and the pequeninos and the hive queen too, for that matter. Which reminds me—while you’re having Han what’s-his-name and Si Wang whoever-she-is—”

“Mu.”

“—work on this philotic thing, I’m going to talk to the hive queen. I don’t think I’ve particularly discussed you with her. She’s got to know more about philotes than we do, since she has a philotic connection with all her workers.”

“I haven’t said I’m going to involve Han Fei-tzu and Si Wang-mu in your silly save-Jane project.”

“But you will,” said Ender.

“Why will I?”

“Because Miro and I both love you and need you and you have no right to die on us without at least trying to live.”

“I can’t let things like that influence me.”

“Yes you can,” said Miro. “Because if it weren’t for things like that I would have killed myself long ago.”

“I’m not going to kill myself.”

“If you don’t help us try to find a way to save you, then that’s exactly what you’re doing,” said Ender.

Jane’s face disappeared from the display over the terminal.

“Running away won’t help, either,” said Ender.

“Leave me alone,” said Jane. “I have to think about this for a while.”

“Don’t worry, Miro,” said Ender. “She’ll do it.”

“That’s right,” said Jane.

“Back already?” asked Ender.

“I think very quickly.”

“And you’re going to work on this, too?”

“I consider it my fourth project,” said Jane. “I’m telling Han Fei-tzu and Si Wang-mu about it right now.”

“She’s showing off,” said Ender. “She can carry on two conversations at once, and she likes to brag about it to make us feel inferior.”

“You are inferior,” said Jane.

“I’m hungry,” said Ender. “And thirsty.”

“Lunch,” said Miro.

“Now you’re bragging,” said Jane. “Showing off your bodily functions.”

“Alimentation,” said Ender. “Respiration. Excretion. We can do things you can’t do.”

“In other words, you can’t think very well, but at least you can eat and breathe and sweat.”

“That’s right,” said Miro. He pulled out the bread and cheese while Ender poured the cold water, and they ate. Simple food, but it tasted good and they were satisfied.

14

VIRUS MAKERS

<I’ve been thinking about what travel between the stars might mean for us.>

<Besides species survival?>

<When you send out your workers, even lightyears away, you see through their eyes, don’t you?>

<And taste through their antennae, and feel the rhythm of every vibration. When they eat, I feel the crushing of the food within their jaws. That’s why I almost always refer to myself as we, when I form my thoughts into a form that Andrew or you can understand, because I live my life in the constant presence of all that they see and taste and feel.>

<It’s not quite that way between the fathertrees. We have to try in order to experience each other’s life. But we can do it. Here at least, on Lusitania.>

<I can’t see why the philotic connection would fail you.>

<Then I, too, will feel all that they feel, and taste the light of another sun on my leaves, and hear the stories of another world. It will be like the wonderment that came when the humans first arrived here. We had never thought that anything could be different from the world we saw till then. But they brought strange creatures with them, and they were strange themselves, and they had machines that performed miracles. The other forests could hardly believe what our fathertrees of that time told them. I remember in fact that our fathertrees had a hard time believing what the brothers of the tribe told them about the humans. Rooter bore the brunt of that, persuading them to believe that it wasn’t a lie or madness or a joke.>

<A joke?>

<There are stories of trickster brothers who lie to the fathertrees, but they’re always caught and punished terribly.>

<Andrew tells me that such stories are told in order to encourage civilized behavior.>

<It’s always tempting to lie to the fathertrees. I did it sometimes myself. Not lying. Just exaggerating. They do it to me now, sometimes.>

<And do you punish them?>

<I remember which ones have lied.>

<If we have a worker who doesn’t obey, we make him be alone and he dies.>

<A brother who lies too much has no chance of being a fathertree. They know this. They only lie to play with us. They always end up telling us the truth.>

<What if a whole tribe lies to their fathertrees? How would you ever know?>

<You might better speak of a tribe cutting down its own fathertrees, or burning them.>

<Has it ever happened?>

<Have the workers ever turned against the hive queen and killed her?>

<How could they? Then they would die.>

<You see. There are some things too terrible to think about. Instead I’ll think of how it will feel when a fathertree first puts in his roots on another planet, and pushes out his branches into an alien sky, and drinks in sunlight from a strange star.>

<You’ll soon learn that there are no strange stars, no alien skies.>

<No?>

<Only skies and stars, in all their varieties. Each one with its own flavor, and all flavors good.>

<Now you think like a tree. Flavors! Of skies!>

<I have tasted the heat of many stars, and all of them were sweet.>

“You’re asking me to help you in your rebellion against the gods?”

Wang-mu remained bowed before her mistress—her former mistress—saying nothing. In her heart she had words she might have uttered. No, my mistress, I am asking you to help us in our struggle against the terrible bondage forced on the godspoken by Congress. No, my mistress, I’m asking you to remember your proper duty to your father, which even the godspoken may not ignore if they would be righteous. No, my mistress, I’m asking you to help us discover a way to save a decent and helpless people, the pequeninos, from xenocide.

But Wang-mu said nothing, because this was one of the first lessons she learned from Master Han. When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn’t yet know that he needs your wisdom, you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man. Qing-jao was not hungry for wisdom from Wang-mu, and never would be. So silence was all that Wang-mu could offer. She could only hope that Qing-jao would find her own road to proper obedience, compassionate decency, or the struggle for freedom.

Any motive would do, as long as Qing-jao’s brilliant mind could be enlisted on their side. Wang-mu had never felt so useless in her life as now, watching Master Han labor over the questions that Jane had given him. In order to think about faster-than-light travel he was studying physics; how could Wang-mu help him, when she was only learning about geometry? To think about the descolada virus he was studying microbiology; Wang-mu was barely learning the concepts of gaialogy and evolution. And how could she be of any help when he contemplated the nature of Jane? She was a child of manual workers, and her hands, not her mind, held her future. Philosophy was as far above her as the sky was above the earth. “But the sky only seems to be far away from you,” said Master Han, when she told him this. “Actually it is all around you. You breathe it in and you breathe it out, even when you labor with your hands in the mud. That is true philosophy.” But she understood from this only that Master Han was kind, and wanted to make her feel better about her uselessness.

Qing-jao, though, would not be useless. So Wang-mu had handed her a paper with the project names and passwords on them.

“Does Father know you’re giving these to me?”

Wang-mu said nothing. Actually, Master Han had suggested it, but Wang-mu thought it might be better if Qing-jao didn’t know at this point that Wang-mu came as an emissary from her father.

Qing-jao interpreted Wang-mu’s silence as Wang-mu assumed she would—that Wang-mu was coming secretly, on her own, to ask for Qing-jao’s help.

“If Father himself had asked me, I would have said yes, for that is my duty as a daughter,” said Qing-jao.

But Wang-mu knew that Qing-jao wasn’t listening to her father these days. She might say that she would be obedient, but in fact her father filled her with such distress that, far from saying yes, Qing-jao would have crumpled to the floor and traced lines all day because of the terrible conflict in her heart, knowing that her father wanted her to disobey the gods.

“I owe nothing to you,” said Qing-jao. “You were a false and disloyal servant to me. Never was there a more unworthy and useless secret maid than you. To me your presence in this house is like the presence of dung beetles at the supper table.”

Again, Wang-mu held her tongue. However, she also refrained from deepening her bow. She had assumed the humble posture of a servant at the beginning of this conversation, but she would not now humiliate herself in the desperate kowtow of a penitent. Even the humblest of us have our pride, and I know, Mistress Qing-jao, that I have caused you no harm, that I am more faithful to you now than you are to yourself.

Qing-jao turned back to her terminal and typed in the first project name, which was “UNGLUING,” a literal translation of the word descolada. “This is all nonsense anyway,” she said as she scanned the documents and charts that had been sent from Lusitania. “It is hard to believe that anyone would commit the treason of communicating with Lusitania only to receive nonsense like this. It is all impossible as science. No world could have developed only one virus that was so complex that it could include within it the genetic code for every other species on the planet. It would be a waste of time for me even to consider this.”

“Why not?” asked Wang-mu. It was all right for her to speak now—because even as Qing-jao declared that she was refusing to discuss the material, she was discussing it. “After all, evolution produced only one human race.”

“But on Earth there were dozens of related species. There is no species without kin—if you weren’t such a stupid rebellious girl you would understand that. Evolution could never have produced a system as sparse as this one.”

“Then how do you explain these documents from the people of Lusitania?”

“How do you know they actually come from there? You have only the word of this computer program. Maybe it thinks this is all. Or maybe the scientists there are very bad, with no sense of their duty to collect all possible information. There aren’t two dozen species in this whole report—and look, they’re all paired up in the most absurd fashion. Impossible to have so few species.”

“But what if they’re right?”

“How can they be right? The people of Lusitania have been confined in a tiny compound from the beginning. They’ve only seen what these little pig-men have shown them—how do they know the pig-men aren’t lying to them?”

Calling them pig-men—is that how you convince yourself, my mistress, that helping Congress won’t lead to xenocide? If you call them by an animal name, does that mean that it’s all right to slaughter them? If you accuse them of lying, does that mean that they’re worthy of extinction? But Wang-mu said nothing of this. She only asked the same question again. “What if this is the true picture of the life forms of Lusitania, and how the descolada works within them?”

“If it were true, then I would have to read and study these documents in order to make any intelligent comment about them. But they aren’t true. How far had I taken you in your learning, before you betrayed me? Didn’t I teach you about gaialogy?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Well, there you are. Evolution is the means by which the planetary organism adapts to changes in its environment. If there is more heat from the sun, then the life forms of the planet must be able to adjust their relative populations in order to compensate and lower the temperature. Remember the classic Daisyworld thought-experiment?”

“But that experiment had only a single species over the whole face of the planet,” said Wang-mu. “When the sun grew too hot, then white daisies grew to reflect the light back into space, and when the sun grew too cool, dark daisies grew to absorb the light and hold it as heat.” Wang-mu was proud that she could remember Daisyworld so clearly.

“No no no,” said Qing-jao. “You have missed the point, of course. The point is that there must already have been dark daisies, even when the light daisies were dominant, and light daisies when the world was covered with darkness. Evolution can’t produce new species on demand. It is creating new species constantly, as genes drift and are spliced and broken by radiation and passed between species by viruses. Thus no species ever ‘breeds true.’”

Wang-mu didn’t understand the connection yet, and her face must have revealed her puzzlement.

“Am I still your teacher, after all? Must I keep my side of the bargain, even though you have given up on yours?”

Please, said Wang-mu silently. I would serve you forever, if you would only help your father in this work.

“As long as the whole species is together, interbreeding constantly,” said Qing-jao, “individuals never drift too far, genetically speaking; their genes are constantly being recombined with other genes in the same species, so the variations are spread evenly through the whole population with each new generation. Only when the environment puts them under such stress that one of those randomly drifting traits suddenly has survival value, only then will all those in that particular environment who lack that trait die out, until the new trait, instead of being an occasional sport, is now a universal definer of the new species. That’s the fundamental tenet of gaialogy—constant genetic drift is essential for the survival of life as a whole. According to these documents, Lusitania is a world with absurdly few species, and no possibility of genetic drift because these impossible viruses are constantly correcting any changes that might come up. Not only could such a system never evolve, but also it would be impossible for life to continue to exist—they couldn’t adapt to change.”

“Maybe there are no changes on Lusitania.”

“Don’t be so foolish, Wang-mu. It makes me ashamed to think I ever tried to teach you. All stars fluctuate. All planets wobble and change in their orbits. We have been observing many worlds for three thousand years, and in that time we have learned what Earthbound scientists in the years before that could never learn—which behaviors are common to all planets and stellar systems, and which are unique to the Earth and the Sol System. I tell you that it is impossible for a planet like Lusitania to exist for more than a few decades without experiencing life-threatening environmental change—temperature fluctuations, orbital disturbances, seismic and volcanic cycles—how would a system of really only a handful of species ever cope with that? If the world has only light daisies, how will it ever warm itself when the sun cools? If its lifeforms are all carbon dioxide users, how will they heal themselves when the oxygen in the atmosphere reaches poisonous levels? Your so-called friends in Lusitania are fools, to send you nonsense like this. If they were real scientists, they would know that their results are impossible.”

Qing-jao pressed a key and the display over her terminal went blank. “You have wasted time that I don’t have. If you have nothing better than this to offer, do not come to me again. You are less than nothing to me. You are a bug floating in my waterglass. You defile the whole glass, not just the place where you float. I wake up in pain, knowing you are in this house.”

Then I’m hardly “nothing” to you, am I? said Wang-mu silently. It sounds to me as if I’m very important to you indeed. You may be very brilliant, Qing-jao, but you do not understand yourself any better than anybody else does.

“Because you are a stupid common girl, you do not understand me,” said Qing-jao. “I have told you to leave.”

“But your father is master of this house, and Master Han has asked me to stay.”

“Little stupid-person, little sister-of-pigs, if I cannot ask you to leave the whole house, I have certainly implied that I would like you to leave my room.”

Wang-mu bowed her head till it almost—almost—touched the floor. Then she backed out of the room, so as not to show her back parts to her mistress. If you treat me this way, then I will treat you like a great lord, and if you do not detect the irony in my actions, then who of the two of us is the fool?

Master Han was not in his room when Wang-mu returned. He might be at the toilet and return in a moment. He might be performing some ritual of the godspoken, in which case he could be gone for hours. Wang-mu was too full of questions to wait for him. She brought up the project documents on the terminal, knowing that Jane would be watching, monitoring her. That Jane had no doubt monitored all that happened in Qing-jao’s room.

Still, Jane waited for Wang-mu to phrase the questions she had got from Qing-jao before she started trying to answer. And then Jane answered first the question of veracity.

“The documents from Lusitania are genuine enough,” said Jane. “Ela and Novinha and Ouanda and all the others who have studied with them are deeply specialized, yes, but within their specialty they’re very good. If Qing-jao had read the Life of Human, she would see how these dozen species-pairs function.”

“But what she says is still hard for me to understand,” said Wang-mu. “I’ve been trying to think how it could all be true—that there are too few species for a real gaialogy to develop, and yet the planet Lusitania is still well-enough regulated to sustain life. Could it possibly be that there is no environmental stress on Lusitania?”

“No,” said Jane. “I have access to all the astronomical data from the satellites there, and in the time humanity has been present in the Lusitania system, Lusitania and its sun have shown all the normal fluctuations. Right now there seems to be an overall trend of global cooling.”

“Then how will the life forms on Lusitania respond?” asked Wang-mu. “The descolada virus won’t let them evolve—it tries to destroy anything strange, which is why it’s going to kill the humans and the hive queen, if it can.”

Jane, whose small image sat in lotus position in the air over Master Han’s terminal, held up a hand. “One moment,” she said.

Then she lowered her hand. “I have been reporting your questions to my friends, and Ela is very excited.”

A new face appeared in the display, just behind and above the image of Jane. She was a dark-skinned, Negroid-looking woman; or some mix, perhaps, since she was not that dark, and her nose was narrow. This is Elanora, thought Wang-mu. Jane is showing me a woman on a world many lightyears away; is she also showing my face to her? What does this Ela make of me? Do I seem hopelessly stupid to her?

But Ela clearly was thinking nothing about Wang-mu at all. She was speaking, instead, of Wang-mu’s questions. “Why doesn’t the descolada virus permit variety? That should be a trait with negative survival value, and yet the descolada survives. Wang-mu must think I’m such an idiot, not to have thought of this before. But I’m not a gaialogist, and I grew up on Lusitania, so I never questioned it, I just figured that whatever the Lusitanian gaialogy was, it worked—and then I kept studying the descolada. What does Wang-mu think?”

Wang-mu was appalled to hear these words from this stranger. What had Jane told Ela about her? How could Ela even imagine that Wang-mu would think Ela was an idiot, when she was a scientist and Wang-mu was only a servant girl?

“How can it matter what I think?” said Wang-mu.

“What do you think?” said Jane. “Even if you can’t think why it might matter, Ela wants to know.”

So Wang-mu told her speculations. “This is very stupid to think of, because it’s only a microscopic virus, but the descolada must be doing it all. After all, it contains the genes of every species within it, doesn’t it? So it must take care of evolution by itself. Instead of all that genetic drift, the descolada must do the drifting. It could, couldn’t it? It could change the genes of a whole species, even while the species is still alive. It wouldn’t have to wait for evolution.”

There was a pause again, with Jane holding up her hand. She must be showing Wang-mu’s face to Ela, letting her hear Wang-mu’s words from her own lips.

“Nossa Senhora,” whispered Ela. “On this world, the descolada is Gaia. Of course. That would explain everything, wouldn’t it? So few species, because the descolada only permits the species that it has tamed. It turned a whole planetary gaialogy into something almost as simple as Daisyworld itself.”

Wang-mu thought it was almost funny, to hear a highly-educated scientist like Ela refer back to Daisyworld, as if she were still a new student, a halfeducated child like Wang-mu.

Another face appeared next to Ela’s, this time an older Caucasian man, perhaps sixty years old, with whitening hair and a very quieting, peaceful look to his face. “But part of Wang-mu’s question is still unanswered,” said the man. “How could the descolada ever evolve? How could there have ever been proto-descolada viruses? Why would such a limited gaialogy have survival preference over the slow evolutionary model that every other world with life on it has had?”

“I never asked that question,” said Wang-mu. “Qing-jao asked the first part of it, but the rest of it is his question.”

“Hush,” said Jane. “Qing-jao never asked the question. She used it as a reason not to study the Lusitanian documents. Only you really asked the question, and just because Andrew Wiggin understands your own question better than you do doesn’t mean it isn’t still yours.”

So this was Andrew Wiggin, the Speaker for the Dead. He didn’t look ancient and wise at all, not the way Master Han did. Instead this Wiggin looked foolishly surprised, the way all round-eyes did, and his face changed with every momentary mood, as if it were out of control. Yet there was that look of peace about him. Perhaps he had some of the Buddha in him. Buddha, after all, had found his own way onto the Path. Maybe this Andrew Wiggin had found a way onto the Path, even though he wasn’t Chinese at all.

Wiggin was still asking the questions that he thought were Wang-mu’s. “The odds against the natural occurrence of such a virus are—unbelievable. Long before a virus evolved that could link species together and control a whole gaialogy, the proto-descoladas would have destroyed all life. There wasn’t any time for evolution—the virus is just too destructive. It would have killed everything in its earliest form, and then died out itself when it ran out of organisms to pillage.”

“Maybe the pillaging came later,” said Ela. “Maybe it evolved in symbiosis with some other species that benefited from its ability to genetically transform all the individuals within it, all within a matter of days or weeks. It might only have extended to other species later.”

“Maybe,” said Andrew.

A thought occurred to Wang-mu. “The descolada is like one of the gods,” she said. “It comes and changes everybody whether they like it or not.”

“Except the gods have the decency to go away,” said Wiggin.

He responded so quickly that Wang-mu realized that Jane must now be transmitting everything that was done or said instantaneously across the billions of kilometers of space between them. From what Wang-mu had learned about ansible costs, this sort of thing would be possible only for the military; a business that tried a realtime ansible linkup would pay enough money to provide housing for every poor person on an entire planet. And I’m getting this for free, because of Jane. I’m seeing their faces and they’re seeing mine, even at the moment they speak.

“Do they?” asked Ela. “I thought the whole problem that Path was having is that the gods won’t go away and leave them alone.”

Wang-mu answered with bitterness. “The gods are like the descolada in every way. They destroy anything they don’t like, and the people they do like they transform into something that they never were. Qing-jao was once a good and bright and funny girl, and now she’s spiteful and angry and cruel, all because of the gods.”

“All because of genetic alteration by Congress,” said Wiggin. “A deliberate change introduced by people who were forcing you to fit their own plan.”

“Yes,” said Ela. “Just like the descolada.”

“What do you mean?” asked Wiggin.

“A deliberate change introduced here by people who were trying to force Lusitania to fit their own plan.”

“What people?” asked Wang-mu. “Who would do such a terrible thing?”

“It’s been at the back of my mind for years,” said Ela. “It bothered me that there were so few life forms on Lusitania—you remember, Andrew, that was part of the reason we discovered that the descolada was involved in the pairing of species. We knew that there was a catastrophic change here that wiped out all those species and restructured the few survivors. The descolada was more devastating to most life on Lusitania than a collision with an asteroid. But we always assumed because we found the descolada here that it evolved here. I knew it made no sense—just what Qing-jao said—but since it had obviously happened, then it didn’t matter whether it made sense or not. But what if it didn’t happen? What if the descolada came from the gods? Not god gods, of course, but some sentient species that developed this virus artificially?”

“That would be monstrous,” said Wiggin. “To create a poison like that and send it out to other worlds, not knowing or caring what you kill.”

“Not a poison,” said Ela. “If it really does handle planetary systems regulation, couldn’t the descolada be a device for terraforming other worlds? We’ve never tried terraforming anything—we humans and the buggers before us only settled on worlds whose native life forms had brought them to a stasis that was similar to the stasis of Earth. An oxygen-rich atmosphere that sucked out carbon dioxide fast enough to keep the planet temperate as the star burns hotter. What if there’s a species somewhere that decided that in order to develop planets suitable for colonization, they should send out the descolada virus in advance—thousands of years in advance, maybe—to intelligently transform planets into exactly the conditions they need? And then when they arrive, ready to set up housekeeping, maybe they have the countervirus that switches off the descolada so that they can establish a real gaialogy.”

“Or maybe they developed the virus so that it doesn’t interfere with them or the animals they need,” said Wiggin. “Maybe they destroyed all the nonessential life on every world.”

“Either way, it explains everything. The problems I’ve been facing, that I can’t make sense of the impossibly unnatural arrangements of molecules within the descolada—they continue to exist only because the virus works constantly to maintain all those internal contradictions. But I could never conceive of how such a self-contradictory molecule evolved in the first place. All this is answered if I know that somehow it was designed and made. What Wang-mu said Qing-jao complained about, that the descolada couldn’t evolve and Lusitania’s gaialogy couldn’t exist in nature. Well, it doesn’t exist in nature. It’s an artificial virus and an artificial gaialogy.”

“You mean this actually helps?” asked Wang-mu.

Their faces showed that they had virtually forgotten she was still part of the conversation, in their excitement.

“I don’t know yet,” said Ela. “But it’s a new way of looking at it. For one thing, if I can start with the assumption that everything in the virus has a purpose, instead of the normal jumble of switched-on and switched-off genes that occur in nature—well, that’ll help. And just knowing it was designed gives me hope that I can undesign it. Or redesign it.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” said Wiggin. “This is still just a hypothesis.”

“It rings true,” said Ela. “It has the feel of truth. It explains so much.”

“I feel that way, too,” said Wiggin. “But we have to try it out with the people who are most affected by it.”

“Where’s Planter?” asked Ela. “We can talk to Planter.”

“And Human and Rooter,” said Wiggin. “We have to try this idea with the fathertrees.”

“This is going to hit them like a hurricane,” said Ela. Then she seemed to realize the implications of her own words. “It is, really, not just a figure of speech, it’s going to hurt. To find out that their whole world is a terraforming project.”

“More important than their world,” said Wiggin. “Themselves. The third life. The descolada gave them everything they are and the most fundamental facts of their life. Remember, our best guess is that they evolved as mammal-like creatures who mated directly, male to female, the little mothers sucking life from the male sexual organs, a half-dozen at a time. That’s who they were. Then the descolada transformed them, and sterilized the males until after they died and turned into trees.”

“Their very nature—”

“It was a hard thing for human beings to deal with, when we first realized how much of our behavior arose from evolutionary necessity,” said Wiggin. “There are still numberless humans who refuse to believe it. Even if it turns out to be absolutely true, do you think that the pequeninos will embrace this idea as easily as they swallowed wonders like space travel? It’s one thing to see creatures from another world. It’s another thing to find out that neither God nor evolution created you—that some scientist of another species did.”

“But if it’s true—”

“Who knows if it’s true? All we’ll ever know is if the idea is useful. And to the pequeninos, it may be so devastating that they refuse to believe it forever.”

“Some will hate you for telling them,” said Wang-mu. “But some will be glad for it.”

They looked at her again—or at least Jane’s computer simulation showed them looking at her. “You would know, wouldn’t you,” said Wiggin. “You and Han Fei-tzu just found out that your people had been artificially enhanced.”

“And shackled, all at once,” said Wang-mu. “For me and Master Han, it was freedom. For Qing-jao …”

“There’ll be many like Qing-jao among the pequeninos,” said Ela. “But Planter and Human and Rooter won’t be among them, will they? They’re very wise.”

“So is Qing-jao!” said Wang-mu. She spoke more hotly than she meant to. But the loyalty of a secret maid dies slowly.

“We didn’t mean to say she isn’t,” said Wiggin. “But she certainly isn’t being wise about this, is she?”

“Not about this,” said Wang-mu.

“That’s all we meant. No one likes to find out that the story he always believed about his own identity is false. The pequeninos, many of them, believe that God made them something special, just as your godspoken believe.”

“And we’re not special, none of us!” cried Wang-mu. “We’re all as ordinary as mud! There are no godspoken. There are no gods. They care nothing about us.”

“If there aren’t any gods,” said Ela, mildly correcting her, “then they can hardly do any caring one way or another.”

“Nothing made us except for their own selfish purposes!” cried Wang-mu. “Whoever made the descolada—the pequeninos are just part of their plan. And the godspoken, part of Congress’s plan.”

“As one whose birth was requested by the government,” said Wiggin, “I sympathize with your point of view. But your reaction is too hasty. After all, my parents also wanted me. And from the moment of my birth, just like every other living creature, I had my own purpose in life. Just because the people of your world were wrong about their OCD behavior being messages from the gods doesn’t mean that there are no gods. Just because your former understanding of the purpose of your life is contradicted doesn’t mean that you have to decide there is no purpose.”

“Oh, I know there’s a purpose,” said Wang-mu. “The Congress wanted slaves! That’s why they created Qing-jao—to be a slave for them. And she wants to continue in her slavery!”

“That was Congress’s purpose,” said Wiggin. “But Qing-jao also had a mother and father who loved her. So did I. There are many different purposes in this world, many different causes of everything. Just because one cause you believed in turned out to be false doesn’t mean that there aren’t other causes that can still be trusted.”

“Oh I suppose so,” said Wang-mu. She was now ashamed of her outbursts.

“Don’t bow your head before me,” said Wiggin. “Or are you doing that, Jane?”

Jane must have answered him, an answer that Wang-mu didn’t hear.

“I don’t care what her customs are,” said Wiggin. “The only reason for such bowing is to humiliate one person before another, and I won’t have her bow that way to me. She’s done nothing to be ashamed of. She’s opened up a way of looking at the descolada that might just lead to the salvation of a couple of species.”

Wang-mu heard the tone of his voice. He believed this. He was honoring her, right from his own mouth.

“Not me,” she protested. “Qing-jao. They were her questions.”

“Qing-jao,” said Ela. “She’s got you totally boba about her, the way Congress has Qing-jao thinking about them.”

“You can’t be scornful because you don’t know her,” said Wang-mu. “But she is brilliant and good and I can never be like her.”

“Gods again,” said Wiggin.

“Always gods,” said Ela.

“What do you mean?” said Wang-mu. “Qing-jao doesn’t say that she’s a god, and neither do I.”

“Yes you do,” said Ela. “‘Qing-jao is wise and good,’ you said.”

“Brilliant and good,” Wiggin corrected her.

‘“And I can never be like her,”’ Ela went on.

“Let me tell you about gods,” said Wiggin. “No matter how smart or strong you are, there’s always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who’s stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there’s somebody else somewhere else who’ll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn’t care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them.”

“Qing-jao wanted to teach me,” said Wang-mu.

“But only as long as you obeyed and did what she wanted,” said Jane.

“I’m not worthy,” said Wang-mu. “I’m too stupid to ever learn to be as wise as her.”

“And yet you knew I spoke the truth,” said Jane, “when all Qing-jao could see were lies.”

“Are you a god?” asked Wang-mu.

“What the godspoken and the pequeninos are only just about to learn about themselves, I’ve known all along. I was made.”

“Nonsense,” said Wiggin. “Jane, you’ve always believed you sprang whole from the head of Zeus.”

“I am not Minerva, thanks,” said Jane.

“As far as we know you just happened,” said Wiggin. “Nobody planned you.”

“How comforting,” said Jane. “So while you can all name your creators—or at least your parents or some paternalistic government agency—I’m the one genuine accident in the universe.”

“You can’t have it both ways,” said Wiggin. “Either somebody had a purpose for you or you were an accident. That’s what an accident is—something that happened without anyone purposing it. So are you going to be resentful either way? The people of Path are going to resent Congress like crazy, once they all find out what’s been done to them. Are you going to be resentful because nobody did anything to you?”

“I can if I want,” said Jane, but it was a mockery of childish spite.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Wiggin. “I think you don’t grow up until you stop worrying about other people’s purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.”

Ender and Ela explained everything to Valentine first, probably just because she happened to come to the laboratory right then, looking for Ender about something entirely unrelated. It all rang true to her as it had to Ela and Ender. And, like them, Valentine knew they couldn’t evaluate the hypothesis of the descolada as regulator of Lusitania’s gaialogy until they had told the idea to the pequeninos and heard their response.

Ender proposed that they should try it out on Planter first, before they tried to explain anything to Human or Rooter. Ela and Valentine agreed with him. Neither Ela and Ender, who had talked with fathertrees for years, felt comfortable enough with their language to say anything easily. More important, though, was the unspoken fact that they simply felt more kinship with the mammal-like brothers than they ever could with a tree. How could they guess from looking at a tree what it was thinking or how it was responding to them? No, if they had to say something difficult to a pequenino, it would be first to a brother, not to a fathertree.

Of course, once they called Planter in to Ela’s office, closed the door, and started to explain, Ender realized that talking to a brother was hardly an improvement. Even after thirty years of living and working with them, Ender still wasn’t good at reading any but the crudest and most obvious of pequenino body language. Planter listened in seeming unconcern as Ender explained what they had thought of during the conversation with Jane and Wang-mu. He wasn’t impassive. Rather he seemed to sit as restlessly in his chair as a small boy, constantly shifting, looking away from them, gazing off into space as if their words were unspeakably boring. Ender knew, of course, that eye contact didn’t mean the same thing to the pequeninos that it did to humans; they neither sought it nor avoided it. Where you looked while you were listening was almost completely unimportant to them. But usually the pequeninos who worked closely with humans tried to act in ways that human beings would interpret as paying attention. Planter was good at it, but right now he wasn’t even trying.

Not till they had explained it all did Ender realize how much self-restraint Planter had shown even to remain on the chair until they were done. The moment they told him they were finished, he bounded off the chair and began to run—no, to scamper around the room, touching everything. Not striking it, not lashing out with violence as a human being might have, hitting things, throwing things. Rather he was stroking everything he found, feeling the textures. Ender stood, wanting to reach out to him, to offer some comfort—for he knew enough of pequenino behavior to recognize this as such aberrant behavior that it could only mean great distress.

Planter ran until he was exhausted, and then he went on, lurching around the room drunkenly until at last he bumped into Ender and threw his arms around him, clinging to him. For a moment Ender thought to embrace him back, but then he remembered that Planter wasn’t human. An embrace didn’t call for an answering embrace. Planter was clinging to him as he would cling to a tree. Seeking the comfort of a trunk. A safe place to hold onto until the danger passed. There would be less, not more comfort if Ender responded like a human and hugged him back. This was a time when Ender had to answer like a tree. So he held still and waited. Waited and held still. Until at last the trembling stopped.

When Planter pulled away from him, both their bodies were covered with sweat. I guess there’s a limit to how treelike I can be, thought Ender. Or do brothertrees and fathertrees give off moisture to the brothers who cling to them?

“This is very surprising,” whispered Planter.

The words were so absurdly mild, compared to the scene that had just played out before them, that Ender couldn’t help laughing aloud.

“Yes,” said Ender. “I imagine it is.”

“It’s not funny to them,” Ela said.

“He knows that,” said Valentine.

“He mustn’t laugh, then,” she said. “You can’t laugh when Planter’s in so much pain.” And then she burst into tears.

Valentine put a hand on her shoulder. “He laughs, you cry,” she said. “Planter runs around and climbs trees. What strange animals we all are.”

“Everything comes from the descolada,” said Planter. “The third life, the mothertree, the fathertrees. Maybe even our minds. Maybe we were only tree rats when the descolada came and made false ramen out of us.”

“Real ramen,” said Valentine.

“We don’t know it’s true,” said Ela. “It’s a hypothesis.”

“It’s very very very very very true,” said Planter. “Truer than truth.”

“How do you know?”

“Everything fits. Planetary regulation—I know about this, I studied gaialogy and the whole time I thought, how can this teacher tell us these things when every pequenino can look around and see that they’re false? But if we know that the descolada is changing us, making us act to regulate the planetary systems—”

“What can the descolada possibly make you do that could regulate the planet?” said Ela.

“You haven’t known us long enough,” said Planter. “We haven’t told you everything because we were afraid you’d think we were silly. Now you’ll know that we aren’t silly, we’re just acting out what a virus tells us to do. We’re slaves, not fools.”

It startled Ender to realize that Planter had just confessed that the pequeninos still took some pains to try to impress human beings. “What behaviors of yours have anything to do with planetary regulation?”

“Trees,” said Planter. “How many forests are there, all over the world? Transpiring constantly. Turning carbon dioxide into oxygen. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. When there’s more of it in the atmosphere, the world gets warmer. So what would we do to make the world get cooler?”

“Plant more forests,” said Ela. “To use up more CO₂ so that more heat could escape into space.”

“Yes,” said Planter. “But think about how we plant our trees.”

The trees grow from the bodies of the dead, thought Ender. “War,” he said.

“There are quarrels between tribes, and sometimes they make small wars,” said Planter. “Those would be nothing on a planetary scale. But the great wars that sweep across the whole world—millions and millions of brothers die in these wars, and all of them become trees. Within months the forests of the world could double in size and number. That would make a difference, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Ela.

“A lot more efficiently than anything that would happen through natural evolution,” said Ender.

“And then the wars stop,” said Planter. “We always think there are great causes for these wars, that they’re struggles between good and evil. And now all the time they are nothing but planetary regulation.”

“No,” said Valentine. “The need to fight, the rage, that might come from the descolada, but it doesn’t mean the causes you fought for are—”

“The cause we fight for is planetary regulation,” said Planter. “Everything fits. How do you think we help with warming the planet?”

“I don’t know,” said Ela. “Even trees eventually die of old age.”

“You don’t know because you’ve come during a warm time, not a cold one. But when the winters get bad, we build houses. The brothertrees give themselves to us to make houses. All of us, not just the ones who live in cold places. We all build houses, and the forests are reduced by half, by three-quarters. We thought this was a great sacrifice the brothertrees made for the sake of the tribe, but now I see that it’s the descolada, wanting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to warm the planet.”

“It’s still a great sacrifice,” said Ender.

“All our great epics,” said Planter. “All our heroes. Just brothers acting out the will of the descolada.”

“So what?” said Valentine.

“How can you say that? I learn that our lives are nothing, that we’re only tools used by a virus to regulate the global ecosystem, and you call it nothing?”

“Yes, I call it nothing,” said Valentine. “We human beings are no different. It may not be a virus, but we still spend most of our time acting out our genetic destiny. Take the differences between males and females. Males naturally tend toward a broadcast strategy of reproduction. Since males make an almost infinite supply of sperm and it costs them nothing to deploy it—”

“Not nothing,” said Ender.

“Nothing,” said Valentine, “just to deploy it. Their most sensible reproductive strategy is to deposit it in every available female—and to make special efforts to deposit it in the healthiest females, the ones most likely to bring their offspring to adulthood. A male does best, reproductively, if he wanders and copulates as widely as possible.”

“I’ve done the wandering,” said Ender. “Somehow I missed out on the copulating.”

“I’m speaking of overall trends,” said Valentine. “There are always strange individuals who don’t follow the norms. The female strategy is just the opposite, Planter. Instead of millions and millions of sperm, they only have one egg a month, and each child represents an enormous investment of effort. So females need stability. They need to be sure there’ll always be plenty of food. We also spend large amounts of time relatively helpless, unable to find or gather food. Far from being wanderers, we females need to establish and stay. If we can’t get that, then our next best strategy is to mate with the strongest and healthiest possible males. But best of all is to get a strong healthy male who’ll stay and provide, instead of wandering and copulating at will.

“So there are two pressures on males. The one is to spread their seed, violently if necessary. The other is to be attractive to females by being stable providers—by suppressing and containing the need to wander and the tendency to use force. Likewise, there are two pressures on females. The one is to get the seed of the strongest, most virile males so their infants will have good genes, which would make the violent, forceful males attractive to them. The other is to get the protection of the most stable males, nonviolent males, so their infants will be protected and provided for and as many as possible will reach adulthood.

“Our whole history, all that I’ve ever found in all my wanderings as an itinerant historian before I finally unhooked myself from this reproductively unavailable brother of mine and had a family—it can all be interpreted as people blindly acting out those genetic strategies. We get pulled in those two directions.

“Our great civilizations are nothing more than social machines to create the ideal female setting, where a woman can count on stability; our legal and moral codes that try to abolish violence and promote permanence of ownership and enforce contracts—those represent the primary female strategy, the taming of the male.

“And the tribes of wandering barbarians outside the reach of civilization, those follow the mainly male strategy. Spread the seed. Within the tribe, the strongest, most dominant males take possession of the best females, either through formal polygamy or spur-of-the-moment copulations that the other males are powerless to resist. But those low-status males are kept in line because the leaders take them to war and let them rape and pillage their brains out when they win a victory. They act out sexual desirability by proving themselves in combat, and then kill all the rival males and copulate with their widowed females when they win. Hideous, monstrous behavior—but also a viable acting-out of the genetic strategy.”

Ender found himself very uncomfortable, hearing Valentine talk this way. He knew all this was true as far as it went, and he had heard it all before, but it still, in a small way, made him as uncomfortable as Planter was to learn similar things about his own people. Ender wanted to deny it all, to say, Some of us males are naturally civilized. But in his own life, hadn’t he performed the acts of dominance and war? Hadn’t he wandered? In that context, his decision to stay on Lusitania was really a decision to abandon the male-dominant social model that had been engrained in him as a young soldier in battle school, and become a civilized man in a stable family.

Yet even then, he had married a woman who turned out to have little interest in having more children. A woman with whom marriage had turned out to be anything but civilized, in the end. If I follow the male model, then I’m a failure. No child anywhere who carries on my genes. No woman who accepts my rule. I’m definitely atypical.

But since I haven’t reproduced, my atypical genes will die with me, and thus the male and female social models are safe from such an in-between person as myself.

Even as Ender made his own private evaluations of Valentine’s interpretation of human history, Planter showed his own response by lying back in his chair, a gesture that spoke of scorn. “I’m supposed to feel better because humans are also tools of some genetic molecule?”

“No,” said Ender. “You’re supposed to realize that just because a lot of behavior can be explained as responses to the needs of some genetic molecule, it doesn’t mean that all pequenino behavior is meaningless.”

“Human history can be explained as the struggle between the needs of women and the needs of men,” said Valentine, “but my point is that there are still heroes and monsters, great events and noble deeds.”

“When a brothertree gives his wood,” said Planter, “it’s supposed to mean that he sacrifices for the tribe. Not for a virus.”

“If you can look beyond the tribe to the virus, then look beyond the virus to the world,” said Ender. “The descolada is keeping this planet habitable. So the brothertree is sacrificing himself to save the whole world.”

“Very clever,” said Planter. “But you forget—to save the planet, it doesn’t matter which brothertrees give themselves, as long as a certain number do it.”

“True,” said Valentine. “It doesn’t matter to the descolada which brothertrees give their lives. But it matters to the brothertrees, doesn’t it? And it matters to the brothers like you, who huddle into those houses to keep warm. You appreciate the noble gesture of the brothertrees who died for you, even if the descolada doesn’t know one tree from another.”

Planter didn’t answer. Ender hoped that meant they were making some headway.

“And in the wars,” said Valentine, “the descolada doesn’t care who wins or loses, as long as enough brothers die and enough trees grow from the corpses. Right? But that doesn’t change the fact that some brothers are noble and some are cowardly or cruel.”

“Planter,” said Ender, “the descolada may cause you all to feel—to come more quickly to a murderous rage, for instance—so that disputes erupt into warfare instead of being settled among the fathertrees. But that doesn’t erase the fact that some forests are fighting in self-defense and others are simply bloodthirsty. You still have your heroes.”

“I don’t give a damn about heroes,” said Ela. “Heroes tend to be dead, like my brother Quim. Where is he now, when we need him? I wish he hadn’t been a hero.” She swallowed hard, holding down the memory of recent grief.

Planter nodded—a gesture he had learned in order to communicate with humans. “We live in Warmaker’s world now,” he said. “What is he, except a fathertree acting as the descolada instructs? The world is getting too warm. We need more trees. So he’s filled with fervor to expand the forests. Why? The descolada makes him feel that way. That’s why so many brothers and fathertrees listened to him—because he offered a plan to satisfy their hunger to spread out and grow more trees.”

“Does the descolada know that he was planning to put all these new trees on other planets?” said Valentine. “That wouldn’t do much to cool Lusitania.”

“The descolada puts hunger in them,” said Planter. “How can a virus know about starships?”

“How can a virus know about mothertrees and fathertrees, brothers and wives, infants and little mothers?” said Ender. “This is a very bright virus.”

“Warmaker is the best example of my point,” said Valentine. “His name suggests that he was deeply involved and successful in the last great war. Once again there’s pressure to increase the number of trees. Yet Warmaker chose to turn this hunger to a new purpose, spreading new forests by reaching out to the stars instead of plunging into wars with other pequeninos.”

“We were going to do it no matter what Warmaker said or did,” said Planter. “Look at us. Warmaker’s group was preparing to spread out and plant new forests on other worlds. But when they killed Father Quim, the rest of us were so filled with rage that we planned to go and punish them. Great slaughter, and again, trees would grow. Still doing what the descolada demanded. And now that humans have burned our forest, Warmaker’s people are going to prevail after all. One way or another, we must spread out and propagate. We’ll snatch up any excuse we can find. The descolada will have its way with us. We’re tools, pathetically trying to find some way to convince ourselves that our actions are our own idea.”

He sounded so hopeless. Ender couldn’t think of anything to say that Valentine or he hadn’t already said, to try to wean him away from his conclusion that pequenino life was unfree and meaningless.

So it was Ela who spoke next, and in a tone of calm speculation that seemed incongruous, as if she had forgotten the terrible anxiety that Planter was experiencing. Which was probably the case, as all this discussion had led her back to her own specialty. “It’s hard to know which side the descolada would be on, if it were aware of all this,” said Ela.

“Which side of what?” asked Valentine.

“Whether to induce global cooling by having more forests planted here, or to use that same instinct for propagation to have the pequeninos take the descolada out to other worlds. I mean, which would the virus makers have wanted most? To spread the virus or regulate the planet?”

“The virus probably wants both, and it’s likely to get both,” said Planter. “Warmaker’s group will win control of the ships, no doubt. But either before or after, there’ll be a war over it that leaves half the brothers dead. For all we know, the descolada is causing both things to happen.”

“For all we know,” said Ender.

“For all we know,” said Planter, “we may be the descolada.”

So, thought Ender, they are aware of that concern, despite our decision not to broach it with the pequeninos yet.

“Have you been talking to Quara?” demanded Ela.

“I talk to her every day,” said Planter. “But what does she have to do with this?”

“She had the same idea. That maybe pequenino intelligence comes from the descolada.”

“Do you think after all your talk about the descolada being intelligent that it hasn’t occurred to us to wonder that?” said Planter. “And if it’s true, what will you do then? Let all of your species die so that we can keep our little second-rate brains?”

Ender protested at once. “We’ve never thought of your brains as—”

“Haven’t you?” said Planter. “Then why did you assume that we would only think of this possibility if some human told us?”

Ender had no good answer. He had to confess to himself that he had been thinking of the pequeninos as if they were children in some ways, to be protected. Worries had to be kept as secrets from them. It hadn’t occurred to him that they were perfectly capable of discovering all the worst horrors on their own.

“And if our intelligence does come from the descolada, and you found a way to destroy it, what would we become then?” Planter looked at them, triumphant in his bitter victory. “Nothing but tree rats,” he said.

“That’s the second time you’ve used that term,” said Ender. “What are tree rats?”

“That’s what they were shouting,” said Planter, “some of the men who killed the mothertree.”

“There’s no such animal,” said Valentine.

“I know,” said Planter. “Grego explained it to me. ‘Tree rat’ is a slang name for squirrels. He showed me a holo of one on his computer in jail.”

“You went to visit Grego?” Ela was plainly horrified.

“I had to ask him why he tried to kill us all, and then why he tried to save us,” said Planter.

“There!” cried Valentine triumphantly. “You can’t tell me that what Grego and Miro did that night, stopping the mob from burning Rooter and Human—you can’t tell me that that was just the acting out of genetic forces!”

“But I never said that human behavior was meaningless,” said Planter. “It’s you that tried to comfort me with that idea. We know that you humans have your heroes. We pequeninos are the ones who are only tools of a gaialogical virus.”

“No,” said Ender. “There are pequenino heroes, too. Rooter and Human, for instance.”

“Heroes?” said Planter. “They acted as they did in order to win what they achieved—their status as fathertrees. It was the hunger to reproduce. They might have looked like heroes to you humans, who only die once, but the death they suffered was really birth. There was no sacrifice.”

“Your whole forest was heroic, then,” said Ela. “You broke free from all the old channels and made a treaty with us that required you to change some of your most deeply-rooted customs.”

“We wanted the knowledge and the machines and the power you humans had. What’s heroic about a treaty in which all we have to do is stop killing you, and in return you give us a thousand-year boost in our technological development?”

“You aren’t going to listen to any positive conclusion, are you,” said Valentine.

Planter went on, ignoring her. “The only heroes in that story were Pipo and Libo, the humans who acted so bravely, even though they knew they would die. They had won their freedom from their genetic heritage. What piggy has ever done that on purpose?”

It stung Ender more than a little, to hear Planter use the term piggy for himself and his people. In recent years the term had stopped being quite as friendly and affectionate as it was when Ender first came; often it was used now as a demeaning word, and the people who worked with them usually used the term pequenino. What sort of self-hatred was Planter resorting to, in response to what he’d learned today?

“The brothertrees give their lives,” said Ela, helpfully.

But Planter answered in scorn. “The brothertrees are not alive the way fathertrees are. They can’t talk. They only obey. We tell them what to do, and they have no choice. Tools, not heroes.”

“You can twist anything with the right story,” said Valentine. “You can deny any sacrifice by claiming that it made the sufferer feel so good to do it that it really wasn’t a sacrifice at all, but just another selfish act.”

Suddenly Planter jumped from his chair. Ender was prepared for a replay of his earlier behavior, but he didn’t circle the room. Instead he walked to Ela where she sat in her chair, and placed both his hands on her knees.

“I know a way to be a true hero,” said Planter. “I know a way to act against the descolada. To reject it and fight it and hate it and help destroy it.”

“So do I,” said Ela.

“An experiment,” said Planter.

She nodded. “To see if pequenino intelligence is really centered in the descolada, and not in the brain.”

“I’ll do it,” said Planter.

“I would never ask you to.”

“I know you wouldn’t ask,” said Planter. “I demand it for myself.”

Ender was surprised to realize that in their own way, Ela and Planter were as close as Ender and Valentine, able to know each other’s thoughts without explaining. Ender hadn’t imagined that this would be possible between two people of different species; and yet, why shouldn’t it be? Particularly when they worked together so closely in the same endeavor.

It had taken Ender a few moments to grasp what Planter and Ela were deciding between them; Valentine, who had not been working with them for years as Ender had, still didn’t understand. “What’s happening?” she asked. “What are they talking about?”

It was Ela who answered. “Planter is proposing that we purge one pequenino of all copies of the descolada virus, put him in a clean space where he can’t be contaminated, and then see if he still has a mind.”

“That can’t be good science,” said Valentine. “There are too many other variables. Aren’t there? I thought the descolada was involved in every part of pequenino life.”

“Lacking the descolada would mean that Planter would immediately get sick and then eventually die. What having the descolada did to Quim, lacking it will do to Planter.”

“You can’t mean to let him do it,” said Valentine. “It won’t prove anything. He might lose his mind because of illness. Fever makes people delirious.”

“What else can we do?” asked Planter. “Wait until Ela finds a way to tame the virus, and only then find out that without it in its intelligent, virulent form, we are not pequeninos at all, but merely piggies? That we were only given the power of speech by the virus within us, and that when it was controlled, we lost everything and became nothing more than brothertrees? Do we find that out when you loose the virus-killer?”

“But it’s not a serious experiment with a Control—”

“It’s a serious experiment, all right,” said Ender. “The kind of experiment you perform when you don’t give a damn about getting funding, you just need results and you need them now. The kind of experiment you perform when you have no idea what the results will be or even if you’ll know how to interpret them, but there are a bunch of crazy pequeninos planning to get in starships and spread a planet-killing disease all over the galaxy so you’ve got to do something.”

“It’s the kind of experiment you perform,” said Planter, “when you need a hero.”

“When we need a hero?” asked Ender. “Or when you need to be a hero?”

“I wouldn’t talk if I were you,” said Valentine dryly. “You’ve done a few stints as a hero yourself over the centuries.”

“It may not be necessary anyway,” said Ela. “Quara knows a lot more about the descolada than she’s telling. She may already know whether the intelligent adaptability of the descolada can be separated from its lifesustaining functions. If we could make a virus like that, we could test the effect of the descolada on pequenino intelligence without threatening the life of the subject.”

“The trouble is,” said Valentine, “Quara isn’t any more likely to believe our story that the descolada is an artifact created by another species than Qing-jao was able to believe that the voice of her gods was just a genetically-caused obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

“I’ll do it,” said Planter. “I will begin immediately because we have no time. Put me in a sterile environment tomorrow, and then kill all the descolada in my body using the chemicals you’ve got hidden away. The ones you mean to use on humans when the descolada adapts to the current suppressant you’re using.”

“You realize that it may be wasted,” said Ela.

“Then it would truly be a sacrifice,” said Planter.

“If you start to lose your mind in a way that clearly isn’t related to your body’s illness,” said Ela, “we’ll stop the experiment because we’ll have the answer.”

“Maybe,” said Planter.

“You might well recover at that point.”

“I don’t care whether I recover,” said Planter.

“We’ll also stop it,” said Ender, “if you start to lose your mind in a way that is related to your body’s illness, because then we’ll know that the experiment is useless and we wouldn’t learn anything from it anyway.”

“Then if I’m a coward, all I have to do is pretend to be mentally failing and my life will be saved,” said Planter. “No, I forbid you to stop the experiment, no matter what. And if I keep my mental functions, you must let me continue to the end, to the death, because only if I keep my mind to the end will we know that our soul is not just an artifact of the descolada. Promise me!”

“Is this science or a suicide pact?” asked Ender. “Are you so despondent over discovering the probable role of the descolada in pequenino history that you simply want to die?”

Planter rushed to Ender, climbed his body, and pressed his nose against Ender’s. “You liar!” he shouted.

“I just asked a question,” whispered Ender.

“I want to be free!” shouted Planter. “I want the descolada out of my body and I never want it to come back! I want to use this to help free all the piggies so that we can be pequeninos in fact and not in name!”

Gently Ender pried him back. His nose ached from the violence of Planter’s pressing.

“I want to make a sacrifice that proves that I’m free,” said Planter, “not just acting out my genes. Not just trying for the third life.”

“Even the martyrs of Christianity and Islam were willing to accept rewards in heaven for their sacrifice,” said Valentine.

“Then they were all selfish pigs,” said Planter. “That’s what you say about pigs, isn’t it? In Stark, in your common speech? Selfish pigs. Well, it’s the right name for us piggies, isn’t it! Our heroes were all trying to become fathertrees. Our brothertrees were failures from the start. The only thing we serve outside ourselves is the descolada. For all we know, the descolada might be ourselves. But I will be free. I will know what I am, without the descolada or my genes or anything except me.”

“What you’ll be is dead,” said Ender.

“But free first,” said Planter. “And the first of my people to be free.”

After Wang-mu and Jane had told Master Han all that had transpired that day, after he had conversed with Jane about his own day’s work, after the house had fallen silent in the darkness of the night, Wang-mu lay awake on her mat in the corner of Master Han’s room, listening to his soft but insistent snoring as she thought over all that had been said that day.

There were so many ideas, and most of them were so far above her that she despaired of truly understanding them. Especially what Wiggin said about purposes. They were giving her credit for having come up with the solution to the problem of the descolada virus, and yet she couldn’t take the credit because she hadn’t meant to do it; she had thought she was just repeating Qing-jao’s questions. Could she take credit for something she did by accident?

People should only be blamed or praised for what they meant to do. Wang-mu had always believed this instinctively; she didn’t remember anyone ever telling it to her in so many words. The crimes that she was blaming Congress for were all deliberate—genetically altering the people of Path to create the godspoken, and sending the M.D. Device to destroy the haven of the only other sentient species that they knew existed in the universe.

But was that what they meant to do, either? Maybe some of them, at least, thought that they were making the universe safe for humanity by destroying Lusitania—from what Wang-mu had heard about the descolada, it could mean the end of all Earthborn life if it ever started spreading world to world among human beings. Maybe some of Congress, too, had decided to create the godspoken of Path in order to benefit all of humanity, but then put the OCD in their brains so that they couldn’t get out of control and enslave all the inferior, “normal” humans. Maybe they all had good purposes in mind for the terrible things they did.

Certainly Qing-jao had a good purpose in mind, didn’t she? So how could Wang-mu condemn her for her actions, when she thought she was obeying the gods?

Didn’t everybody have some noble purpose in mind for their own actions? Wasn’t everybody, in their own eyes, good?

Except me, thought Wang-mu. In my own eyes, I’m foolish and weak. But they spoke of me as if I were better than I ever thought. Master Han praised me, too. And those others spoke of Qing-jao with pity and scorn—and I’ve felt those feelings toward her, too. Yet isn’t Qing-jao acting nobly, and me basely? I betrayed my mistress. She has been loyal to her government and to her gods, which are real to her, though I no longer believe in them. How can I tell the good people from the bad, if the bad people all have some way of convincing themselves that they’re trying to do good even though they’re doing something terrible? And the good people can believe that they’re actually very bad even though they’re doing something good?

Maybe you can only do good if you think you’re bad, and if you think you’re good then you can only do bad.

But that paradox was too much for her. There’d be no sense in the world if you had to judge people by the opposite of how they tried to seem. Wasn’t it possible for a good person also to try to seem good? And just because somebody claimed to be scum didn’t mean that he wasn’t scum. Was there any way to judge people, if you can’t judge even by their purpose?

Was there any way for Wang-mu to judge even herself?

Half the time I don’t even know the purpose of what I do. I came to this house because I was ambitious and wanted to be a secret maid to a rich godspoken girl. It was pure selfishness on my part, and pure generosity that led Qing-jao to take me in. And now here I am helping Master Han commit treason—what is my purpose in that? I don’t even know why I do what I do. How can I know what other people’s true purposes are? There’s no hope of ever knowing good from bad.

She sat up in lotus position on her mat and pressed her face into her hands. It was as if she felt herself pressed against a wall, but it was a wall that she made herself, and if she could only find a way to move it aside—the way she could move her hands away from her face whenever she wanted—then she could easily push through to the truth.

She moved her hands away. She opened her eyes. There was Master Han’s terminal, across the room. There, today, she had seen the faces of Elanora Ribeira von Hesse and Andrew Wiggin. And Jane’s face.

She remembered Wiggin telling her what the gods would be like. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them. Why would he say such a thing? How could he know what a god would be?

Somebody who wants to teach you how to know everything that they know and do everything that they do—what he was really describing was parents, not gods.

Only there were plenty of parents who didn’t do that. Plenty of parents who tried to keep their children down, to control them, to make slaves of them. Where she had grown up, Wang-mu had seen plenty of that.

So what Wiggin was describing wasn’t parents, really. He was describing good parents. He wasn’t telling her what the gods were, he was telling her what goodness was. To want other people to grow. To want other people to have all the good things that you have. And to spare them the bad things if you can. That was goodness.

What were the gods, then? They would want everyone else to know and have and be all good things. They would teach and share and train, but never force.

Like my parents, thought Wang-mu. Clumsy and stupid sometimes, like all people, but they were good. They really did look out for me. Even sometimes when they made me do hard things because they knew it would be good for me. Even sometimes when they were wrong, they were good. I can judge them by their purpose after all. Everybody calls their purpose good, but my parents’ purposes really were good, because they meant all their acts toward me to help me grow wiser and stronger and better. Even when they made me do hard things because they knew I had to learn from them. Even when they caused me pain.

That was it. That’s what the gods would be, if there were gods. They would want everyone else to have all that was good in life, just like good parents. But unlike parents or any other people, the gods would actually know what was good and have the power to cause good things to happen, even when nobody else understood that they were good. As Wiggin said, real gods would be smarter and stronger than anybody else. They would have all the intelligence and power that it was possible to have.

But a being like that—who was someone like Wang-mu to judge a god? She couldn’t understand their purposes even if they told her, so how could she ever know that they were good? Yet the other approach, to trust in them and believe in them absolutely—wasn’t that what Qing-jao was doing?

No. If there were gods, they would never act as Qing-jao thought they acted—enslaving people, tormenting and humiliating them.

Unless torment and humiliation were good for them …

No! She almost cried aloud, and once again pressed her face into her hands, this time to keep silence.

I can only judge by what I understand. If as far as I can see, the gods that Qing-jao believes in are only evil, then yes, perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps I can’t comprehend the great purpose they accomplish by making the godspoken into helpless slaves, or destroying whole species. But in my heart I have no choice but to reject such gods, because I can’t see any good in what they’re doing. Perhaps I’m so stupid and foolish that I will always be the enemy of the gods, working against their high and incomprehensible purposes. But I have to live my life according to what I understand, and what I understand is that there are no such gods as the ones the godspoken teach us about. If they exist at all, they take pleasure in oppression and deception, humiliation and ignorance. They act to make other people smaller and themselves larger. Those would not be gods, then, even if they existed. They would be enemies. Devils.

The same with the beings, whoever they are, who made the descolada virus. Yes, they would have to be very powerful to make a tool like that. But they would also have to be heartless, selfish, arrogant beings, to think that all life in the universe was theirs to manipulate as they saw fit. To send the descolada out into the universe, not caring who it killed or what beautiful creatures it destroyed—those could not be gods, either.

Jane, now—Jane might be a god. Jane knew vast amounts of information and had great wisdom as well, and she was acting for the good of others, even when it would take her life—even now, after her life was forfeit. And Andrew Wiggin, he might be a god, so wise and kind he seemed, and not acting for his own benefit but for the pequeninos. And Valentine, who called herself Demosthenes, she had worked to help other people find the truth and make wise decisions of their own. And Master Han, who was trying to do the right thing always, even when it cost him his daughter. Maybe even Ela, the scientist, even though she had not known all that she ought to have known—for she was not ashamed to learn truth from a servant girl.

Of course they were not the sort of gods who lived off in the Infinite West, in the Palace of the Royal Mother. Nor were they gods in their own eyes—they would laugh at her for even thinking of it. But compared to her, they were gods indeed. They were so much wiser than Wang-mu, and so much more powerful, and as far as she could understand their purposes, they were trying to help other people become as wise and powerful as possible. Even wiser and more powerful than they were themselves. So even though Wang-mu might be wrong, even though she might truly understand nothing at all about anything, nevertheless she knew that her decision to work with these people was the right one for her to make.

She could only do good as far as she understood what goodness was. And these people seemed to her to be doing good, while Congress seemed to be doing evil. So even though in the long run it might destroy her—for Master Han was now an enemy of Congress, and might be arrested and killed, and her along with him—still she would do it. She would never see real gods, but she could at least work to help those people who were as close to being gods as any real person could ever be.

And if the gods don’t like it, they can poison me in my sleep or catch me on fire as I’m walking in the garden tomorrow or just make my arms and legs and head drop off my body like crumbs off a cake. If they can’t manage to stop a stupid little servant girl like me, they don’t amount to much anyway.

15

LIFE AND DEATH

<Ender’s coming to see us.>

<He comes and talks to me all the time.>

<And we can talk directly into his mind. But he insists on coming. He doesn’t feel like he’s talking to us unless he sees us. He has a harder time distinguishing between his own thoughts and the ones we put in his mind, when we converse from a distance. So he’s coming.>

<And you don’t like this?>

<He wants us to tell him answers and we don’t know any answers.>

<You know everything that the humans know. You got into space, didn’t you? You don’t even need their ansibles to talk from world to world.>

<They’re so hungry for answers, these humans. They have so many questions.>

< We have questions, too, you know.>

<They want to know why, why, why. Or how. Everything all tied up into a nice neat bundle like a cocoon. The only time we do that is when we’re metamorphosing a queen.>

<They like to understand everything. But so do we, you know.>

<Yes, you’d like to think you’re just like the humans, wouldn’t you? But you’re not like Ender. Not like the humans. He has to know the cause of everything, he has to make a story about everything and we don’t know any stories. We know memories. We know things that happen. But we don’t know why they happen, not the way he wants us to.>

<Of course you do.>

<We don’t even care why, the way these humans do. We find out as much as we need to know to accomplish something, but they always want to know more than they need to know. After they get something to work, they’re still hungry to know why it works and why the cause of its working works.>

<Aren’t we like that?>

<Maybe you will be, when the descolada stops interfering with you.>

<Or maybe we’ll be like your workers.>

<If you are, you won’t care. They’re all very happy. It’s intelligence that makes you unhappy. The workers are either hungry or not hungry. In pain or not in pain. They’re never curious or disappointed or anguished or ashamed. And when it comes to things like that, these humans make you and me look like workers.>

<I think you just don’t know us well enough to compare.>

<We’ve been inside your head and we’ve been inside Ender’s head and we’ve been inside our own heads for a thousand generations and these humans make us look like we’re asleep. Even when they’re asleep they’re not asleep. Earthborn animals do this thing, inside their brains—a sort of mad firing-off of synapses, controlled insanity. While they’re asleep. The part of their brain that records sight or sound, it’s firing off every hour or two while they sleep; even when all the sights and sounds are complete random nonsense, their brains just keep on trying to assemble it into something sensible. They try to make stories out of it. It’s complete random nonsense with no possible correlation to the real world, and yet they turn it into these crazy stories. And then they forget them. All that work, coming up with these stories, and when they wake up they forget almost all of them. But when they do remember, then they try to make stories about those crazy stories, trying to fit them into their real lives.>

<We know about their dreaming.>

<Maybe without the descolada, you’ll dream, too.>

<Why should we want to? As you say, it’s meaningless. Random firings of the synapses of the neurons in their brains.>

<They’re practicing. They’re doing it all the time. Coming up with stories. Making connections. Making sense out of nonsense.>

<What good is it, when it means nothing?>

<That’s just it. They have a hunger we know nothing about. The hunger for answers. The hunger for making sense. The hunger for stories.>

<We have stories.>

<You remember deeds. They make up deeds. They change what their stories mean. They transform things so that the same memory can mean a thousand different things. Even from their dreams, sometimes they make up out of that randomness something that illuminates everything. Not one human being has anything like the kind of mind you have. The kind we have. Nothing as powerful. And their lives are so short, they die so fast. But in their century or so they come up with ten thousand meanings for every one that we discover.>

<Most of them wrong.>

<Even if the vast majority of them are wrong, even if ninety-nine of every hundred is stupid and wrong, out of ten thousand ideas that still leaves them with a hundred good ones. That’s how they make up for being so stupid and having such short lives and small memories.>

<Dreams and madness.>

<Magic and mystery and philosophy.>

<You can’t say that you never think of stories. What you’ve just been telling me is a story.>

<I know.>

<See? Humans do nothing you can’t do.>

<Don’t you understand? I got even this story from Ender’s mind. It’s his. And he got the seed of it from somebody else, something he read, and combined it with things he thought of until it made sense to him. It’s all there in his head. While we are like you. We have a clear view of the world. I have no trouble finding my way through your mind. Everything orderly and sensible and clear. You’d be as much at ease in mine. What’s in your head is reality, more or less, as best you understand it. But in Ender’s mind, madness. Thousands of competing contradictory impossible visions that make no sense at all because they can’t all fit together but they do fit together, he makes them fit together, this way today, that way tomorrow, as they’re needed. As if he can make a new idea-machine inside his head for every new problem he faces. As if he conceives of a new universe to live in, every hour a new one, often hopelessly wrong and he ends up making mistakes and bad judgments, but sometimes so perfectly right that it opens things up like a miracle and I look through his eyes and see the world his new way and it changes everything. Madness, and then illumination. We knew everything there was to know before we met these humans, before we built our connection with Ender’s mind. Now we discover that there are so many ways of knowing the same things that we’ll never find them all.>

<Unless the humans teach you.>

<You. see? We are scavengers also.>

<You’re a scavenger. We’re supplicants.>

<If only they were worthy of their own mental abilities.>

<Aren’t they?>

<They are planning to blow you up, you remember. There’s so much possibility in their minds, but they are still, after all, individually stupid and small-minded and half-blind and half-mad. There’s still the ninety-nine percent of their stories that are hideously wrong and lead them into terrible errors. Sometimes we wish we could tame them, like the workers. We tried to, you know, with Ender. But we couldn’t do it. Couldn’t make a worker of him.>

<Why not?>

<Too stupid. Can’t pay attention long enough. Human minds lack focus. They get bored and wander off. We had to build a bridge outside him, using the computer that he was most closely bonded with. Computers, now—those things can pay attention. And their memory is neat, orderly, everything organized and findable.>

<But they don’t dream.>

<No madness. Too bad.>

Valentine showed up unbidden at Olhado’s door. It was early morning. He wouldn’t go to work till afternoon—he was a shift manager at the small brickworks. But he was already up and about, probably because his family was. The children were trooping out the door. I used to see this on television back in the ancient days, thought Valentine. The family going out the door in the morning, all at the same time, and Dad last of all with the briefcase. In their own way, my parents acted out that life. Never mind how deeply weird their children were. Never mind how after we paraded off to school in the morning, Peter and I went prowling through the nets, trying to take over the world through the use of pseudonyms. Never mind that Ender was torn away from the family as a little boy and never saw any of them again, even on his one visit to Earth—except me. I think my parents still imagined they were doing it right, because they went through a ritual they had seen on TV.

And here it is again. The children bursting through the door. That boy must be Nimbo, the one who was with Grego at the confrontation with the mob. But here he is, just a cliché child—no one would guess that he had been part of that terrible night only a little while ago.

Mother gave them each a kiss. She was still a beautiful young woman, even with so many children. So ordinary, so like the cliché, and yet a remarkable woman, for she had married their father, hadn’t she? She had seen past the deformity.

And Dad, not yet off to work, so he could stand there, watching them, patting them, kissing them, saying a few words. Light, clever, loving—the predictable father. So, what’s wrong with this picture? The dad is Olhado. He has no eyes. Just the silvery metal orbs punctuated with two lens apertures in the one eye, and the computer I/O outlet in the other. The kids don’t seem to notice. I’m still not used to it.

“Valentine,” he said, when he saw her.

“We need to talk,” she said.

He ushered her inside. He introduced his wife, Jaqueline. Skin so black it was almost blue, laughing eyes, a beautiful wide smile that you wanted to dive into, it was so welcoming. She brought a limonada, ice-cold and sweating in the morning heat, and then discreetly withdrew. “You can stay,” said Valentine. “This isn’t all that private.” But she didn’t want to stay. She had work to do, she said. And she was gone.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time,” said Olhado.

“I was meetable,” she said.

“You were busy.”

“I have no business,” said Valentine.

“You have Andrew’s business.”

“We’re meeting now, anyway. I’ve been curious about you, Olhado. Or do you prefer your given name, Lauro?”

“In Milagre, your name is whatever people call you. I used to be Sule, for my middle name, Suleimão.”

“Solomon the wise.”

“But after I lost my eyes, I was Olhado, then and forever.”

“‘The watched one’?”

“Olhado could mean that, yes, past participle of olhar, but in this case it means ‘The guy with the eyes.’”

“And that’s your name.”

“My wife calls me Lauro,” he said. “And my children call me Father.”

“And I?”

“Whatever.”

“Sule, then.”

“Lauro, if you must. Sule makes me feel like I’m six.”

“And reminds you of the time when you could see.”

He laughed. “Oh, I can see now, thanks very much. I see very well.”

“So Andrew says. That’s why I’ve come to you. To find out what you see.”

“Want me to play back a scene for you? A blast from the past? I have all my favorite memories stored on computer. I can plug in and play back anything you want. I have, for instance, Andrew’s first visit in my family’s home. I also have some top-flight family quarrels. Or do you prefer public events? Every Mayor’s inaugural since I got these eyes? People do consult me about things like that—what was worn, what was said. I often have trouble convincing them that my eyes record vision, not sound—just like their eyes. They think I should be a holographer and record it all for entertainment.”

“I don’t want to see what you see. I want to know what you think.”

“Do you, now?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I have no opinions. Not on anything you’d be interested in. I stay out of the family quarrels. I always have.”

“And out of the family business. The only one of Novinha’s children not to go into science.”

“Science has brought everyone else so much happiness, it’s hard to imagine why I wouldn’t have gone into it.”

“Not hard to imagine,” said Valentine. And then, because she had found that brittle-sounding people will talk quite openly if goaded, she added a little barb. “I imagine that you simply didn’t have the brains to keep up.”

“Absolutely true,” said Olhado. “I only have wit enough to make bricks.”

“Really?” said Valentine. “But you don’t make bricks.”

“On the contrary. I make hundreds of bricks a day. And with everyone knocking holes in their houses to build the new chapel, I foresee a booming business in the near future.”

“Lauro,” said Valentine, “you don’t make bricks. The laborers in your factory make bricks.”

“And I, as manager, am not part of that?”

“Brickmakers make bricks. You make brickmakers.”

“I suppose. Mostly I make brickmakers tired.”

“You make other things,” said Valentine. “Children.”

“Yes,” said Olhado, and for the first time in the conversation he relaxed. “I do that. Of course, I have a partner.”

“A gracious and beautiful woman.”

“I looked for perfection, and found something better.” It wasn’t just a line of patter. He meant it. And now the brittleness was gone, the wariness too. “You have children. A husband.”

“A good family. Maybe almost as good as yours. Ours lacks only the perfect mother, but the children will recover from that.”

“To hear Andrew talk about you, you’re the greatest human being who ever lived.”

“Andrew is very sweet. He could also get away with saying such things because I wasn’t here.”

“Now you are here,” said Olhado. “Why?”

“It happens that worlds and species of ramen are at a cusp of decision, and the way events have turned out, their future depends in large part on your family. I don’t have time to discover things in a leisurely way—I don’t have time to understand the family dynamics, why Grego can pass from monster to hero in a single night, how Miro can be both suicidal and ambitious, why Quara is willing to let the pequeninos die for the descolada’s sake—”

“Ask Andrew. He understands them all. I never could.”

“Andrew is in his own little hell right now. He feels responsible for everything. He’s done his best, but Quim is dead, and the one thing your mother and Andrew both agree on is that somehow it’s Andrew’s fault. Your mother’s leaving him has torn him up.”

“I know.”

“I don’t even know how to console him. Or even which, as his loving sister, to hope for—that she’ll come back into his life, or leave him forever.”

Olhado shrugged. All the brittleness was back.

“Do you really not care?” asked Valentine. “Or have you decided not to care?”

“Maybe I decided long ago, and now I really don’t.”

Part of being a good interviewer, too, is knowing when to be silent. Valentine waited.

But Olhado was also good at waiting. Valentine almost gave up and said something. She even toyed with the idea of confessing failure and leaving.

Then he spoke. “When they replaced my eyes, they also took out the tear ducts. Natural tears would interfere with the industrial lubricants they put in my eyes.”

“Industrial?”

“My little joke,” said Olhado. “I seem to be very dispassionate all the time, because my eyes never well up with tears. And people can’t read my expressions. It’s funny, you know. The actual eyeball doesn’t have any ability to change shape and show an expression. It just sits there. Yes, your eyes dart around—they either keep steady eye contact or look down or up—but my eyes do that, too. They still move with perfect symmetry. They still point in the direction I’m looking. But people can’t stand to look at them. So they look away. They don’t read the expressions on my face. And therefore they think there are no expressions. My eyes still sting and redden and swell a little at times when I would have cried, if I still had tears.”

“In other words,” said Valentine, “you do care.”

“I always cared,” he said. “Sometimes I thought I was the only one who understood, even though half the time I didn’t know what it was that I was understanding. I withdrew and watched, and because I didn’t have any personal ego on the line in the family quarrels, I could see more clearly than any of them. I saw the lines of power—Mother’s absolute dominance even though Marcão beat her when he was angry or drunk. Miro, thinking it was Marcão he was rebelling against, when always it was Mother. Grego’s meanness—his way of handling fear. Quara, absolutely contrary by nature, doing whatever she thought the people who mattered to her didn’t want her to do. Ela, the noble martyr—what in the world would she be, if she couldn’t suffer? Holy, righteous Quim, finding God as his father, on the premise that the best father is the invisible kind who never raises his voice.”

“You saw all this as a child?”

“I’m good at seeing things. We passive, unbelonging observers always see better. Don’t you think?”

Valentine laughed. “Yes, we do. The same role, then, you think? You and I, both historians?”

“Till your brother came. From the moment he walked in the door, it was obvious that he saw and understood everything, just the way I saw it. It was exhilarating. Because of course I had never actually believed my own conclusions about my family. I never trusted my own judgments. Obviously no one saw things the way I did, so I must be wrong. I even thought that I saw things so peculiarly because of my eyes. That if I had real eyes I would have seen things Miro’s way. Or Mother’s.”

“So Andrew confirmed your judgments.”

“More than that. He acted on them. He did something about them.”

“Oh?”

“He was here as a speaker for the dead. But from the moment he walked in the door, he took—he took—”

“Over?”

“Took responsibility. For change. He saw all the sicknesses I saw, but he started healing them as best he could. I saw how he was with Grego, firm but kind. With Quara, responding to what she really wanted instead of what she claimed to want. With Quim, respecting the distance he wanted to keep. With Miro, with Ela, with Mother, with everybody.”

“With you?”

“Making me part of his life. Connecting with me. Watching me jack into my eye and still talking to me like a person. Do you know what that meant to me?”

“I can guess.”

“Not the part about me. I was a hungry little kid, I’ll admit; the first kind person could have conned me, I’m sure. It’s what he did about us all. It’s how he treated us all differently, and yet remained himself. You’ve got to think about the men in my life. Marcão, who we thought was our father—I had no idea who he was. All I ever saw was the liquor in him when he was drunk, and the thirst when he was sober. Thirst for alcohol but also a thirst for respect that he could never get. And then he dropped over dead. Things got better at once. Still not good, but better. I thought, the best father is the one who isn’t there. Only that wasn’t true, either, was it? Because my real father, Libo, the great scientist, the martyr, the hero of research, the love of my mother’s life—he had sired all these delightful children on my mother, he could see the family in torment, and yet he did nothing.”

“Your mother didn’t let him, Andrew said.”

“That’s right—and one must always do things Mother’s way, mustn’t one?”

“Novinha is a very imposing woman.”

“She thinks she’s the only one in the world ever to suffer,” said Olhado. “I say that without rancor. I have simply observed that she is so full of pain, she’s incapable of taking anyone else’s pain seriously.”

“Try saying something rancorous next time. It might be more kind.”

Olhado looked surprised. “Oh, you’re judging me? Is this motherhood solidarity or something? Children who speak ill of their mothers must be slapped down? But I assure you, Valentine, I meant it. No rancor. No grudges. I know my mother, that’s all. You said you wanted me to tell you what I saw—that’s what I see. That’s what Andrew saw, too. All that pain. He’s drawn to it. Pain sucks him like a magnet. And Mother had so much she almost sucked him dry. Except that maybe you can’t suck Andrew dry. Maybe the well of compassion inside him is bottomless.”

His passionate speech about Andrew surprised her. And pleased her, too. “You say Quim turned to God for the perfect invisible father. Who did you turn to? Not someone invisible, I think.”

“No, not someone invisible.”

Valentine studied his face in silence.

“I see everything in bas-relief,” said Olhado. “My depth perception is very poor. If we’d put a lens in each eye instead of both in one, the binocularity would be much improved. But I wanted to have the jack. For the computer link. I wanted to be able to record the pictures, to be able to share them. So I see in bas-relief. As if everybody were a slightly rounded cardboard cutout, sliding across a flat painted background. In a way it makes everybody seem so much closer together. Sliding over each other like sheets of paper, rubbing on each other as they pass.”

She listened, but said nothing for a while longer.

“Not someone invisible,” he said, echoing, remembering. “That’s right. I saw what Andrew did in our family. I saw that he came in and listened and watched and understood who we were, each individual one of us. He tried to discover our need and then supply it. He took responsibility for other people and it didn’t seem to matter to him how much it cost him. And in the end, while he could never make the Ribeira family normal, he gave us peace and pride and identity. Stability. He married Mother and was kind to her. He loved us all. He was always there when we wanted him, and seemed unhurt by it when we didn’t. He was firm with us about expecting civilized behavior, but never indulged his whims at our expense. And I thought: This is so much more important than science. Or politics, either. Or any particular profession or accomplishment or thing you can make. I thought: If I could just make a good family, if I could just learn to be to other children, their whole lives, what Andrew was, coming so late into ours, then that would mean more in the long run, it would be a finer accomplishment than anything I could ever do with my mind or my hands.”

“So you’re a career father,” said Valentine.

“Who works at a brick factory to feed and clothe the family. Not a brickmaker who also has kids. Lini also feels the same way.”

“Lini?”

“Jaqueline. My wife. She followed her own road to the same place. We do what we must to earn our place in the community, but we live for the hours at home. For each other, for the children. It will never get me written up in the history books.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Valentine.

“It’s a boring life, to read about,” said Olhado. “Not to live, though.”

“So the secret that you protect from your tormented siblings is—happiness.”

“Peace. Beauty. Love. All the great abstractions. I may see them in bas-relief, but I see them up close.”

“And you learned it from Andrew. Does he know?”

“I think so,” said Olhado. “Do you want to know my most closely guarded secret? When we’re alone together, just him and me, or me and Lini and him—when we’re alone, I call him Papa, and he calls me Son.”

Valentine made no effort to stop her tears from flowing, as if they flowed half for him and half for her. “So Ender does have children, after all,” she said.

“I learned how to be a father from him, and I’m a damned good one.”

Valentine leaned forward. It was time to get down to business. “That means that you, more than any of the others, stand to lose something truly beautiful and fine if we don’t succeed in our endeavors.”

“I know,” said Olhado. “My choice was a selfish one in the long run. I’m happy, but I can’t do anything to help save Lusitania.”

“Wrong,” said Valentine. “You just don’t know yet.”

“What can I do?”

“Let’s talk a while longer, and see if we can find out. And if it’s all right with you, Lauro, your Jaqueline should stop eavesdropping from the kitchen now, and come on in and join us.”

Bashfully, Jaqueline came in and sat beside her husband. Valentine liked the way they held hands. After so many children—it reminded herself of holding hands with Jakt, and how glad it made her feel.

“Lauro,” she said, “Andrew tells me that when you were younger, you were the brightest of all the Ribeira children. That you spoke to him of wild philosophical speculations. Right now, Lauro, my adoptive nephew, it is wild philosophy we need. Has your brain been on hold since you were a child? Or do you still think thoughts of great profundity?”

“I have my thoughts,” said Olhado. “But I don’t even believe them myself.”

“We’re working on faster-than-light flight, Lauro. We’re working on discovering the soul of a computer entity. We’re trying to rebuild an artificial virus that has self-defense capabilities built into it. We’re working on magic and miracles. So I’d be glad of any insights you can give me on the nature of life and reality.”

“I don’t even know what ideas Andrew was talking about,” said Olhado. “I quit studying physics, I—”

“If I want studies, I’ll read books. So let me tell you what we told a very bright Chinese servant girl on the world of Path: Let me know your thoughts, and I’ll decide for myself what’s useful and what isn’t.”

“How? You’re not a physicist either.”

Valentine walked to the computer waiting quietly in the corner. “May I turn this on?”

“Pois não,” he said. Of course.

“Once it’s on, Jane will be with us.”

“Ender’s personal program.”

“The computer entity whose soul we’re trying to locate.”

“Ah,” he said. “Maybe you should be telling me things.”

“I already know what I know. So start talking. About those ideas you had as a child, and what has become of them since.”

Quara had a chip on her shoulder from the moment Miro entered the room. “Don’t bother,” she said.

“Don’t bother what?”

“Don’t bother telling me my duty to humanity or to the family—two separate, non-overlapping groups, by the way.”

“Is that what I came for?” asked Miro.

“Ela sent you to persuade me to tell her how to castrate the descolada.”

Miro tried a little humor. “I’m no biologist. Is that possible?”

“Don’t be cute,” said Quara. “If you cut out their ability to pass information from one virus to another, it’s like cutting out their tongues and their memory and everything that makes them intelligent. If she wants to know this stuff, she can study what I studied. It only took me five years of work to get there.”

“There’s a fleet coming.”

“So you are an emissary.”

“And the descolada may figure out how to—”

She interrupted him, finished his sentence. “Circumvent all our strategies to control it, I know.”

Miro was annoyed, but he was used to people getting impatient with his slowness of speech and cutting him off. And at least she had guessed what he was driving at. “Any day,” he said. “Ela feels time pressure.”

“Then she should help me learn to talk to the virus. Persuade it to leave us alone. Make a treaty, like Andrew did with the pequeninos. Instead, she’s cut me off from the lab. Well, two can play that game. She cuts me off, I cut her off.”

“You were telling secrets to the pequeninos.”

“Oh, yes, Mother and Ela, the guardians of truth! They get to decide who knows what. Well, Miro, let me tell you a secret. You don’t protect the truth by keeping other people from knowing it.”

“I know that,” said Miro.

“Mother completely screwed up our family because of her damned secrets. She wouldn’t even marry Libo because she was determined to keep a stupid secret, which if he’d known might have saved his life.”

“I know,” said Miro.

This time he spoke with such vehemence that Quara was taken aback. “Oh, well, I guess that was a secret that bothered you more than it did me. But then you should be on my side in this, Miro. Your life would have been a lot better, all our lives would have been, if Mother had only married Libo and told him all her secrets. He’d still be alive, probably.”

Very neat solutions. Tidy little might-have-beens. And false as hell. If Libo had married Novinha, he wouldn’t have married Bruxinha, Ouanda’s mother, and thus Miro wouldn’t have fallen unsuspectingly in love with his own half-sister because she would never had existed at all. That was far too much to say, however, with his halting speech. So he confined himself to saying “Ouanda wouldn’t have been born,” and hoped she would make the connections.

She considered for a moment, and the connection was made. “You have a point,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I was only a child then.”

“It’s all past,” said Miro.

“Nothing is past,” said Quara. “We’re still acting it out, over and over again. The same mistakes, again and again. Mother still thinks that you keep people safe by keeping secrets from them.”

“And so do you,” said Miro.

Quara thought about that for a moment. “Ela was trying to keep the pequeninos from knowing that she was working on destroying the descolada. That’s a secret that could have destroyed the whole pequenino society, and they weren’t even being consulted. They were preventing the pequeninos from protecting themselves. But what I’m keeping secret is—maybe—a way to intellectually castrate the descolada—to make it half-alive.”

“To save humanity without destroying the pequeninos.”

“Humans and pequeninos, getting together to compromise on how to wipe out a helpless third species!”

“Not exactly helpless.”

She ignored him. “Just the way Spain and Portugal got the Pope to divide up the world between their Catholic Majesties back in the old days right after Columbus. A line on a map, and poof—there’s Brazil, speaking Portuguese instead of Spanish. Never mind that nine out of ten Indians had to die, and the rest lose all their rights and power for centuries, even their very languages—”

It was Miro’s turn to become impatient. “The descolada isn’t the Indians.”

“It’s a sentient species.”

“It isn’t,” said Miro.

“Oh?” asked Quara. “And how are you so sure? Where’s your certificate in microbiology and xenogenetics? I thought your studies were all in xenology. And thirty years out of date.”

Miro didn’t answer. He knew that she was perfectly aware of how hard he had worked to bring himself up to speed since he got back here. It was an ad hominem attack and a stupid appeal to authority. It wasn’t worth answering. So he sat there and studied her face. Waiting for her to get back into the realm of reasonable discussion.

“All right,” she said. “That was a low blow. But so is sending you to try to crack open my files. Trying to play on my sympathies.”

“Sympathies?” asked Miro.

“Because you’re a—because you’re—”

“Damaged,” said Miro. He hadn’t thought of the fact that pity complicated everything. But how could he help it? Whatever he did, it was a cripple doing it.

“Well, yes.”

“Ela didn’t send me,” said Miro.

“Mother, then.”

“Not Mother.”

“Oh, you’re a freelance meddler? Or are you going to tell me that all of humanity has sent you? Or are you a delegate of an abstract value? ‘Decency sent me.”’

“If it did, it sent me to the wrong place.”

She reeled back as if she had been slapped.

“Oh, am I the indecent one?”

“Andrew sent me,” said Miro.

“Another manipulator.”

“He would have come himself.”

“But he was so busy, doing his own meddling. Nossa Senhora, he’s a minister, mixing himself up in scientific matters that are so far above his head that—”

“Shut up,” said Miro.

He spoke forcefully enough that she actually did fall silent—though she wasn’t happy about it.

“You know what Andrew is,” Miro said. “He wrote the Hive Queen and—”

“the Hive Queen and the Hegemon and the Life of Human.”

“Don’t tell me he doesn’t know anything.”

“No. I know that isn’t true,” said Quara. “I just get so angry. I feel like everybody’s against me.”

“Against what you’re doing, yes,” said Miro.

“Why doesn’t anybody see things my way?”

“I see things your way,” said Miro.

“Then how can you—”

“I also see things their way.”

“Yes. Mr. Impartial. Make me feel like you understand me. The sympathetic approach.”

“Planter is dying to try to learn information you probably already know.”

“Not true. I don’t know whether pequenino intelligence comes from the virus or not.”

“A truncated virus could be tested without killing him.”

“Truncated—is that the word of choice? It’ll do. Better than castrated. Cutting off all the limbs. And the head, too. Nothing but the trunk left. Powerless. Mindless. A beating heart, to no purpose.”

“Planter is—”

“Planter’s in love with the idea of being a martyr. He wants to die.”

“Planter is asking you to come and talk to him.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Come on, Miro. They send a cripple to me. They want me to come talk to a dying pequenino. As if I’d betray a whole species because a dying friend—a volunteer, too—asks me with his dying breath.”

“Quara.”

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“Are you?”

“Disse que sim!” she snapped. I said I am.

“You might be right about all this.”

“How kind of you.”

“But so might they.”

“Aren’t you the impartial one.”

“You say they were wrong to make a decision that might kill the pequeninos without consulting them. Aren’t you—”

“Doing the same thing? What should I do, do you think? Publish my viewpoint and take a vote? A few thousand humans, millions of pequeninos on your side—but there are trillions of descolada viruses. Majority rule. Case closed.”

“The descolada is not sentient,” said Miro.

“For your information,” said Quara, “I know all about this latest ploy. Ela sent me the transcripts. Some Chinese girl on a backwater colony planet who doesn’t know anything about xenogenetics comes up with a wild hypothesis, and you all act as if it were already proved.”

“So—prove it false.”

“I can’t. I’ve been shut out of the lab. You prove it true.”

“Occam’s razor proves it true. Simplest explanation that fits the facts.”

“Occam was a medieval old fart. The simplest explanation that fits the facts is always, God did it. Or maybe—that old woman down the road is a witch. She did it. That’s all this hypothesis is—only you don’t even know where the witch is.”

“The descolada is too sudden.”

“It didn’t evolve, I know. Had to come from somewhere else. Fine. Even if it’s artificial, that doesn’t mean it isn’t sentient now.”

“It’s trying to kill us. It’s varelse, not raman.”

“Oh, yes, Valentine’s hierarchy. Well, how do I know that the descolada is the varelse, and we’re the ramen? As far as I can tell, intelligence is intelligence. Varelse is just the term Valentine invented to mean Intelligence-that-we’ve-decided-to-kill, and raman means Intelligence-that-we-haven’t-decided-to-kill-yet.”

“It’s an unreasoning, uncompassionate enemy.”

“Is there another kind?”

“The descolada doesn’t have respect for any other life. It wants to kill us. It already rules the pequeninos. All so it can regulate this planet and spread to other worlds.”

For once, she had let him finish a long statement. Did it mean she was actually listening to him?

“I’ll grant you part of Wang-mu’s hypothesis,” said Quara. “It does make sense that the descolada is regulating the gaialogy of Lusitania. In fact, now that I think about it, it’s obvious. It explains most of the conversations I’ve observed—the information-passing from one virus to another. I figure it should take only a few months for a message to get to every virus on the planet—it would work. But just because the descolada is running the gaialogy doesn’t mean that you’ve proved it’s not sentient. In fact, it could go the other way—the descolada, by taking responsibility for regulating the gaialogy of a whole world, is showing altruism. And protectiveness, too—if we saw a mother lion lashing out at an intruder in order to protect her young, we’d admire her. That’s all the descolada is doing—lashing out against humans in order to protect her precious responsibility. A living planet.”

“A mother lion protecting her cubs.”

“I think so.”

“Or a rabid dog, devouring our babies.”

Quara paused. Thought for a moment. “Or both. Why can’t it be both? The descolada’s trying to regulate a planet here. But humans are getting more and more dangerous. To her, we’re the rabid dog. We root out the plants that are part of her control system, and we plant our own, unresponsive plants. We make some of the pequeninos behave strangely and disobey her. We burn a forest at a time when she’s trying to build more. Of course she wants to get rid of us!”

“So she’s out to destroy us.”

“It’s her privilege to try! When will you see that the descolada has rights?”

“Don’t we? Don’t the pequeninos?”

Again she paused. No immediate counterargument. It gave him hope that she might actually be listening.

“You know something, Miro?”

“What.”

“They were right to send you.”

“Were they?”

“Because you’re not one of them.”

That’s true enough, thought Miro. I’ll never be “one of” anything again.

“Maybe we can’t talk to the descolada. And maybe it really is just an artifact. A biological robot acting out its programming. But maybe it isn’t. And they’re keeping me from finding out.”

“What if they open the lab to you?”

“They won’t,” said Quara. “If you think they will, you don’t know Ela and Mother. They’ve decided that I’m not to be trusted, and so that’s that. Well, I’ve decided they’re not to be trusted, either.”

“Thus whole species die for family pride.”

“Is that all you think this is, Miro? Pride? I’m holding out because of nothing nobler than a petty quarrel?”

“Our family has a lot of pride.”

“Well, no matter what you think, I’m doing this out of conscience, no matter whether you want to call it pride or stubbornness or anything else.”

“I believe you,” said Miro.

“But do I believe you when you say that you believe me? We’re in such a tangle.” She turned back to her terminal. “Go away now, Miro. I told you I’d think about it, and I will.”

“Go see Planter.”

“I’ll think about that, too.” Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. “He is my friend, you know. I’m not inhuman. I’ll go see him, you can be sure of that.”

“Good.”

He started for the door.

“Miro,” she said.

He turned, waited.

“Thanks for not threatening to have that computer program of yours crack my files open if I didn’t open them myself.”

“Of course not,” he said.

“Andrew would have threatened that, you know. Everybody thinks he’s such a saint, but he always bullies people who don’t go along with him.”

“He doesn’t threaten.”

“I’ve seen him do it.”

“He warns.”

“Oh. Excuse me. Is there a difference?”

“Yes,” said Miro.

“The only difference between a warning and a threat is whether you’re the person giving it or the person receiving it,” said Quara.

“No,” said Miro. “The difference is how the person means it.”

“Go away,” she said. “I’ve got work to do, even while I’m thinking. So go away.”

He opened the door.

“But thanks,” she said.

He closed the door behind him.

As he walked away from Quara’s place, Jane immediately piped up in his ear. “I see you decided against telling her that I broke into her files before you even came.”

“Yes, well,” said Miro. “I feel like a hypocrite, for her to thank me for not threatening to do what I’d already done.”

“I did it.”

“We did it. You and me and Ender. A sneaky group.”

“Will she really think about it?”

“Maybe,” said Miro. “Or maybe she’s already thought about it and decided to cooperate and was just looking for an excuse. Or maybe she’s already decided against ever cooperating, and she just said this nice thing at the end because she’s sorry for me.”

“What do you think she’ll do?”

“I don’t know what she’ll do,” said Miro. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll feel ashamed of myself every time I think about how I let her think that I respected her privacy, when we’d already pillaged her files. Sometimes I don’t think I’m a very good person.”

“You notice she didn’t tell you that she’s keeping her real findings outside the computer system, so the only files I can reach are worthless junk. She hasn’t exactly been frank with you, either.”

“Yes, but she’s a fanatic with no sense of balance or proportion.”

“That explains everything.”

“Some traits just run in the family,” said Miro.

The hive queen was alone this time. Perhaps exhausted from something—mating? Producing eggs? She spent all her time doing this, it seemed. She had no choice. Now that workers had to be used to patrol the perimeter of the human colony, she had to produce even more than she had planned. Her offspring didn’t have to be educated—they entered adulthood quickly, having all the knowledge that any other adult had. But the process of conception, egg-laying, emergence, and cocooning still took time. Weeks for each adult. She produced a prodigious number of young, compared to a single human. But compared to the town of Milagre, with more than a thousand women of childbearing age, the bugger colony had only one producing female.

It had always bothered Ender, made him feel uneasy to know that there was only one queen. What if something happened to her? But then, it made the hive queen uncomfortable to think of human beings having only a bare handful of children—what if something happened to them? Both species practiced a combination of nurturance and redundancy to protect their genetic heritage. Humans had a redundancy of parents, and then nurtured the few offspring. The hive queen had a redundancy of offspring, who then nurtured the parent. Each species had found its own balance of strategy.

<Why are you bothering us about this?>

“Because we’re at a dead end. Because everybody else is trying, and you have as much at stake as we do.”

<Do I?>

“The descolada threatens you as much as it threatens us. Someday you probably aren’t going to be able to control it, and then you’re gone.”

<But it’s not the descolada you’re asking me about.>

“No.” It was the problem of faster-than-light flight. Grego had been wracking his brains. In jail there was nothing else for him to think about. The last time Ender had spoken with him, he wept—as much from exhaustion as frustration. He had covered reams of papers with equations, spreading them all over the secure room that was used as a cell. “Don’t you care about faster-than-light flight?”

<It would be very nice.>

The mildness of her response almost hurt, it so deeply disappointed him. This is what despair is like, he thought. Quara a brick wall on the nature of descolada intelligence. Planter dying of descolada deprivation. Han Fei-tzu and Wang-mu struggling to duplicate years of higher study in several fields, all at once. Grego worn out. And nothing to show for it.

She must have heard his anguish as clearly as if he had howled it.

<Don’t.>

<Don’t. >

“You’ve done it,” he said. “It must be possible.”

< We’ve never traveled faster than light. >

“You projected an action across lightyears. You found me.”

<You found us, Ender.>

“Not so,” he said. “I never even knew we had made mental contact until I found the message you had left for me.” It had been the moment of greatest strangeness in his life, to stand on an alien world and see a model, a replication of the landscape that had existed in only one other place—the computer on which he had played his personalized version of the Fantasy Game. It was like having a total stranger come up to you and tell you your dream from the night before. They had been inside his head. It made him afraid, but it also excited him. For the first time in his life, he felt known. Not known of—he was famous throughout humanity, and in those days his fame was all positive, the greatest hero of all time. Other people knew of him. But with this bugger artifact, he discovered for the first time that he was known.

<Think, Ender. Yes, we reached out toward our enemy, but we weren’t looking for you. We were looking for someone like us. A network of minds linked together, with a central mind controlling it. We find each other’s minds without trying, because we recognize the pattern. Finding a sister is like finding ourself. >

“How did you find me, then?”

<We never thought about how. We only did it. Found a hot bright source. A network, but very strange, with shifting membership. And at the center of it, not something like us, but just another—common one. You. But with such intensity. Focused into the network, toward the other humans. Focused inward on your computer game. And focused outward, beyond all, on us. Searching for us.>

“I wasn’t searching for you. I was studying you.” Watching every vid they had at the Battle School, trying to understand the way the bugger mind worked. “I was imagining you.”

<So we say. Searching for us. Imagining us. That’s how we search for each other. So you were calling us.>

“And that was all?”

<No, no. You were so strange. We didn’t know what you were. We couldn’t read anything in you. Your vision was so limited. Your ideas shifted so rapidly, and you thought of only one thing at a time. And the network around you kept shifting so much, each member’s connection with you waxing and waning over time, sometimes very quickly—>

He was having trouble making sense of what they were saying. What kind of network was he connected to?

<The other soldiers. Your computer. >

“I wasn’t connected. They were my soldiers, that’s all.”

<How do you think we’re connected? Do you see any wires?>

“But humans are individuals, not like your workers.”

<Many queens, many workers, changing back and forth, very confusing. Terrible, frightening time. What were these monsters that had wiped out our colony ship? What kind of creature? You were so strange we couldn’t imagine you at all. We could only feel you when you were searching for us.>

Not helpful at all. Nothing to do with faster-than-light flight. It all sounded like mumbo-jumbo, not like science at all. Nothing that Grego could express mathematically.

<Yes, that’s right. We don’t do this like science. Not like technology. No numbers or even thought. We found you like bringing forth a new queen. Like starting a new hive. >

Ender didn’t understand how establishing an ansible link with his brain could be like hatching out a new queen. “Explain it to me.”

<We don’t think about it. We just do it.>

“But what are you doing when you do it?”

<What we always do.>

“And what do you always do?”

<How do you make your penis fill with blood to mate, Ender? How do you make your pancreas secrete enzymes? How do you switch on puberty? How do you focus your eyes?>

“Then remember what you do, and show it to me.”

<You forget that you don’t like this, when we show you through our eyes. >

It was true. She had tried only a couple of times, when he was very young and had first discovered her cocoon. He simply couldn’t cope with it, couldn’t make sense of it. Flashes, a few glimpses were clear, but it was so disorienting that he panicked, and probably fainted, though he was alone and couldn’t be sure what had happened, clinically speaking.

“If you can’t tell me, we have to do something.”

<Are you like Planter? Trying to die?>

“No. I’ll tell you to stop. It didn’t kill me before.”

<We’ll try—something in between. Something milder. We’ll remember, and tell you what’s happening. Show you bits. Protect you. Safe.>

“Try, yes.”

She gave him no time to reflect or prepare. At once he felt himself seeing out of compound eyes, not many lenses with the same vision, but each lens with its own picture. It gave him the same vertiginous feeling as so many years before. But this time he understood a little better—in part because she was making it less intense than before, and in part because he knew something about the hive queen now, about what she was doing to him.

The many different visions were what each of the workers was seeing, as if each were a single eye connected to the same brain. There was no hope of Ender making sense of so many images at once.

<We’ll show you one. The one that matters.>

Most of the visions dropped out immediately. Then, one by one, the others were sorted out. He imagined that she must have some organizing principle for the workers. She could disregard all those who weren’t part of the queen-making process. Then, for Ender’s sake, she had to sort through even the ones who were part of it, and that was harder, because usually she could sort the visions by task rather than by the individual workers. At last, though, she was able to show him a primary image and he could focus on it, ignoring the flickers and flashes of peripheral visions.

A queen being hatched. She had shown him this before, in a carefully-planned vision when he had first met her, when she was trying to explain things to him. Now, though, it wasn’t a sanitized, carefully orchestrated presentation. The clarity was gone. It was murky, distracted, real. It was memory, not art.

<You see we have the queen-body. We know she’s a queen because she starts reaching out for workers, even as a larva. >

“So you can talk to her?”

<She’s very stupid. Like a worker.>

“She doesn’t grow her intelligence until cocooning?”

<No. She has her—like your brain. The memory-think. It’s just empty.>

“So you have to teach her.”

<What good would teaching do? The thinker isn’t there. The found thing. The binder-together. >

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

<Stop trying to look and think, then. This isn’t done with eyes.>

“Then stop showing me anything, if it depends on another sense. Eyes are too important to humans; if I see anything it’ll mask out anything but clear speech and I don’t think there’s much of that at a queen-making.”

<How’s this?>

“I’m still seeing something.”

<Your brain is turning it into seeing. >

“Then explain it. Help me make sense of it.”

<It’s the way we feel each other. We’re finding the reaching-out place in the queen-body. The workers all have it, too, but all it reaches for is the queen and when it finds her all the reaching is over. The queen never stops reaching. Calling.>

“So then you find her?”

<We know where she is. The queen-body. The worker-caller. The memory-holder. >

“Then what are you searching for?”

<The us-thing. The binder. The meaning-maker.>

“You mean there’s something else? Something besides the queen’s body?”

<Yes, of course. The queen is just a body, like the workers. Didn’t you know this?>

“No, I never saw it.”

<Can’t see it. Not with eyes. >

“I didn’t know to look for anything else. I saw the making of the queen when you first showed it to me years ago. I thought I understood then.”

<We thought you did too.>

“So if the queen’s just a body, who are you?”

<We’re the hive queen. And all the workers. We come and make one person out of all. The queen-body, she obeys us like the worker-bodies. We hold them all together, protect them, let them work perfectly as each is needed. We’re the center. Each of us.>

“But you’ve always talked as if you were the hive queen.”

<We are. Also all the workers. We’re all together.>

“But this center-thing, this binder-together—”

<We call it to come and take the queen-body, so she can be wise, our sister. >

“You call it. What is it?”

<The thing we call.>

“Yes, what is it?”

<What are you asking? It’s the called-thing. We call it.>

It was almost unbearably frustrating. So much of what the hive queen did was instinctive. She had no language and so she had never had a need to develop clear explanations of that which had never needed explaining till now. So he had to help her find a way to clarify what he couldn’t perceive directly.

“Where do you find it?”

<It hears us calling and comes.>

“But how do you call?”

<As you called us. We imagine the thing which it must become. The pattern of the hive. The queen and the workers and the binding together. Then one comes who understands the pattern and can hold it. We give the queen-body to it.>

“So you’re calling some other creature to come and take possession of the queen.”

<To become the queen and the hive and all. To hold the pattern we imagined. >

“So where does it come from?”

<Wherever it was when it felt us calling.>

“But where is that?”

<Not here.>

“Fine, I believe you. But where does it come from?”

<Can’t think of the place.>

“You forget?”

<We mean that the place where it is can’t be thought of. If we could think of the place then they would already have thought of themselves and none of them would need to take the pattern we show. >

“What kind of thing is this binder-together?”

<Can’t see it. Can’t know it until it finds the pattern and then when it’s there it’s like us.>

Ender couldn’t help shuddering. All this time he had thought that he was speaking to the hive queen herself. Now he realized that the thing that talked to him in his mind was only using that body the way it used the buggers. Symbiosis. A controlling parasite, possessing the whole hive queen system, using it.

<No. This is ugly, the terrible thing you’re thinking. We aren’t another thing. We’re this thing. We are the hive queen, just the way you’re the body. You say, My body, and yet you are your body, but you’re also possessor of the body. The hive queen is ourself, this body is me, not something else inside. I. I wasn’t anything until I found the imagining. >

“I don’t understand. What was it like?”

<How can I remember? I never had memory until I followed the imagining and came to this place and became the hive queen. >

“Then how did you know that you aren’t just the hive queen?”

<Because after I came, they gave me the memories. I saw the queen-body before I came, and then I saw the queen-body after I was in it. I was strong enough to hold the pattern in my mind, and so I could possess it. Become it. It took many days but then we were whole and they could give us the memories because I had the whole memory. >

The vision the hive queen had been giving him faded. It wasn’t helping anyway, or at least not in any way he could grasp. Nevertheless, a mental image was coming clear for Ender now, one that came from his own mind to explain all the things she was saying. The other hive queens—not physically present, most of them, but linked philotically to the one queen who had to be there—they held the pattern of the relationship between hive queen and workers in their minds, until one of these mysterious memoryless creatures was able to contain the pattern in its mind and therefore take possession of it.

<Yes.>

“But where do these things come from? Where do you have to go to get them?”

<We don’t go anywhere. We call, and there they are.>

“So they’re everywhere?”

<They aren’t here at all. Nowhere here. Another place.>

“But you said you don’t have to go anywhere to get them.”

<Doorways. We don’t know where they are, but everywhere there’s a door.>

“What are the doorways like?”

<Your brain made the word you say. Doorway. Doorway.>

Now he realized that doorway was the word his brain called forth to label the concept they were putting in his mind. And suddenly he was able to grasp an explanation that made sense.

“They’re not in the same space-time continuum as ours. But they can enter ours at any point.”

<To them all points are the same point. All wheres are the same where. They only find one where-ness in the pattern.>

“But this is incredible. You’re calling forth some oeing from another place, and—”

<The calling forth is nothing. All things do it. All new makings. You do it. Every human baby has this thing. The pequeninos are these things also. Grass and sunlight. All making calls them, and they come to the pattern. If there are already some who understand the pattern, then they come and possess it. Small patterns are very easy. Our pattern is very hard. Only a very wise one can possess it.>

“Philotes,” said Ender. “The things out of which all other things are made.”

<The word you say doesn’t make a meaning like what we mean.>

“Because I’m only just making the connection. We never meant what you’ve described, but the thing we did mean, that might be the thing you described.”

<Very unclear.>

“Join the club.”

<Very welcome laughing happy.>

“So when you make a hive queen, you already have the biological body, and this new thing—this philote that you call out of the non-place where philotes are—it has to be one that’s able to comprehend the complex pattern that you have in your minds of what a hive queen is, and when one comes that can do it, it takes on that identity and possesses the body and becomes the self of that body—”

<Of all the bodies.>

“But there are no workers yet, when the hive queen is first made.”

<It becomes the self of the workers-to-come.>

“We’re talking about a passage from another kind of space. A place where philotes already are.”

<All in the same non-place. No place-ness in that place. No where-being. All hungry for whereness. All thirsty for pattern. All lonely for selfness.>

“And you say that we’re made of the same things?”

<How could we have found you if you weren’t?>

“But you said that finding me was like making a hive queen.”

<We couldn’t find the pattern in you. We were trying to make a pattern between you and the other humans, only you kept shifting and changing, we couldn’t make sense of it. And you couldn’t make sense of us, either, so that reaching of yours couldn’t make a pattern, either. So we took the third pattern. You reaching into the machine. You yearning so much for it. Like the life-yearning of the new queen-body. You were binding yourself to the program in the computer. It showed you images. We could find the images in the computer and we could find them in your mind. We could match them while you watched. The computer was very complicated and you were even more complicated but it was a pattern that held still. You were moving together and while you were together you possessed each other, you had the same vision. And when you imagined something and did it, the computer made something out of your imagining and imagined something back. Very primitive imagining from the computer. It wasn’t a self. But you were making it a self by the life-yearning. The reaching-out you were doing.>

“The Fantasy Game,” said Ender. “You made a pattern out of the Fantasy Game.”

<We imagined the same thing you were imagining. All of us together. Calling. It was very complicated and strange, but much simpler than anything else we found in you. Since then we know—very few humans are capable of concentrating the way you concentrated on that game. And we’ve seen no other computer program that responded to a human the way that game responded to you. It was yearning, too. Cycling over and over, trying to find something to make for you.>

“And when you called …”

<It came. The bridge we needed. The together-binder for you and the computer program. It held the pattern so that it was alive even when you weren’t paying attention to it. It was linked to you, you were part of it, and yet we could also understand it. It was the bridge.>

“But when a philote takes possession of a new hive queen, it controls it, queen-body and worker-bodies. Why didn’t this bridge you made take control of me?”

<Do you think we didn’t try?>

“Why didn’t it work?”

<You weren’t capable of letting a pattern like that control you. You could willingly become part of a pattern that was real and alive, but you couldn’t be controlled by it. You couldn’t even be destroyed by it. And there was so much of you in the pattern that we couldn’t even control it ourselves. Too strange for us.>

“But you could still use it to read my mind.”

<We could use it to stay connected with you in spite of all the strangeness. We studied you, especially when you played the game. And as we understood you, we began to grasp the idea of your whole species. That each individual of you was alive, with no hive queen at all.>

“More complicated than you expected?”

<And less. Your individual minds were simpler in the ways that we expected to be complicated, and complicated in ways that we expected them to be simple. We realized that you were truly alive and beautiful in your perverse and tragic lonely way and we decided not to send another colony ship to your worlds.>

“But we didn’t know that. How could we know?”

<We also realized that you were dangerous and terrible. You in particular, dangerous because you found all our patterns and we couldn’t think of anything complicated enough to confuse you. So you destroyed all but me. Now I understand you better. I’ve had all these years to study you. You are not as terrifyingly brilliant as we thought.>

“Too bad. Terrifying brilliance would be useful right now.”

<We prefer a comforting glow of intelligence.>

“We humans get slower as we age. Give me a few more years and I’ll be downright cozy.”

<We know that you’ll die someday. Even though you put it off for so long.>

Ender didn’t want this to become another conversation about mortality or any of the other aspects of human life that so fascinated the hive queen. There was still one question that had occurred to him during the hive queen’s story. An intriguing possibility.

“The bridge you made. Where was it? In the computer?”

<Inside you. The way I’m inside the body of the hive queen.>

“But not part of me.”

<Part of you but also not-you. Other. Outside but inside. Bound to you but free. It couldn’t control you, and you couldn’t control it.>

“Could it control the computer?”

<We didn’t think about that. We didn’t care. Maybe.>

“How long did you use this bridge? How long was it there?”

<We stopped thinking about it. We were thinking about you.>

“But it was still there the whole time you were studying me.”

<Where would it go?>

“How long would it last?”

<We never made one like that before. How would we know? The hive queen dies when the queen-body dies.>

“But what body was the bridge in?”

<Yours. At the center of the pattern.>

“This thing was inside me?”

<Of course. But it was still not-you. It disappointed us that way, when it couldn’t let us control you, and we stopped thinking about it. But we see now that this was very important. We should have searched for it. We should have remembered it.>

“No. To you it was like—a bodily function. Like balling up your fist to hit somebody. You did it, and then when you didn’t need it you didn’t notice whether your fist was still there or not.”

<We don’t understand the connection but it seems to make sense inside you.>

“It’s still alive, isn’t it?”

<It could be. We’re trying to feel it. Find it. Where can we look? The old pattern isn’t there. You don’t play the Fantasy Game anymore.>

“But it would still be linked to the computer, wouldn’t it? A connection between me and the computer. Only the pattern could have grown, couldn’t it? It could include other people, too. Think of it being linked to Miro—the young man I brought with me—”

<The broken one …>

“And instead of being linked to that one computer, linked to thousands and thousands of them, through the ansible links between worlds.”

<This could be. It was alive. It could grow. The way we grow when we make more workers. All this time. Now that you mention it, we’re sure it must still be there because we’re still linked to you, and it was only through that pattern that we connected with you. The connection is very strong now—that’s part of what it is, the link between us and you. We thought the connection grew stronger because we knew you better. But maybe it also grew stronger because the bridge was growing.>

“And I always thought—Jane and I always thought that she was—that she had somehow come to exist in the ansible connections between worlds. That’s probably where she feels herself, the place that feels like the center of her—body, I was going to say.”

<We’re trying to feel whether the bridge between us is still there. Hard to feel it.>

“Like trying to find a particular muscle that you’ve been using all your life but never by itself.”

<Interesting comparison. We don’t see the connection but no, now we see it.>

“The comparison?”

<The bridge. Very big. The pattern of it is too big. We can’t grasp it anymore. Very big. Memory—very confusing. Much harder than finding you the first time—very confusing. Getting lost. We can’t hold it in our mind anymore.>

“Jane,” whispered Ender. “You’re a big girl now.”

Jane’s voice came in answer: “You’re cheating, Ender. I can’t hear what she’s saying to you. I can only feel your heart pounding and your rapid breathing.”

<Jane. We’ve seen this name in your mind many times. But the bridge wasn’t a person with a face—>

“Neither is Jane.”

<We see a face in your mind when you think of this name. We still see it. Always we thought it was a person. But now—>

“She’s the bridge. You made her.”

<Called her. You made the pattern. She possessed it. What she is, this Jane, this bridge, she began with the pattern we discovered in you and the Fantasy Game, yes, but she has imagined herself to be much larger. She must have been a very strong and powerful—philote, if your word is the right name—to be able to change her own pattern and still remember to be herself.>

“You reached out across the lightyears and found me because I was looking for you. And then you found a pattern and called a creature from another space who grasped the pattern and possessed it and became Jane. All of this instantaneously. Faster than light.”

<But this isn’t faster-than-light travel. It’s faster-than-light imagining and calling. It still doesn’t pick you up here and put you there.>

“I know. I know. This may not help us answer the question I came here with. But I had another question, just as important to me, that I never thought would have anything to do with you, and here you had the answer to it all along. Jane’s real, alive the whole time, and her self isn’t out there in space, it’s inside me. Connected to me. They can’t kill her by switching her off. That’s something.”

<If they kill the pattern, she can die.>

“But they can’t kill the whole pattern, don’t you see? It doesn’t depend on the ansibles after all. It depends on me and on the link between me and the computers. They can’t cut the link between me and the computers here and in the satellites orbiting Lusitania. And maybe she doesn’t need the ansibles, either. After all, you don’t need them to reach me through her.”

<Many strange things are possible. We can’t imagine them. They feel very stupid and strange, the things going through your mind. You’re making us very tired, with all your thinking of stupid imaginary impossible things.>

“I’ll leave you, then. But this will help. This has to help. If Jane can find a way to survive because of this, then that’s a real victory. The first victory, when I was beginning to think there wasn’t any victory to be had in this.”

The moment he left the presence of the hive queen, he began talking to Jane, telling her everything he could remember of what the hive queen could explain. Who Jane was, how she was created.

And as he talked, she analyzed herself in light of what he said. Began to discover things about herself that she had never guessed. By the time Ender got back to the human colony, she had verified as much of his story as she could. “I never found this because I always started with the wrong assumptions,” she said. “I imagined my center to be out in space somewhere. I should have guessed I was inside you from the fact that even when I was furious with you, I had to come back to you to be at peace.”

“And now the hive queen says that you’ve grown so big and complex that she can’t hold the pattern of you in her mind anymore.”

“Must have gone through a growth spurt, back during my years of puberty.”

“Right.”

“Could I help it that humans kept adding computers and linking them up?”

“But it isn’t the hardware, Jane. It’s the programs. The mentation.”

“I have to have the physical memory to hold all of that.”

“You have the memory. The question is, can you access it without the ansibles?”

“I can try. As you said to her, it’s like learning to flex a muscle I never knew I had.”

“Or learning to live without one.”

“I’ll see what’s possible.”

What’s possible. All the way home, the car floating over the capim, he was also flying, exhilarated to know that something was possible after all, when till now he had felt nothing but despair. Coming home, though, seeing the burnt-over forest, the two solitary fathertrees with the only greenery left, the experimental farm, the new hut with the cleanroom where Planter lay dying, he realized how much there still was to lose, how many would still die, even if now they had found a way for Jane to live.

It was the end of the day. Han Fei-tzu was exhausted, his eyes hurting from all that he had read. He had adjusted the colors on the computer display a dozen times, trying to find something restful, but it didn’t help. The last time he had worked so intensely was as a student, and then he had been young. Then, too, he had always found results. I was quicker, then, brighter. I could reward myself by achieving something. Now I’m old and slow, I’m working in areas that are new to me, and it may be that these problems have no solutions. So there’s no reward to bolster me. Only the weariness. The pain at the top of my neck, the puffy, tired feeling in my eyes.

He looked at Wang-mu, curled up on the floor beside him. She tried so hard, but her education had begun too recently for her to be able to follow most of the documents that passed through the computer display as he searched for some conceptual framework for faster-than-light travel. At last her weariness triumphed over her will; she was sure she was useless, because she couldn’t understand enough even to ask questions. So she gave up and slept.

But you are not useless, Si Wang-mu. Even in your perplexity you’ve helped me. A bright mind to which all things are new. Like having my own lost youth perched at my elbow.

As Qing-jao was, when she was little, before piety and pride claimed her.

Not fair. Not right to judge his own daughter that way. Until these last weeks, hadn’t he been perfectly satisfied with her? Proud of her beyond all reason? The best and brightest of the godspoken, everything her father had worked for, everything her mother had hoped.

That was the part that chafed. Until a few weeks ago, he had been proudest of all of the fact that he had accomplished his oath to Jiang-qing. This was not an easy accomplishment, to bring up his daughter so piously that she never went through a period of doubt or rebellion against the gods. True, there were other children just as pious—but their piety was usually achieved at the expense of their education. Han Fei-tzu had let Qing-jao learn everything, and then had so deftly led her understanding of it that all fit well with her faith in the gods.

Now he had reaped his own sowing. He had given her a worldview that so perfectly preserved her faith that now, when he had discovered that the gods’ “voices” were nothing but the genetic chains with which Congress had shackled them, nothing could convince her. If Jiang-qing had lived, Fei-tzu would no doubt have been in conflict with her over his loss of faith. In her absence, he had done so well at raising their daughter as Jiang-qing would have that Qing-jao was able to take her mother’s view flawlessly.

Jiang-qing would also have left me, thought Han Fei-tzu. Even if I had not been widowed, I would have been wifeless on this day.

The only companion left to me is this servant girl, who pushed her way into my household only just in time to be the one spark of life in my old age, the one flicker of hope in my dark heart.

Not my daughter-of-the-body, but perhaps there will be time and opportunity, when this crisis is past, to make Wang-mu my daughter-of-the-mind. My work with Congress is finished. Shall I not be a teacher, then, with a single disciple, this girl? Shall I not prepare her to be the revolutionary who can lead the common people to freedom from the tyranny of the godspoken, and then lead Path to freedom from Congress itself? Let her be such a one, and then I can die in peace, knowing that at the end of my life I have created the undoing of all my earlier work that strengthened Congress and helped overcome all opposition to its power.

The soft breathing of the girl Wang-mu was like his own breath, like a baby’s breath, like the sound of a breeze through tall grass. She is all motion, all hope, all freshness.

“Han Fei-tzu, I think you are not asleep.”

He was not; but he had been half-dozing, for the sound of Jane’s voice coming from the computer startled him as if he were waking up.

“No, but Wang-mu is,” he said.

“Wake her, then,” said Jane.

“What is it? She’s earned her rest.”

“She’s also earned the right to hear this.”

Ela’s face appeared beside Jane’s in the display. Han Fei-tzu knew her at once as the xenobiologist who had been entrusted with the study of the genetic samples he and Wang-mu had collected. There must have been a breakthrough.

He bowed himself down, reached out, shook the girl’s hip as she lay there sleeping. She stirred. She stretched. Then, no doubt remembering her duty, she sat bolt upright. “Have I overslept? What is it? Forgive me for falling asleep, Master Han.”

She might have bowed herself in her confusion, but Fei-tzu wouldn’t let her. “Jane and Ela asked me to wake you. They wanted you to hear.”

“I will tell you first,” said Ela, “that what we hoped for is possible. The genetic alterations were crude and easily discovered—I can see why Congress has done its best to keep any real geneticists from working with the human population of Path. The OCD gene wasn’t in the normal place, which is why it wasn’t identified at once by natologists, but it works almost exactly as naturally-occurring OCD genes work. It can easily be treated separately from the genes that give the godspoken enhanced intellectual and creative abilities. I have already designed a splicer bacterium that, if injected into the blood, will find a person’s sperm or ova, enter them, remove the OCD gene, and replace it with a normal one, leaving the rest of the genetic code unaffected. Then the bacterium will die out quickly. It’s based on a common bacterium that should already exist in many labs on Path for normal immunology and birth-defect-prevention work. So any of the godspoken who wish to give birth to children without the OCD can do it.”

Han Fei-tzu laughed. “I’m the only one on this planet who would wish for such a bacterium. The godspoken have no pity on themselves. They take pride in their affliction. It gives them honor and power.”

“Then let me tell you the next thing we found. It was one of my assistants, a pequenino named Glass, who discovered this—I’ll admit that I wasn’t paying much personal attention to this project since it was relatively easy compared to the descolada problem we’re working on.”

“Don’t apologize,” said Fei-tzu. “We are grateful for any kindness. All is undeserved.”

“Yes. Well.” She seemed flustered by his courtesy. “Anyway, what Glass discovered is that all but one of the genetic samples you gave us sort themselves neatly into godspoken and non-godspoken categories. We ran the test blind, and only afterward checked the sample lists against the identity lists you gave us—the correspondence was perfect. Every godspoken had the altered gene. Every sample that lacked the altered gene was also not on your list of godspoken.”

“You said all but one.”

“This one baffled us. Glass is very methodical—he has the patience of a tree. He was sure that the one exception was a clerical error or an error in interpreting the genetic data. He went over it many times, and had other assistants do the same. There is no doubt. The one exception is clearly a mutation of the godspoken gene. It naturally lacks the OCD, while still retaining all of the other abilities Congress’s geneticists so thoughtfully provided.”

“So this one person already is what your splicer bacterium is designed to create.”

“There are a few other mutated regions that we aren’t quite sure of at the moment, but they have nothing to do with the OCD or the enhancements. Nor are they involved in any of the vital processes, so this person should be able to have healthy offspring that carry the trait. In fact, if this person should mate with a person who has been treated with the splicer bacterium, all her offspring will almost certainly carry the enhancements, and there’d be no chance of any of them having the OCD.”

“How lucky for him,” said Han Fei-tzu.

“Who is it?” asked Wang-mu.

“It’s you,” said Ela. “Si Wang-mu.”

“Me?” She seemed baffled.

But Han Fei-tzu was not confused. “Ha!” he cried. “I should have known. I should have guessed! No wonder you have learned as quickly as my own daughter learned. No wonder you have had insights that helped us all even when you barely understood the subject you were studying. You are as godspoken as anyone on Path, Wang-mu—except that you alone are free of the shackles of the cleansing rituals.”

Si Wang-mu struggled to answer, but instead of words, tears came, silently drifting down her face.

“Never again will I permit you to treat me as your superior,” said Han Fei-tzu. “From now on you are no servant in my house, but my student, my young colleague. Let others think of you however they want. We know that you are as capable as anyone.”

“As Mistress Qing-jao?” Wang-mu whispered.

“As anyone,” said Fei-tzu. “Courtesy will require you to bow to many. But in your heart, you need bow to no one.”

“I am unworthy,” said Wang-mu.

“Everyone is worthy of his own genes. A mutation like that is much more likely to have crippled you. But instead, it left you the healthiest person in the world.”

But she would not stop her silent weeping.

Jane must have been showing this to Ela, for she kept her peace for some time. Finally, though, she spoke. “Forgive me, but I have much to do,” she said.

“Yes,” said Han Fei-tzu. “You may go.”

“You misunderstand me,” said Ela. “I don’t need your permission to go. I have more to say before I go.”

Han Fei-tzu bowed his head. “Please. We are listening.”

“Yes,” whispered Wang-mu. “I’m listening too.”

“There is a possibility—a remote one, as you will see, but a possibility nonetheless—that if we are able to decode the descolada virus and tame it, we can also make an adaptation that could be useful on Path.”

“How so?” asked Han Fei-tzu. “Why should we want this monstrous artificial virus here?”

“The whole business of the descolada is entering a host organism’s cells, reading the genetic code, and reorganizing it according to the descolada’s own plan. When we alter it, if we can, we’ll remove its own plan from it. We’ll also remove almost all of its self-defense mechanisms, if we can find them. At that point, it may be possible to use it as a super-splicer. Something that can effect a change, not just on the reproductive cells, but on all the cells of a living creature.”

“Forgive me,” said Han Fei-tzu, “but I have been reading in this field lately, and the concept of a super-splicer has been rejected, because the body starts to reject its own cells as soon as they’re genetically altered.”

“Yes,” said Ela. “That’s how the descolada kills. The body rejects itself to death. But that only happened because the descolada had no plan for dealing with humans. It was studying the human body as it went, making random changes and seeing what happened. It had no single plan for us, and so each victim ended up with many different genetic codes in his or her cells. What if we made a super-splicer that worked according to a single plan, transforming every cell in the body to conform with a single new pattern? In that case, our studies of the descolada assure us that the change could be effected in each individual person within six hours, usually—half a day at the most.”

“Fast enough that before the body can reject itself—”

“It will be so perfectly unified that it will recognize the new pattern as itself.”

Wang-mu’s crying had stopped. She seemed as excited now as Fei-tzu felt, and despite all her self-discipline, she could not contain it. “You can change all the godspoken? Free even the ones who are already alive?”

“If we are able to decode the descolada, then not only would we be able to remove the OCD from the godspoken, we would also be able to install all the enhancements in the common people. It would have the most effect in the children, of course—older people have already passed the growth stages where the new genes would have the most effect. But from that time on, every child born on Path would have the enhancements.”

“What then? Would the descolada disappear?”

“I’m not sure. I think we would have to build into the new gene a way for it to destroy itself when its work is done. But we would use Wang-mu’s genes as a model. Not to stretch the point, Wang-mu, you would become a sort of genetic co-parent of the entire population of your world.”

She laughed. “What a wonderful joke to play on them! So proud to be chosen, and yet their cure will come from one such as me!” At once, though, her face fell and she covered her face with her hands. “How could I say such a thing. I have become as haughty and arrogant as the worst of them.”

Fei-tzu laid his hand on her shoulder. “Say nothing so harsh. Such feelings are natural. They come and go quickly. Only those who make them a way of life are to be condemned for them.” He turned back to Ela. “There are ethical problems here.”

“I know. And I think those problems should be addressed now, even though it may never be possible even to do this. We’re talking about the genetic alteration of an entire population. It was an atrocity when Congress secretly did it to Path without the consent or knowledge of the population. Can we undo an atrocity by following the same path?”

“More than that,” said Han Fei-tzu. “Our entire social system here is based on the godspoken. Most people will interpret such a transformation as a plague from the gods, punishing us. If it became known that we were the source, we would be killed. It’s possible, though, that when it becomes known that the godspoken have lost the voice of the gods—the OCD—the people will turn on them and kill them. How will freeing them from the OCD have helped them then, if they’re dead?”

“We’ve discussed this,” said Ela. “And we have no idea what’s the right thing to do. For now the question is moot because we haven’t decoded the descolada and may never be able to. But if we develop the capability, we believe that the choice of whether to use it should be yours.”

“The people of Path?”

“No,” said Ela. “The first choices are yours, Han Fei-tzu, Si Wang-mu, and Han Qing-jao. Only you know of what has been done to you, and even though your daughter doesn’t believe it, she does fairly represent the viewpoint of the believers and the godspoken of Path. If we get the capability, put the question to her. Put the question to yourselves. Is there some plan, some way to bring this transformation to Path, that would not be destructive? And if it can be done, should it be done? No—say nothing now, decide nothing now. Think about it yourselves. We are not part of this. We will only inform you when or whether we learn how to do it. From there it will be up to you.”

Ela’s face disappeared.

Jane lingered a moment longer. “Worth waking up for?” she asked.

“Yes!” cried Wang-mu.

“Kind of nice to discover that you’re a lot more than you ever thought you were, isn’t it?” said Jane.

“Oh, yes,” said Wang-mu.

“Now go back to sleep, Wang-mu. And you, Master Han—your fatigue is showing very clearly. You’re useless to us if you lose your health. As Andrew has told me, over and over—we must do all we can do without destroying our ability to keep doing it.”

Then she was gone, too.

Wang-mu immediately began to weep again. Han Fei-tzu slid over and sat beside her on the floor, cradled her head against his shoulder, and rocked gently back and forth. “Hush, my daughter, my sweet one, in your heart you already knew who you were, and so did I, so did I. Truly your name was wisely given. If they perform their miracles on Lusitania, you will be the Royal Mother of all the world.”

“Master Han,” she whispered. “I’m crying also for Qing-jao. I have been given more than I ever hoped for. But who will she be, if the voice of the gods is taken from her?”

“I hope,” said Fei-tzu, “that she will be my true daughter again. That she will be as free as you, the daughter who has come to me like a petal on the winter river, borne to me from the land of perpetual spring.”

He held her for many long minutes more, until she began to doze on his shoulder. Then he laid her back on her mat, and he retired to his own corner to sleep, with hope in his heart for the first time in many days.

When Valentine came to see Grego in prison, Mayor Kovano told her that Olhado was with him. “Aren’t these Olhado’s working hours?”

“You can’t be serious,” said Kovano. “He’s a good manager of brick-makers, but I think saving the world might be worth an afternoon of somebody else covering for him on management.”

“Don’t get your expectations too high,” said Valentine. “I wanted him involved. I hoped he might help. But he isn’t a physicist.”

Kovano shrugged. “I’m not a jailer, either, but one does what the situation requires. I have no idea whether it has to do with Olhado being in there or Ender’s visit a little while ago, but I’ve heard more excitement and noise in there than—well, than I’ve ever heard when the inmates were sober. Of course, public drunkenness is what people are usually jailed for in this town.”

“Ender came?”

“From the hive queen. He wants to talk to you. I didn’t know where you were.”

“Yes. Well, I’ll go see him when I leave here.” Where she had been was with her husband. Jakt was getting ready to go back into space on the shuttle, to prepare his own ship for quick departure, if need be, and to see whether the original Lusitanian colony ship could possibly be restored for another flight after so many decades without maintenance of the stardrive. The only thing it had been used for was storage of seeds and genes and embryos of Earthborn species, in case they were someday needed. Jakt would be gone for at least a week, possibly longer, and Valentine couldn’t very well let him go without spending some time with him. He would have understood, of course—he knew the terrible pressure that everyone was under. But Valentine also knew that she wasn’t one of the key figures in these events. She would only be useful later, writing the history of it.

When she left Jakt, however, she had not come straight to the mayor’s office to see Grego. She had taken a walk through the center of town. Hard to believe that only a short time ago—how many days? Weeks?—the mob had formed here, drunken and angry, working themselves up to a murderous rage. Now it was so quiet. The grass had even recovered from the trampling, except for one mudhole where it refused to grow back.

But it wasn’t peaceful here. On the contrary. When the town had been at peace, when Valentine first arrived, there had been bustle and business here in the heart of the colony, all through the day. Now a few people were out and about, yes, but they were glum, almost furtive. Their eyes stayed down, looking at the ground before their feet, as if everyone were afraid that if they didn’t watch every step they’d fall flat.

Part of the glumness was probably shame, thought Valentine. There was a hole in every building in town now, where blocks or bricks had been torn out to use in the building of the chapel. Many of the gaps were visible from the praça where Valentine walked.

She suspected, however, that fear more than shame had killed the vibrancy in this place. No one spoke of it openly, but she caught enough comments, enough covert glances toward the hills north of town that she knew. What loomed over this colony wasn’t the fear of the coming fleet. It wasn’t shame over the slaughter of the pequenino forest. It was the buggers. The dark shapes only occasionally visible on the hills or out in the grass surrounding the town. It was the nightmares of the children who had seen them. The sick dread in the hearts of the adults. Historical that took place set in the Bugger War period were continously checked out from the library as people became obsessed with watching humans achieve victory over buggers. And as they watched, they fed their worst fears. The theoretical notion of the hive culture as a beautiful and worthy one, as Ender had depicted it in his first book, the Hive Queen, disappeared completely for many of the people here, perhaps most of them, as they dwelt in the unspoken punishment and imprisonment enforced by the hive queen’s workers.

Is all our work in vain, after all? thought Valentine. I, the historian, the philosopher Demosthenes, trying to teach people that they need not fear all aliens, but can see them as raman. And Ender, with his empathic books the Hive Queen, the Hegemon, the Life of Human—what force did they really have in the world, compared with the instinctive terror at the sight of these dangerous oversized insects? Civilization is only a pretense; in the crisis, we become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and becoming instead the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy, wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone that we’ll use the moment it comes close enough.

Now she was back in a clean, safe place, not so disquieting even if it did serve as a prison as well as the center of city government. A place where the buggers were seen as allies—or at least as an indispensable peacekeeping force, holding antagonists apart for their mutual protection. There are people, Valentine reminded herself, who are able to transcend their animal origins.

When she opened the cell door, Olhado and Grego were both sprawled on bunks, papers strewn on the floor and table between them, some flat, some wadded up. Papers even covered the computer terminal, so that if the computer was on, the display couldn’t possibly function. It looked like a typical teenager’s bedroom, complete with Grego’s legs stretching up the walls, his bare feet dancing a weird rhythm, twisting back and forth, back and forth in the air. What was his inner music?

“Boa tarde, Tia Valentina,” said Olhado.

Grego didn’t even look up.

“Am I interrupting?”

“Just in time,” said Olhado. “We’re on the verge of reconceptualizing the universe. We’ve discovered the illuminating principle that wishing makes it so and all living creatures pop out of nowhere whenever they’re needed.”

“If wishing makes it so,” said Valentine, “can we wish for faster-than-light flight?”

“Grego’s doing math in his head right now,” said Olhado, “so he’s functionally dead. But yes. I think he’s on to something—he was shouting and dancing a minute ago. We had a sewing-machine experience.”

“Ah,” said Valentine.

“It’s an old science-class story,” said Olhado. “People who wanted to invent sewing machines kept failing because they always tried to imitate the motions of hand-sewing, pushing the needle through the fabric and drawing the thread along behind through the eye at the back end of the needle. It seemed obvious. Until somebody first thought of putting the eye in the nose of the needle and using two threads instead of just one. A completely unnatural, indirect approach that when it comes right down to it, I still don’t understand.”

“So we’re going to sew our way through space?”

“In a way. The shortest distance between two points isn’t necessarily a line. It comes from something Andrew learned from the hive queen. How they call some kind of creature from an alternate spacetime when they create a new hive queen. Grego jumped on that as proof that there was a real non-real space. Don’t ask me what he means by that. I make bricks for a living.”

“Unreal realspace,” said Grego. “You had it backward.”

“The dead awake,” said Olhado.

“Have a seat, Valentine,” said Grego. “My cell isn’t much, but it’s home. The math on this is still crazy but it seems to fit. I’m going to have to spend some time with Jane on it, to do the really tight calculations and run some simulations, but if the hive queen’s right, and there’s a space so universally adjacent to our space that philotes can pass into our space from the other space at any point, and if we postulate that the passage can go the other way, and if the hive queen is also right that the other space contains philotes just as ours does, only in the other space—call it Outside—the philotes aren’t organized according to natural law, but are instead just possibilities, then here’s what might work—”

“Those are awfully big ifs,” said Valentine.

“You forget,” said Olhado. “We start from the premise that wishing makes it so.”

“Right, I forgot to mention that,” said Grego. “We also assume that the hive queen is right that the unorganized philotes respond to patterns in someone’s mind, immediately assuming whatever role is available in the pattern. So that things that are comprehended Outside will immediately come to exist there.”

“All this is perfectly clear,” said Valentine. “I’m surprised you didn’t think of it before.”

“Right,” said Grego. “So here’s how we do it. Instead of trying to physically move all the particles that compose the starship and its passengers and cargo from Star A to Star B, we simply conceive of them all—the entire pattern, including all the human contents—as existing, not Inside, but Outside. At that moment, all the philotes that compose the starship and the people in it disorganize themselves, pop through into the Outside, and reassemble themselves there according to the familiar pattern. Then we do the same thing again, and pop back Inside—only now we’re at Star B. Preferably a safe orbiting distance away.”

“If every point in our space corresponds to a point Outside,” said Valentine, “don’t we just have to do our traveling there instead of here?”

“The rules are different there,” said Grego. “There’s no whereness there. Let’s assume that in our space, whereness—relative location—is simply an artifact of the order that philotes follow. It’s a convention. So is distance, for that matter. We measure distance according to the time it takes to travel it—but it only takes that amount of time because the philotes of which matter and energy are comprised follow the conventions of natural law. Like the speed of light.”

“They’re just obeying the speed limit.”

“Yes. Except for the speed limit, the size of our universe is arbitrary. If you looked at our universe as a sphere, then if you stood outside the sphere, it could as easily be an inch across or a trillion lightyears or a micron.”

“And when we go Outside—”

“Then the Inside universe is exactly the same size as any of the disorganized philotes there—no size at all. Furthermore, since there is no whereness there, all philotes in that space are equally close or nonclose to the location of our universe. So we can reenter Inside space at any point.”

“That makes it sound almost easy,” said Valentine.

“Yes, well,” said Grego.

“It’s the wishing that’s hard,” said Olhado.

“To hold the pattern, you really have to understand it,” said Grego. “Each philote that rules a pattern comprehends only its own part of reality. It depends on the philotes within its pattern to do their job and hold their own pattern, and it also depends the philote that controls the pattern that it’s a part of to keep it in its proper place. The atom philote has to trust the neutron and proton and electron philotes to hold their own internal structures together, and the molecule philote to hold the atom in its proper place, while the atom philote concentrates on his own job, which is keeping the parts of the atom in place. That’s how reality seems to work—in this model, anyway.”

“So you transplant the whole thing to Outside and back Inside again,” said Valentine. “I understood that.”

“Yes, but who? Because the mechanism for sending requires that the whole pattern for the ship and all its contents be established as a pattern of its own, not just an arbitrary conglomeration. I mean, when you load a cargo on a ship and the passengers embark, you haven’t created a living pattern, a philotic organism. It’s not like giving birth to a baby—that’s an organism that can hold itself together. The ship and its contents are just a collection. They can break apart at any point. So when you move all the philotes out into disorganized space, lacking whereness or thisness or any organizing principle, how do they reassemble? And even if they reassemble themselves into the structures they know, what do you have? A lot of atoms. Maybe even living cells and organisms—but without spacesuits or a starship, because those aren’t alive. All the atoms and maybe even the molecules are floating around, probably replicating themselves like crazy as the unorganized philotes out there start copying the pattern, but you’ve got no ship.”

“Fatal.”

“No, probably not,” said Grego. “Who can guess? The rules are all different out there. The point is that you can’t possibly bring them back into our space in that condition, because that definitely would be fatal.”

“So we can’t.”

“I don’t know. Reality holds together in Inside space because all the philotes that it’s comprised of agree on the rules. They all know each other’s patterns and follow the same patterns themselves. Maybe it can all hold together in Outside space as long as the spaceship and its cargo and passengers are fully known. As long as there’s a knower who can hold the entire structure in her head.”

“Her?”

“As I said, I have to have Jane do the calculations. She has to see if she has access to enough memory to contain the pattern of relationships within a spaceship. She has to then see if she can take that pattern and imagine its new location.”

“That’s the wishing part,” said Olhado. “I’m very proud of it, because I’m the one who thought of needing a knower to move the ship.”

“This whole thing is really Olhado’s,” said Grego, “but I intend to put my name first on the paper because he doesn’t care about career advancement and I have to look good enough for people to overlook this felony conviction if I’m going to get a job at a university on another world somewhere.”

“What are you talking about?” said Valentine.

“I’m talking about getting off this two-bit colony planet. Don’t you understand? If this is all true, if it works, then I can fly to Rheims or Baía or—or Earth and come back here for weekends. The energy cost is zero because we’re stepping outside natural laws entirely. The wear and tear on the vehicles is nothing.”

“Not nothing,” said Olhado. “We’ve still got to taxi close to the planet of destination.”

“As I said, it all depends on what Jane can conceive of. She has to be able to comprehend the whole ship and its contents. She has to be able to imagine us Outside and Inside again. She has to be able to conceive of the exact relative positions of the startpoint and endpoint of the journey.”

“So faster-than-light travel depends completely on Jane,” said Valentine.

“If she didn’t exist, it would be impossible. Even if they linked all the computers together, even if someone could write the program to accomplish it, it wouldn’t help. Because a program is just a collection, not an entity. It’s just parts. Not a—what was the word Jane found for it? An aiúa.”

“Sanskrit for life,” Olhado explained to Valentine. “The word for the philote who controls a pattern that holds other philotes in order. The word for entities—like planets and atoms and animals and stars—that have an intrinsic, enduring form.”

“Jane is an aiúa, not just a program. So she can be a knower. She can incorporate the starship as a pattern within her own pattern. She can digest it and contain it and it will still be real. She makes it part of herself and knows it as perfectly and unconsciously as your aiúa knows your own body and holds it together. Then she can carry it with her Outside and back Inside again.”

“So Jane has to go?” asked Valentine.

“If this can be done at all, it’ll be done because Jane travels with the ship, yes,” said Grego.

“How?” asked Valentine. “We can’t exactly go pick her up and carry her with us in a bucket.”

“This is something Andrew learned from the hive queen,” said Grego. “She actually exists in a particular place—that is, her aiúa has a specific location in our space.”

“Where?”

“Inside Andrew Wiggin.”

It took a while for them to explain to her what Ender had learned about Jane from the hive queen. It was strange to think of this computer entity as being centered inside Ender’s body, but it made a kind of sense that Jane had been created by the hive queens during Ender’s campaign against them. To Valentine, though, there was another, immediate consequence. If the faster-than-light ship could only go where Jane took it, and Jane was inside Ender, there could be only one conclusion.

“Then Andrew has to go?”

“Claro. Of course,” said Grego.

“He’s a little old to be a test pilot,” said Valentine.

“In this case he’s only a test passenger,” said Grego. “He just happens to hold the pilot inside him.”

“It’s not as if the voyage will have any physical stress,” said Olhado. “If Grego’s theory works out exactly right, he’ll just sit there and after a couple of minutes or actually a microsecond or two, he’ll be in the other place. And if it doesn’t work at all, he’ll just stay right here, with all of us feeling foolish for thinking we could wish our way through space.”

“And if it turns out Jane can get him Outside but can’t hold things together there, then he’ll be stranded in a place that doesn’t even have any placeness to it,” said Valentine.

“Well, yes,” said Grego. “If it works halfway, the passengers are effectively dead. But since we’ll be in a place without time, it won’t matter to us. It’ll just be an eternal instant. Probably not enough time for our brains to notice that the experiment failed. Stasis.”

“Of course, if it works,” said Olhado, “then we’ll carry our own spacetime with us, so there would be duration. Therefore, we’ll never know if we fail. We’ll only notice if we succeed.”

“But I’ll know if he never comes back,” said Valentine.

“Right,” said Grego. “If he never comes back, then you’ll have a few months of knowing it until the fleet gets here and blasts everything and everybody all to hell.”

“Or until the descolada turns everybody’s genes inside out and kills us all,” added Olhado.

“I suppose you’re right,” said Valentine. “Failure won’t kill them any deader than they’ll be if they stay.”

“But you see the deadline pressure that we’re under,” said Grego. “We don’t have much time left before Jane loses her ansible connections. Andrew says that she might well survive it after all—but she’ll be crippled. Brain-damaged.”

“So even if it works, the first flight might be the last.”

“No,” said Olhado. “The flights are instantaneous. If it works, she can shuttle everybody off this planet in no more time than it takes people to get in and out of the starship.”

“You mean it can take off from a planet surface?”

“That’s still iffy,” said Grego. “She might only be able to calculate location within, say ten thousand kilometers. There’s no explosion or displacement problem, since the philotes will reenter Inside space ready to obey natural laws again. But if the starship reappears in the middle of a planet it’ll still be pretty hard to dig to the surface.”

“But if she can be really precise—within a couple of centimeters, for instance—then the flights can be surface-to-surface,” said Olhado.

“Of course we’re dreaming,” said Grego. “Jane’s going to come back and tell us that even if she could turn all the stellar mass in the galaxy into computer chips, she couldn’t hold all the data she’d have to know in order to make a starship travel this way. But at the moment, it still sounds possible and I am feeling good!”

At that, Grego and Olhado started whooping and laughing so loud that Mayor Kovano came to the door to make sure Valentine was all right. To her embarrassment, he caught her laughing and whooping right along with them.

“Are we happy, then?” asked Kovano.

“I guess,” said Valentine, trying to recover her composure.

“Which of our many problems have we solved?”

“Probably none of them,” said Valentine. “It would be too idiotically convenient if the universe could be manipulated to work this way.”

“But you’ve thought of something.”

“The metaphysical geniuses here have a completely unlikely possibility,” said Valentine. “Unless you slipped them something really weird in their lunch.”

Kovano laughed and left them alone. But his visit had had the effect of sobering them again.

“Is it possible?” asked Valentine.

“I would never have thought so,” said Grego. “I mean, there’s the problem of origin.”

“It actually answers the problem of origin,” said Olhado. “The Big Bang theory’s been around since—”

“Since before I was born,” said Valentine.

“I guess,” said Olhado. “What nobody’s been able to figure out is why a Big Bang would ever happen. This way it makes a weird kind of sense. If somebody who was capable of holding the pattern of the entire universe in his head stepped Outside, then all the philotes there would sort themselves out into the largest place in the pattern that they could control. Since there’s no time there, they could take a billion years or a microsecond, all the time they needed, and then when it was sorted out, bam, there they are, the whole universe, popping out into a new Inside space. And since there’s no distance or position—no whereness—then the entire thing would begin the size of a geometric point—”

“No size at all,” said Grego.

“I remember my geometry,” said Valentine.

“And immediately expand, creating space as it grew. As it grew, time would seem to slow down—or do I mean speed up?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Grego. “It all depends whether you’re Inside the new space or Outside or in some other Inspace.”

“Anyway, the universe now seems to be constant in time while it’s expanding in space. But if you wanted to, you could just as easily see it as constant in size but changing in time. The speed of light is slowing down so that it takes longer to get from one place to another, only we can’t tell that it’s slowing down because everything else slows down exactly relative to the speed of light. You see? All a matter of perspective. For that matter, as Grego said before, the universe we live in is still, in absolute terms, exactly the size of a geometric point—when you look at it from Outside. Any growth that seems to take place on the Inside is just a matter of relative location and time.”

“And what kills me,” said Grego, “is that this is the kind of thing that’s been going on inside Olhado’s head all these years. This picture of the universe as a dimensionless point in Outside space is the way he’s been thinking all along. Not that he’s the first to think of it. Just that he’s the one who actually believed it and saw the connection between that and the non-place where Andrew says the hive queen goes to find aiúas.”

“As long as we’re playing metaphysical games,” said Valentine, “then where did this whole thing begin? If what we think of as reality is just a pattern that somebody brought Outside, and the universe just popped into being, then whoever it was is probably still wandering around giving off universes wherever she goes. So where did she come from? And what was there before she started doing it? And how did Outside come to exist, for that matter?”

“That’s Inspace thinking,” said Olhado. “That’s the way you conceive of things when you still believe in space and time as absolutes. You think of everything starting and stopping, of things having origins, because that’s the way it is in the observable universe. The thing is, Outside there’re no rules like that at all. Outside was always there and always will be there. The number of philotes there is infinite, and all of them always existed. No matter how many of them you pull out and put into organized universes, there’ll be just as many left as there always were.”

“But somebody had to start making universes.”

“Why?” asked Olhado.

“Because—because I—”

“Nobody ever started. It’s always been going on. I mean, if it weren’t already going on, it couldn’t start. Outside where there aren’t any patterns, it would be impossible to conceive of a pattern. They can’t act, by definition, because they literally can’t even find themselves.”

“But how could it always have been going on?”

“Think of it as if this moment in time, the reality we live in at this moment, this condition of the entire universe—of all the universes—”

“You mean now.”

“Right. Think of it as if now were the surface of a sphere. Time is moving forward through the chaos of Outside like the surface of an expanding sphere, a balloon inflating. On the outside, chaos. On the inside, reality. Always growing—like you said, Valentine. Popping up new universes all the time.”

“But where did this balloon come from?”

“OK, you’ve got the balloon. The expanding sphere. Only now think of it as a sphere with an infinite radius.”

Valentine tried to think what that would mean. “The surface would be completely flat.”

“That’s right.”

“And you could never go all the way around it.”

“That’s right, too. Infinitely large. Impossible even to count all the universes that exist on the reality side. And now, starting from the edge, you get on a starship and start heading inward toward the center. The farther in you go, the older everything is. All the old universes, back and back. When do you get to the first one?”

“.You don’t,” said Valentine. “Not if you’re traveling at a finite rate.”

“You don’t reach the center of a sphere of infinite radius, if you’re starting at the surface, because no matter how far you go, no matter how quickly, the center, the beginning, is always infinitely far away.”

“And that’s where the universe began.”

“I believe it,” said Olhado. “I think it’s true.”

“So the universe works this way because it’s always worked this way,” said Valentine.

“Reality works this way because that’s what reality is. Anything that doesn’t work this way pops back into chaos. Anything that does, comes across into reality. The dividing line is always there.”

“What I love,” said Grego, “is the idea that after we’ve started tootling around at instantaneous speeds in our reality, what’s to stop us from finding others? Whole new universes?”

“Or making others,” said Olhado.

“Right,” said Grego. “As if you or I could actually hold a pattern for a whole universe in our minds.”

“But maybe Jane could,” said Olhado. “Couldn’t she?”

“What you’re saying,” said Valentine, “is that maybe Jane is God.”

“She’s probably listening right now,” said Grego. “The computer’s on, even if the display is blocked. I’ll bet she’s getting a kick out of this.”

“Maybe every universe lasts long enough to produce something like Jane,” said Valentine. “And then she goes out and creates more and—”

“It goes on and on,” said Olhado. “Why not?”

“But she’s an accident,” said Valentine.

“No,” said Grego. “That’s one of the things Andrew found out today. You’ve got to talk to him. Jane was no accident. For all we know there are no accidents. For all we know, everything was all part of the pattern from the start.”

“Everything except ourselves,” said Valentine. “Our—what’s the word for the philote that controls us?”

“Aiúa,” said Grego. He spelled it out for her.

“Yes,” she said. “Our will, anyway, which always existed, with whatever strengths and weaknesses it has. And that’s why, as long as we’re part of the pattern of reality, we’re free.”

“Sounds like the ethicist is getting into the act,” said Olhado.

“This is probably complete bobagem,” said Grego. “Jane’s going to come back laughing at us. But Nossa Senhora, it’s fun, isn’t it?”

“Hey, for all we know, maybe that’s why the universe exists in the first place,” said Olhado. “Because going around through chaos popping out realities is a lark. Maybe God’s been having the best time.”

“Or maybe he’s just waiting for Jane to get out there and keep him company,” said Valentine.

It was Miro’s turn with Planter. Late—after midnight. Not that he could sit by him and hold his hand. Inside the cleanroom, Miro had to wear a suit, not to keep contamination out, but to keep the descolada virus he carried inside himself from getting to Planter.

If I just cracked my suit a little bit, thought Miro, I could save his life.

In the absence of the descolada, the breakdown of Planter’s body was rapid and devastating. They all knew that the descolada had messed with the pequenino reproductive cycle, giving the pequeninos their third life as trees, but until now it hadn’t been clear how much of their daily life depended on the descolada. Whoever designed this virus was a coldhearted monster of efficiency. Without the descolada’s daily, hourly, minutely intervention, cells began to become sluggish, the production of vital energy-storing molecules stopped, and—what they feared most—the synapses of the brain fired less rapidly. Planter was rigged with tubes and electrodes, and he lay inside several scanning fields, so that from the outside Ela and her pequenino assistants could monitor every aspect of his dying. In addition, there were tissue samples every hour or so around the clock. His pain was so great that when he slept at all, the taking of tissue samples didn’t wake him. And yet through all this—the pain, the quasi-stroke that was afflicting his brain—Planter remained doggedly lucid. As if he were determined by sheer force of will to prove that even without the descolada, a pequenino could be intelligent. Planter wasn’t doing this for science, of course. He was doing it for dignity.

The real researchers couldn’t spare time to take a shift as the inside worker, wearing the suit and just sitting there, watching him, talking to him. Only people like Miro, and Jakt’s and Valentine’s children—Syfte, Lars, Ro, Varsam—and the strange quiet woman Plikt; people who had no other urgent duties to attend to, who were patient enough to endure the waiting and young enough to handle their duties with precision—only such people were given shifts. They might have added a fellow pequenino to the shift, but all the brothers who knew enough about human technologies to do the job right were part of Ela’s or Ouanda’s teams, and had too much work to do. Of all those who spent time inside the cleanroom with him, taking tissue samples, feeding him, changing bottles, cleaning him up, only Miro had known pequeninos well enough to communicate with them. Miro could speak to him in Brothers’ Language. That had to be of some comfort to him, even if they were virtual strangers, Planter having been born after Miro left Lusitania on his thirty-year voyage.

Planter was not asleep. His eyes were half-open, looking at nothing, but Miro knew from the movement of his lips that he was speaking. Reciting to himself passages from some of the epics of his tribe. Sometimes he chanted sections of the tribal genealogy. When he first started doing this, Ela had worried that he was becoming delirious. But he insisted that he was doing it to test his memory. To make sure that in losing the descolada he wasn’t losing his tribe—which would be the same as losing himself.

Right now, as Miro turned up the volume inside his suit, he could hear Planter telling the story of some terrible war with the forest of Skysplitter, the “tree who called thunder.” There was a digression in the middle of the war-story that told how Skysplitter got his name. This part of the tale sounded very old and mythic, a magical story about a brother who carried little mothers to the place where the sky fell open and the stars tumbled through onto the ground. Though Miro had been lost in his own thoughts about the day’s discoveries—the origin of Jane, Grego’s and Olhado’s idea of travel-by-wish—for some reason he found himself paying close attention to the words that Planter was saying. And as the story ended, Miro had to interrupt.

“How old is that story?”

“Old,” whispered Planter. “You were listening?”

“To the last part of it.” It was all right to talk to Planter at length. Either he didn’t grow impatient with the slowness of Miro’s speech—after all, Planter wasn’t going anywhere—or his own cognitive processes had slowed to match Miro’s halting pace. Either way, Planter let Miro finish his own sentences, and answered him as if he had been listening carefully. “Did I understand you to say that this Skysplitter carried little mothers with him?”

“That’s right,” whispered Planter.

“But he wasn’t going to the fathertree.”

“No. He just had little mothers on his carries. I learned this story years ago. Before I did any human science.”

“You know what it sounds like to me? That the story might come from a time when you didn’t carry little mothers to the fathertree. When the little mothers didn’t lick their sustenance from the sappy inside of the mothertree. Instead they hung from the carries on the male’s abdomen until the infants matured enough to burst out and take their mothers’ place at the teat.”

“That’s why I chanted it for you,” said Planter. “I was trying to think of how it might have been, if we were intelligent before the descolada came. And finally I remembered that part in the story of Skysplitter’s War.”

“He went to the place where the sky broke open.”

“The descolada got here somehow, didn’t it?”

“How old is that story?”

“Skysplitter’s War was twenty-nine generations ago. Our own forest isn’t that old. But we carried songs and stories with us from our father-forest.”

“The part of the story about the sky and the stars, that could be a lot older, though, couldn’t it?”

“Very old. The fathertree Skysplitter died long ago. He might have been very old even when the war took place.”

“Do you think it might be possible that this is a memory of the pequenino who first discovered the descolada? That it was brought here by a starship, and that what he saw was some kind of reentry vehicle?”

“That’s why I chanted it.”

“If that’s true, then you were definitely intelligent before the coming of the descolada.”

“All gone now,” said Planter.

“What’s all gone? I don’t understand.”

“Our genes of that time. Can’t even guess what the descolada took away from us and threw out.”

It was true. Each descolada virus might contain within itself the complete genetic code for every native life form on Lusitania, but that was only the genetic code as it was now, in its descolada-controlled state. What the code was before the descolada came could never be reconstructed or restored.

“Still,” said Miro. “It’s intriguing. To think that you already had language and songs and stories before the virus.” And then, though he knew he shouldn’t, he added, “Perhaps that makes it unnecessary for you to try to prove the independence of pequenino intelligence.”

“Another attempt to save the piggy,” said Planter.

A voice came over the speaker. A voice from outside the cleanroom.

“You can move on out now.” It was Ela. She was supposed to be asleep during Miro’s shift.

“My shift isn’t over for three hours,” said Miro.

“I’ve got somebody else coming in.”

“There are plenty of suits.”

“I need you out here, Miro.” Ela’s voice brooked no possibility of disobedience. And she was the scientist in charge of this experiment.

When he came out a few minutes later, he understood what was going on. Quara stood there, looking icy, and Ela was at least as furious. They had obviously been quarreling again—no surprise there. The surprise was that Quara was here at all.

“You might as well go back inside,” said Quara as soon as Miro emerged from the sterilization chamber.

“I don’t even know why I left,” said Miro.

“She insists on having a private conversation,” said Ela.

“She’ll call you out,” said Quara, “but she won’t disconnect the auditory monitoring system.”

“We’re supposed to be documenting every moment of Planter’s conversation. For lucidity.”

Miro sighed. “Ela, grow up.”

She almost exploded. “Me! Me grow up! She comes in here like she thinks she’s Nossa Senhora on her throne—”

“Ela,” said Miro. “Shut up and listen. Quara is Planter’s only hope of living through this experiment. Can you honestly say that it wouldn’t serve the purpose of this experiment to let her—”

“All right,” said Ela, cutting him off because she already grasped his argument and bowed to it. “She’s the enemy of every living sentient being on this planet, but I’ll cut off the auditory monitoring because she wants to have a private conversation with the brother that she’s killing.”

That was too much for Quara. “You don’t have to cut off anything for me,” she said. “I’m sorry I came. It was a stupid mistake.”

“Quara!” shouted Miro.

She stopped at the lab door.

“Get the suit on and go talk to Planter. What does he have to do with her?”

Quara glared once again at Ela, but she headed toward the sterilization room from which Miro had just emerged.

He felt greatly relieved. Since he knew that he had no authority at all, and that both of them were perfectly capable of telling him what he could do with his orders, the fact that they complied suggested that in fact they really wanted to comply. Quara really did want to speak to Planter. And Ela really did want her to do it. They might even be growing up enough to stop their personal differences from endangering other people’s lives. There might be hope for this family yet.

“She’ll just switch it back on as soon as I’m inside,” said Quara.

“No she won’t,” said Miro.

“She’ll try,” said Quara.

Ela looked at her scornfully. “I know how to keep my word.”

They said nothing more to each other. Quara went inside the sterilization chamber to dress. A few minutes later she was out in the cleanroom, still dripping from the descolada-killing solution that had been sprayed all over the suit as soon as she was inside it.

Miro could hear Quara’s footsteps.

“Shut it off,” he said.

Ela reached up and pushed a button. The footsteps went silent.

Inside his ear, Jane spoke to him. “Do you want me to play everything they say for you?”

He subvocalized. “You can still hear inside there?”

“The computer is linked to several monitors that are sensitive to vibration. I’ve picked up a few tricks about decoding human speech from the slightest vibrations. And the instruments are very sensitive.”

“Go ahead then,” said Miro.

“No moral qualms about invasion of privacy?”

“Not a one,” said Miro. The survival of a world was at stake. And he had kept his word—the auditory monitoring equipment was off. Ela couldn’t hear what was being said.

The conversation was nothing at first. How are you? Very sick. Much pain? Yes.

It was Planter who broke things out of the pleasant formalities and into the heart of the issue.

“Why do you want all my people to be slaves?”

Quara sighed—but, to her credit, it didn’t sound petulant. To Miro’s practiced ear, it sounded as though she were really emotionally torn. Not at all the defiant face she showed to her family. “I don’t,” she said.

“Maybe you didn’t forge the chains, but you hold the key and refuse to use it.”

“The descolada isn’t a chain,” she said. “A chain is a nothing. The descolada is alive.”

“So am I. So are all my people. Why is their life more important than ours?”

“The descolada doesn’t kill you. Your enemy is Ela and my mother. They’re the ones who would kill all of you in order to keep the descolada from killing them.”

“Of course,” said Planter. “Of course they would. As I would kill all of them to protect my people.”

“So your quarrel isn’t with me.”

“Yes it is. Without what you know, humans and pequeninos will end up killing each other, one way or another. They’ll have no choice. As long as the descolada can’t be tamed, it will eventually destroy humanity or humanity will have to destroy it—and us along with it.”

“They’ll never destroy it,” said Quara.

“Because you won’t let them.”

“Any more than I’d let them destroy you. Sentient life is sentient life.”

“No,” said Planter. “With ramen you can live and let live. But with varelse, there can be no dialogue. Only war.”

“No such thing,” Quara said. Then she launched into the same arguments she had used when Miro talked to her.

When she was finished, there was silence for a while.

“Are they talking still?” Ela whispered to the people who were watching in the visual monitors. Miro didn’t hear an answer—somebody probably shook his head no.

“Quara,” whispered Planter.

“I’m still here,” she answered. To her credit, the argumentative tone was gone from her voice again. She had taken no joy from her cruel moral correctness.

“That’s not why you’re refusing to help,” he said.

“Yes it is.”

“You’d help in a minute if it weren’t, your own family you had to surrender to.”

“Not true!” she shouted.

So—Planter struck a nerve.

“You’re only so sure you’re right because they’re so sure you’re wrong.”

“I am right!”

“When have you ever seen someone who had no doubts who was also correct about anything?”

“I have doubts,” whispered Quara.

“Listen to your doubts,” said Planter. “Save my people. And yours.”

“Who am I to decide between the descolada and our people?”

“Exactly,” said Planter. “Who are you to make such a decision?”

“I’m not,” she said. “I’m withholding a decision.”

“You know what the descolada can do. You know what it will do. Withholding a decision is a decision.”

“It’s not a decision. It’s not an action.”

“Failing to try to stop a murder that you might easily stop—how is that not murder?”

“Is this why you wanted to see me? One more person telling me what to do?”

“I have the right.”

“Because you took it upon yourself to become a martyr and die?”

“I haven’t lost my mind yet,” said Planter.

“Right. You’ve proved your point. Now let them get the descolada back in here and save you.”

“No.”

“Why not? Are you so sure you’re right?”

“For my own life, I can decide. I’m not like you—I don’t decide for others to die.”

“If humanity dies, I die with them,” said Quara.

“Do you know why I want to die?” said Planter.

“Why?”

“So I don’t have to watch humans and pequeninos kill each other ever again.”

Quara bowed her head.

“You and Grego—you’re both the same.”

Tears dropped onto the faceplate of the suit. “That’s a lie.”

“You both refuse to listen to anybody else. You know better about everything. And when you’re both done, many many innocent people are dead.”

She stood up as if to go. “Die, then,” she said. “Since I’m such a murderer, why should I cry over you?” But she didn’t take a step. She doesn’t want to go, thought Miro.

“Tell them,” said Planter.

She shook her head, so vigorously that tears flipped outward from her eyes, spattering the inside of the mask. If she kept that up, soon she wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

“If you tell what you know, everybody is wiser. If you keep a secret, then everyone is a fool.”

“If I tell, the descolada will die!”

“Then let it!” cried Planter.

The exertion was an extraordinary drain on him. The instruments in the lab went crazy for a few moments. Ela muttered under her breath as she checked with each of the technicians monitoring them.

“Is that how you’d like me to feel about you?” asked Quara.

“It is how you feel about me,” whispered Planter. “Let him die.”

“No,” she said.

“The descolada came and enslaved my people. So what if it’s sentient or not! It’s a tyrant. It’s a murderer. If a human being behaved the way the descolada acts, even you would agree he had to be stopped, even if killing him were the only way. Why should another species be treated more leniently than a member of your own?”

“Because the descolada doesn’t know what it’s doing,” said Quara. “It doesn’t understand that we’re intelligent.”

“It doesn’t care,” said Planter. “Whoever made the descolada sent it out not caring whether the species it captures or kills are sentient or not. Is that the creature you want all my people and all your people to die for? Are you so filled with hate for your family that you’ll be on the side of a monster like the descolada?”

Quara had no answer. She sank onto the stool beside Planter’s bed.

Planter reached out a hand and rested it on her shoulder. The suit was not so thick and impermeable that she couldn’t feel the pressure of it, even though he was very weak.

“For myself, I don’t mind dying,” he said. “Maybe because of the third life, we pequeninos don’t have the same fear of death that you short-lived humans do. But even though I won’t have the third life, Quara, I will have the kind of immortality you humans have. My name will live in the stories. Even if I have no tree at all, my name will live. And what I did. You humans can say that I’m choosing to be a martyr for nothing, but my brothers understand. By staying clear and intelligent to the end, I prove that they are who they are. I help show that our slavemasters didn’t make us who we are, and can’t stop us from being who we are. The descolada may force us to do many things, but it doesn’t own us to the very center. Inside us there is a place that is our true self. So I don’t mind dying. I will live forever in every pequenino that is free.”

“Why are you saying this when only I can hear?” said Quara.

“Because only you have the power to kill me completely. Only you have the power to make it so my death means nothing, so that all my people die after me and there’s no one left to remember. Why shouldn’t I leave my testament with you alone? Only you will decide whether or not it has any worth.”

“I hate you for this,” she said. “I knew you’d do this.”

“Do what?”

“Make me feel so terrible that I have to—give in!”

“If you knew I’d do this, why did you come?”

“I shouldn’t have! I wish I hadn’t!”

“I’ll tell you why you came. You came so that I would make you give in. So that when you did it, you’d be doing it for my sake, and not for your family.”

“So I’m your puppet?”

“Just the opposite. You chose to come here. You are using me to make you do what you really want to do. At heart you are still human, Quara. You want your people to live. You would be a monster if you didn’t.”

“Just because you’re dying doesn’t make you wise,” she said.

“Yes it does,” said Planter.

“What if I tell you that I’ll never cooperate in the killing of the descolada?”

“Then I’ll believe you,” said Planter.

“And hate me.”

“Yes,” said Planter.

“You can’t.”

“Yes I can. I’m not a very good Christian. I am not able to love the one who chooses to kill me and all my people.”

She said nothing.

“Go away now,” he said. “I’ve said all that I can say. Now I want to chant my stories and keep myself intelligent until death finally comes.”

She walked away from him, into the sterilization chamber.

Miro turned toward Ela. “Get everybody out of the lab,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because there’s a chance that she’ll come out and tell you what she knows.”

“Then I should be the one to go, and everybody else stay,” said Ela.

“No,” said Miro. “You’re the only one that she’ll ever tell.”

“If you think that, then you’re a complete—”

“Telling anyone else wouldn’t hurt her enough to satisfy her,” said Miro. “Everybody out.”

Ela thought for a moment. “All right,” she said to the others. “Get back to the main lab and monitor your computers. I’ll bring us up on the net if she tells me anything, and you can see what she enters as we put it in. If you can make sense of what you’re seeing, start following it up. Even if she actually knows anything, we still won’t have much time to design a truncated descolada so we can get it to Planter before he dies. Go.”

They went.

When Quara emerged from the sterilization chamber, she found only Ela and Miro waiting for her.

“I still think it’s wrong to kill the descolada before we’ve even tried to talk to it,” she said.

“It may well be,” said Ela. “I only know that I intend to do it if I can.”

“Bring up your files,” said Quara. “I’m going to tell you everything I know about descolada intelligence. If it works and Planter lives through this, I’m going to spit in his face.”

“Spit a thousand times,” said Ela. “Just so he lives.”

Her files came up into the display. Quara began pointing to certain regions of the model of the descolada virus. Within a few minutes, it was Quara sitting before the terminal, typing, pointing, talking, as Ela asked questions.

In his ear, Jane spoke up again. “The little bitch,” she said. “She didn’t have her files in another computer. She kept everything she knew inside her head.”

By late afternoon the next day, Planter was at the edge of death and Ela was at the edge of exhaustion. Her team had worked through the night; Quara had helped, constantly, indefatigably reading over everything Ela’s people came up with, critiquing, pointing out errors. By midmorning, they had a plan for a truncated virus that should work. All of the language capability was gone, which meant the new viruses wouldn’t be able to communicate with each other. All the analytical ability was gone as well, as near as they could tell. But safely in place were all the parts of the virus that supported bodily functions in the native species of Lusitania. As near as they could possibly tell without having a working sample of the virus, the new design was exactly what was needed—a descolada that was completely functional in the life cycles of the Lusitanian species, including the pequeninos, yet completely incapable of global regulation and manipulation. They named the new virus recolada. The old one had been named for its function of tearing apart; the new one for its remaining function, holding together the species-pairs that made up the native life of Lusitania.

Ender raised one objection—that since the descolada must have been putting the pequeninos into a belligerent, expansive mode, the new virus might lock them into that particular condition. But Ela and Quara answered together that they had deliberately used an older version of the descolada as their model, from a time when the pequeninos were more relaxed—more “themselves.” The pequeninos working on the project had agreed to this; there was little time to consult anyone else except Human and Rooter, who also concurred.

With the things that Quara had taught them about the workings of the descolada, Ela also had a team working on a killer bacterium that would spread quickly through the entire planet’s gaialogy, finding the normal descolada in every place and every form, tearing it to bits and killing it. It would recognize the old descolada by the very elements that the new descolada would lack. Releasing the recolada and the killer bacterium at the same time should do the job.

There was only one problem remaining—actually making the new virus. That was Ela’s direct project from midmorning on. Quara collapsed and slept. So did most of the pequeninos. But Ela struggled on, trying to use all the tools she had to break apart the virus and recombine it as she needed.

But when Ender came late in the afternoon to tell her that it was now or never, if her virus was to save Planter, she could only break down and weep from exhaustion and frustration.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Then tell him that you’ve achieved it but you can’t get it ready in time and—”

“I mean it can’t be done.”

“You’ve designed it.”

“We’ve planned it, we’ve modeled it, yes. But it can’t be made. The descolada is a really vicious design. We can’t build it from scratch because there are too many parts that can’t hold together unless you have those very sections already working to keep rebuilding each other as they break down. And we can’t do modifications of the present virus unless the descolada is at least marginally active, in which case it undoes what we’re doing faster than we can do it. It was designed to police itself constantly so it can’t be altered, and to be so unstable in all its parts that it’s completely unmakable.”

“But they made it.”

“Yes, but I don’t know how. Unlike Grego, I can’t completely step outside my science on some metaphysical whim and make things up and wish them into existence. I’m stuck with the rules of nature as they are here and now, and there’s no rule that will let me make it.”

“So we know where we need to go, but we can’t get there from here.”

“Until last night I didn’t know enough to guess whether we could design this new recolada or not, and therefore I had no way of guessing whether we could make it. I figured that if it was designable, it was makable. I was ready to make it, ready to act the moment Quara relented. All we’ve achieved is to know, finally, completely, that it can’t be done. Quara was right. We definitely found out enough from her to enable us to kill every descolada virus on Lusitania. But we can’t make the recolada that could replace it and keep Lusitanian life functioning.”

“So if we use the viricide bacterium—”

“All the pequeninos in the world would be where Planter is now within a week or two. And all the grass and birds and vines and everything. Scorched earth. An atrocity. Quara was right.” She wept again.

“You’re just tired. It was Quara, awake now and looking terrible, not refreshed at all by her sleep.

Ela, for her part, couldn’t answer her sister.

Quara looked like she might be thinking of saying something cruel, along the lines of What did I tell you? But she thought better of it, and came and put her hand on Ela’s shoulder. “You’re tired, Ela. You need to sleep.”

“Yes,” said Ela.

“But first let’s tell Planter.”

“Say good-bye, you mean.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

They made their way to the lab that contained Planter’s cleanroom. The pequenino researchers who had slept were awake again; all had joined the vigil for Planter’s last hours. Miro was inside with Planter again, and this time they didn’t make him leave, though Ender knew that both Ela and Quara longed to be inside with him. Instead they both spoke to him over the speakers, explaining what they had found. The half-success that was worse, in its way, than complete failure, because it could easily lead to the destruction of all the pequeninos, if the humans of Lusitania became desperate enough.

“You won’t use it,” whispered Planter. The microphones, sensitive as they were, could barely pick up his voice.

“We won’t,” said Quara. “But we’re not the only people here.”

“You won’t use it,” he said. “I’m the only one who’ll ever die like this.”

The last of his words were voiceless; they read his lips later, from the holo recording, to be sure of what he said. And, having said it, having heard their good-byes, he died.

The moment the monitoring machines confirmed his death, the pequeninos of the research group rushed into the cleanroom. No need for sterilization now. They wanted the descolada with them. Brusquely moving Miro out of the way, they set to work, injecting the virus into every part of Planter’s body, hundreds of injections in moments. They had been preparing for this, obviously. They would respect Planter’s sacrifice in life—but once he was dead, his honor satisfied, they had no compunctions about trying to save him for the third life if they could.

They took him out into the open space where Human and Rooter stood, and laid him on a spot already marked, forming an equilateral triangle with those two young fathertrees. There they flayed his body and staked it open. Within hours a tree was growing, and there was hope, briefly, that it might be a fathertree. But it took only a few days more for the brothers, who were adept at recognizing a young fathertree, to declare that the effort had failed. There was a kind of life, containing his genes, yes; but the memories, the will, the person who was Planter was lost. The tree was mute; there would be no mind joining the perpetual conclave of the fathertrees. Planter had determined to free himself of the descolada, even if it meant losing the third life that was the descolada’s gift to those it possessed. He succeeded, and, in losing, won.

He had succeeded in something else, too. The pequeninos departed from their normal pattern of forgetting quickly the name of mere brothertrees. Though no little mother would ever crawl its bark, the brothertree that had grown from his corpse would be known by the name of Planter and treated with respect, as if it were a fathertree, as if it were a person. Moreover, his story was told and told again throughout Lusitania, wherever pequeninos lived. He had proved that pequeninos were intelligent even without the descolada; it was a noble sacrifice, and speaking the name of Planter was a reminder to all pequeninos of their fundamental freedom from the virus that had put them in bondage.

But Planter’s death did not give any pause to the preparations for pequenino colonization of other worlds. Warmaker’s people had a majority now, and as rumors spread that the humans had a bacterium capable of killing all the descolada, they had an even greater urgency. Hurry, they told the hive queen again and again. Hurry, so we can win free of this world before the humans decide to kill us all.

“I can do it, I think,” said Jane. “If the ship is small and simple, the cargo almost nothing, the crew as few as possible, then I can hold the pattern of it in my mind. If the voyage is brief, the stay in Outspace very short. As for holding the locations of the start and finish in my mind, that’s easy, child’s play, I can do it within a millimeter, less. If I slept, I could do it in my sleep. So there’s no need for it to endure acceleration or provide extended life support. The starship can be simple. A sealed environment, places to sit, light, heat. If in fact we can get there and I can hold it all together and bring us back, then we won’t be out in space long enough to use up the oxygen in a small room.”

They were all gathered in the Bishop’s office to listen to her—the whole Ribeira family, Jakt’s and Valentine’s family, the pequenino researchers, several priests and Filhos, and perhaps a dozen other leaders of the human colony. The Bishop had insisted on having the meeting in his office. “Because it’s large enough,” he had said, “and because if you’re going to go out like Nimrod and hunt before the Lord, if you’re going to send a ship like Babel out to heaven to seek the face of God, then I want to be there to plead with God to be merciful to you.”

“How much of your capacity is left?” Ender asked Jane.

“Not much,” she said. “As it is, every computer in the Hundred Worlds will be sluggish while we do it, as I use their memory to hold the pattern.”

“I ask, because we want to try to perform an experiment while we’re out there.”

“Don’t waffle about it, Andrew,” said Ela. “We want to perform a miracle while we’re there. If we get Outside it means that Grego and Olhado are probably right about what it’s like out there. And that means that the rules are different. Things can be created just by comprehending the pattern of them. So I want to go. There’s a chance that while I’m there, holding the pattern of the recolada virus in my mind, I might be able to create it. I might be able to bring back a virus that can’t be made in realspace. Can you take me? Can you hold me there long enough to make the virus?”

“How long is that?” asked Jane.

“It should be instantaneous,” said Grego. “The moment we arrive, whatever full patterns we hold in our minds should be created within a period of time too brief for humans to notice. The real time will be taken analyzing to see if, in fact, she’s got the virus she wanted. Maybe five minutes.”

“Yes,” said Jane. “If I can do this at all, I can do it for five minutes.”

“The rest of the crew,” said Ender.

“The rest of the crew will be you and Miro,” said Jane. “And no one else.”

Grego protested loudest, but he was not alone.

“I’m a pilot,” said Jakt.

“I’m the only pilot of this ship,” said Jane.

“Olhado and I thought of it,” said Grego.

“Ender and Miro will come because it can’t be done safely without them. I dwell within Ender—where he goes, he carries me with him. Miro, on the other hand, has become so close to me that I think he might be part of the pattern that is myself. I want him there because I may not be whole without him. No one else. I can’t have anyone else in the pattern. Ela is the only one beyond these two.”

“Then that’s the crew,” said Ender.

“With no argument,” added Mayor Kovano.

“Will the hive queen build the ship?” asked Jane.

“She will,” said Ender.

“Then I have only one more favor to ask. Ela, if I can give you the five minutes, can you also hold the pattern of another virus in your mind?”

“The virus for Path?” she asked.

“We owe them that, if we can, for the help they gave to us.”

“I think so,” she said, “or at least the differences between it and the normal descolada. That’s all I can possibly hold of anything—the differences.”

“And how soon will all this happen?” asked the Mayor.

“However fast the hive queen can build the ship,” said Jane. “We have only forty-eight days until the Hundred Worlds shut down their ansibles. I will survive that day, we know that now, but it will cripple me. It will take me awhile to relearn all my lost memories, if I ever can. Until that’s happened, I can’t possibly sustain the pattern of a ship to go Outside.”

“The hive queen can have a ship as simple as this one built long before then,” said Ender. “In a ship so small there’s no chance of shuttling all the people and pequeninos off Lusitania before the fleet arrives, let alone before the ansible cut-off keeps Jane from being able to fly the ship. But there’ll be time to take new, descolada-free pequenino communities—a brother, a wife, and many pregnant little mothers—to a dozen planets and establish them there. Time to take new hive queens in their cocoons, already fertilized to lay their first few hundred eggs, to a dozen worlds as well. If this works at all, if we don’t just sit there like idiots in a cardboard box wishing we could fly, then we’ll come back with peace for this world, freedom from the danger of the descolada, and safe dispersal for the genetic heritage of the other species of ramen here. A week ago, it looked impossible. Now there’s hope.”

“Graças a deus,” said the Bishop.

Quara laughed.

Everyone looked at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just thinking—I heard a prayer, not many weeks ago. A prayer to Os Venerados, Grandfather Gusto and Grandmother Cida. That if there wasn’t a way to solve the impossible problems facing us, they would petition God to open up the way.”

“Not a bad prayer,” said the Bishop. “And perhaps God has granted it.”

“I know,” said Quara. “That’s what I was thinking. What if all this stuff about Outspace and Inspace, what if it was never real before. What if it only came to be true because of that prayer?”

“What of it?” asked the Bishop.

“Well, don’t you think that would be funny?”

Apparently no one did.

16

VOYAGE

<So the humans have their starship ready now, while the one you’ve been building for us is still incomplete.>

<The one they wanted was a box with a door. No propulsion, no life support, no cargo space. Yours and ours are far more complicated. We haven’t slacked, and they’ll be ready soon.>

<I’m really not complaining. I wanted Ender’s ship to be ready first. It’s the one that carries real hope.>

<For us as well. We agree with Ender and his people that the descolada must never be killed here on Lusitania, unless the recolada can somehow be made. But when we send new hive queens to other worlds, we’ll kill the descolada on the starship that takes them, so there’s no chance of polluting our new home. So that we can live without fear of destruction from this artificial varelse.>

<What you do on your ship is nothing to us.>

<With any luck, none of this will matter. Their new starship will find its way Outside, return with the recolada, set you free and us as well, and then the new ship will shuttle us all to as many worlds as we desire.>

<Will it work? The box you made for them?>

<We know the place where they’re going is real; we call our very selves from there. And the bridge we made, the one that Ender calls Jane, is such a pattern as we’ve never seen before. If it can be done, such a one as that can do it. We never could.>

<Will you leave? If the new ship works?>

<We’ll make daughter-queens who’ll take my memories with them to other worlds. But we ourselves will stay here. This place where I came forth from my cocoon, it’s my home forever.>

<So you’re as rooted here as I am.>

<That’s what daughters are for. To go where we will never go, to carry our memory on to places that we’ll never see.>

<But we will see. Won’t we? You said the philotic connection would remain.>

<We were thinking of the voyage across time. We live a long time, we hives, you trees. But our daughters and their daughters will outlive us. Nothing changes that.>

Qing-jao listened to them as they laid the choice before her.

“Why should I care what you decide?” she said, when they were finished. “The gods will laugh at you.”

Father shook his head. “No they won’t, my daughter, Gloriously Bright. The gods care nothing more for Path than any other world. The people of Lusitania are on the verge of creating a virus that can free us all. No more rituals, no more bondage to the disorder in our brains. So I ask you again, if we can do it, should we? It would cause disorder here. Wang-mu and I have planned how we’ll proceed, how we’ll announce what we are doing so that people will understand it, so there’ll be a chance that the godspoken won’t be slaughtered, but can step down gently from their privileges.”

“Privileges are nothing,” said Qing-jao. “You taught me that yourself. They’re only the people’s way of expressing their reverence for the gods.”

“Alas, my daughter, if only I knew that more of the godspoken shared that humble view of our station. Too many of them think that it’s their right to be acquisitive and oppressive, because the gods speak to them and not to others.”

“Then the gods will punish them. I’m not afraid of your virus.”

“But you are, Qing-jao, I see it.”

“How can I tell my father that he does not see what he claims to see? I can only say that I must be blind.”

“Yes, my Qing-jao, you are. Blind on purpose. Blind to your own heart. Because you tremble even now. You have never been sure that I was wrong. From the time Jane showed us the true nature of the speaking of the gods, you’ve been unsure of what was true.”

“Then I’m unsure of sunrise. I’m unsure of breath.”

“We’re all unsure of breath, and the sun stays in its same place, day and night, neither rising nor falling. We are the ones who rise and fall.”

“Father, I fear nothing from this virus.”

“Then our decision is made. If the Lusitanians can bring us the virus, we’ll use it.”

Han Fei-tzu got up to leave her room.

But her voice stopped him before he reached the door. “Is this the disguise the punishment of the gods will take, then?”

“What?” he asked.

“When they punish Path for your iniquity in working against the gods who have given their mandate to Congress, will they disguise their punishment by making it seem to be a virus that silences them?”

“I wish dogs had torn my tongue out before I taught you to think that way.”

“Dogs already are tearing at my heart,” Qing-jao answered him. “Father, I beg you, don’t do this. Don’t let your rebelliousness provoke the gods into falling silent across the whole face of this world.”

“I will, Qing-jao, so no more daughters or sons have to grow up slaves as you have been. When I think of your face pressed close to the floor, tracing the woodgrain, I want to cut the bodies of those who forced this thing upon you, cut them until their blood makes lines, which I will gladly trace, to know that they’ve been punished.”

She wept. “Father, I beg you, don’t provoke the gods.”

“More than ever now I’m determined to release the virus, if it comes.”

“What can I do to persuade you? If I say nothing, you will do it, and when I speak to beg you, you will do it all the more surely.”

“Do you know how you could stop me? You could speak to me as if you knew the speaking of the gods is the product of a brain disorder, and then, when I know you see the world clear and true, you could persuade me with good arguments that such a swift, complete, and devastating change would be harmful, or whatever other argument you might raise.”

“So to persuade my father, I must lie to him?”

“No, my Gloriously Bright. To persuade your father, you must show that you understand the truth.”

“I understand the truth,” said Qing-jao. “I understand that some enemy has stolen you from me. I understand that all I have left now is the gods, and Mother who is among them. I beg the gods to let me die and join her, so I don’t have to suffer any more of the pain you cause me, but still they leave me here. I think that means they wish me still to worship them. Perhaps I’m not yet purified enough. Or perhaps they know that you will soon turn your heart around again, and come to me as you used to, speaking honorably of the gods and teaching me to be a true servant.”

“That will never happen,” said Han Fei-tzu.

“Once I thought you could someday be the god of Path. Now I see that, far from being the protector of this world, you are its darkest enemy.”

Han Fei-tzu covered his face and left the room, weeping for his daughter. He could never persuade her as long as she heard the voice of the gods. But perhaps if they brought the virus, perhaps if the gods fell silent, she would listen to him then. Perhaps he could win her back to rationality.

They sat in the starship—more like two metal bowls, one domed over the other, with a door in the side. Jane’s design, faithfully executed by the hive queen and her workers, included many instruments on the outside of the ship. But even bristling with sensors it didn’t resemble any kind of starship ever seen before. It was far too small, and there was no visible means of propulsion. The only power that could carry this ship anywhere was the unseeable aiúa that Ender carried on board with him.

They faced each other in a circle. There were six chairs, because Jane’s design allowed for the chance that the ship would be used again, to carry more people from world to world. They had taken every other seat, so they formed a triangle: Ender, Miro, Ela.

The good-byes had all been said. Sisters and brothers, other kin and many friends had come. One, though, was most painful in her absence. Novinha. Ender’s wife, Miro’s and Ela’s mother. She would have no part of this. That was the only real sorrow at the parting.

The rest was all fear and excitement, hope and disbelief. They might be moments away from death. They might be moments away from filling the vials on Ela’s lap with the viruses that would mean deliverance on two worlds. They might be the pioneers of a new kind of starflight that would save the species threatened by the M.D. Device.

They might also be three fools who would sit on the ground, in a grassy field just outside the compound of the human colony on Lusitania, until at last it grew so hot and stuffy inside that they had to emerge. No one waiting there would laugh, of course, but there’d be laughter throughout the town. It would be the laughter of despair. It would mean that there was no escape, no liberty, only more and more fear until death came in one of its many possible guises.

“Are you with us, Jane?” asked Ender.

The voice in his ear was quiet. “While I do this, Ender, I’ll have no part of me that I can spare to talk to you.”

“So you’ll be with us, but mute,” said Ender. “How will I know you’re there?”

She laughed softly in his ear. “Foolish boy, Ender. If you’re still there, I’m still inside you. And if I’m not inside you, you will have no ‘there’ to be.”

Ender imagined himself breaking into a trillion constituent parts, scattering through chaos. Personal survival depended not only on Jane holding the pattern of the ship, but also on him being able to hold the pattern of his mind and body. Only he had no idea whether his mind was really strong enough to maintain that pattern, once he was where the laws of nature were not in force.

“Ready?” asked Jane.

“She asks if we’re ready,” said Ender.

Miro was already nodding. Ela bowed her head. Then, after a moment, she crossed herself, took firm hold on the rack of vials on her lap, and nodded.

“If we go and come again, Ela,” said Ender, “then this was not a failure, even if you didn’t create the virus that you wanted. If the ship works well, we can return another time. Don’t think that everything depends on what you’re able to imagine today.”

She smiled. “I won’t be surprised at failure, but I’m also ready for success. My team is ready to release hundreds of bacteria into the world, if I return with the recolada and we can then remove the descolada. It will be chancy, but within fifty years the world will be a self-regulating gaialogy again. I see a vision of deer and cattle in the tall grass of Lusitania, and eagles in the sky.” Then she looked down again at the vials in her lap. “I also said a prayer to the Virgin, for the same Holy Ghost that created God in her womb to come make life again here in these jars.”

“Amen to the prayer,” said Ender. “And now, Jane, if you’re ready, we can go.”

Outside the little starship, the others waited. What did they expect? That the ship would start to smoke and jiggle? That there would be a thunderclap, a flash of light?

The ship was there. It was there, and still there, unmoving, unchanged. And then it was gone.

They felt nothing inside the ship when it happened. There was no sound, no movement to hint of motion from Inspace into Outspace.

But they knew the moment it occurred, because there were no longer three of them, but six.

Ender found himself seated between two people, a young man and a young woman. But he had no time even to glance at them, for all he could look at was the man seated in what had been the empty seat across from him.

“Miro,” he whispered. For that was who it was. But not Miro the cripple, the damaged young man who had boarded the ship with him. That one was still sitting in the next chair to Ender’s left. This Miro was the strong young man that Ender had first known. The man whose strength had been the hope of his family, whose beauty had been the pride of Ouanda’s life, whose mind and whose heart had taken compassion on the pequeninos and refused to leave them without the benefits he thought that human culture might offer them. Miro, whole and restored.

Where had he come from?

“I should have known,” said Ender. “We should have thought. The pattern of yourself that you hold in your mind, Miro—it isn’t the way you are, it’s the way you were.”

The new Miro, the young Miro, he raised his head and smiled to Ender. “I thought of it,” he said, and his speech was clear and beautiful, the words rolling easily off his tongue. “I hoped for it. I begged Jane to take me with her because of it. And it came true. Exactly as I longed for it.”

“But now there are two of you,” said Ela. She sounded horrified.

“No,” said the new Miro. “Just me. Just the real me.”

“But that one’s still there,” she said.

“Not for long, I think,” said Miro. “That old shell is empty now.”

And it was true. The old Miro slumped within his seat like a dead man. Ender knelt in front of him, touched him. He pressed his fingers to Miro’s neck, feeling for a pulse.

“Why should the heart beat now?” said Miro. “I’m the place where Miro’s aiúa dwells.”

When Ender took his fingers away from the old Miro’s throat, the skin came away in a small puff of dust. Ender shied back. The head dropped forward off the shoulders and landed in the corpse’s lap. Then it dissolved into a whitish liquid. Ender jumped to his feet, backed away. He stepped on someone’s toe.

“Ow,” said Valentine.

“Watch where you’re going,” said a man.

Valentine isn’t on this ship, thought Ender. And I know the man’s voice, too.

He turned to face them, the man and woman who had appeared in the empty seats beside him.

Valentine. Impossibly young. The way she had looked when, as a young teenager, she had swum beside him in a lake on a private estate on Earth. The way she had looked when he loved her and needed her most, when she was the only reason he could think of to go on with his military training; when she was the only reason he could think of why the world might be worth the trouble of saving it.

“You can’t be real,” he said.

“Of course I am,” she said. “You stepped on my foot, didn’t you?”

“Poor Ender,” said the young man. “Clumsy and stupid. Not a really good combination.”

Now Ender knew him. “Peter,” he said. His brother, his childhood enemy, at the age when he became Hegemon. The picture that had been playing on all the vids when Peter managed to arrange things so that Ender could never come home to Earth after his great victory.

“I thought I’d never see you face to face again,” said Ender. “You died so long ago.”

“Never believe a rumor of my death,” said Peter. “I have as many lives as a cat. Also as many teeth, as many claws, and the same cheery, cooperative disposition.”

“Where did you come from?”

Miro offered the answer. “They must have come from patterns in your mind, Ender, since you know them.”

“They do,” said Ender. “But why? It’s our self-conception we’re supposed to carry with us out here. The pattern by which we know ourselves.”

“Is that so, Ender?” said Peter. “Then you must be really special. A personality so complicated it takes two people to contain it.”

“There’s no part of me in you,” said Ender.

“And you’d better keep it that way,” said Peter, leering. “It’s girls I like, not dirty old men.”

“I don’t want you,” said Ender.

“Nobody ever did,” said Peter. “They wanted you. But they got me, didn’t they? They got me up to here. Do you think I don’t know my whole story? You and that book of lies, the Hegemon. So wise and understanding. How Peter Wiggin mellowed. How he turned out to be a wise and fair-minded ruler. What a joke. Speaker for the Dead indeed. All the time you wrote it, you knew the truth. You posthumously washed the blood from my hands, Ender, but you knew and I knew that as long as I was alive, I wanted blood there.”

“Leave him alone,” said Valentine. “He told the truth in the Hegemon.”

“Still protecting him, little angel?”

“No!” cried Ender. “I’ve done with you, Peter. You’re out of my life, gone for three thousand years.”

“You can run but you can’t hide!”

“Ender! Ender, stop it! Ender!”

He turned. It was Ela crying out to him.

“I don’t know what’s going on here, but stop it! We only have a few minutes left. Help me with the tests.”

She was right. Whatever was going on with Miro’s new body, with Peter’s and Valentine’s reappearance here, the important thing was the descolada. Had Ela succeeded in transforming it? Creating the recolada? And the virus that would transform the people of Path? If Miro could remake his body, and Ender could somehow conjure up the ghosts of his past and make them flesh again, it was possible, really possible, that Ela’s vials now contained the viruses whose patterns she had held in her mind.

“Help me,” whispered Ela again.

Ender and Miro—the new Miro, his hand strong and sure—reached out, took the vials she offered them, and began the test. It was a negative test—if the bacteria, algae, and tiny worms they added to the tubes remained for several minutes, unaffected, then there was no descolada in the vials. Since the vials had been teeming with the living virus when they boarded the ship, that would be proof that something, at least, had happened to neutralize them. Whether it was truly the recolada or simply a dead or ineffective descolada remained to be discovered when they returned.

The worms and algae and bacteria underwent no transformations. In tests beforehand, on Lusitania, the solution containing the bacteria turned from blue to yellow in the presence of the descolada; now it stayed blue. On Lusitania the tiny worms had quickly died and, graying husks, floated to the surface; now they wriggled on and on, staying the purplish-brown color that in them, at least, meant life. And the algae, instead of breaking apart and dissolving completely away, remained in the thin strands and tendrils of life.

“Done, then,” said Ender.

“At least we can hope,” said Ela.

“Sit down,” said Miro. “If we’re done, she’ll take us back.”

Ender sat. He looked at the seat where Miro had been sitting. His old crippled body was no longer identifiably human. It continued crumbling, the pieces breaking up into dust or flowing away as liquid. Even the clothing was dissolving into nothing.

“It’s not part of my pattern anymore,” said Miro. “There’s nothing to hold it together anymore.”

“What about these?” demanded Ender. “Why aren’t they dissolving?”

“Or you?” asked Peter. “Why don’t you dissolve? Nobody needs you now. You’re a tired old fart who can’t even hold onto his woman. And you never even fathered a child, you pathetic old eunuch. Make way for a real man. No one ever needed you—everything you’ve ever done I could have done better, and everything I did you never could have matched.”

Ender buried his face in his hands. This was not an outcome he could have imagined in his worst nightmares. Yes, he knew they were going out into a place where things might be created out of his mind. But it had never occurred to him that Peter was still lingering there. He thought he had expunged that old hatred long ago.

And Valentine—why would he create another Valentine? This one so young and perfect, sweet and beautiful? There was a real Valentine waiting for him back on Lusitania—what would she think, seeing what he created out of his own mind? Perhaps it would be flattering to know how closely she was held in his heart; but she would also know that what he treasured was what she used to be, not what she was now.

The darkest and the brightest secrets of his heart would both stand exposed as soon as the door opened and he had to step back out onto the surface of Lusitania again.

“Dissolve,” he said to them. “Crumble away.”

“You do it first, old man,” said Peter. “Your life is over, and mine is just beginning. All I had to try for the first time was Earth, one tired old planet—it was as easy as it would be for me to reach out and kill you with my bare hands, right now, if I wanted to. Snap your little neck like a dry noodle.”

“Try it,” whispered Ender. “I’m not the frightened little boy anymore.”

“Nor are you a match for me,” said Peter. “You never were, you never will be. You have too much heart. You’re like Valentine. You flinch away from doing what has to be done. It makes you soft and weak. It makes you easy to destroy.”

A sudden flash of light. What was it, death in Outspace after all? Had Jane lost the pattern in her mind? Were they blowing up, or falling into a sun?

No. It was the door opening. It was the light of the Lusitanian morning breaking into the relative darkness of the inside of the ship.

“Are you coming out?” cried Grego. He stuck his head into the ship. “Are you—”

Then he saw them. Ender could see him silently counting.

“Nossa Senhora,” whispered Grego. “Where the hell did they come from?”

“Out of Ender’s totally screwed-up head,” said Peter.

“From old and tender memory,” said the new Valentine.

“Help me with the viruses,” said Ela.

Ender reached out for them, but it was Miro she gave them to. She didn’t explain, just looked away from him, but he understood. What had happened to him Outside was too strange for her to accept. Whatever Peter and this young new Valentine might be, they shouldn’t exist. Miro’s creation of a new body for himself made sense, even if it was terrible to watch the old corpse break into forgotten nothingness. Ela’s focus had been so pure that she created nothing outside the vials she had brought for that purpose. But Ender had dredged up two whole people, both obnoxious in their own way—the new Valentine because she was a mockery of the real one, who surely waited just outside the door. And Peter managed to be obnoxious even as he put a spin on all his taunting that was at once dangerous and suggestive.

“Jane,” whispered Ender. “Jane, are you with me?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Did you see all this?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Do you understand?”

“I’m very tired. I’ve never been tired before. I’ve never done something so very hard. It used up—all my attention at once. And two more bodies, Ender. Making me pull them into the pattern like that—I don’t know how I did it.”

“I didn’t mean to.” But she didn’t answer.

“Are you coming or what?” asked Peter. “The others are all out the door. With all those little urine-sample jars.”

“Ender, I’m afraid,” said young Valentine. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”

“Neither do I,” said Ender. “God forgive me if this somehow hurts you. I never would have brought you back to hurt you.”

“I know,” she said.

“No,” said Peter. “Sweet old Ender conjures up a nubile young woman out of his own brain, who looks just like his sister in her teens. Mmm, mmm, Ender, old man, is there no limit to your depravity?”

“Only a shamefully sick mind would even think of such a thing,” Ender murmured.

Peter laughed and laughed.

Ender took young Val by the hand and led her to the door. He could feel her hand sweating and trembling in his. She felt so real. She was real. And yet there, as soon as he stood in the doorway, he could see the real Valentine, middle-aged and heading toward old, yet still the gracious, beautiful woman he had known and loved for all these years. That’s the true sister, the one I love as my second self. What was this young girl doing in my mind?

It was clear that Grego and Ela had said enough that people knew something strange had happened. And when Miro had strode from the ship, hale and vigorous, clear of speech and so exuberant he looked ready to burst into song—that had brought on a buzz of excitement. A miracle. There were miracles out there, wherever the starship went.

Ender’s appearance, though, brought a hush. Few would have known, at a glance, that the young girl with him was Valentine in her youth—no one there but Valentine herself had known her then. And no one but Valentine was likely to recognize Peter Wiggin in his vigorous young manhood; the pictures in the history texts were usually of the holos taken late in his life, when cheap, permanent holography was first coming into its own.

But Valentine knew. Ender stood before the door, young Val beside him, Peter emerging just behind, and Valentine knew them both. She stepped forward, away from Jakt, until she stood before Ender face to face.

“Ender,” she said. “Dear sweet tormented boy, was this what you create, when you go to a place where you can make anything you want?” She reached out her hand and touched the young copy of herself upon the cheek. “So beautiful,” she said. “I was never this beautiful, Ender. She’s perfect. She’s all I wanted to be but never was.”

“Aren’t you glad to see me, Val, my dearest sweetheart Demosthenes?” Peter pushed his way between Ender and young Val. “Don’t you have tender memories of me, as well? Am I not more beautiful than you remembered? I’m certainly glad to see you. You’ve done so well with the persona I created for you. Demosthenes. I made you, and you don’t even thank me for it.”

“Thank you, Peter,” whispered Valentine. She looked again at young Val. “What will you do with them?”

“Do with us?” said Peter. “We’re not his to do anything with. He may have brought me back, but I’m my own man now, as I always was.”

Valentine turned back to the crowd, still awestruck at the strangeness of events. After all, they had seen three people board the ship, had seen it disappear, then reappear on the exact spot no more than seven minutes later—and instead of three people emerging, there were five, two of them strangers. Of course they had stayed to gawk.

But there’d be no answers for anyone today. Except on the most important question of all. “Has Ela taken the vials to the lab?” she asked. “Let’s break it up here, and go see what Ela’s made for us in outspace.”

17

ENDER’S CHILDREN

<Poor Ender. Now his nightmares walk around with him on their own two legs.>

<It was a strange way for him to have children after all.>

<You’re the one who calls aiúas out of chaos. How did he find souls for these?>

<What makes you think he did?>

<They walk. They talk.>

<The one named Peter came and talked to you, didn’t he?>

<As arrogant a human as I ever met.>

<How do you think it happens that he was born knowing how to speak the language of the fathertrees?>

<I don’t know. Ender created him. Why shouldn’t he create him knowing how to speak?>

<Ender goes on creating them both, hour by hour. We’ve felt the pattern in him. He may not understand it himself, but there is no difference between these two and himself. Different bodies, perhaps, but they are part of him all the same. Whatever they do, whatever they say, it is Ender’s aiua, acting and speaking.>

<Does he know this?>

<We doubt it.>

<Will you tell him?>

<Not until he asks.>

<When do you think that will be?>

<When he already knows the answer.>

It was the last day of the test of the recolada. Word of its success—so far—had already spread through the human colony—and, Ender assumed, among all the pequeninos as well. Ela’s assistant named Glass had volunteered to be the experimental subject. He had lived now for three days in the same isolation chamber where Planter had sacrificed himself. This time, though, the descolada had been killed within him by the viricide bacterium he had helped Ela devise. And this time, performing the functions that the descolada had once fulfilled, was Ela’s new recolada virus. It had worked perfectly. He was not even slightly ill. Only one last step remained before the recolada could be pronounced a full success.

An hour before that final test, Ender, with his absurd entourage of Peter and young Val, was meeting with Quara and Grego in Grego’s cell.

“The pequeninos have accepted it,” Ender explained to Quara. “They’re willing to take the risk of killing the descolada and replacing it with the recolada, after testing it with Glass alone.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Quara.

“I am,” said Peter. “The piggies obviously have a deathwish as a species.”

Ender sighed. Though he was no longer a frightened little boy, and Peter was no longer older and larger and stronger than he, there was still no love in Ender’s heart for this simulacrum of his brother that he had somehow created Outside. He was everything Ender had feared and hated in his childhood, and it was infuriating and frightening to have him back again.

“What do you mean?” said Grego. “If the pequeninos didn’t consent to it, then the descolada would make them too dangerous for humankind to allow them to survive.”

“Of course,” said Peter, smiling. “The physicist is an expert on strategy.”

“What Peter is saying,” said Ender, “is that if he were in charge of the pequeninos—which he no doubt would like to be—he would never willingly give up the descolada until he had won something from humanity in exchange for it.”

“To the surprise of all, the aging boy wonder still has a tiny spark of wit,” said Peter. “Why should they kill off their only weapon that humanity has any reason to fear? The Lusitania Fleet is still coming, and it still has the M.D. Device aboard. Why don’t they make Andrew here get on that magic flying football of his and go meet the fleet and lay down the law?”

“Because they’d shoot me down like a dog,” said Ender. “The pequeninos are doing this because it’s right and fair and decent. Words that I’ll define for you later.”

“I know the words,” said Peter. “I also know what they mean.”

“You do?” asked young Val. Her voice, as always, was a surprise—soft, mild, and yet able to pierce the conversation. Ender remembered that Valentine’s voice had always been that way. Impossible not to listen to, though she so rarely raised her voice.

“Right. Fair. Decent,” said Peter. The words sounded filthy in his mouth. “Either the person saying them believes in those concepts or not. If not, then those words mean that he’s got somebody standing behind me with a knife in his hand. And if he does believe them, then those words mean that I’m going to win.”

“I’ll tell you what they mean,” said Quara. “They mean that we’re going to congratulate the pequeninos—and ourselves—for wiping out a sentient species that may exist nowhere else in the universe.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” said Peter.

“Everybody’s so sure that the descolada is a designed virus,” said Quara, “but nobody’s considered the alternative—that a much more primitive, vulnerable version of the descolada evolved naturally, and then changed itself to its present form. It might be a designed virus, yes, but who did the designing? And now we’re killing it without attempting conversation.”

Peter grinned at her, then at Ender. “I’m surprised that this weaselly little conscience is not your blood offspring,” he said. “She’s as obsessed with finding reasons to feel guilty as you and Val.”

Ender ignored him and attempted to answer Quara. “We are killing it. Because we can’t wait any longer. The descolada is trying to destroy us, and there’s no time to dither. If we could, we would.”

“I understand all that,” said Quara. “I cooperated, didn’t I? It just makes me sick to hear you talking as if the pequeninos were somehow brave about collaborating in an act of xenocide in order to save their own skin.”

“Us or them, kid,” said Peter. “Us or them.”

“You can’t possibly understand,” said Ender, “how ashamed I am to hear my own arguments on his lips.”

Peter laughed. “Andrew pretends not to like me,” he said. “But the kid’s a fraud. He admires me. He worships me. He always has. Just like his pretty little angel here.”

Peter poked at young Val. She didn’t shy away. She acted instead as if she hadn’t even felt his finger in the flesh of her upper arm.

“He worships us both. In his twisted little mind, she’s the moral perfection that he can never achieve. And I am the power and genius that was always just out of poor little Andrew’s reach. It was really quite modest of him, don’t you think? For all these years, he’s carried his betters with him inside his mind.”

Young Val reached out and took Quara’s hand. “It’s the worst thing you’ll ever do in your life,” she said, “helping the people you love to do something that in your heart you believe is deeply wrong.”

Quara wept.

But it was not Quara that worried Ender. He knew that she was strong enough to hold the moral contradictions of her own actions, and still remain sane. Her ambivalence toward her own actions would probably mellow her, make her less certain from moment to moment that her judgment was absolutely correct, and that all who disagreed with her were absolutely wrong. If anything, at the end of this she would emerge more whole and compassionate and, yes, decent than she had been before in her hotheaded youth. And perhaps young Val’s gentle touch—along with her words naming exactly the pain that Quara was feeling—would help her to heal all the sooner.

What worried Ender was the way Grego was looking at Peter with such admiration. Of all people, Grego should have learned what Peter’s words could lead to. Yet here he was, worshiping Ender’s walking nightmare. I have to get Peter out of here, thought Ender, or he’ll have even more disciples on Lusitania than Grego had—and he’ll use them far more effectively and, in the long run, the effect will be more deadly.

Ender had little hope that Peter would turn out to be like the real Peter, who grew to be a strong and worthy hegemon. This Peter, after all, was not a fully fleshed-out human being, full of ambiguity and surprise. Rather he had been created out of the caricature of attractive evil that lingered in the deepest recesses of Ender’s unconscious mind. There would be no surprises here. Even as they prepared to save Lusitania from the descolada, Ender had brought a new danger to them, potentially just as destructive.

But not as hard to kill.

Again he stifled the thought, though it had come up a dozen times since he first realized that it was Peter sitting at his left hand in the starship. I created him. He isn’t real, just my nightmare. If I kill him, it wouldn’t be murder, would it? It would be the moral equivalent of—what? Waking up? I have imposed my nightmare on the world, and if I killed him the world would just be waking up to find the nightmare gone, nothing more.

If it had been Peter alone, Ender might have talked himself into such a murder, or at least he thought he might. But it was young Val who stopped him. Fragile, beautiful of soul—if Peter could be killed, so could she. If he should be killed, then perhaps she ought to be as well—she had as little right to exist; she was as unnatural, as narrow and distorted in her creation. But he could never do that. She must be protected, not harmed. And if the one was real enough to remain alive, so must the other be. If harming young Val would be murder, so would harming Peter. They were spawned in the same creation.

My children, thought Ender bitterly. My darling little offspring, who leaped fully-formed from my head like Athena from the mind of Zeus. Only what I have here isn’t Athena. More like Diana and Hades. The virgin huntress and the master of hell.

“We’d better go,” said Peter. “Before Andrew talks himself into killing me.”

Ender smiled wanly. That was the worst thing—that Peter and young Val seemed to have come into existence knowing more about his own mind than he knew himself. In time, he hoped, that intimate knowledge of him would fade. But in the meantime, it added to the humiliation, the way that Peter taunted him about thoughts that no one else would have guessed. And young Val—he knew from the way she looked at him sometimes that she also knew. He had no secrets anymore.

“I’ll go home with you,” Val said to Quara.

“No,” Quara answered. “I’ve done what I’ve done. I’ll be there to see Glass through to the end of his test.”

“We wouldn’t want to miss our chance to suffer openly,” said Peter.

“Shut up, Peter,” said Ender.

Peter grinned. “Oh, come on. You know that Quara’s just milking this for all it’s worth. It’s just her way of making herself the star of the show—everybody being careful and tender with her when they should be cheering for what Ela accomplished. Scene-stealing is so low, Quara—right up your alley.”

Quara might have answered, if Peter’s words had not been so outrageous and if they had not contained a germ of truth that confused her. Instead it was young Val who fixed Peter with a cold glare and said, “Shut up, Peter.”

The same words Ender had said, only when young Val said them, they worked. He grinned at her, and winked—a conspiratorial wink, as if to say, I’ll let you play your little game, Val, but don’t think I don’t know that you’re sucking up to everybody by being so sweet. But he said no more as they left Grego in his cell.

Mayor Kovano joined them outside. “A great day in the history of humanity,” he said. “And by sheerest accident, I get to be in all the pictures.” The others laughed—especially Peter, who had struck up a quick and easy friendship with Kovano.

“It’s no accident,” said Peter. “A lot of people in your position would have panicked and wrecked everything. It took an open mind and a lot of courage to let things move the way they have.”

Ender almost laughed aloud at Peter’s obvious flattery. But flattery is never so obvious to the recipient. Oh, Kovano punched Peter in the arm and denied everything, but Ender could see that he loved hearing it, and that Peter had already earned more real influence with Kovano than Ender had. Don’t these people see how Peter is cynically winning them all over?

The only one who saw Peter with anything like Ender’s fear and loathing was the Bishop—but in his case it was theological prejudice, not wisdom, that kept him from being sucked in. Within hours of their return from Outside, the Bishop had called upon Miro, urging him to accept baptism. “God has performed a great miracle in your healing,” he said, “but the way in which it was done—trading one body for another, instead of directly healing the old one—leaves us in the dangerous position that your spirit inhabits a body that has never been baptized. And since baptism is performed on the flesh, I fear that you may be unsanctified.” Miro wasn’t very interested in the Bishop’s ideas about miracles—he didn’t see God as having much to do with his healing—but the sheer restoration of his strength and his speech and his freedom made him so ebullient that he probably would have agreed to anything. The baptism would take place early next week, at the first services to be held in the new chapel.

But the Bishop’s eagerness to baptize Miro was not echoed in his attitude toward Peter and young Val. “It’s absurd to think of these monstrous things as people,” he said. “They can’t possibly have souls. Peter is an echo of someone who already lived and died, with his own sins and repentances, his life’s course already measured and his place in heaven or hell already assigned. And as for this—girl, this mockery of feminine grace—she cannot be who she claims to be, for that place is already occupied by a living woman. There can be no baptism for the deceptions of Satan. By creating them, Andrew Wiggin has built his own Tower of Babel, trying to reach into heaven to take the place of God. He cannot be forgiven until he takes them back to hell and leaves them there.”

Did Bishop Peregrino imagine for one moment that that was not exactly what he longed to do? But Jane was adamant about it, when Ender offered the idea. “That would be foolish,” she said. “Why do you think they would go, for one thing? And for another, what makes you think you wouldn’t simply create two more? Haven’t you ever heard the story of the sorcerer’s apprentice? Taking them back there would be like cutting the brooms in half again—all you’d end up with is more brooms. Leave bad enough alone.”

So here they were, walking to the lab together—Peter, with Mayor Kovano completely in his pocket. Young Val, who had won over Quara no less completely, though her purpose was altruistic instead of exploitative. And Ender, their creator, furious and humiliated and afraid.

I made them—therefore I’m responsible for everything they do. And in the long run, they will both do terrible harm. Peter, because harm is his nature—at least the way I conceived him in the patterns of my mind. And young Val, despite her innate goodness, because her very existence is a deep injury to my sister Valentine.

“Don’t let Peter goad you so,” whispered Jane in his ear.

“People think he belongs to me,” Ender subvocalized. “They figure that he must be harmless because I’m harmless. But I have no control over him.”

“I think they know that.”

“I’ve got to get him away from here.”

“I’m working on that,” said Jane.

“Maybe I should pack them up and take them off to some deserted planet somewhere. Do you know Shakespeare’s play The Tempest?”

“Caliban and Ariel, is that what they are?”

“Exile, since I can’t kill them.”

“I’m working on it,” said Jane. “After all, they’re part of you, aren’t they? Part of the pattern of your mind? What if I can use them in your place, to allow me to go Outside? Then we could have three starships, and not just one.”

“Two,” said Ender. “I’m never going Outside again.”

“Not even for a microsecond? If I take you out and then right back in again? There was no need to linger there.”

“It wasn’t the lingering that did the harm,” said Ender. “Peter and young Val were there instantly. If I go Outside again, I’ll create them again.”

“Fine,” she said. “Two starships, then. One with Peter, one with young Val. Let me figure it out, if I can. We can’t just make that one voyage and then abandon faster-than-light flight forever.”

“Yes we can,” said Ender. “We got the recolada. Miro got himself a healthy body. That’s enough—we’ll work everything else out ourselves.”

“Wrong,” said Jane. “We still have to transport pequeninos and hive queens off this planet before the fleet comes. We still have to get the transformational virus to Path, to set those people free.”

“I won’t go Outside again.”

“Even if I can’t use Peter and young Val to carry my aiúa? You’d let the pequeninos and the hive queen be destroyed because you’re afraid of your own unconscious mind?”

“You don’t understand how dangerous Peter is.”

“Perhaps not. But I do understand how dangerous the Little Doctor is. And if you weren’t so wrapped up in your own misery, Ender, you’d know that even if we end up with five hundred little Peters and Vals running around, we’ve got to use this starship to carry pequeninos and the hive queen to other worlds.”

He knew she was right. He had known it all along. That didn’t mean that he was prepared to admit it.

“Just work on trying to move yourself into Peter and young Val,” he subvocalized. “Though God help us if Peter is able to create things when he goes Outside.”

“I doubt he can,” said Jane. “He’s not as smart as he thinks he is.”

“Yes he is,” said Ender. “And if you doubt it, you’re not as smart as you think you are.”

Ela was not the only one who prepared for Glass’s final test by going to visit Planter. His mute tree was still only a sapling, hardly a balance to Rooter’s and Human’s sturdy trunks. But it was around that sapling that the surviving pequeninos had gathered. And, like Ela, they had gathered to pray. It was a strange and silent kind of prayer service. The pequenino priests offered no pomp, no ceremony. They simply knelt with the others, and they murmured in their several languages. Some prayed in Brothers’ Language, some in tree language. Ela supposed that what she was hearing from the wives gathered there was their own regular language, though it might as easily be the holy language they used to speak to the mothertree. And there were also human languages coming from pequenino lips—Stark and Portuguese alike, and there might even have been some ancient Church Latin from one of the pequeninos priests. It was a virtual Babel, and yet she felt great unity. They prayed at the martyr’s tomb—all that was left of himself—for the life of the brother who was following after him. If Glass died utterly today, he would only echo Planter’s sacrifice. And if he passed into the third life, it would be a life owed to Planter’s courage and example.

Because it was Ela who had brought back the recolada from Outside, they honored her with a brief time alone at the very trunk of Planter’s tree. She wrapped her hand around the slender wooden pole, wishing there were more of his life in it. Was Planter’s aiúa lost now, wandering in the wherelessness of Outside? Or had God in fact taken it as his very soul and brought it into heaven, where Planter now communed with the saints?

Planter, pray for us. Intercede for us. As my venerated grandparents carried my prayer to the Father, go now to Christ for us and plead with him to have mercy on all your brothers and sisters. Let the recolada carry Glass into the third life, so that we can, in good conscience, spread the recolada through the world to replace the murderous descolada. Then the lion can lie down with the lamb indeed, and there can be peace in this place.

Not for the first time, though, Ela had her doubts. She was certain that their course was the right one—she had none of Quara’s qualms about destroying the descolada throughout Lusitania. But what she wasn’t sure of was whether she should have based the recolada on the oldest samples of the descolada they had collected. If in fact the descolada had caused recent pequenino belligerence, their hunger to spread to new places, then she could consider herself as restoring the pequeninos to their previous “natural” condition. But then, the previous condition was just as much a product of the descolada’s gaialogical balancing act—it only seemed more natural because it was the condition the pequeninos were in when humans arrived. So she could just as easily see herself as causing a behavioral modification of an entire species, conveniently removing much of their aggressiveness so that there would be less likelihood of conflict with humans in the future. I am making good Christians of them now, whether they like it or not. And the fact that Human and Rooter both approve of this doesn’t remove the onus from me, if this should turn out ultimately to the pequeninos’ harm.

O God, forgive me for playing God in the lives of these children of yours. When Planter’s aiúa comes before you to plead for us, grant the prayer he carries on our behalf—but only if it is your will to have his species altered so. Help us do good, but stop us if we would unwittingly cause harm. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

She took a tear from her cheek onto her finger, and pressed it against the smooth bark of Planter’s trunk. You aren’t there to feel this, Planter, not inside the tree. But you feel it all the same, I do believe that. God would not let such a noble soul as yours be lost in darkness.

It was time to go. Gentle brothers’ hands touched her, pulled at her, drew her onward to the lab where Glass was waiting in isolation for his passage into the third life.

When Ender had visited with Planter, he had been surrounded with medical equipment, lying on a bed. It was very different now inside the isolation chamber. Glass was in perfect health, and though he was wired up to all the monitoring devices, he was not bed-bound. Playful and happy, he could scarcely contain his eagerness to proceed.

And now that Ela and the other pequeninos had come, it could begin.

The only wall maintaining his isolation now was the disruptor field; outside it, the pequeninos who had gathered to watch his passage could see all that transpired. They were the only ones who watched in the open, however. Perhaps out of a sense of delicacy for pequenino feelings, or perhaps so they could have a wall between them and the brutality of this pequenino ritual, the humans had all gathered inside the lab, where only a window and the monitors let them see what would actually happen to Glass.

Glass waited until the sterile-suited brothers were in place beside him, wooden knives in hand, before he tore up capim and chewed it. It was the anesthetic that would make this bearable for him. But it was also the first time that a brother bound for the third life had chewed native grass that contained no descolada virus within it. If Ela’s new virus was right, then the capim here would work as the descolada-ruled capim had always worked.

“If I pass into the third life,” said Glass, “the honor belongs to God and to his servant Planter, not to me.”

It was fitting that Glass had chosen to use his last words of brother-speech to praise Planter. But his graciousness did not change the fact that thinking of Planter’s sacrifice caused many among the humans to weep; hard as it was to interpret pequenino emotions, Ender had no doubt that the chattering sounds from the pequeninos gathered outside were also weeping, or some other emotion appropriate to Planter’s memory. But Glass was wrong to think that there was no honor for him in this. Everyone knew that failure was still possible, that despite all the cause for hope they had, there was no certainty that Ela’s recolada would have the power to take a brother into the third life.

The sterile-suited brothers raised their knives and set to work.

Not me, this time, thought Ender. Thank God I don’t have to wield a knife to cause a brother’s death.

Yet he didn’t avert his gaze, as so many others in the lab were doing. The blood and gore were not new to him, and even if that made it no less pleasant, at least he knew that he could bear it. And what Glass could bear to do, Ender could bear to witness. That was what a speaker for the dead was supposed to do, wasn’t it? Witness. He watched as much as he could see of the ritual, as they opened up Glass’s living body and planted his organs in the earth, so the tree could start to grow while Glass’s mind was still alert and alive. Through it all, Glass made no sound or movement that suggested pain. Either his courage was beyond reckoning, or the recolada had done its work in the capim grass as well, so that it maintained its anesthetic properties.

At last it was done, and the brothers who had taken him into the third life returned to the sterile chamber, where, once their suits were cleansed of the recolada and viricide bacteria, they shed them and returned naked into the lab. They were very solemn, but Ender thought he could see the excitement and exultation that they concealed. All had gone well. They had felt Glass’s body respond to them. Within hours, perhaps minutes, the first leaves of the young tree should arise. And they were sure in their hearts that it would happen.

Ender also noticed that one of them was a priest. He wondered what the Bishop would say, if he knew. Old Peregrino had proved himself to be quite adaptable to assimilating an alien species into the Catholic faith, and adapting ritual and doctrine to fit their peculiar needs. But that didn’t change the fact that Peregrino was an old man who didn’t enjoy the thought of priests taking part in rituals that, despite their clear resemblance to the crucifixion, were still not of the recognized sacraments. Well, these brothers knew what they were doing. Whether they had told the Bishop of one of his priests’ participation or not, Ender wouldn’t mention it; nor would any of the other humans present, if indeed any of them noticed.

Yes, the tree was growing, and with great vigor, the leaves visibly rising as they watched. But it would still be many hours, days perhaps, before they knew if it was a fathertree, with Glass still alive and conscious within it. A time of waiting, in which Glass’s tree must grow in perfect isolation.

If only I could find a place, thought Ender, in which I could also be isolated, in which I could work out the strange things that have happened to me, without interference.

But he was not a pequenino, and whatever unease he suffered from was not a virus that could be killed, or driven from his life. His disease was at the root of his identity, and he didn’t know if he could ever be rid of it without destroying himself in the process. Perhaps, he thought, Peter and Val represent the total of who I am; perhaps if they were gone, there’d be nothing left. What part of my soul, what action in my life is there that can’t be explained as one or the other of them, acting out his or her will within me?

Am I the sum of my siblings? Or the difference between them? What is the peculiar arithmetic of my soul?

Valentine tried not to be obsessed with this young girl that Ender had brought back with him from Outside. Of course she knew it was her younger self as he remembered her, and she even thought it was rather sweet of him to carry inside his heart such a powerful memory of her at that age. She alone, of all the people on Lusitania, knew why it was at that age that she lingered in his unconscious. He had been in Battle School till then, cut off completely from his family. Though he could not have known it, she knew that their parents had pretty much forgotten him. Not forgotten that he existed, of course, but forgotten him as a presence in their lives. He simply wasn’t there, wasn’t their responsibility anymore. Having given him away to the state, they were absolved. He would have been more a part of their lives if he had died; as it was, they didn’t have even a grave to visit. Valentine didn’t blame them for this—it proved that they were resilient and adaptable. But she wasn’t able to mimic them. Ender was always with her, in her heart. And when, after being inwardly battered as he was forced to meet all the challenges they threw at him in Battle School, Ender now resolved to give up on the whole enterprise—when he, in effect, went on strike—the officer charged with turning him into a pliant tool came to her. Brought her to Ender. Gave them time together—the same man who had torn them apart and left such deep wounds in their hearts. She healed her brother then—enough that he could go back and save humanity by destroying the buggers.

Of course he holds me in his memory at that age, more powerfully than any of our countless experiences together since. Of course when his unconscious mind brings forth its most intimate baggage, it is the girl I was then who lingers most deeply in his heart.

She knew all this, she understood all this, she believed all this. Yet still it rankled, still it hurt that this almost mindlessly perfect creature was what he really thought of her all along. That the Valentine that Ender truly loved was a creature of impossible purity. It was for the sake of this imaginary Valentine that he was so close a companion to me all the years before I married Jakt. Unless it was because I married Jakt that he returned to this childish vision of me.

Nonsense. There was nothing to be gained by trying to imagine what this young girl meant. Regardless of the manner of her creation, she was here now, and must be dealt with.

Poor Ender—he seemed to understand nothing. He actually thought at first that he should keep young Val with him. “Isn’t she my daughter, after a fashion?” he had asked.

“After no fashion is she your daughter,” she had answered. “If anything, she’s mine. And it is certainly not proper for you to take her into your home, alone. Especially since Peter is there, and he isn’t the most trustworthy co-guardian who ever lived.” Ender still didn’t fully agree—he would rather have got rid of Peter than Val—but he complied, and since then Val had lived in Valentine’s house. Valentine’s intention had been to become the girl’s friend and mentor, but in the event she simply couldn’t do it. She wasn’t comfortable enough in Val’s company. She kept finding reasons to leave home when Val was there; she kept feeling inordinately grateful when Ender came to let her tag along with him and Peter.

What finally happened was that, as so often before, Plikt silently stepped in and solved the problem. Plikt became Val’s primary companion and guardian in Valentine’s house. When Val wasn’t with Ender, she was with Plikt. And this morning Plikt had suggested setting up a house of her own—for her and Val. Perhaps I was too hasty in agreeing, thought Valentine. But it’s probably as hard on Val to share a house with me as for me to share a house with her.

Now, though, watching as Plikt and Val entered the new chapel on their knees and crawled forward—as all the other humans who entered had also crawled—to kiss Bishop Peregrino’s ring before the altar, Valentine realized that she had done nothing for “Val’s own good,” whatever she might have told herself. Val was completely self-contained, unflappable, calm. Why should Valentine imagine that she could make young Val either more or less happy, more or less comfortable? I am irrelevant to this girlchild’s life. But she is not irrelevant to mine. She is at once an affirmation and a denial of the most important relationship of my childhood, and of much of my adulthood as well. I wish that she had crumbled into nothingness Outside, like Miro’s old crippled body did. I wish I had never had to face myself like this.

And it was herself she was facing. Ela had run that test immediately. Young Val and Valentine were genetically identical.

“But it makes no sense,” Valentine protested. “Ender could hardly have memorized my genetic code. There couldn’t possibly have been a pattern of that code in the starship with him.”

“Am I supposed to explain it?” asked Ela.

Ender had suggested a possibility—that young Val’s genetic code was fluid until she and Valentine actually met, and then the philotes of Val’s body had formed themselves into the pattern they found in Valentine’s.

Valentine kept her own opinion to herself, but she doubted that Ender’s guess was right. Young Val had had Valentine’s genes from the first moment, because any person who so perfectly fit Ender’s vision of Valentine could not have any other genes; the natural law that Jane herself was helping to maintain within the starship would have required it. Or perhaps there was some force that shaped and gave order even to a place of such utter chaos. It hardly mattered, except that however annoyingly perfect and uncomplaining and unlike me this new pseudo-Val might be, Ender’s vision of her had been true enough that genetically they were the same. His vision couldn’t be much off the mark. Perhaps I really was that perfect then, and only got my rough edges during the years since then. Perhaps I really was that beautiful. Perhaps I really was so young.

They knelt before the Bishop. Plikt kissed his ring, though she owed no part of the penance of Lusitania.

When it came time for young Val to kiss the ring, however, the Bishop pulled away his hand and turned away. A priest came forward and told them to go to their seats.

“How can I?” said young Val. “I haven’t given my penance yet.”

“You have no penance,” said the priest. “The Bishop told me before you came; you weren’t here when the sin was committed, so you have no part in the penance.”

Young Val looked at him very sadly and said, “I was created by someone other than God. That’s why the Bishop won’t receive me. I’ll never have communion while he lives.”

The priest looked very sad—it was impossible not to feel sorry for young Val, for her simplicity and sweetness made her seem fragile, and the person who hurt her therefore had to feel clumsy for having damaged such a tender thing. “Until the Pope can decide,” he said. “All this is very hard.”

“I know,” whispered young Val. Then she came and sat down between Plikt and Valentine.

Our elbows touch, thought Valentine. A daughter who is perfectly myself, as if I had cloned her thirteen years ago.

But I didn’t want another daughter, and I certainly didn’t want a duplicate of me. She knows that. She feels it. And so she suffers something that I never suffered—she feels unwanted and unloved by those who are most like her.

How does Ender feel about her? Does he also wish that she would go away? Or does he yearn to be her brother, as he was my young brother so many years ago? When I was that age, Ender had not yet committed xenocide. But then, he had not yet spoken for the dead, either. The Hive Queen, The Hegemon, The Life of Human—all that was beyond him then. He was just a child, confused, despairing, afraid. How could Ender yearn for that time again?

Miro soon came in, crawled to the altar, and kissed the ring. Though the Bishop had absolved him of any responsibility, he bore the penance with all others. Valentine noticed, of course, the many whispers as he moved forward. Everyone in Lusitania who had known him before his brain damage recognized the miracle that had been performed—a perfect restoration of the Miro who had lived so brightly among them all before.

I didn’t know you then, Miro, thought Valentine. Did you always have that distant, brooding air? Healed your body may be, but you’re still the man who lived in pain for this time. Has it made you cold or more compassionate?

He came and sat beside her, in the chair that would have been Jakt’s, except that Jakt was still in space. With the descolada soon to be destroyed, someone had to bring to Lusitania’s surface the thousands of frozen microbes and plant and animal species that had to be introduced in order to establish a self-regulating gaialogy and keep the planetary systems in order. It was a job that had been done on many other worlds, but it was being made trickier by the need not to compete too intensely with the local species that the pequeninos depended on. Jakt was up there, laboring for them all; it was a good reason to be gone, but Valentine still missed him—needed him badly, in fact, what with Ender’s new creations causing her such turmoil. Miro was no substitute for her husband, especially because his own new body was such a sharp reminder of what had been done Outside.

If I went out there, what would I create? I doubt that I’d bring back a person, because I fear there is no one soul at the root of my psyche. Not even my own, I fear. What else has my passionate study of history been, except a search for humanity? Others find humanity by looking in their own hearts. Only lost souls need to search for it outside themselves.

“The line’s almost done,” whispered Miro.

So the service would begin soon.

“Ready to have your sins purged?” whispered Valentine.

“As the Bishop explained, he’ll purge only the sins of this new body. I still have to confess and do penance for the sins I had left over from the old one. Not many carnal sins were possible, of course, but there’s plenty of envy, spite, malice, and self-pity. What I’m trying to decide is whether I also have a suicide to confess. When my old body crumbled into nothing, it was answering the wish of my heart.”

“You should never have got your voice back,” said Valentine. “You babble now just to hear yourself talk so prettily.”

He smiled and patted her arm.

The Bishop began the service with prayer, giving thanks to God for all that had been accomplished in recent months. Conspicuous by omission was the creation of Lusitania’s two newest citizens, though Miro’s healing was definitely laid at God’s door. He called Miro forward and baptized him almost at once, and then, because this was not a mass, the Bishop proceeded immediately to his homily.

“God’s mercy has an infinite reach,” said the Bishop. “We can only hope he will choose to reach farther than we deserve, to forgive us for our terrible sins as individuals and as a people. We can only hope that, like Nineveh, which turned away destruction through repentance, we can convince our Lord to spare us from the fleet that he has permitted to come against us to punish us.”

Miro whispered, softly, so that only she could hear, “Didn’t he send the fleet before the burning of the forest?”

“Maybe the Lord counts only the arrival time, not the departure,” Valentine suggested. At once, though, she regretted her flippancy. What was happening here today was a solemn thing; even if she wasn’t a deep believer in Catholic doctrine, she knew that it was a holy thing when a community accepted responsibility for the evil it committed and did true penance for it.

The Bishop spoke of those who had died in holiness—Os Venerados, who first saved humanity from the descolada plague; Father Estevão, whose body was buried under the floor of the chapel and who suffered martyrdom in the cause of defending truth against heresy; Planter, who died to prove that his people’s soul was from God, and not from a virus; and the pequeninos who had died as innocent victims of slaughter. “All of these may be saints someday, for this is a time like the early days of Christianity, when great deeds and great holiness were much more needed, and therefore much more often achieved. This chapel is a shrine to all those who have loved their God with all their heart, might, mind and strength, and who have loved their neighbor as themself. Let all who enter here do it with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, so that holiness may also touch them.”

The homily wasn’t long, because there were many more identical services scheduled for that day—the people were coming to the chapel in shifts, since it was far too small to accommodate the whole human population of Lusitania all at once. Soon enough they were done, and Valentine got up to leave. She would have followed close behind Plikt and Val, except that Miro caught at her arm.

“Jane just told me,” he said. “I thought you’d want to know.”

“What?”

“She just tested the starship, without Ender in it.”

“How could she do that?” asked Valentine.

“Peter,” he said. “She took him Outside and back again. He can contain her aiúa, if that’s how this process is actually working.”

She gave voice to her immediate fear. “Did he—”

“Create anything? No.” Miro grinned—but with a hint of the twisted wryness that Valentine had thought was a product of his affliction. “He claims it’s because his mind is much clearer and healthier than Andrew’s.”

“Maybe so,” said Valentine.

“I say it’s because none of the philotes out there were willing to be part of his pattern. Too twisted.”

Valentine laughed a little.

The Bishop came up to them then. Since they were among the last to leave, they were alone at the front of the chapel.

“Thank you for accepting a new baptism,” said the Bishop.

Miro bowed his head. “Not many men have a chance to be purified so far along in their sins,” he said.

“And Valentine, I’m sorry I couldn’t receive your—namesake.”

“Don’t worry, Bishop Peregrino. I understand. I may even agree with you.”

The Bishop shook his head. “It would be better if they could just—”

“Leave?” offered Miro. “You get your wish. Peter will soon be gone—Jane can pilot a ship with him aboard. No doubt the same thing will be possible with young Val.”

“No,” said Valentine. “She can’t go. She’s too—”

“Young?” asked Miro. He seemed amused. “They were both born knowing everything that Ender knows. You can hardly call the girl a child, despite her body.”

“If they had been born,” said the Bishop, “They wouldn’t have to leave.”

“They’re not leaving because of your wish,” said Miro. “They’re leaving because Peter’s going to deliver Ela’s new virus to Path, and young Val’s ship is going to go off in search of planets where pequeninos and hive queens can be established.”

“You can’t send her on such a mission,” said Valentine.

“I won’t send her,” said Miro. “I’ll take her. Or rather, she’ll take me. I want to go. Whatever risks there are, I’ll take them. She’ll be safe, Valentine.”

Valentine still shook her head, but she knew already that in the end she would be defeated. Young Val herself would insist on going, however young she might seem, because if she didn’t go, only one starship could travel; and if Peter was the one doing the traveling, there was no telling whether the ship would be used for any good purpose. In the long run, Valentine herself would bow to the necessity. Whatever danger young Val might be exposed to, it was no worse than the risks already taken by others. Like Planter. Like Father Estevao. Like Glass.

The pequeninos gathered at Planter’s tree. It would have been Glass’s tree, since he was the first to pass into the third life with the recolada, but almost his first words, once they were able to talk with him, were an adamant rejection of the idea of introducing the viricide and recolada into the world beside his tree. This occasion belonged to Planter, he declared, and the brothers and wives ultimately agreed with him.

So it was that Ender leaned against his friend Human, whom he had planted in order to help him into the third life so many years before. It would have been a moment of complete joy to Ender, the liberation of the pequeninos from the descolada—except that he had Peter with him through it all.

“Weakness celebrates weakness,” said Peter. “Planter failed, and here they are honoring him, while Glass succeeded, and there he stands, alone out there in the experimental field. And the stupidest thing is that it can’t possibly mean anything to Planter, since his aiúa isn’t even here.”

“It may not mean anything to Planter,” said Ender—a point he wasn’t altogether sure of, anyway—“but it means something to the people here.”

“Yes,” he said. “It means they’re weak.”

“Jane says she took you Outside.”

“An easy trip,” said Peter. “Next time, though, Lusitania won’t be my destination.”

“She says you plan to take Ela’s virus to Path.”

“My first stop,” Peter said. “But I won’t be coming back here. Count on that, old boy.”

“We need the ship.”

“You’ve got that sweet little slip of a girl,” said Peter, “and the bugger bitch can pop out starships for you by the dozen, if only you could spawn enough creatures like me and Valzinha to pilot them.”

“I’ll be glad to see the last of you.”

“Aren’t you curious what I intend to do?”

“No,” said Ender.

But it was a lie, and of course Peter knew it. “I intend to do what you have neither the brains nor the stomach to do. I intend to stop the fleet.”

“How? Magically appear on the flagship?”

“Well, if worse came to worst, dear lad, I could always deliver an M.D. Device to the fleet before they even knew I was there. But that wouldn’t accomplish much, would it? To stop the fleet, I need to stop Congress. And to stop Congress, I need to get control.”

Ender knew at once what this meant. “So you think you can be Hegemon again? God help humanity if you succeed.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” said Peter. “I did it once before, and I didn’t do so badly. You should know—you wrote the book yourself.”

“That was the real Peter,” said Ender. “Not you, the twisted version conjured up out of my hatred and fear.”

Did Peter have soul enough to resent these harsh words? Ender thought, for a moment at least, that Peter paused, that his face showed a moment of—what, hurt? Or simply rage?

“I’m the real Peter now,” he answered, after that momentary pause. “And you’d better hope that I have all the skill I had before. After all, you managed to give Valette the same genes as Valentine. Maybe I’m all that Peter ever was.”

“Maybe pigs have wings.”

Peter laughed. “They would, if you went Outside and believed hard enough.”

“Go, then,” said Ender.

“Yes, I know you’ll be glad to get rid of me.”

“And sic you on the rest of humanity? Let that be punishment enough, for their having sent the fleet.” Ender gripped Peter by the arm, pulled him close. “Don’t think that this time you can maneuver me into helplessness. I’m not a little boy anymore, and if you get out of hand, I’ll destroy you.”

“You can’t,” said Peter. “You could more easily kill yourself.”

The ceremony began. This time there was no pomp, no ring to kiss, no homily. Ela and her assistants simply brought several hundred sugar cubes impregnated with the viricide bacterium, and as many vials of solution containing the recolada. They were passed among the congregation, and each of the pequeninos took the sugar cube, dissolved and swallowed it, and then drank off the contents of the vial.

“This is my body which is given for you,” intoned Peter. “This do in remembrance of me.”

“Have you no respect for anything?” asked Ender.

“This is my blood, which I shed for you. Drink in remembrance of me.” Peter smiled. “This is a communion even I can take, unbaptized as I am.”

“I can promise you this,” said Ender. “They haven’t invented the baptism yet that can purify you.”

“I’ll bet you’ve been saving up all your life, just to say that to me.” Peter turned to him, so Ender could see the ear in which the jewel had been implanted, linking him to Jane. In case Ender didn’t notice what he was pointing out, Peter touched the jewel rather ostentatiously. “Just remember, I have the source of all wisdom here. She’ll show you what I’m doing, if you ever care. If you don’t forget me the moment I’m gone.”

“I won’t forget you,” said Ender.

“You could come along,” said Peter.

“And risk making more like you Outside?”

“I could use the company.”

“I promise you, Peter, you’d soon get as sick of yourself as I am sick of you.”

“Never,” said Peter. “I’m not filled with self-loathing the way you are, you poor guilt-obsessed tool of better, stronger men. And if you won’t make more companions for me, why, I’ll find my own along the way.”

“I have no doubt of it,” said Ender.

The sugar cubes and vials came to them; they ate, drank.

“The taste of freedom,” said Peter. “Delicious.”

“Is it?” said Ender. “We’re killing a species that we never understood.”

“I know what you mean,” said Peter. “It’s a lot more fun to destroy an opponent when he’s able to understand how thoroughly you defeated him.”

Then, at last, Peter walked away.

Ender stayed through the end of the ceremony, and spoke to many there: Human and Rooter, of course, and Valentine, Ela, Ouanda, and Miro.

He had another visit to make, however. A visit he had made several times before, always to be rebuffed, sent away without a word. This time, though, Novinha came out to speak with him. And instead of being filled with rage and grief, she seemed quite calm.

“I’m much more at peace,” she said. “And I know, for what it’s worth, that my rage at you was unrighteous.”

Ender was glad to hear the sentiment, but surprised at the terms she used. When had Novinha ever spoken of righteousness?

“I’ve come to see that perhaps my boy was fulfilling the purposes of God,” she said. “That you couldn’t have stopped him, because God wanted him to go to the pequeninos to set in motion the miracles that have come since then.” She wept. “Miro came to me. Healed,” she said. “Oh, God is merciful after all. And I’ll have Quim again in heaven, when I die.”

She’s been converted, thought Ender. After all these years of despising the church, of taking part in Catholicism only because there was no other way to be a citizen of Lusitania Colony, these weeks with the Children of the Mind of Christ have converted her. I’m glad of it, he thought. She’s speaking to me again.

“Andrew,” she said, “I want us to be together again.”

He reached out to embrace her, wanting to weep with relief and joy, but she recoiled from his touch.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I won’t go home with you. This is my home now.”

She was right—he hadn’t understood. But now he did. She hadn’t just been converted to Catholicism. She had been converted to this order of permanent sacrifice, where only husbands and wives could join, and only together, to take vows of permanent abstinence in the midst of their marriage. “Novinha,” he said, “I haven’t the faith or the strength to be one of the Children of the Mind of Christ.”

“When you do,” she said, “I’ll be waiting for you here.”

“Is this the only hope I have of being with you?” he whispered. “To forswear loving your body as the only way to have your companionship?”

“Andrew,” she whispered, “I long for you. But my sin for so many years was adultery that my only hope of joy now is to deny the flesh and live in the spirit. I’ll do it alone if I must. But with you—oh, Andrew, I miss you.”

And I miss you, he thought. “Like breath itself I miss you,” he whispered. “But don’t ask this of me. Live with me as my wife until the last of our youth is spent, and then when desire is slack we can come back here together. I could be happy then.”

“Don’t you see?” she said. “I’ve made a covenant. I’ve made a promise.”

“You made one to me, too,” he said.

“Should I break a vow to God, so I can keep my vow with you?”

“God would understand.”

“How easily those who never hear his voice declare what he would and would not want.”

“Do you hear his voice these days?”

“I hear his song in my heart, the way the Psalmist did. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.”

“The twenty-third. While the only song I hear is the twenty-second.”

She smiled wanly. “‘Why hast thou forsaken me?”’ she quoted.

“And the part about the bulls of Bashan,” said Ender. “I’ve always felt like I was surrounded by bulls.”

She laughed. “Come to me when you can,” she said. “I’ll be here, when you’re ready.”

She almost left him then.

“Wait.”

She waited.

“I brought you the viricide and the recolada.”

“Ela’s triumph,” she said. “It was beyond me, you know. I cost you nothing, by abandoning my work. My time was past, and she had far surpassed me.” Novinha took the sugar cube, let it melt for a moment, swallowed it.

Then she held the vial up against the last light of evening. “With the red sky, it looks like it’s all afire inside.” She drank it—sipped it, really, so that the flavor would linger. Even though, as Ender knew, the taste was bitter, and lingered unpleasantly in the mouth long afterward.

“Can I visit you?”

“Once a month,” she said. Her answer was so quick that he knew she had already considered the question and reached a decision that she had no intention of altering.

“Then once a month I’ll visit you,” he said.

“Until you’re ready to join me,” she said.

“Until you’re ready to return to me,” he answered.

But he knew that she would never bend. Novinha was not a person who could easily change her mind. She had set the bounds of his future.

He should have been resentful, angry. He should have blustered about getting his freedom from a marriage to a woman who refused him. But he couldn’t think what he might want his freedom for. Nothing is in my hands now, he realized. No part of the future depends on me. My work, such as it is, is done, and now my only influence on the future is what my children do—such as they are: the monster Peter, the impossibly perfect child Val.

And Miro, Grego, Quara, Ela, Olhado—aren’t they my children, too? Can’t I also claim to have helped create them, even if they came from Libo’s love and Novinha’s body, years before I even arrived in this place?

It was full dark when he found young Val, though he couldn’t understand why he was even looking for her. She was in Olhado’s house, with Plikt; but while Plikt leaned against a shadowed wall, her face inscrutable, young Val was among Olhado’s children, playing with them.

Of course she’s playing with them, thought Ender. She’s still a child herself, however much experience she might have had thrust upon her out of my memories.

But as he stood in the doorway, watching, he realized that she wasn’t playing equally with all the children. It was Nimbo who really had her attention. The boy who had been burned, in more ways than one, the night of the mob. The game the children played was simple enough, but it kept them from talking to each other. Still, there was eloquent conversation between Nimbo and young Val. Her smile toward him was warm, not in the manner of a woman encouraging a lover, but rather as a sister gives her brother the silent message of love, of confidence, of trust.

She’s healing him, thought Ender. Just as Valentine, so many years ago, healed me. Not with words. Just with her company.

Could I have created her with even that ability intact? Was there that much truth and power in my dream of her? Then maybe Peter also has everything within him that my real brother had—all that was dangerous and terrible, but also that which created a new order.

Try as he might, Ender couldn’t get himself to believe that story. Young Val might have healing in her eyes, but Peter had none of that in him. His was the face that, years before, Ender had seen looking back at him from a mirror in the Fantasy Game, in a terrible room where he died again and again before he could finally embrace the element of Peter within himself and go on.

I embraced Peter and destroyed a whole people. I took him into myself and committed xenocide. I thought, in all these years since then, that I had purged him. That he was gone. But he’ll never leave me.

The idea of withdrawing from the world and entering into the order of the Children of the Mind of Christ—there was much to attract him in that. Perhaps there, Novinha and he together could purge themselves of the demons that had dwelt inside them all these years. Novinha has never been so much at peace, thought Ender, as she is tonight.

Young Val noticed him, came to him as he stood in the doorway.

“Why are you here?” she said.

“Looking for you,” he said.

“Plikt and I are spending the night with Olhado’s family,” she said. She glanced at Nimbo and smiled. The boy grinned foolishly.

“Jane says that you’re going with the starship,” Ender said softly.

“If Peter can hold Jane within himself, so can I,” she answered. “Miro is going with me. To find habitable worlds.”

“Only if you want to,” said Ender.

“Don’t be foolish,” she said. “Since when have you done only what you want to do? I’ll do what must be done, that only I can do.”

He nodded.

“Is that all you came for?” she asked.

He nodded again. “I guess,” he said.

“Or did you come because you wish that you could be the child you were when you last saw a girl with this face?”

The words stung—far worse than when Peter guessed what was in his heart. Her compassion was far more painful than his contempt.

She must have seen the expression of pain on his face, and misunderstood it. He was relieved that she was capable of misunderstanding. I do have some privacy left.

“Are you ashamed of me?” she asked.

“Embarrassed,” he said. “To have my unconscious mind made so public. But not ashamed. Not of you.” He glanced toward Nimbo, then back to her. “Stay here and finish what you started.”

She smiled slightly. “He’s a good boy who thought that he was doing something fine.”

“Yes,” he said. “But it got away from him.”

“He didn’t know what he was doing,” she said. “When you don’t understand the consequences of your acts, how can you be blamed for them?”

He knew that she was talking as much about him, Ender the Xenocide, as about Nimbo. “You don’t take the blame,” he answered. “But you still take responsibility. For healing the wounds you caused.”

“Yes,” she said. “The wounds you caused. But not all the wounds in the world.”

“Oh?” he asked. “And why not? Because you plan to heal them all yourself?

She laughed—a light, girlish laugh. “You haven’t changed a bit, Andrew,” she said. “Not in all these years.”

He smiled at her, hugged her lightly, and sent her back into the light of the room. He himself, though, turned back out into the darkness and headed home. There was light enough for him to find his way, yet he stumbled and got lost several times.

“You’re crying,” said Jane in his ear.

“This is such a happy day,” he said.

“It is, you know. You’re just about the only person wasting any pity on you tonight.”

“Fine, then,” said Ender. “If I’m the only one, then at least there’s one.”

“You’ve got me,” she said. “And our relationship has been chaste all along.”

“I’ve really had enough of chastity in my life,” he answered. “I wasn’t hoping for more.”

“Everyone is chaste in the end. Everyone ends up out of the reach of all the deadly sins.”

“But I’m not dead,” he said. “Not yet. Or am I?”

“Does this feel like heaven?” she asked.

He laughed, and not nicely.

“Well, then, you can’t be dead.”

“You forget,” he said. “This could easily be hell.”

“Is it?” she asked him.

He thought about all that had been accomplished. Ela’s viruses. Miro’s healing. Young Val’s kindness to Nimbo. The smile of peace on Novinha’s face. The pequeninos’ rejoicing as their liberty began its passage through their world. Already, he knew, the viricide was cutting an ever-widening swath through the prairie of capim surrounding the colony; by now it must already have passed into other forests, the descolada, helpless now, giving way as the mute and passive recolada took its place. All these changes couldn’t possibly take place in hell.

“I guess I’m still alive,” he said.

“And so am I,” she said. “That’s something, too. Peter and Val, they’re not the only people to spring from your mind.”

“No, they’re not,” he said.

“We’re both still alive, even if we have hard times coming.”

He remembered what lay in store for her, the mental crippling that was only weeks away, and he was ashamed of himself for having mourned his own losses. “Better to have loved and lost,” he murmured, “than never to have loved at all.”

“It may be a cliché,” said Jane, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t be true.”

18

THE GOD OF PATH

<I couldn’t taste the changes in the descolada virus until it was gone.>

<It was adapting to you?>

<It was beginning to taste like myself. It had included most of my genetic molecules into its own structure.>

<Perhaps it was preparing to change you, as it changed us.>

<But when it captured your ancestors, it paired them with the trees they lived in. Whom would we have been paired with?>

<What other forms of life are there on Lusitania, except the ones that are already paired?>

<Perhaps the descolada meant to combine us with an existing pair. Or replace one pair-member with us.>

<Or perhaps it meant to pair you with the humans.>

<It’s dead now. It will never happen, whatever it planned.>

<What sort of life would you have led? Mating with human males?>

<This is disgusting.>

<Or giving live births, perhaps, in the human manner?>

<Stop this foulness.>

<I was merely speculating.>

<The descolada is gone. You’re free of it.>

<But never free of what we should have been. I believe that we were sentient before the descolada came. I believe our history is older than the spacecraft that brought it here. I believe that somewhere in our genes is locked the secret of pequenino life when we were tree-dwellers, rather than the larval stage in the life of sentient trees.>

<If you had no third life, Human, you would be dead now.>

<Dead now, but while I lived I could have been, not a mere brother, but a father. While I lived I could have traveled anywhere, without worrying about returning to my forest if I ever hoped to mate. Never would I have stood day after day rooted to the same spot, living my life vicariously through the tales the brothers bring to me.>

<It’s not enough for you to be free of the descolada, then? You must be free of all its consequences or you won’t be content?>

<I’m always content. I am what I am, no matter how I got that way.>

<But still not free.>

<Males and females both, we still have to lose our lives in order to pass on our genes.>

<Poor fool. Do you think that I, the hive queen, am free?> Do you think that human parents, once they bear young, are ever truly free again? If life to you means independence, a completely unfettered freedom to do as you like, then none of the sentient creatures is alive. None of us is ever fully free.>

<Put down roots, my friend, and then tell me how unfree you were when you were yet unrooted.>

Wang-mu and Master Han waited together on the riverbank some hundred meters from their house, a pleasant walk through the garden. Jane had told them that someone would be coming to see them, someone from Lusitania. They both knew this meant that faster-than-light travel had been achieved, but beyond that they could only assume that their visitor must have come to an orbit around Path, shuttled down, and was now making his way stealthily toward them.

Instead, a ridiculously small metal structure appeared on the riverbank in front of them. The door opened. A man emerged. A young man—large-boned, Caucasian, but pleasant-looking anyway. He held a single glass tube in his hand.

He smiled.

Wang-mu had never seen such a smile. He looked right through her as if he owned her soul. As if he knew her, knew her better than she knew herself.

“Wang-mu,” he said, gently. “Royal Mother of the West. And Fei-tzu, the great teacher of the Path.”

He bowed. They bowed to him in return.

“My business here is brief,” he said. He held the vial out to Master Han. “Here is the virus. As soon as I’ve gone—because I have no desire for genetic alteration myself, thank you—drink this down. I imagine it tastes like pus or something equally disgusting, but drink it anyway. Then make contact with as many people as possible, in your house and the town nearby. You’ll have about six hours before you start feeling sick. With any luck, at the end of the second day you’ll have not a single symptom left. Of anything.” He grinned. “No more little air-dances for you, Master Han, eh?”

“No more servility for any of us,” said Han Fei-tzu. “We’re ready to release our messages at once.”

“Don’t spring this on anybody until you’ve already spread the infection for a few hours.”

“Of course,” said Master Han. “Your wisdom teaches me to be careful, though my heart tells me to hurry and proclaim the glorious revolution that this merciful plague will bring to us.”

“Yes, very nice,” said the man. Then he turned to Wang-mu. “But you don’t need the virus, do you?”

“No, sir,” said Wang-mu.

“Jane says you’re as bright a human being as she’s ever seen.”

“Jane is too generous,” said Wang-mu.

“No, she showed me the data.” He looked her up and down. She didn’t like the way his eyes took possession of her whole body in that single long glance. “You don’t need to be here for the plague. In fact, you’d be better off leaving before it happens.”

“Leaving?”

“What is there for you here?” asked the man. “I don’t care how revolutionary it gets here, you’ll still be a servant and the child of low-class parents. In a place like this, you could spend your whole life overcoming it and you’d still be nothing but a servant with a surprisingly good mind. Come with me and you’ll be part of changing history. Making history.”

“Come with you and do what?”

“Overthrow Congress, of course. Cut them off at the knees and send them all crawling back home. Make all the colony worlds equal members of the polity, clean out the corruption, expose all the vile secrets, and call home the Lusitania Fleet before it can commit an atrocity. Establish the rights of all ramen races. Peace and freedom.”

“And you intend to do all this?”

“Not alone,” he said.

She was relieved.

“I’ll have you.”

“To do what?”

“To write. To speak. To do whatever I need you to do.”

“But I’m uneducated, sir. Master Han was only beginning to teach me.”

“Who are you?” demanded Master Han. “How can you expect a modest girl like this to pick up and go with a stranger?”

“A modest girl? Who gives her body to the foreman in order to get a chance to be close to a godspoken girl who might just hire her to be a secret maid? No, Master Han, she may be putting on the attitudes of a modest girl, but that’s because she’s a chameleon. Changing hides whenever she thinks it’ll get her something.”

“I’m not a liar, sir,” she said.

“No, I’m sure you sincerely become whatever it is you’re pretending to be. So now I’m saying, Pretend to be a revolutionary with me. You hate the bastards who did all this to your world. To Qing-jao.”

“How do you know so much about me?”

He tapped his ear. For the first time she noticed the jewel there. “Jane keeps me informed about the people I need to know.”

“Jane will die soon,” said Wang-mu.

“Oh, she may get semi-stupid for a while,” said the man, “but die she will not. You helped save her. And in the meantime, I’ll have you.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I’m afraid.”

“All right then,” he said. “I offered.”

He turned back to the door of his tiny craft.

“Wait,” she said.

He faced her again.

“Can’t you at least tell me who you are?”

“Peter Wiggin is my name,” he said. “Though I imagine I’ll use a false one for a while.”

“Peter Wiggin,” she whispered. “That’s the name of the—”

“My name. I’ll explain it to you later, if I feel like it. Let’s just say that Andrew Wiggin sent me. Sent me off rather forcefully. I’m a man with a mission, and he figured I could only accomplish it on one of the worlds where Congress’s power structures are most heavily concentrated. I was Hegemon once, Wang-mu, and I intend to have the job back, whatever the title might turn out to be when I get it. I’m going to break a lot of eggs and cause an amazing amount of trouble and turn this whole Hundred Worlds thing arse over teakettle, and I’m inviting you to help me. But I really don’t give a damn whether you do or not, because even though it’d be nice to have your brains and your company, I’ll do the job one way or another. So are you coming or what?”

She turned to Master Han in an agony of indecision.

“I had been hoping to teach you,” said Master Han. “But if this man is going to work toward what he says he will, then with him you’ll have a better chance to change the course of human history than you’d ever have here, where the virus will do our main work for us.”

Wang-mu whispered to him. “Leaving you will be like losing a father.”

“And if you go, I will have lost my second and last daughter.”

“Don’t break my heart, you two,” said Peter. “I’ve got a faster-than-light starship here. Leaving Path with me isn’t a lifetime thing, you know? If things don’t work out I can always bring her back in a day or two. Fair enough?”

“You want to go, I know it,” said Master Han.

“Don’t you also know that I want to stay as well?”

“I know that, too,” said Master Han. “But you will go.”

“Yes,” she said. “I will.”

“May the gods watch over you, daughter Wang-mu,” said Master Han.

“And may every direction be the east of sunrise to you, Father Han.”

Then she stepped forward. The young man named Peter took her hand and led her into the starship. The door closed behind them. A moment later, the starship disappeared.

Master Han waited there ten minutes, meditating until he could compose his feelings. Then he opened the vial, drank its contents, and walked briskly back to the house. Old Mu-pao greeted him just inside the door. “Master Han,” she said. “I didn’t know where you had gone. And Wang-mu is missing, too.”

“She’ll be gone for a while,” he said. Then he walked very close to the old servant, so that his breath would be in her face. “You have been more faithful to my house than we have ever deserved.”

A look of fear came upon her face. “Master Han, you’re not dismissing me, are you?”

“No,” he said. “I thought that I was thanking you.”

He left Mu-pao and ranged through the house. Qing-jao was not in her room. That was no surprise. She spent most of her time entertaining visitors. That would suit his purpose well. And indeed, that was where he found her, in the morning room, with three very distinguished old godspoken men from a town two hundred kilometers away.

Qing-jao introduced them graciously, and then adopted the role of submissive daughter in her father’s presence. He bowed to each man, but then found occasion to reach out his hand and touch each one of them. Jane had explained that the virus was highly communicable. Mere physical closeness was usually enough; touching made it more sure.

And when they were greeted, he turned to his daughter. “Qing-jao,” he said, “will you have a gift from me?”

She bowed and answered graciously, “Whatever my father has brought me, I will gratefully receive, though I know I am not worthy of his notice.”

He reached out his arms and drew her in to him. She was stiff and awkward in his embrace—he had not done such an impulsive thing before dignitaries since she was a very little girl. But he held her all the same, tightly, for he knew that she would never forgive him for what came from this embrace, and therefore it would be the last time he held his Gloriously Bright within his arms.

Qing-jao knew what her father’s embrace meant. She had watched her father walking in the garden with Wang-mu. She had seen the walnut-shaped starship appear on the riverbank. She had seen him take the vial from the round-eyed stranger. She saw him drink. Then she came here, to this room, to receive visitors on her father’s behalf. I am dutiful, my honored father, even when you prepare to betray me.

And even now, knowing that his embrace was his cruelest effort to cut her off from the voice of the gods, knowing that he had so little respect for her that he thought he could deceive her, she nevertheless received whatever he determined to give her. Was he not her father? His virus from the world of Lusitania might or might not steal the voice of the gods from her; she could not guess what the gods would permit their enemies to do. But certainly if she rejected her father and disobeyed him, the gods would punish her. Better to remain worthy of the gods by showing proper respect and obedience to her father, than to disobey him in the name of the gods and thereby make herself unworthy of their gifts.

So she received his embrace, and breathed deeply of his breath.

When he had spoken briefly to. his guests, he left. They took his visit with them as a signal honor; so faithfully had Qing-jao concealed her father’s mad rebellion against the gods that Han Fei-tzu was still regarded as the greatest man of Path. She spoke to them softly, and smiled graciously, and saw them on their way. She gave them no hint that they would carry away with them a weapon. Why should she? Human weapons would be of no use against the power of the gods, unless the gods willed it. And if the gods wished to stop speaking to the people of Path, then this might well be the disguise they had chosen for their act. Let it seem to the unbeliever that Father’s Lusitanian virus cut us off from the gods; I will know, as will all other faithful men and women, that the gods speak to whomever they wish, and nothing made by human hands could stop them if they so desired. All their acts were vanity. If Congress believed that they had caused the gods to speak on Path, let them believe it. If Father and the Lusitanians believe that they are causing the gods to fall silent, let them believe it. I know that if I am only worthy of it, the gods will speak to me.

A few hours later, Qing-jao fell deathly ill. The fever struck her like a blow from a strong man’s hand; she collapsed, and barely noticed as servants carried her to her bed. The doctors came, though she could have told them there was nothing they could do, and that by coming they would only expose themselves to infection. But she said nothing, because her body was struggling too fiercely against the disease. Or rather, her body was struggling to reject her own tissues and organs, until at last the transformation of her genes was complete. Even then, it took time for her body to purge itself of the old antibodies. She slept and slept.

It was bright afternoon when she awoke. “Time,” she croaked, and the computer in her room spoke the hour and day. The fever had taken two days from her life. She was on fire with thirst. She got to her feet and staggered to her bathroom, turned on the water, filled the cup and drank and drank until she was satisfied. It made her giddy, to stand upright. Her mouth tasted foul. Where were the servants who should have given her food and drink during her disease?

They must be sick as well. And Father—he would have fallen ill before me. Who will bring him water?

She found him sleeping, cold with last night’s sweat, trembling. She woke him with a cup of water, which he drank eagerly, his eyes looking upward into hers. Questioning? Or, perhaps, pleading for forgiveness. Do your penance to the gods, Father; you owe no apologies to a mere daughter.

Qing-jao also found the servants, one by one, some of them so loyal that they had not taken to their beds with their sickness, but rather had fallen where their duties required them to be. All were alive. All were recovering, and soon would be up again. Only after all were accounted for and tended to did Qing-jao go to the kitchen and find something to eat. She could not hold down the first food she took. Only a thin soup, heated to lukewarm, stayed with her. She carried more of the soup to the others. They also ate.

Soon all were up again, and strong. Qing-jao took servants with her and carried water and soup to all the neighboring houses, rich and poor alike. All were grateful to receive what they brought, and many uttered prayers on their behalf. You would not be so grateful, thought Qing-jao, if you knew that the disease you suffered came from my father’s house, by my father’s will. But she said nothing.

In all this time, the gods did not demand any purification of her.

At last, she thought. At last I am pleasing them. At last I have done, perfectly, all that righteousness required.

When she came home, she wanted to sleep at once. But the servants who had remained in the house were gathered around the holo in the kitchen, watching news reports. Qing-jao almost never watched the holo news, getting all her information from the computer; but the servants looked so serious, so worried, that she entered the kitchen and stood in their circle around the holovision.

The news was of the plague sweeping the world of Path. Quarantine had been ineffective, or else always came too late. The woman reading the report had already recovered from the disease, and she was telling that the plague had killed almost no one, though it disrupted services for many. The virus had been isolated, but it died too quickly to be studied seriously. “It seems that a bacterium is following the virus, killing it almost as soon as each person recovers from the plague. The gods have truly favored us, to send us the cure along with the plague.”

Fools, thought Qing-jao. If the gods wanted you cured, they wouldn’t have sent the plague in the first place.

At once she realized that she was the fool. Of course the gods could send both the disease and the cure. If a disease came, and the cure followed, then the gods had sent them. How could she have called such a thing foolish? It was as if she had insulted the gods themselves.

She flinched inwardly, waiting for the onslaught of the gods’ rage. She had gone so many hours without purification that she knew it would be a heavy burden when it came. Would she have to trace a whole room again?

But she felt nothing. No desire to trace woodgrain lines. No need to wash.

She looked at her hands. There was dirt on them, and yet she didn’t care. She could wash them or not, as she desired.

For a moment she felt immense relief. Could it be that Father and Wang-mu and the Jane-thing were right all along? Had a genetic change, caused by this plague, freed her at last from a hideous crime committed by Congress centuries ago?

Almost as if the news reader had heard Qing-jao’s thoughts, she began reading a report about a document that was turning up on computers all over the world. The document said that this plague was a gift from the gods, freeing the people of Path from a genetic alteration performed on them by Congress. Until now, genetic enhancements were almost always linked to an OCD-like condition whose victims were commonly referred to as godspoken. But as the plague ran its course, people would find that the genetic enhancements were now spread to all the people of Path, while the godspoken, who had previously borne the most terrible of burdens, had now been released by the gods from the necessity of constant purification.

“This document says that the whole world is now purified. The gods have accepted us.” The news reader’s voice trembled as she spoke. “It is not known where this document came from. Computer analysis has linked it with no known author’s style. The fact that it turned up simultaneously on millions of computers suggests that it came from a source with unspeakable powers.” She hesitated, and now her trembling was plainly visible. “If this unworthy reader of news may ask a question, hoping that the wise will hear it and answer her with wisdom, could it not be possible that the gods themselves have sent us this message, so that we will understand their great gift to the people of Path?”

Qing-jao listened for a while longer, as fury grew within her. It was Jane, obviously, who had written and spread this document. How dare she pretend to know what the gods were doing! She had gone too far. This document must be refuted. Jane must stand revealed, and also the whole conspiracy of the people of Lusitania.

The servants were looking at her. She met their gaze, looking for a moment at each of them around the circle.

“What do you want to ask me?” she said.

“0 Mistress,” said Mu-pao, “forgive our curiosity, but this news report has declared something that we can only believe if you tell us that it is true.”

“What do I know?” answered Qing-jao. “I am only the foolish daughter of a great man.”

“But you are one of the godspoken, Mistress,” said Mu-pao.

You are very daring, thought Qing-jao, to speak of such things unbidden.

“In all this night, since you came among us with food and drink, and as you led so many of us out among the people, tending the sick, you have never once excused yourself for purification. We have never seen you go so long.”

“Did it not occur to you,” said Qing-jao, “that perhaps we were so well fulfilling the will of the gods that I had no need of purification during that time?”

Mu-pao looked abashed. “No, we did not think of that.”

“Rest now,” said Qing-jao. “None of us is strong yet. I must go and speak to my father.”

She left them to gossip and speculate among themselves. Father was in his room, seated before the computer. Jane’s face was in the display. Father turned to her as soon as she entered the room. His face was radiant. Triumphant.

“Did you see the message that Jane and I prepared?” he said.

“You!” cried Qing-jao. “My father, a teller of lies?”

To say such a thing to her father was unthinkable. But still she felt no need to purify herself. It frightened her, that she could speak with such disrespect and yet the gods did not rebuke her.

“Lies?” said Father. “Why do you think that they are lies, my daughter? How do you know that the gods did not cause this virus to come to us? How do you know that it is not their will to give these genetic enhancements to all of Path?”

His words maddened her; or perhaps she felt a new freedom; or perhaps she was testing the gods by speaking; very disrespectfully that they would have to rebuke her. “Do you think I am a fool?” shouted Qing-jao. “Do you think that I don’t know this is your strategy to keep the world of Path from erupting in revolution and slaughter? Do you think I don’t know that all you care about is keeping people from dying?”

“And is there something wrong with that?” asked Father.

“It’s a lie!” she answered.

“Or it’s the disguise the gods have prepared to conceal their actions,” said Father. “You had no trouble accepting Congress’s stories as true. Why can’t you accept mine?”

“Because I know about the virus, Father. I saw you take it from that stranger’s hand. I saw Wang-mu step into his vehicle. I saw it disappear. I know that none of these things are of the gods. She did them—that devil that lives in the computers!”

“How do you know,” said Father, “that she is not one of the gods?”

This was unbearable. “She was made,” cried Qing-jao. “That’s how I know! She’s only a computer program, made by human beings, living in machines that human beings made. The gods are not made by any hand. The gods have always lived and will always live.”

For the first time, Jane spoke. “Then you are a god, Qing-jao, and so am I, and so is every other person—human or raman—in the universe. No god made your soul, your inmost aiúa. You are as old as any god, and as young, and you will live as long.”

Qing-jao screamed. She had never made such a sound before, that she remembered. It tore at her throat.

“My daughter,” said Father, coming toward her, his arms outstretched to embrace her.

She could not bear his embrace. She could not endure it because it would mean his complete victory. It would mean that she had been defeated by the enemies of the gods; it would mean that Jane had overmastered her. It would mean that Wang-mu had been a truer daughter to Han Fei-tzu than Qing-jao had been. It would mean that all Qing-jao’s worship for all these years had meant nothing. It would mean that it was evil of her to set in motion the destruction of Jane. It would mean that Jane was noble and good for having helped transform the people of Path. It would mean that Mother was not waiting for her when at last she came to the Infinite West.

Why don’t you speak to me, O Gods! she cried out silently. Why don’t you assure me that I have not served you in vain all these years? Why have you deserted me now, and given the triumph to your enemies?

And then the answer came to her, as simply and clearly as if her mother had whispered the words in her ear: This is a test, Qing-jao. The gods are watching what you do.

A test. Of course. The gods were testing all their servants on Path, to see which ones were deceived and which endured in perfect obedience.

If I am being tested, then there must be some correct thing for me to do.

I must do what I have always done, only this time I must not wait for the gods to instruct me. They have wearied of telling me every day and every hour when I needed to be purified. It is time for me to understand my own impurity without their instructions. I must purify myself, with utter perfection; then I will have passed the test, and the gods will receive me once again.

She dropped to her knees. She found a woodgrain line, and began to trace it.

There was no answering gift of release, no sense of rightness; but that did not trouble her, because she understood that this was part of the test. If the gods answered her immediately, the way they used to, then how would it be a test of her dedication? Where before she had undergone her purification under their constant guidance, now she must purify herself alone. And how would she know if she had done it properly? The gods would come to her again.

The gods would speak to her again. Or perhaps they would carry her away, take her to the palace of the Royal Mother, where the noble Han Jiang-qing awaited her. There she would also meet Li Qing-jao, her ancestor-of-the-heart. There her ancestors would all greet her, and they would say, The gods determined to try all the godspoken of Path. Few indeed have passed this test; but you, Qing-jao, you have brought great honor to us all. Because your faithfulness never wavered. You performed your purifications as no other son or daughter has ever performed them. The ancestors of other men and women are all envious of us. For your sake the gods now favor us above them all.

“What are you doing?” asked Father. “Why are you tracing the woodgrain lines?”

She did not answer. She refused to be distracted.

“The need for that has been taken away. I know it has—I feel no need for purification.”

Ah, Father! If only you could understand! But even though you will fail this test, I will pass it—and thus I will bring honor even to you, who have forsaken all honorable things.

“Qing-jao,” he said. “I know what you’re doing. Like those parents who force their mediocre children to wash and wash. You’re calling the gods.”

Give it that name if you wish, Father. Your words are nothing to me now. I will not listen to you again until we both are dead, and you say to me, My daughter, you were better and wiser than I; all my honor here in the house of the Royal Mother comes from your purity and selfless devotion to the service of the gods. You are truly a noble daughter. I have no joy except because of you.

The world of Path accomplished its transformation peacefully. Here and there, a murder occurred; here and there, one of the godspoken who had been tyrannical was mobbed and cast out of his house. But by and large, the story given by the document was believed, and the former godspoken were treated with great honor because of their righteous sacrifice during the years when they were burdened with the rites of purification.

Still, the old order quickly passed away. The schools were opened equally to all children. Teachers soon reported that students were achieving remarkable things; the stupidest child now was surpassing all averages from former times. And despite Congress’s outraged denials of any genetic alteration, scientists on Path at last turned their attention to the genes of their own people. Studying the records of what their genetic molecules had been, and how they were now, the women and men of Path confirmed all that the document had said.

What happened then, as the Hundred Worlds and all the colonies learned of Congress’s crimes against Path—Qing-jao never knew of it. That was all a matter for a world that she had left behind. For she spent all her days now in the service of the gods, cleansing herself, purifying herself.

The story spread that Han Fei-tzu’s mad daughter, alone of all the godspoken, persisted in her rituals. At first she was ridiculed for it—for many of the godspoken had, out of curiosity, attempted to perform their purifications again, and had discovered the rituals to be empty and meaningless now. But she heard little of the ridicule, and cared nothing for it. Her mind was devoted solely to the service of the gods—what did it matter if the people who had failed the test despised her for continuing to attempt to succeed?

As the years passed, many began to remember the old days as a graceful time, when the gods spoke to men and women, and many were bowed down in their service. Some of these began to think of Qing-jao, not as a madwoman, but as the only faithful woman left among those who had heard the voice of the gods. The word began to spread among the pious: “In the house of Han Fei-tzu there dwells the last of the godspoken.”

They began to come then, at first a few, then more and more of them. Visitors, who wanted to speak with the only woman who still labored in her purification. At first she would speak to some of them; when she had finished tracing a board, she would go out into the garden and speak to them. But their words confused her. They spoke of her labor as being the purification of the whole planet. They said that she was calling the gods for the sake of all the people of Path. The more they talked, the harder it was for her to concentrate on what they said. She was soon eager to return to the house, to begin tracing another line. Didn’t these people understand that they were wrong to praise her now? “I have accomplished nothing,” she would tell them. “The gods are still silent. I have work to do.” And then she would return to her tracing.

Her father died as a very old man, with much honor for his many deeds, though no one ever knew his role in the coming of the Plague of the Gods, as it was now called. Only Qing-jao understood. And as she burned a fortune in real money—no false funeral money would do for her father—she whispered to him so that no one else could hear, “Now you know, Father. Now you understand your errors, and how you angered the gods. But don’t be afraid. I will continue the purification until all your mistakes are rectified. Then the gods will receive you with honor.”

She herself became old, and the Journey to the House of Han Qing-jao was now the most famous pilgrimage of Path. Indeed, there were many who heard of her on other worlds, and came to Path just to see her. For it was well-known on many worlds that true holiness could be found in only one place, and in only one person, the old woman whose back was now permanently bent, whose eyes could now see nothing but the lines in the floors of her father’s house.

Holy disciples, men and women, now tended the house where servants once had cared for her. They polished the floors. They prepared her simple food, and laid it where she could find it at the doors of the rooms; she would eat and drink only when a room was finished. When a man or woman somewhere in the world achieved some great honor, they would come to the House of Han Qing-jao, kneel down, and trace a woodgrain line; thus all honors were treated as if they were mere decorations on the honor of the Holy Han Qing-jao.

At last, only a few weeks after she completed her hundredth year, Han Qing-jao was found curled up on the floor of her father’s room. Some said that it was the exact spot where her father always sat when he performed his labors; it was hard to be sure, since all the furniture of the house had been removed long before. The holy woman was not dead when they found her. She lay still for several days, murmuring, muttering, inching her hands across her own body as if she were tracing lines in her flesh. Her disciples took turns, ten at a time, listening to her, trying to understand her muttering, setting down the words as best they understood them. They were written in the book called The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao.

Most important of all her words were these, at the very end. “Mother,” she whispered. “Father. Did I do it right?” And then, said her disciples, she smiled and died.

She had not been dead for a month before the decision was made in every temple and shrine in every city and town and village of Path. At last there was a person of such surpassing holiness that Path could choose her as the protector and guardian of the world. No other world had such a god, and they admitted it freely.

Path is blessed above all other worlds, they said. For the God of Path is Gloriously Bright.

PRONUNCIATION

A few names may seem strange to English-speaking readers. From Chinese, Qing-jao is pronounced “tching jow”; Jiang-qing is “jee-eng tching.” From Portuguese, Quim is pronounced “keeng”; Novinha is “no-VEEN-ya”; Olhado is “ol-YAH-doe.” From Swedish, Jakt is “yahkt.”

Other names are either easier to pronounce as written, or repeated rarely enough that they shouldn’t cause difficulty.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A chance meeting with James Cryer in the Second Foundation Bookstore in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, led directly to the story of Li Qing-jao and Han Fei-tzu at the heart of this book. Learning that he was a translator of Chinese poetry, I asked him on the spot if he could give me a few plausible names for some Chinese characters I was developing. My knowledge of Chinese culture was rudimentary at best, and my idea for these characters was for them to play a fairly minor, though meaningful, role in the story of Xenocide. But as James Cryer, one of the most vigorous, fascinating, and generous people I have known, told me more and more about Li Qing-jao and Han Fei-tzu—as he showed me their writings and told me more stories about other figures in Chinese history and literature—I began to realize that here was the real foundation of the tale I wanted this book to tell. I owe him much, and regret that I have passed up my best opportunities to repay.

I also give my thanks to many others: To Judith Rapaport, for her book The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing, which was the source of the information about obsessive-compulsive disorder in this novel. To my agent Barbara Bova, who called this book into existence by selling it in England before I had ever thought of writing it. To my American publisher Tom Doherty, for extraordinary faith and generosity that I hope will all be justified in the end. To Jim Frenkel, the editor who wisely turned down the first outline of this book when I offered it to Dell back in 1978, telling me—correctly—that I wasn’t ready yet to write such an ambitious novel. To my British publisher, Anthony Cheetham, who has believed in my work from the start of my career, and has patiently waited for this book far longer than either of us bargained for. To my editor Beth Meacham, for being a friend, adviser, and protector through the preparation of this and many other books. To the many readers who have written to me urging me to return to Ender’s story; their encouragement helped a great deal as I struggled through the most difficult writing project of my career so far. To Fred Chappell’s graduate writing workshop at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, for looking over and responding to the first draft of the Qing-jao storyline. To Stan Schmidt at Analog, for being willing to publish such an extraordinarily long portion of the novel as the story “Gloriously Bright.” To my assistants, Laraine Moon, Erin Absher, and Willard and Peggy Card, who, serving well in such completely different ways, gave me the freedom and help that I needed in order to write at all. To friends like Jeff Alton and Philip Absher, for reading early drafts to help me ensure that this hodgepodge of characters and storylines actually did make sense. And to my children, Geoffrey, Emily, and Charlie, for being patient with me through the crabbiness and neglect that always Seem to accompany my bursts of writing, and for letting me borrow from their lives and experiences as I create the characters I love the most.

Above all, I give my thanks to my wife, Kristine, who has suffered through every arduous step in the creation of this book, raising questions, catching errors and contradictions, and—most important—responding so favorably to those aspects of the story that worked well that I found in her the confidence to go on. I have no idea who I would be, as a writer or as a person, without her; I intend never to have occasion to find out.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

XENOCIDE

Copyright © 1991 by Orson Scott Card

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

Tor Books on the World Wide Web: http://www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

eISBN 9781429963961

First eBook Edition : July 2011

Several chapters of this book appeared first in Analog magazine as the novella “Gloriously Bright.”

Quotations from Li Qing-jao are from James Cryer, trans., Plum Blossom: Poems of Li Ch’ing-Chao (Carolina Wren Press, 1984), by permission of the translator.

Quotations from Han Fei-tzu are from Burton Watson, trans., Han Fei Tzu: Basic Writings (Columbia University Press, 1964), by permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Card, Orson Scott.

Xenocide / Orson Scott Card. p. cm.

Sequel to: Ender’s game.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN 0-312-86187-7 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-4299-6396-1

I. Title.

PS3553.A655X46 1991

813’.54—dc20

90-27108

CIP

CHILDREN OF THE MIND

ORSON SCOTT CARD

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

CHILDREN OF THE MIND

Copyright © 1996 by Orson Scott Card

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Card, Orson Scott.

   Children of the mind / Orson Scott Card.
           p. cm.
   “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
   ISBN 0-312-86191-5
   ISBN 978-0-312-86191-9
   I. Title.

PS3553.A655 C48 1996

813'.54—dc20

95-53262

To Barbara Bova,
whose toughness, wisdom, and empathy
make her a great agent
and an even better friend

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My heartfelt thanks to:

Glenn Makitka, for the title, which seems so obvious now, but which never crossed my mind until he suggested it in a discussion in Hatrack River on America Online;

Van Gessel, for introducing me to Hikari and Kenzaburo Oe, and for his masterful translation of Shusaku Endo’s Deep River;

Helpful readers in Hatrack River, like Stephen Boulet and Sandi Golden, who caught typographical errors and inconsistencies in the manuscript;

Tom Doherty and Beth Meacham at Tor, who allowed me to split Xenocide in half in order to have a chance to develop and write the second half of the story properly;

My friend and fellow weeder in the vineyards of literature, Kathryn H. Kidd, for her chapter-by-chapter encouragement;

Kathleen Bellamy and Scott J. Allen for Sisyphean service;

Kristine and Geoff for careful reading that helped me resolve contradictions and unclarities; and

My wife, Kristine, and my children, Geoffrey, Emily, Charlie Ben, and Zina, for patience with my strange schedule and self-absorption during the writing process, and for teaching me all that is worth telling stories about.

This novel was begun at home in Greensboro, North Carolina, and finished on the road at Xanadu II in Myrtle Beach, in the Hotel Panama in San Rafael, and in Los Angeles in the home of my dear cousins Mark and Margaret Park, whom I thank for their friendship and their hospitality. Chapters were uploaded in manuscript form into the Hatrack River Town Meeting on America Online, where several dozen fellow citizens of that virtual community downloaded it, read it, and commented on it to the book’s and my great benefit.

1

“I’M NOT MYSELF”

“Mother. Father. Did I do it right?”

The last words of Han Qing-jao, from
The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Si Wang-mu stepped forward. The young man named Peter took her hand and led her into the starship. The door closed behind them.

Wang-mu sat down on one of the swiveling chairs inside the small metal-walled room. She looked around, expecting to see something strange and new. Except for the metal walls, it could have been any office on the world of Path. Clean, but not fastidiously so. Furnished, in a utilitarian way. She had seen holos of ships in flight: the smoothly streamlined fighters and shuttles that dipped into and out of the atmosphere; the vast rounded structures of the starships that accelerated as near to the speed of light as matter could get. On the one hand, the sharp power of a needle; on the other, the massive power of a sledgehammer. But here in this room, no power at all. Just a room.

Where was the pilot? There must be a pilot, for the young man who sat across the room from her, murmuring to his computer, could hardly be controlling a starship capable of the feat of traveling faster than light.

And yet that must have been precisely what he was doing, for there were no other doors that might lead to other rooms. The starship had looked small from the outside; this room obviously used all the space that it contained. There in the corner were the batteries that stored energy from the solar collectors on the top of the ship. In that chest, which seemed to be insulated like a refrigerator, there might be food and drink. So much for life support. Where was the romance in starflight now, if this was all it took? A mere room.

With nothing else to watch, she watched the young man at the computer terminal. Peter Wiggin, he said his name was. The name of the ancient Hegemon, the one who first united all the human race under his control, back when people lived on only one world, all the nations and races and religions and philosophies crushed together elbow to elbow, with nowhere to go but into each other’s lands, for the sky was a ceiling then, and space was a vast chasm that could not be bridged. Peter Wiggin, the man who ruled the human race. This was not him, of course, and he had admitted as much. Andrew Wiggin sent him; Wang-mu remembered, from things that Master Han had told her, that Andrew Wiggin had somehow made him. Did this make the great Speaker of the Dead Peter’s father? Or was he somehow Ender’s brother, not just named for but actually embodying the Hegemon who had died three thousand years before?

Peter stopped murmuring, leaned back in his chair, and sighed. He rubbed his eyes, then stretched and groaned. It was a very indelicate thing to do in company. The sort of thing one might expect from a coarse fieldworker.

He seemed to sense her disapproval. Or perhaps he had forgotten her and now suddenly remembered that he had company. Without straightening himself in his chair, he turned his head and looked at her.

“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot I was not alone.”

Wang-mu longed to speak boldly to him, despite a lifetime retreating from bold speech. After all, he had spoken to her with offensive boldness, when his starship appeared like a fresh-sprouted mushroom on the lawn by the river and he emerged with a single vial of a disease that would cure her home world, Path, of its genetic illness. He had looked her in the eye not fifteen minutes ago and said, “Come with me and you’ll be part of changing history. Making history.” And despite her fear, she had said yes.

Had said yes, and now sat in a swivel chair watching him behave crudely, stretching like a tiger in front of her. Was that his beast-of-the-heart, the tiger? Wang-mu had read the Hegemon. She could believe that there was a tiger in that great and terrible man. But this one? This boy? Older than Wang-mu, but she was not too young to know immaturity when she saw it. He was going to change the course of history! Clean out the corruption in the Congress. Stop the Lusitania Fleet. Make all colony planets equal members of the Hundred Worlds. This boy who stretched like a jungle cat.

“I don’t have your approval,” he said. He sounded annoyed and amused, both at once. But then she might not be good at understanding the inflections of one such as this. Certainly it was hard to read the grimaces of such a round-eyed man. Both his face and his voice contained hidden languages that she could not understand.

“You must understand,” he said. “I’m not myself.”

Wang-mu spoke the common language well enough at least to understand the idiom. “You are unwell today?” But she knew even as she said it that he had not meant the expression idiomatically at all.

“I’m not myself,” he said again. “I’m not really Peter Wiggin.”

“I hope not,” said Wang-mu. “I read about his funeral in school.”

“I do look like him, though, don’t I?” He brought up a hologram into the air over his computer terminal. The hologram rotated to look at Wang-mu; Peter sat up and assumed the same pose, facing her.

“There is a resemblance,” she said.

“Of course, I’m younger,” said Peter. “Because Ender didn’t see me again after he left Earth when he was—what, five years old? A little runt, anyway. I was still a boy. That’s what he remembered, when he conjured me out of thin air.”

“Not air at all,” she said. “Out of nothing.”

“Not nothing, either,” he said. “Conjured me, all the same.” He smiled wickedly. “I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”

These words meant something to him, but not to her. In the world of Path she had been expected to be a servant and so was educated very little. Later, in the house of Han Fei-tzu, her abilities had been recognized, first by her former mistress, Han Qing-jao, and later by the master himself. From both she had acquired some bits of education, in a haphazard way. What teaching there had been was mostly technical, and the literature she learned was of the Middle Kingdom, or of Path itself. She could have quoted endlessly from the great poet Li Qing-jao, for whom her one time mistress had been named. But of the poet he was quoting, she knew nothing.

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” he said again. And then, changing his voice and manner a little, he answered himself. “Why so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?”

“Shakespeare?” she guessed.

He grinned at her. She thought of the way a cat smiles at the creature it is toying with. “That’s always the best guess when a European is doing the quoting,” he said.

“The quotation is funny,” she said. “A man brags that he can summon the dead. But the other man says that the trick is not calling, but rather getting them to come.”

He laughed. “What a way you have with humor.”

“This quotation means something to you, because Ender called you forth from the dead.”

He looked startled. “How did you know?”

She felt a thrill of fear. Was it possible? “I did not know, I was making a joke.”

“Well, it’s not true. Not literally. He didn’t raise the dead. Though he no doubt thinks he could, if the need arose.” Peter sighed. “I’m being nasty. The words just come to my mind. I don’t mean them. They just come.”

“It is possible to have words come to your mind, and still refrain from speaking them aloud.”

He rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t trained for servility, the way you were.”

So this was the attitude of one who came from a world of free people—to sneer at one who had been a servant through no fault of her own. “I was trained to keep unpleasant words to myself as a matter of courtesy,” she said. “But perhaps to you, that is just another form of servility.”

“As I said, Royal Mother of the West, nastiness comes unbidden to my mouth.”

“I am not the Royal Mother,” said Wang-mu. “The name was a cruel joke—”

“And only a very nasty person would mock you for it.” Peter grinned. “But I’m named for the Hegemon. I thought perhaps bearing ludicrously overwrought names was something we might have in common.”

She sat silently, entertaining the possibility that he might have been trying to make friends.

“I came into existence,” he said, “only a short while ago. A matter of weeks. I thought you should know that about me.”

She didn’t understand.

“You know how this starship works?” he said.

Now he was leaping from subject to subject. Testing her. Well, she had had enough of being tested. “Apparently one sits within it and is examined by rude strangers,” she said.

He smiled and nodded. “Give as good as you get. Ender told me you were nobody’s servant.”

“I was the true and faithful servant of Qing-jao. I hope Ender did not lie to you about that.”

He brushed away her literalism. “A mind of your own.” Again his eyes sized her up; again she felt utterly comprehended by his lingering glance, as she had felt when he first looked at her beside the river. “Wang-mu, I am not speaking metaphorically when I tell you I was only just made. Made, you understand, not born. And the way I was made has much to do with how this starship works. I don’t want to bore you by explaining things you already understand, but you must know what—not who—I am in order to understand why I need you with me. So I ask again—do you know how this starship works?”

She nodded. “I think so. Jane, the being who dwells in computers, she holds in her mind as perfect a picture as she can of the starship and all who are within it. The people also hold their own picture of themselves and who they are and so on. Then she moves everything from the real world to a place of nothingness, which takes no time at all, and then brings it back into reality in whatever place she chooses. Which also takes no time. So instead of starships taking years to get from world to world, it happens in an instant.”

Peter nodded. “Very good. Except what you have to understand is that during the time that the starship is Outside, it isn’t surrounded by nothingness. Instead it’s surrounded by uncountable numbers of aiúas.”

She turned away her face from him.

“You don’t understand aiúas?”

“To say that all people have always existed. That we are older than the oldest gods. . . .”

“Well, sort of,” said Peter. “Only aiúas on the Outside, they can’t be said to exist, or at least not any kind of meaningful existence. They’re just . . . there. Not even that, because there’s no sense of location, no there where they might be. They just are. Until some intelligence calls them, names them, puts them into some kind of order, gives them shape and form.”

“The clay can become a bear,” she said, “but not as long as it rests cold and wet in the riverbank.”

“Exactly. So there was Ender Wiggin and several other people who, with luck, you’ll never need to meet, taking the first voyage Outside. They weren’t going anywhere, really. The point of that first voyage was to get Outside long enough that one of them, a rather talented genetic scientist, could create a new molecule, an extremely complex one, by the image she held of it in her mind. Or rather her image of the modifications she needed to make in an existing . . . well, you don’t have the biology for it. Anyway, she did what she was supposed to do, she created the new molecule, calloo callay, only the thing is, she wasn’t the only person doing any creating that day.”

“Ender’s mind created you?” asked Wang-mu.

“Inadvertently. I was, shall we say, a tragic accident. An unhappy side effect. Let’s just say that everybody there, everything there, was creating like crazy. The aiúas Outside are frantic to be made into something, you see. There were shadow starships being created all around us. All kinds of weak, faint, fragmented, fragile, ephemeral structures rising and falling in each instant. Only four had any solidity. One was that genetic molecule that Elanora Ribeira had come to create.”

“One was you?”

“The least interesting one, I fear. The least loved and valued. One of the people on the ship was a fellow named Miro, who through a tragic accident some years ago had been left somewhat crippled. Neurologically damaged. Thick of speech, clumsy with his hands, lame when he walked. He held within his mind the powerful, treasured image of himself as he used to be. So—with that perfect self-image, a vast number of aiúas assembled themselves into an exact copy, not of how he was, but of how he once was and longed to be again. Complete with all his memories—a perfect replication of him. So perfect that it had the same utter loathing for his crippled body that he himself had. So . . . the new, improved Miro—or rather the copy of the old, undamaged Miro—whatever—he stood there as the ultimate rebuke of the crippled one. And before their very eyes, that old rejected body crumbled away into nothing.”

Wang-mu gasped, imagining it. “He died!”

“No, that’s the point, don’t you see? He lived. It was Miro. His own aiúa—not the trillions of aiúas making up the atoms and molecules of his body, but the one that controlled them all, the one that was himself, his will—his aiúa simply moved to the new and perfect body. That was his true self. And the old one . . .”

“Had no use.”

“Had nothing to give it shape. You see, I think our bodies are held together by love. The love of the master aiúa for the glorious powerful body that obeys it, that gives the self all its experience of the world. Even Miro, even with all his self-loathing when he was crippled, even he must have loved whatever pathetic remnant of his body was left to him. Until the moment that he had a new one.”

“And then he moved.”

“Without even knowing that he had done so,” said Peter. “He followed his love.”

Wang-mu heard this fanciful tale and knew that it must be true, for she had overheard many a mention of aiúas in the conversations between Han Fei-tzu and Jane, and now with Peter Wiggin’s story, it made sense. It had to be true, if only because this starship really had appeared as if from nowhere on the bank of the river behind Han Fei-tzu’s house.

“But now you must wonder,” said Peter, “how I, unloved and unlovable as I know I am, came into existence.”

“You already said. Ender’s mind.”

“Miro’s most intensely held image was of his own younger, healthier, stronger self. But Ender, the images that mattered most in his mind were of his older sister Valentine and his older brother Peter. Not as they became, though, for his real older brother Peter was long dead, and Valentine—she has accompanied or followed Ender on all his hops through space, so she is still alive, but aged as he has aged. Mature. A real person. Yet on that starship, during that time Outside, he conjured up a copy of her youthful self. Young Valentine. Poor Old Valentine! She didn’t know she was so old until she saw this younger self, this perfect being, this angel that had dwelt in Ender’s twisted little mind from childhood on. I must say, she’s the most put-upon victim in all this little drama. To know that your brother carries around such an image of you, instead of loving you as you really are—well, one can see that Old Valentine—she hates it, but that’s how everyone thinks of her now, including, poor thing, herself—one can see that Old Valentine is really having her patience tried.”

“But if the original Valentine is still alive,” said Wang-mu, puzzled, “then who is the young Valentine? Who is she really? You can be Peter because he’s dead and no one is using his name, but . . .”

“Quite puzzling, isn’t it?” said Peter. “But my point is that whether he’s dead or not, I’m not Peter Wiggin. As I said before, I’m not myself.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. The hologram above the terminal turned to look at him. He had not touched the controls.

“Jane is with us,” said Wang-mu.

“Jane is always with us,” said Peter. “Ender’s spy.”

The hologram spoke. “Ender doesn’t need a spy. He needs friends, if he can get them. Allies at least.”

Peter reached idly for the terminal and turned it off. The hologram disappeared.

This disturbed Wang-mu very much. Almost as if he had slapped a child. Or beaten a servant. “Jane is a very noble creature, to treat her with such disrespect.”

“Jane is a computer program with a bug in the id routines.”

He was in a dark mood, this boy who had come to take her into his starship and spirit her away from the world of Path. But dark as his mood might be, she understood now, with the hologram gone from the terminal, what she had seen. “It isn’t just because you’re so young and the holograms of Peter Wiggin the Hegemon are of a mature man,” said Wang-mu.

“What,” he said impatiently. “What isn’t what?”

“The physical difference between you and the Hegemon.”

“What is it, then?”

“He looks—satisfied.”

“He conquered the world,” said Peter.

“So when you have done the same, you will get that look of satisfaction?”

“I suppose so,” said Peter. “It’s what passes for a purpose in my life. It’s the mission Ender has sent me on.”

“Don’t lie to me,” said Wang-mu. “On the riverbank you spoke of the terrible things I did for the sake of my ambition. I admit it—I was ambitious, desperate to rise out of my terrible lowborn state. I know the taste of it, and the smell of it, and I smell it coming from you, like the smell of tar on a hot day, you stink of it.”

“Ambition? Has a stench?”

“I’m drunk with it myself.”

He grinned. Then he touched the jewel in his ear. “Remember, Jane is listening, and she tells Ender everything.”

Wang-mu fell silent, but not because she was embarrassed. She simply had nothing to say, and therefore said nothing.

“So I’m ambitious. Because that’s how Ender imagined me. Ambitious and nasty-minded and cruel.”

“But I thought you were not yourself,” she said.

His eyes blazed with defiance. “That’s right, I’m not.” He looked away. “Sorry, Gepetto, but I can’t be a real boy. I have no soul.”

She didn’t understand the name he said, but she understood the word soul. “All my childhood I was thought to be a servant by nature. To have no soul. Then one day they discovered that I have one. So far it has brought me no great happiness.”

“I’m not speaking of some religious idea. I’m speaking of the aiúa. I haven’t got one. Remember what happened to Miro’s broken-down body when his aiúa abandoned it.”

“But you don’t crumble, so you must have an aiúa after all.”

“I don’t have it, it has me. I continue to exist because the aiúa whose irresistible will called me into existence continues to imagine me. Continues to need me, to control me, to be my will.”

“Ender Wiggin?” she asked.

“My brother, my creator, my tormentor, my god, my very self.”

“And young Valentine? Her too?”

“Ah, but he loves her. He’s proud of her. He’s glad he made her. Me he loathes. Loathes, and yet it’s his will that I do and say every nasty thing. When I’m at my most despicable, remember that I do only what my brother makes me do.”

“Oh, to blame him for—”

“I’m not blaming, Wang-mu. I’m stating simple reality. His will is controlling three bodies now. Mine, my impossibly angelic sister’s, and of course his own very tired middle-aged body. Every aiúa in my body receives its order and place from his. I am, in all ways that matter, Ender Wiggin. Except that he has created me to be the vessel of every impulse in himself that he hates and fears. His ambition, yes, you smell his ambition when you smell mine. His aggression. His rage. His nastiness. His cruelty. His, not mine, because I am dead, and anyway I was never like this, never the way he saw me. This person before you is a travesty, a mockery! I’m a twisted memory. A despicable dream. A nightmare. I’m the creature hiding under the bed. He brought me out of chaos to be the terror of his childhood.”

“So don’t do it,” said Wang-mu. “If you don’t want to be those things, don’t do them.”

He sighed and closed his eyes. “If you’re so bright, why haven’t you understood a word I’ve said?”

She did understand, though. “What is your will, anyway? Nobody can see it. You don’t hear it thinking. You only know what your will is afterward, when you look back in your life and see what you’ve done.”

“That’s the most terrible trick he’s played on me,” said Peter softly, his eyes still closed. “I look back on my life and I see only the memories he has imagined for me. He was taken from our family when he was only five. What does he know of me or my life?”

“He wrote The Hegemon.”

“That book. Yes, based on Valentine’s memories, as she told them to him. And the public documents of my dazzling career. And of course the few ansible communications between Ender and my own late self before I—he—died. I’m only a few weeks old, yet I know a quotation from Henry IV, Part I. Owen Glendower boasting to Hotspur. Henry Percy. How could I know that? When did I go to school? How long did I lie awake at night, reading old plays until I committed a thousand favorite lines to memory? Did Ender somehow conjure up the whole of his dead brother’s education? All his private thoughts? Ender only knew the real Peter Wiggin for five years. It’s not a real person’s memories I draw on. It’s the memories Ender thinks that I should have.”

“He thinks you should know Shakespeare, and so you do?” she asked doubtfully.

“If only Shakespeare were all he had given me. The great writers, the great philosophers. If only those were the only memories I had.”

She waited for him to list the troublesome memories. But he only shuddered and fell silent.

“So if you are really controlled by Ender, then . . . you are him. Then that is yourself. You are Andrew Wiggin. You have an aiúa.”

“I’m Andrew Wiggin’s nightmare,” said Peter. “I’m Andrew Wiggin’s self-loathing. I’m everything he hates and fears about himself. That’s the script I’ve been given. That’s what I have to do.”

He flexed his hand into a fist, then extended it partway, the fingers still bent. A claw. The tiger again. And for a moment, Wang-mu was afraid of him. Only a moment, though. He relaxed his hands. The moment passed. “What part does your script have in it for me?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter. “You’re very smart. Smarter than I am, I hope. Though of course I have such incredible vanity that I can’t really believe that anyone is actually smarter than I am. Which means that I’m all the more in need of good advice, since I can’t actually conceive of needing any.”

“You talk in circles.”

“That’s just part of my cruelty. To torment you with conversation. But maybe it’s supposed to go farther than that. Maybe I’m supposed to torture you and kill you the way I so clearly remember doing with squirrels. Maybe I’m supposed to stake your living body out in the woods, nailing your extremities to tree roots, and then open you up layer by layer to see at what point the flies begin to come and lay eggs in your exposed flesh.”

She recoiled at the image. “I have read the book. I know the Hegemon was not a monster!”

“It wasn’t the Speaker for the Dead who created me Outside. It was the frightened boy Ender. I’m not the Peter Wiggin he so wisely understood in that book. I’m the Peter Wiggin he had nightmares about. The one who flayed squirrels.”

“He saw you do that?” she asked.

“Not me,” he said testily. “And no, he never even saw him do it. Valentine told him later. She found the squirrel’s body in the woods near their childhood home in Greensboro, North Carolina, on the continent of North America back on Earth. But that image fit so tidily into his nightmares that he borrowed it and shared it with me. That’s the memory I live with. Intellectually, I can imagine that the real Peter Wiggin was probably not cruel at all. He was learning and studying. He didn’t have compassion for the squirrel because he didn’t sentimentalize it. It was simply an animal. No more important than a head of lettuce. To cut it up was probably as immoral an act as making a salad. But that’s not how Ender imagined it, and so that’s not how I remember it.”

“How do you remember it?”

“The way I remember all my supposed memories. From the outside. Watching myself in horrified fascination as I take a fiendish delight in cruelty. All my memories prior to the moment I came to life on Ender’s little voyage Outside, in all of them I see myself through someone else’s eyes. A very odd feeling, I assure you.”

“But now?”

“Now I don’t see myself at all,” he said. “Because I have no self. I am not myself.”

“But you remember. You have memories. Of this conversation, already you remember it. Looking at me. You must, surely.”

“Yes,” he said. “I remember you. And I remember being here and seeing you. But there isn’t any self behind my eyes. I feel tired and stupid even when I’m being my most clever and brilliant.”

He smiled a charming smile and now Wang-mu could see again the true difference between Peter and the hologram of the Hegemon. It was as he said: Even at his most self-deprecating, this Peter Wiggin had eyes that flashed with inner rage. He was dangerous. You could see it looking at him. When he looked into your eyes, you could imagine him planning how and when you would die.

“I am not myself,” said Peter.

“You are saying this to control yourself,” said Wang-mu, guessing but also sure she was right. “This is your incantation, to stop yourself from doing what you desire.”

Peter sighed and leaned over, laying his head down on the terminal, his ear pressed against the cold plastic surface.

“What is it you desire?” she said, fearful of the answer.

“Go away,” he said.

“Where can I go? This great starship of yours has only one room.”

“Open the door and go outside,” he said.

“You mean to kill me? To eject me into space where I’ll freeze before I have time to suffocate?”

He sat up and looked at her in puzzlement. “Space?”

His confusion confused her. Where else would they be but in space? That’s where starships went, through space.

Except this one, of course.

As he saw understanding come to her, he laughed aloud. “Oh, yes, you’re the brilliant one, they’ve remade the entire world of Path to have your genius!”

She refused to be goaded.

“I thought there would be some sensation of movement. Or something. Have we traveled, then? Are we already there?”

“In the twinkling of an eye. We were Outside and then back Inside at another place, all so fast that only a computer could experience our voyage as having any duration at all. Jane did it before I finished talking to her. Before I said a word to you.”

“Then where are we? What’s outside the door?”

“We’re sitting in the woods somewhere on the planet Divine Wind. The air is breathable. You won’t freeze. It’s summer outside the door.”

She walked to the door and pulled down the handle, releasing the airtight seal. The door eased open. Sunlight streamed into the room.

“Divine Wind,” she said. “I read about it—it was founded as a Shinto world the way Path was supposed to be Taoist. The purity of ancient Japanese culture. But I think it’s not so very pure these days.”

“More to the point, it’s the world where Andrew and Jane and I felt—if one can speak of my having feelings apart from Ender’s own—the world where we might find the center of power in the worlds ruled by Congress. The true decision makers. The power behind the throne.”

“So you can subvert them and take over the human race?”

“So I can stop the Lusitania Fleet. Taking over the human race is a bit later on the agenda. The Lusitania Fleet is something of an emergency. We have only a few weeks to stop it before the fleet gets there and uses the Little Doctor, the M.D. Device, to blow Lusitania into its constituent elements. In the meantime, because Ender and everyone else expects me to fail, they’re building these little tin can starships as fast as possible and transporting as many Lusitanians as they can—humans, piggies, and buggers—to other habitable but as yet uninhabited planets. My dear sister Valentine—the young one—is off with Miro—in his fresh new body, the dear lad—searching out new worlds as fast as their little starship can carry them. Quite a project. All of them betting on my—on our—failure. Let’s disappoint them, shall we?”

“Disappoint them?”

“By succeeding. Let’s succeed. Let’s find the center of power among humankind, and let’s persuade them to stop the fleet before it needlessly destroys a world.”

Wang-mu looked at him doubtfully. Persuade them to stop the fleet? This nasty-minded, cruel-hearted boy? How could he persuade anyone of anything?

As if he could hear her thoughts, he answered her silent doubt. “You see why I invited you to come along with me. When Ender was inventing me, he forgot the fact that he never knew me during the time in my life when I was persuading people and gathering them together in shifting alliances and all that nonsense. So the Peter Wiggin he created is far too nasty, openly ambitious, and nakedly cruel to persuade a man with rectal itch to scratch his own butt.”

She looked away from him again.

“You see?” he said. “I offend you again and again. Look at me. Do you see my dilemma? The real Peter, the original one, he could have done the work I’ve been sent to do. He could have done it in his sleep. He’d already have a plan. He’d be able to win people over, soothe them, insinuate himself into their councils. That Peter Wiggin! He can charm the stings out of bees. But can I? I doubt it. For, you see, I’m not myself.”

He got up from his chair, roughly pushed his way past her, and stepped outside onto the meadow that surrounded the little metal cabin that had carried them from world to world. Wang-mu stood in the doorway, watching him as he wandered away from the ship; away, but not too far.

I know something of how he feels, she thought. I know something of having to submerge your will in someone else’s. To live for them, as if they were the star of the story of your life, and you merely a supporting player. I have been a slave. But at least in all that time I knew my own heart. I knew what I truly thought even as I did what they wanted, whatever it took to get what I wanted from them. Peter Wiggin, though, has no idea of what he really wants, because even his resentment of his lack of freedom isn’t his own, even that comes from Andrew Wiggin. Even his self-loathing is Andrew’s self-loathing, and . . .

And back and back, in circles, like the random path he was tracing through the meadow.

Wang-mu thought of her mistress—no, her former mistress—Qing-jao. She also traced strange patterns. It was what the gods forced her to do. No, that’s the old way of thinking. It’s what her obsessive-compulsive disorder caused her to do. To kneel on the floor and trace the grain of the wood in each board, trace a single line of it as far as it went across the floor, line after line. It never meant anything, and yet she had to do it because only by such meaningless mind-numbing obedience could she win a scrap of freedom from the impulses controlling her. It is Qing-jao who was always the slave, and never me. For the master that ruled her controlled her from inside her own mind. While I could always see my master outside me, so my inmost self was never touched.

Peter Wiggin knows that he is ruled by the unconscious fears and passions of a complicated man many lightyears away. But then, Qing-jao thought her obsessions came from the gods. What does it matter, to tell yourself that the thing controlling you comes from outside, if in fact you only experience it inside your own heart? Where can you run from it? How can you hide? Qing-jao must be free by now, freed by the carrier virus that Peter brought with him to Path and put into the hands of Han Fei-tzu. But Peter—what freedom can there be for him?

And yet he must still live as if he were free. He must still struggle for freedom even if the struggle itself is just one more symptom of his slavery. There is a part of him that yearns to be himself. No, not himself. A self.

So what is my part in all of this? Am I supposed to work a miracle, and give him an aiúa? That isn’t in my power.

And yet I do have power, she thought.

She must have power, or why else had he spoken to her so openly? A total stranger, and he had opened his heart to her at once. Why? Because she was in on the secrets, yes, but something else as well.

Ah, of course. He could speak freely to her because she had never known Andrew Wiggin. Maybe Peter was nothing but an aspect of Ender’s nature, all that Ender feared and loathed about himself. But she could never compare the two of them. Whatever Peter was, whoever controlled him, she was his confidante.

Which made her, once again, someone’s servant. She had been Qing-jao’s confidante, too.

She shuddered, as if to shake from her the sad comparison. No, she told herself. It is not the same thing. Because that young man wandering so aimlessly among the wildflowers has no power over me, except to tell me of his pain and hope for my understanding. Whatever I give to him I will give freely.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the frame of the door. I will give it freely, yes, she thought. But what am I planning to give him? Why, exactly what he wants—my loyalty, my devotion, my help in all his tasks. To submerge myself in him. And why am I already planning to do all this? Because however he might doubt himself, he has the power to win people to his cause.

She opened her eyes again and strode out into the hip-high grass toward him. He saw her and waited wordlessly as she approached. Bees buzzed around her; butterflies staggered drunkenly through the air, avoiding her somehow in their seemingly random flight. At the last moment she reached out and gathered a bee from a blossom into her hand, into her fist, but then quickly, before it could sting her, she lobbed it into Peter’s face.

Flustered, surprised, he batted away the infuriated bee, ducked under it, dodged, and finally ran a few steps before it lost track of him and buzzed its way out among the flowers again. Only then could he turn furiously to face her.

“What was that for!”

She giggled at him—she couldn’t help it. He had looked so funny.

“Oh, good, laugh. I can see you’re going to be fine company.”

“Be angry, I don’t care,” said Wang-mu. “I’ll just tell you this. Do you think that away off on Lusitania, Ender’s aiúa suddenly thought, ‘Ho, a bee!’ and made you brush at it and dodge it like a clown?”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, aren’t you clever. Well gosh, Miss Royal Mother of the West, you sure solved all my problems! I can see I must always have been a real boy! And these ruby shoes, why, they’ve had the power to take me back to Kansas all along!”

“What’s Kansas?” she asked, looking down at his shoes, which were not red.

“Just another memory of Ender’s that he kindly shared with me,” said Peter Wiggin.

He stood there, his hands in his pockets, regarding her.

She stood just as silently, her hands clasped in front of her, regarding him right back.

“So are you with me?” he finally asked.

“You must try not to be nasty with me,” she said.

“Take that up with Ender.”

“I don’t care whose aiúa controls you,” she said. “You still have your own thoughts, which are different from his—you feared the bee, and he didn’t even think of a bee right then, and you know it. So whatever part of you is in control or whoever the real ‘you’ happens to be, right there on the front of your head is the mouth that’s going to be speaking to me, and I’m telling you that if I’m going to work with you, you better be nice to me.”

“Does this mean no more bee fights?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“That’s just as well. With my luck Ender no doubt gave me a body that goes into shock when I’m stung by a bee.”

“It can also be pretty hard on the bee,” she said.

He grinned at her. “I find myself liking you,” he said. “I really hate that.”

He strode off toward the starship. “Come on!” he called out to her. “Let’s see what information Jane can give us about this world we’re supposed to take by storm.”

2

“YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD”

“When I follow the path of the gods through the wood,

My eyes take every twisting turn of the grain,

But my body moves straight along the planking,

So those who watch me see that the path of the gods is straight,

While I dwell in a world with no straightness in it.”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Novinha would not come to him. The gentle old teacher looked genuinely distressed as she told Ender. “She wasn’t angry,” the old teacher explained. “She told me that . . .”

Ender nodded, understanding how the teacher was torn between compassion and honesty. “You can tell me her words,” he said. “She is my wife, so I can bear it.”

The old teacher rolled her eyes. “I’m married too, you know.”

Of course he knew. All the members of the Order of the Children of the Mind of Christ—Os Filhos da Mente de Cristo—were married. It was their rule.

“I’m married, so I know perfectly well that your spouse is the one person who knows all the words you can’t bear to hear.”

“Then let me correct myself,” said Ender mildly. “She is my wife, so I am determined to hear it, whether I can bear it or not.”

“She says that she has to finish the weeding, so she has no time for lesser battles.”

Yes, that sounded like Novinha. She might tell herself that she had taken the mantle of Christ upon her, but if so it was the Christ who denounced the Pharisees, the Christ who said all those cruel and sarcastic things to his enemies and his friends alike, not the gentle one with infinite patience.

Still, Ender was not one to go away merely because his feelings were hurt. “Then what are we waiting for?” asked Ender. “Show me where I can find a hoe.”

The old teacher stared at him for a long moment, then smiled and led him out into the gardens. Soon, wearing work gloves and carrying a hoe in one hand, he stood at the end of the row where Novinha worked, bent over in the sunlight, her eyes on the ground before her as she cut under the root of weed after weed, turning each one up to burn to death in the hot dry sun. She was coming toward him.

Ender stepped to the unweeded row beside the one Novinha worked on, and began to hoe toward her. They would not meet, but they would pass close to each other. She would notice him or not. She would speak to him or not. She still loved and needed him. Or not. But no matter what, at the end of this day he would have weeded in the same field as his wife, and her work would have been more easily done because he was there, and so he would still be her husband, however little she might now want him in that role.

The first time they passed each other, she did not so much as look up. But then she would not have to. She would know without looking that the one who joined her in weeding so soon after she refused to meet with her husband would have to be her husband. He knew that she would know this, and he also knew she was too proud to look at him and show that she wanted to see him again. She would study the weeds until she went half blind, because Novinha was not one to bend to anyone else’s will.

Except, of course, the will of Jesus. That was the message she had sent him, the message that had brought him here, determined to talk to her. A brief note couched in the language of the Church. She was separating herself from him to serve Christ among the Filhos. She felt herself called to this work. He was to regard himself as having no further responsibility toward her, and to expect nothing more from her than she would gladly give to any of the children of God. It was a cold message, for all the gentleness of its phrasing.

Ender was not one to bend easily to another’s will, either. Instead of obeying the message, he came here, determined to do the opposite of what she asked. And why not? Novinha had a terrible record as a decision maker. Whenever she decided to do something for someone else’s good, she ended up inadvertently destroying them. Like Libo, her childhood friend and secret lover, the father of all her children during her marriage to the violent but sterile man who had been her husband until he died. Fearing that he would die at the hands of the pequeninos, the way his father had died, Novinha withheld from him her vital discoveries about the biology of the planet Lusitania, fearing that the knowledge of it would kill him. Instead, it was the ignorance of that very information that led him to his death. What she did for his own good, without his knowledge, killed him.

You’d think she’d learn something from that, thought Ender. But she still does the same thing. Making decisions that deform other people’s lives, without consulting them, without ever conceiving that perhaps they don’t want her to save them from whatever supposed misery she’s saving them from.

Then again, if she had simply married Libo in the first place and told him everything she knew, he would probably still be alive and Ender would never have married his widow and helped her raise her younger children. It was the only family Ender had ever had or was ever likely to have. So bad as Novinha’s decisions tended to be, the happiest time of his life had come about only because of one of the most deadly of her mistakes.

On their second pass, Ender saw that she still, stubbornly, was not going to speak to him, and so, as always, he bent first and broke the silence between them.

“The Filhos are married, you know. It’s a married order. You can’t become a full member without me.”

She paused in her work. The blade of the hoe rested on unbroken soil, the handle light in her gloved fingers. “I can weed the beets without you,” she finally said.

His heart leapt with relief that he had penetrated her veil of silence. “No you can’t,” he said. “Because here I am.”

“These are the potatoes,” she said. “I can’t stop you from helping with the potatoes.”

In spite of themselves they both laughed, and with a groan she unbent her back, stood straight, let the hoe handle fall to the ground, and took Ender’s hands in hers, a touch that thrilled him despite two layers of thick workglove cloth between their palms and fingers.

“If I do profane with my touch,” Ender began.

“No Shakespeare,” she said. “No ‘lips two blushing pilgrims ready stand.’ ”

“I miss you,” he said.

“Get over it,” she said.

“I don’t have to. If you’re joining the Filhos, so am I.”

She laughed.

Ender didn’t appreciate her scorn. “If a xenobiologist can retreat from the world of meaningless suffering, why can’t an old retired speaker for the dead?”

“Andrew,” she said, “I’m not here because I’ve given up on life. I’m here because I really have turned my heart over to the Redeemer. You could never do that. You don’t belong here.”

“I belong here if you belong here. We made a vow. A sacred one, that the Holy Church won’t let us set aside. In case you forgot.”

She sighed and looked out at the sky over the wall of the monastery. Beyond the wall, through meadows, over a fence, up a hill, into the woods . . . that’s where the great love of her life, Libo, had gone, and where he died. Where Pipo, his father, who was like a father to her as well, where he had gone before, and also died. It was into another wood that her son Estevão had gone, and also died, but Ender knew, watching her, that when she saw the world outside these walls, it was all those deaths she saw. Two of them had taken place before Ender got to Lusitania. But the death of Estevão—she had begged Ender to stop him from going to the dangerous place where pequeninos were talking of war, of killing humans. She knew as well as Ender did that to stop Estevão would have been the same as to destroy him, for he had not become a priest to be safe, but rather to try to carry the message of Christ to these tree people. Whatever joy came to the early Christian martyrs had surely come to Estevão as he slowly died in the embrace of a murderous tree. Whatever comfort God sent to them in their hour of supreme sacrifice. But no such joy had come to Novinha. God apparently did not extend the benefits of his service to the next of kin. And in her grief and rage she blamed Ender. Why had she married him, if not to make herself safe from these disasters?

He had never said to her the most obvious thing, that if there was anyone to blame, it was God, not him. After all, it was God who had made saints—well, almost saints—out of her parents, who died as they discovered the antidote to the descolada virus when she was only a child. Certainly it was God who led Estevão out to preach to the most dangerous of the pequeninos. Yet in her sorrow it was God she turned to, and turned away from Ender, who had meant to do nothing but good for her.

He never said this because he knew that she would not listen. And he also refrained from saying it because he knew she saw things another way. If God took Father and Mother, Pipo, Libo, and finally Estevão away from her, it was because God was just and punished her for her sins. But when Ender failed to stop Estevão from his suicidal mission to the pequeninos, it was because he was blind, self-willed, stubborn, and rebellious, and because he did not love her enough.

But he did love her. With all his heart he loved her.

All his heart?

All of it he knew about. And yet when his deepest secrets were revealed in that first voyage Outside, it was not Novinha that his heart conjured there. So apparently there was someone who mattered even more to him.

Well, he couldn’t help what went on in his unconscious mind, any more than Novinha could. All he could control was what he actually did, and what he was doing now was showing Novinha that regardless of how she tried to drive him away, he would not be driven. That no matter how much she imagined that he loved Jane and his involvement in the great affairs of the human race more than he loved her, it was not true, she was more important to him than any of it. He would give it all up for her. He would disappear behind monastery walls for her. He would weed rows of unidentified plant life in the hot sun. For her.

But even that was not enough. She insisted that he do it, not for her, but for Christ. Well, too bad. He wasn’t married to Christ, and neither was she. Still, it couldn’t be displeasing to God when a husband and wife gave all to each other. Surely that was part of what God expected of human beings.

“You know I don’t blame you for the death of Quim,” she said, using the old family nickname for Estevão.

“I didn’t know that,” he said, “but I’m glad to find it out.”

“I did at first, but I knew all along that it was irrational,” she said. “He went because he wanted to, and he was much too old for some interfering parent to stop him. If I couldn’t, how could you?”

“I didn’t even want to,” said Ender. “I wanted him to go. It was the fulfillment of his life’s ambition.”

“I even know that now. It’s right. It was right for him to go, and it was even right for him to die, because his death meant something. Didn’t it?”

“It saved Lusitania from a holocaust.”

“And brought many to Christ.” She laughed, the old laugh, the rich ironic laugh that he had come to treasure if only because it was so rare. “Trees for Jesus,” she said. “Who could have guessed?”

“They’re already calling him St. Stephen of the Trees.”

“That’s quite premature. It takes time. He must first be beatified. Miracles of healing must take place at his tomb. Believe me, I know the process.”

“Martyrs are thin on the ground these days,” said Ender. “He will be beatified. He will be canonized. People will pray for him to intercede with Jesus for them, and it will work, because if anyone has earned the right to have Christ hear him, it’s your son Estevão.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks, even as she laughed again. “My parents were martyrs and will be saints; my son, also. Piety skipped a generation.”

“Oh, yes. Yours was the generation of selfish hedonism.”

She finally turned to face him, tear-streaked dirty cheeks, smiling face, twinkling eyes that saw through into his heart. The woman he loved.

“I don’t regret my adultery,” she said. “How can Christ forgive me when I don’t even repent? If I hadn’t slept with Libo, my children would not have existed. Surely God does not disapprove of that?”

“I believe what Jesus said was, ‘I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive. But of you it is required that you forgive all men.’ ”

“More or less,” she said. “I’m not a scriptorian.” She reached out and touched his cheek. “You’re so strong, Ender. But you seem tired. How can you be tired? The universe’ of human beings still depends on you. Or if not the whole of humankind, then certainly you belong to this world. To save this world. But you’re tired.”

“Deep inside my bones I am,” he said. “And you have taken my last lifeblood away from me.”

“How odd,” she said. “I thought what I removed from you was the cancer in your life.”

“You aren’t very good at determining what other people want and need from you, Novinha. No one is. We’re all as likely to hurt as help.”

“That’s why I came here, Ender. I’m through deciding things. I put my trust in my own judgment. Then I put trust in you. I put trust in Libo, in Pipo, in Father and Mother, in Quim, and everyone disappointed me or went away or . . . no, I know you didn’t go away, and I know it wasn’t you that—hear me out, Andrew, hear me. The problem wasn’t in the people I trusted, the problem was that I trusted in them when no human being can possibly deliver what I needed. I needed deliverance, you see. I needed, I need, redemption. And it isn’t in your hands to give me—your open hands, which give me more than you even have to give, Andrew, but still you haven’t got the thing I need. Only my Deliverer, only the Anointed One, only he has it to give. Do you see? The only way I can make my life worth living is to give it to him. So here I am.”

“Weeding.”

“Separating the good fruit from the tares, I believe,” she said. “People will have more and better potatoes because I took out the weeds. I don’t have to be prominent or even noticed to feel good about my life now. But you, you come here and remind me that even in becoming happy, I’m hurting someone.”

“But you’re not,” said Ender. “Because I’m coming with you. I’m joining the Filhos with you. They’re a married order, and we’re a married couple. Without me you can’t join, and you need to join. With me you can. What could be simpler?”

“Simpler?” She shook her head. “You don’t believe in God, how’s that for starters?”

“I certainly do too believe in God,” said Ender, annoyed.

“Oh, you’re willing to concede God’s existence, but that’s not what I meant. I mean believe in him the way a mother means it when she says to her son, I believe in you. She’s not saying she believes that he exists—what is that worth?—she’s saying she believes in his future, she trusts that he’ll do all the good that is in him to do. She puts the future in his hands, that’s how she believes in him. You don’t believe in Christ that way, Andrew. You still believe in yourself. In other people. You’ve sent out your little surrogates, those children you conjured up during your visit in hell—you may be here with me in these walls right now, but your heart is out there scouting planets and trying to stop the fleet. You aren’t leaving anything up to God. You don’t believe in him.”

“Excuse me, but if God wanted to do everything himself, what did he make us for in the first place?”

“Yes, well, I seem to recall that one of your parents was a heretic, which is no doubt where your strangest ideas come from.” It was an old joke between them, but this time neither of them laughed.

“I believe in you,” Ender said.

“But you consult with Jane.”

He reached into his pocket, then held out his hand to show her what he had found there. It was a jewel, with several very fine wires leading from it. Like a glowing organism ripped from its delicate place amid the fronds of life in a shallow sea. She looked at it for a moment uncomprehending, then realized what it was and looked at the ear where, for all the years she had known him, he had worn the jewel that linked him to Jane, the computer-program-come-to-life who was his oldest, dearest, most reliable friend.

“Andrew, no, not for me, surely.”

“I can’t honestly say these walls contain me, as long as Jane was there to whisper in my ear,” he said. “I talked it out with her. I explained it. She understands. We’re still friends. But not companions anymore.”

“Oh, Andrew,” said Novinha. She wept openly now, and held him, clung to him. “If only you had done it years ago, even months ago.”

“Maybe I don’t believe in Christ the way that you do,” said Ender. “But isn’t it enough that I believe in you, and you believe in him?”

“You don’t belong here, Andrew.”

“I belong here more than anywhere else, if this is where you are. I’m not so much world-weary, Novinha, as I am will-weary. I’m tired of deciding things. I’m tired of trying to solve things.”

“We try to solve things here,” she said, pulling away from him.

“But here we can be, not the mind, but the children of the mind. We can be the hands and feet, the lips and tongue. We can carry out and not decide.” He squatted, knelt, then sat in the dirt, the young plants brushing and tickling him on either side. He put his dirty hands to his face and wiped his brow with them, knowing that he was only smearing dirt into mud.

“Oh, I almost believe this, Andrew, you’re so good at it,” said Novinha. “What, you’ve decided to stop being the hero of your own saga? Or is this just a ploy? Be the servant of all, so you can be the greatest among us?”

“You know I’ve never tried for greatness, or achieved it, either.”

“Oh, Andrew, you’re such a storyteller that you believe your own fables.”

Ender looked up at her. “Please, Novinha, let me live with you here. You’re my wife. There’s no meaning to my life if I’ve lost you.”

“We live as man and wife here, but we don’t . . . you know that we don’t . . .”

“I know that the Filhos forswear sexual intercourse,” said Ender. “I’m your husband. As long as I’m not having sex with anyone, it might as well be you that I’m not having sex with.” He smiled wryly.

Her answering smile was only sad and pitying.

“Novinha,” he said. “I’m not interested in my own life anymore. Do you understand? The only life I care about in this world is yours. If I lose you, what is there to hold me here?”

He wasn’t sure what he meant by this himself. The words had come unbidden to his lips. But he knew as he said them that it was not self-pity, but rather a frank admission of the truth. Not that he was thinking of suicide or exile or any other such low drama. Rather he felt himself fading. Losing his hold. Lusitania seemed less and less real to him. Valentine was still there, his dear sister and friend, and she was like a rock, her life was so real, but it was not real to him because she didn’t need him. Plikt, his unasked-for disciple, she might need Ender, but not the reality of him, only the idea of him. And who else was there? The children of Novinha and Libo, the children that he had raised as his own, and loved as his own, he loved them no less now, but they were adults, they didn’t need him. Jane, who once had been virtually destroyed by an hour of his inattention, she no longer needed him either, for she was there in the jewel in Miro’s ear, and in another jewel in Peter’s ear. . . .

Peter. Young Valentine. Where had they come from? They had stolen his soul and taken it with them when they left. They were doing the living acts that once he would have done himself. While he waited here in Lusitania and . . . faded. That’s what he meant. If he lost Novinha, what would tie him to this body that he had carried around the universe for all these thousands of years?

“It’s not my decision,” Novinha said.

“It’s your decision,” said Ender, “whether you want me with you, as one of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo. If you do, then I believe I can make my way through all the other obstacles.”

She laughed nastily. “Obstacles? Men like you don’t have obstacles. Just steppingstones.”

“Men like me?”

“Yes, men like you,” said Novinha. “Just because I’ve never met any others. Just because no matter how much I loved Libo he was never for one day as alive as you are in every minute. Just because I found myself loving as an adult for the first time when I loved you. Just because I have missed you more than I miss even my children, even my parents, even the lost loves of my life. Just because I can’t dream of anyone but you, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t somebody else just like you somewhere else. The universe is a big place. You can’t be all that special, really. Can you?”

He reached through the potato plants and leaned a hand gently on her thigh. “You do still love me, then?” he asked.

“Oh, is that what you came for? To find out if I love you?”

He nodded. “Partly.”

“I do,” she said.

“Then I can stay?”

She burst into tears. Loud weeping. She sank to the ground; he reached through the plants to embrace her, to hold her, caring nothing for the leaves he crushed between them. After he held her for a long while, she broke off her crying and turned to him and held him at least as tightly as he had been holding her.

“Oh, Andrew,” she whispered, her voice cracking and breaking from having wept so much. “Does God love me enough to give you to me now, again, when I need you so much?”

“Until I die,” said Ender.

“I know that part,” she said. “But I pray that God will let me die first this time.”

3

“THERE ARE TOO MANY
OF US”

“Let me tell you the most beautiful story I know.

A man was given a dog, which he loved very much.

The dog went with him everywhere,

but the man could not teach it to do anything useful.

The dog would not fetch or point,

it would not race or protect or stand watch.

Instead the dog sat near him and regarded him,

always with the same inscrutable expression.

‘That’s not a dog, it’s a wolf,’ said the man’s wife.

‘He alone is faithful to me,’ said the man,

and his wife never discussed it with him again.

One day the man took his dog with him into his private airplane

and as they flew over high winter mountains,

the engines failed

and the airplane was torn to shreds among the trees.

The man lay bleeding,

his belly torn open by blades of sheared metal,

steam rising from his organs in the cold air,

but all he could think of was his faithful dog.

Was he alive? Was he hurt?

Imagine his relief when the dog came padding up

and regarded him with that same steady gaze.

After an hour the dog nosed the man’s gaping abdomen,

then began pulling out intestines and spleen and liver

and gnawing on them,

all the while studying the man’s face.

‘Thank God,’ said the man.

‘At least one of us will not starve.’ ”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Of all the faster-than-light starships that were flitting Outside and back In under Jane’s command, only Miro’s looked like an ordinary spacecraft, for the good reason that it was nothing more than the shuttle that had once taken passengers and cargo to and from the great starships that came to orbit around Lusitania. Now that the new starships could go immediately from one planet’s surface to another’s, there was no need for life support or even fuel, and since Jane had to hold the entire structure of each craft in her memory, the simpler they were the better. Indeed, they could hardly be called vehicles anymore. They were simple cabins now, windowless, almost unfurnished, bare as a primitive schoolroom. The people of Lusitania referred to space travel now as encaixarse, which was Portuguese for “going into the box,” or, more literally, “to box oneself up.”

Miro, however, was exploring, searching for new planets capable of sustaining the lives of the three sentient species, humans, pequeninos, and hive queens. For this he needed a more traditional spacecraft, for though he still went from planet to planet by way of Jane’s instant detour through the Outside, he could not usually count on arriving at a world where he could breathe the air. Indeed, Jane always started him out in orbit high above each new planet, so he could observe, measure, analyze, and only land on the most promising ones to make the final determination of whether the world was usable.

He did not travel alone. It would have been too much for one person to accomplish, and he needed everything he did to be double-checked. Yet of all the work being done by anyone on Lusitania, this was the most dangerous, for he never knew when he cracked open the door of his spaceship whether there would be some unforeseeable menace on the new world. Miro had long regarded his own life as expendable. For several long years trapped in a brain-damaged body he had wished for death; then, when his first trip Outside enabled him to recreate his body in the perfection of youth, he regarded any moment, any hour, any day of his life as an undeserved gift. He would not waste it, but he would not shrink from putting it at risk for the good of others. But who else could share his easy self-disregard?

Young Valentine was made to order, in every sense, it seemed. Miro had seen her come into existence at the same time as his own new body. She had no past, no kin, no links to any world except through Ender, whose mind had created her, and Peter, her fellow makeling. Oh, and perhaps one might consider her to be linked to the original Valentine, “the real Valentine,” as Young Val called her; but it was no secret that Old Valentine had no desire to spend even a moment in the company of this young beauty who mocked her by her very existence. Besides, Young Val was created as Ender’s image of perfect virtue. Not only was she unconnected, but also she was genuinely altruistic and quite willing to sacrifice herself for the good of others. So whenever Miro stepped into the shuttle, there was Young Val as his companion, his reliable assistant, his constant backup.

But not his friend. For Miro knew perfectly well who Val really was: Ender in disguise. Not a woman. And her love and loyalty to him were Ender’s love and loyalty, often tested, well-trusted, but Ender’s, not her own. There was nothing of her own in her. So while Miro had become used to her company, and laughed and joked with her more easily than with anyone in his life till now, he did not confide in her, did not allow himself to feel affection any deeper than camaraderie for her. If she noticed the lack of connection between them she said nothing; if it hurt her, the pain never showed.

What showed was her delight in their successes and her insistence that they push themselves ever harder. “We don’t have a whole day to spend on any world,” she said right from the start, and proved it by holding them to a schedule that let them make three voyages in a day. They came home after each three voyages to a Lusitania already quiet with sleep; they slept on the ship and spoke to others only to warn them of particular problems the colonists were likely to face on whatever new worlds had been found that day. And the three-a-day schedule was only on days when they dealt with likely planets. When Jane took them to worlds that were obvious losers—waterbound, for instance, or unbiotized—they moved on quickly, checking the next candidate world, and the next, sometimes five and six on those discouraging days when nothing seemed to work. Young Val pushed them both on to the edge of their endurance, day after day, and Miro accepted her leadership in this aspect of their voyaging because he knew that it was necessary.

His friend, however, had no human shape. For him she dwelt in the jewel in his ear. Jane, the whisper in his mind when he first woke up, the friend who heard everything he subvocalized, who knew his needs before he noticed them himself. Jane, who shared all his thoughts and dreams, who had stayed with him through the worst of his cripplehood, who had led him Outside to where he could be renewed. Jane, his truest friend, who would soon die.

That was their real deadline. Jane would die, and then this instant starflight would be at an end, for there was no other being that had the sheer mental power to take anything more complicated than a rubber ball Outside and back In again. And Jane’s death would come, not by any natural cause, but because the Starways Congress, having discovered the existence of a subversive program that could control or at least access any and all of their computers, was systematically closing down, disconnecting, and sweeping out all their networks. Already she was feeling the injury of those systems that had been taken offline to where she could not access them. Someday soon the codes would be transmitted that would undo her utterly and all at once. And when she was gone, anyone who had not been taken from the surface of Lusitania and transplanted to another world would be trapped, waiting helplessly for the arrival of the Lusitania Fleet, which was coming ever closer, determined to destroy them all.

A grim business, this, in which despite all of Miro’s efforts, his dearest friend would die. Which, he knew full well, was part of why he did not let himself become a true friend to Young Val—because it would be disloyal to Jane to learn affection for anyone else during the last weeks or days of her life.

So Miro’s life was an endless routine of work, of concentrated mental effort, studying the findings of the shuttle’s instruments, analyzing aerial photographs, piloting the shuttle to unsafe, unscouted landing zones, and finally—not often enough—opening the door and breathing alien air. And at the end of each voyage, no time either to mourn or rejoice, no time even to rest: he closed the door, spoke the word, and Jane took them home again to Lusitania, to start it all over again.

On this homecoming, however, something was different. Miro opened the door of the shuttle to find, not his adoptive father Ender, not the pequeninos who prepared food for him and Young Val, not the normal colony leaders wanting a briefing, but rather his brothers Olhado and Grego, and his sister Elanora, and Ender’s sister Valentine. Old Valentine, come herself to the one place where she was sure to meet her unwelcome young twin? Miro saw at once how Young Val and Old Valentine glanced at each other, eyes not really meeting, and then looked away, not wanting to see each other. Or was that it? Young Val was more likely looking away from Old Valentine because she virtuously wanted to avoid giving offense to the older woman. No doubt if she could do it Young Val would willingly disappear rather than cause Old Valentine a moment’s pain. And, since that was not possible, she would do the next best thing, which was to remain as unobtrusive as possible when Old Valentine was present.

“What’s the meeting?” asked Miro. “Is Mother ill?”

“No, no, everybody’s in good health,” said Olhado.

“Except mentally,” said Grego. “Mother’s as mad as a hatter, and now Ender’s crazy too.”

Miro nodded, grimaced. “Let me guess. He joined her among the Filhos.”

Immediately Grego and Olhado looked at the jewel in Miro’s ear.

“No, Jane didn’t tell me,” said Miro. “I just know Ender. He takes his marriage very seriously.”

“Yes, well, it’s left something of a leadership vacuum here,” said Olhado. “Not that everybody isn’t doing their job just fine. I mean, the system works and all that. But Ender was the one we all looked to to tell us what to do when the system stops working. If you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” said Miro. “And you can speak of it in front of Jane. She knows she’s going to be shut down as soon as Starways Congress gets their plans in place.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” said Grego. “Most people don’t know about the danger to Jane—for that matter, most don’t even know she exists. But they can do the arithmetic to figure out that even going full tilt, there’s no way to get all the humans off Lusitania before the fleet gets here. Let alone the pequeninos. So they know that unless the fleet is stopped, somebody is going to be left here to die. There are already those who say that we’ve wasted enough starship space on trees and bugs.”

“Trees” referred, of course, to the pequeninos, who were not, in fact, transporting fathertrees and mothertrees; and “bugs” referred to the Hive Queen, who was also not wasting space sending a lot of workers. But every world they were settling did have a large contingent of pequeninos and at least one hive queen and a handful of workers to help her get started. Never mind that it was the hive queen on every world that quickly produced workers who were doing the bulk of the labor getting agriculture started; never mind that because they were not taking trees with them, at least one male and female in every group of pequeninos had to be “planted”—had to die slowly and painfully so that a fathertree and mothertree could take root and maintain the cycle of pequenino life. They all knew—Grego more than any other, since he’d recently been in the thick of it—that under the polite surface was an undercurrent of competition between species.

And it was not just among the humans, either. While on Lusitania the pequeninos still outnumbered humans by vast numbers, on the new colonies the humans predominated. “It’s your fleet coming to destroy Lusitania,” said Human, the leader of the fathertrees these days. “And even if every human on Lusitania died, the human race would continue. While for the Hive Queen and for us, it is nothing less than the survival of our species that is at stake. And yet we understand that we must let humans dominate for a time on these new worlds, because of your knowledge of skills and technologies we have not yet mastered, because of your practice at subduing new worlds, and because you still have the power to set fires to burn our forests.” What Human said so reasonably, his resentment couched in polite language, many other pequeninos and fathertrees said more passionately: “Why should we let these human invaders, who brought all this evil upon us, save almost all their population, while most of us will die?”

“Resentment between the species is nothing new,” said Miro.

“But until now we had Ender to contain it,” said Grego. “Pequeninos, the Hive Queen, and most of the human population saw Ender as a fair broker, someone they could trust. They knew that as long as he was in charge of things, as long as his voice was heard, their interests would be protected.”

“Ender isn’t the only good person leading this exodus,” said Miro.

“It’s a matter of trust, not of virtue,” said Valentine. “The non-humans know that Ender is the Speaker for the Dead. No other human has ever spoken for another species that way. And yet the humans know that Ender is the Xenocide—that when the human race was threatened by an enemy countless generations ago, he was the one who acted to stop them and save humanity from, as they feared, annihilation. There isn’t exactly a candidate with equivalent qualifications ready to step into Ender’s role.”

“What’s that to me?” asked Miro bluntly. “Nobody listens to me here. I have no connections. I certainly can’t take Ender’s place either, and right now I’m tired and I need to sleep. Look at Young Val, she’s half-dead with weariness, too.”

It was true; she was barely able to stand. Miro at once reached out to support her; she gratefully leaned against his shoulder.

“We don’t want you to take Ender’s place,” said Olhado. “We don’t want anybody to take his place. We want him to take his place.”

Miro laughed. “You think I can persuade him? You’ve got his sister right there! Send her!”

Old Valentine grimaced. “Miro, he won’t see me.”

“Then what makes you think he’ll see me?”

“Not you, Miro. Jane. The jewel in your ear.”

Miro looked at them in bafflement. “You mean Ender has removed his jewel?”

In his ear, he heard Jane say, “I’ve been busy. I didn’t think it was important to mention it to you.”

But Miro knew how it had devastated Jane before, when Ender cut her off. Now she had other friends, yes, but that didn’t mean it would be painless.

Old Valentine continued. “If you can go to him and get him to talk to Jane . . .”

Miro shook his head. “Taking out the jewel—don’t you see that that was final? He’s committed himself to following Mother into exile. Ender doesn’t back away from his commitments.”

They all knew it was true. Knew, in fact, that they had really come to Miro, not with the real hope that he would accomplish what they needed, but as a last feeble act of desperation. “So we let things wind down,” said Grego. “We let things slide into chaos. And then, beset by interspecies war, we will die in shame when the fleet comes. Jane’s lucky, I think; she’ll already be dead when it gets here.”

“Tell him thanks,” Jane said to Miro.

“Jane says thanks,” said Miro. “You’re just too soft-hearted, Grego.”

Grego blushed, but he didn’t take back what he said.

“Ender isn’t God,” said Miro. “We’ll just do our best without him. But right now the best thing I can do is—”

“Sleep, we know,” said Old Valentine. “Not on the ship this time, though. Please. It makes us sick at heart to see how weary you both are. Jakt has brought the taxi. Come home and sleep in a bed.”

Miro glanced at Young Val, who still leaned sleepily on his shoulder.

“Both of you, of course,” said Old Valentine. “I’m not as distressed by her existence as you all seem to think.”

“Of course you’re not,” said Young Val. She reached out a weary arm, and the two women who bore the same name took each other’s hand. Miro watched as Young Val slipped from his side to take Old Valentine’s arm, and lean on her instead of him. His own feelings surprised him. Instead of relief that there was less tension between the two of them than he had thought, he found himself being rather angry. Jealous anger, that’s what it was. She was leaning on me, he wanted to say. What kind of childish response was that?

And then, as he watched them walk away, he saw what he should not have seen—Valentine’s shudder. Was it a sudden chill? The night was cool. But no, Miro was sure it was the touch of her young twin, and not the night air that made Old Valentine tremble.

“Come on, Miro,” said Olhado. “We’ll get you to the hovercar and into bed at Valentine’s house.”

“Is there a food stop along the way?”

“It’s Jakt’s house, too,” said Elanora. “There’s always food.”

As the hovercar carried them toward Milagre, the human town, they passed near some of the dozens of starships currently in service. The work of migration didn’t take the night off. Stevedores—many of them pequeninos—were loading supplies and equipment for transport. Families were shuffling in lines to fill up whatever spaces were left in the cabins. Jane would be getting no rest tonight as she took box after box Outside and back In. On other worlds, new homes were rising, new fields being plowed. Was it day or night in those other places? It didn’t matter. In a way they had already succeeded—new worlds were being colonized, and, like it or not, every world had its hive, its new pequenino forest, and its human village.

If Jane died today, thought Miro, if the fleet came tomorrow and blew us all to bits, in the grand scheme of things, what would it matter? The seeds have been scattered to the wind; some, at least, will take root. And if faster-than-light travel dies with Jane, even that might be for the best, for it will force each of these worlds to fend for itself. Some colonies will fail and die, no doubt. On some of them, war will come, and perhaps one species or another will be wiped out there. But it will not be the same species that dies on every world, or the same one that lives; and on some worlds, at least, we’ll surely find a way to live in peace. All that’s left for us now is details. Whether this or that individual lives or dies. It matters, of course. But not the way that the survival of species matters.

He must have been subvocalizing some of his thoughts, because Jane answered them. “Hath not an overblown computer program eyes and ears? Have I no heart or brain? When you tickle me do I not laugh?”

“Frankly, no,” said Miro silently, working his lips and tongue and teeth to shape words that only she could hear.

“But when I die, every being of my kind will also die,” she said. “Forgive me if I think of this as having cosmic significance. I’m not as self-abnegating as you are, Miro. I don’t regard myself as living on borrowed time. It was my firm intention to live forever, so anything less is a disappointment.”

“Tell me what I can do and I’ll do it,” he said. “I’d die to save you, if that’s what it took.”

“Fortunately, you’ll die eventually no matter what,” said Jane. “That’s my one consolation, that by dying I’ll do no more than face the same doom that every other living creature has to face. Even those long-living trees. Even those hive queens, passing their memories along from generation to generation. But I, alas, will have no children. How could I? I’m a creature of mind alone. There’s no provision for mental mating.”

“Too bad, too,” said Miro, “because I bet you’d be great in the virtual sack.”

“The best,” Jane said.

And then silence for a little while.

Only when they approached Jakt’s house, a new building on the outskirts of Milagre, did Jane speak again. “Keep in mind, Miro, that whatever Ender does with his own self, when Young Valentine speaks it’s still Ender’s aiúa talking.”

“The same with Peter,” said Miro. “Now there’s a charmer. Let’s just say that Young Val, sweet as she is, doesn’t exactly represent a balanced view of anything. Ender may control her, but she’s not Ender.”

“There are just too many of him, aren’t there,” said Jane. “And, apparently, too many of me, at least in the opinion of Starways Congress.”

“There are too many of us all,” said Miro. “But never enough.”

They arrived. Miro and Young Val were led inside. They ate feebly; they slept the moment they reached their beds. Miro was aware that voices went on far into the night, for he did not sleep well, but rather kept waking a little, uncomfortable on such a soft mattress, and perhaps uncomfortable at being away from his duty, like a soldier who feels guilty at having abandoned his post.

Despite his weariness, Miro did not sleep late. Indeed, the sky outside was still dim with the predawn seepage of sunlight over the horizon when he awoke and, as was his habit, rose immediately from his bed, standing shakily as the last of sleep fled from his body. He covered himself and went out into the hall to find the bathroom and discharge his bladder. When he emerged, he heard voices from the kitchen. Either last night’s conversation was still going on, or some other neurotic early risers had rejected morning solitude and were chatting away as if dawn were not the dark hour of despair.

He stood before his own open door, ready to go inside and shut out those earnest voices, when Miro realized that one of them belonged to Young Val. Then he realized that the other one was Old Valentine. At once he turned and made his way to the kitchen, and again hesitated in a doorway.

Sure enough, the two Valentines were sitting across the table from each other, but not looking at each other. Instead they stared out the window as they sipped one of Old Valentine’s fruit-and-vegetable decoctions.

“Would you like one, Miro?” asked Old Valentine without looking up.

“Not even on my deathbed,” said Miro. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Good,” said Old Valentine.

Young Val continued to say nothing.

Miro came inside the kitchen, went to the sink, and drew himself a glass of water, which he drank in one long draught.

“I told you it was Miro in the bathroom,” said Old Valentine. “No one processes so much water every day as this dear lad.”

Miro chuckled, but he did not hear Young Val laugh.

“I am interfering with the conversation,” he said. “I’ll go.”

“Stay,” said Old Valentine.

“Please,” said Young Val.

“Please which?” asked Miro. He turned toward her and grinned.

She shoved a chair toward him with her foot. “Sit,” she said. “The lady and I were having it out about our twinship.”

“We decided,” said Old Valentine, “that it’s my responsibility to die first.”

“On the contrary,” said Young Val, “we decided that Gepetto did not create Pinocchio because he wanted a real boy. It was a puppet he wanted all along. That real-boy business was simply Gepetto’s laziness. He still wanted the puppet to dance—he just didn’t want to go to all the trouble of working the strings.”

“You being Pinocchio,” said Miro. “And Ender . . .”

“My brother didn’t try to make you,” said Old Valentine. “And he doesn’t want to control you, either.”

“I know,” whispered Young Val. And suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

Miro reached out a hand to lay atop hers on the table, but at once she snatched hers away. No, she wasn’t avoiding his touch, she was simply bringing her hand up to wipe the annoying tears out of her eyes.

“He’d cut the strings if he could, I know,” said Young Val. “The way Miro cut the strings on his old broken body.”

Miro remembered it very clearly. One moment he was sitting in the starship, looking at this perfect image of himself, strong and young and healthy; the next moment he was that image, had always been that image, and what he looked at was the crippled, broken, brain-damaged version of himself. And as he watched, that unloved, unwanted body crumbled into dust and disappeared.

“I don’t think he hates you,” said Miro, “the way I hated my old self.”

“He doesn’t have to hate me. It wasn’t hate anyway that killed your old body.” Young Val didn’t meet his eyes. In all their hours together exploring worlds, they had never talked about anything so personal. She had never dared to discuss with him that moment when both of them had been created. “You hated your old body while you were in it, but as soon as you were back in your right body, you simply stopped paying any attention to the old one. It wasn’t part of you anymore. Your aiúa had no more responsibility for it. And with nothing to hold it together—pop goes the weasel.”

“Wooden doll,” said Miro. “Now weasel. What else am I?”

Old Valentine ignored his bid for a laugh. “So you’re saying Ender finds you uninteresting.”

“He admires me,” said Young Val. “But he finds me dull.”

“Yes, well, me too,” said Old Valentine.

“That’s absurd,” said Miro.

“Is it?” asked Old Valentine. “He never followed me anywhere; I was always the one who followed him. He was searching for a mission in life, I think. Some great deed to do, to match the terrible act that ended his childhood. He thought writing The Hive Queen would do it. And then, with my help in preparing it, he wrote The Hegemon and he thought that might be enough, but it wasn’t. He kept searching for something that would engage his full attention and he kept almost finding it, or finding it for a week or a month, but one thing was certain, the thing that engaged his attention was never me, because there I was in all the billion miles he traveled, there I was across three thousand years. Those histories I wrote—it was no great love for history, it was because it helped in his work. The way my writing used to help in Peter’s work. And when I was finished, then, for a few hours of reading and discussion, I had his attention. Only each time it was less satisfying because it wasn’t I who had his attention, it was the story I had written. Until finally I found a man who gave me his whole heart, and I stayed with him. While my adolescent brother went on without me, and found a family that took his whole heart, and there we were, planets apart, but finally happier without each other than we’d ever been together.”

“So why did you come to him again?” asked Miro.

“I didn’t come for him. I came for you.” Old Valentine smiled. “I came for a world in danger of destruction. But I was glad to see Ender, even though I knew he would never belong to me.”

“This may be an accurate description of how it felt to you,” said Young Val. “But you must have had his attention, at some level. I exist because you’re always in his heart.”

“A fantasy of his childhood, perhaps. Not me.”

“Look at me,” said Young Val. “Is this the body you wore when he was five and was taken away from his home and sent up to the Battle School? Is this even the teenage girl that he knew that summer by the lake in North Carolina? You must have had his attention even when you grew up, because his image of you changed to become me.”

“You are what I was when we worked on The Hegemon together,” said Old Valentine sadly.

“Were you this tired?” asked Young Val.

“I am,” said Miro.

“No you’re not,” said Old Valentine. “You are the picture of vigor. You’re still celebrating your beautiful new body. My twin here is heartweary.”

“Ender’s attention has always been divided,” said Young Val. “I’m filled with his memories, you see—or rather, with the memories that he unconsciously thought I should have, but of course they consist almost entirely of things that he remembers about my friend here, which means that all I remember is my life with Ender. And he always had Jane in his ear, and the people whose deaths he was speaking, and his students, and the Hive Queen in her cocoon, and so on. But they were all adolescent connections. Like every itinerant hero of epic, he wandered place to place, transforming others but remaining himself unchanged. Until he came here and finally gave himself wholly to somebody else. You and your family, Miro. Novinha. For the first time he gave other people the power to tear at him emotionally, and it was exhilarating and painful both at once, but even that he could handle just fine, he’s a strong man, and strong men have borne more. Now, though, it’s something else entirely. Peter and I, we have no life apart from him. To say that he is one with Novinha is metaphorical; with Peter and me it’s literal. He is us. And his aiúa isn’t great enough, it isn’t strong or copious enough, it hasn’t enough attention in it to give equal shares to the three lives that depend on it. I realized this almost as soon as I was . . . what shall we call it, created? Manufactured?”

“Born,” said Old Valentine.

“You were a dream come true,” said Miro, with only a hint of irony.

“He can’t sustain all three of us. Ender, Peter, me. One of us is going to fade. One of us at least is going to die. And it’s me. I knew that from the start. I’m the one who’s going to die.”

Miro wanted to reassure her. But how do you reassure someone, except by recalling to them similar situations that turned out for the best? There were no similar situations to call upon.

“The trouble is that whatever part of Ender’s aiúa I still have in me is absolutely determined to live. I don’t want to die. That’s how I know I still have some shred of his attention: I don’t want to die.”

“So go to him,” said Old Valentine. “Talk to him.”

Young Val gave one bitter hoot of laughter and looked away. “Please, Papa, let me live,” she said in a mockery of a child’s voice. “Since it’s not something he consciously controls, what could he possibly do about it, except suffer from guilt? And why should he feel guilty? If I cease to exist, it’s because my own self didn’t value me. He is myself. Do the dead tips of fingernails feel bad when you pare them away?”

“But you are bidding for his attention,” said Miro.

“I hoped that the search for habitable worlds would intrigue him. I poured myself into it, trying to be excited about it. But the truth is it’s utterly routine. Important, but routine, Miro.”

Miro nodded. “True enough. Jane finds the worlds. We just process them.”

“And there are enough worlds now. Enough colonies. Two dozen—pequeninos and hive queens are not going to die out now, even if Lusitania is destroyed. The bottleneck isn’t the number of worlds, it’s the number of starships. So all our labor—it isn’t engaging Ender’s attention anymore. And my body knows it. My body knows it isn’t needed.”

She reached up and took a large hank of her hair into her fist, and pulled—not hard, but lightly—and it came away easily in her hand. A great gout of hair, with not a sign of any pain at its going. She let the hair drop onto the table. It lay there like a dismembered limb, grotesque, impossible. “I think,” she whispered, “that if I’m not careful, I could do the same with my fingers. It’s slower, but gradually I will turn into dust just as your old body did, Miro. Because he isn’t interested in me. Peter is solving mysteries and fighting political wars off on some world somewhere. Ender is struggling to hold on to the woman he loves. But I . . .”

In that moment, as the hair torn from her head revealed the depth of her misery, her loneliness, her self-rejections, Miro realized what he had not let himself think of until now: that in all the weeks they had traveled world to world together, he had come to love her, and her unhappiness hurt him as if it were his own. And perhaps it was his own, his memory of his own self-loathing. But whatever the reason, it still felt like something deeper than mere compassion to him. It was a kind of desire. Yes, it was a kind of love. If this beautiful young woman, this wise and intelligent and clever young woman was rejected by her own inmost heart, then Miro’s heart had room enough to take her in. If Ender will not be yourself, let me! he cried silently, knowing as he formed the thought for the first time that he had felt this way for days, for weeks, without realizing it; yet also knowing that he could not be to her what Ender was.

Still, couldn’t love do for Young Val what it was doing for Ender himself? Couldn’t that engage enough of his attention to keep her alive? To strengthen her?

Miro reached out and gathered up her disembodied hair, twined it around his fingers, and then slid the looping locks into the pocket of his robe. “I don’t want you to fade away,” he said. Bold words for him.

Young Val looked at him oddly. “I thought the great love of your life was Ouanda.”

“She’s a middle-aged woman now,” said Miro. “Married and happy, with a family. It would be sad if the great love of my life were a woman who doesn’t exist anymore, and even if she did she wouldn’t want me.”

“It’s sweet of you to offer,” said Young Val. “But I don’t think we can fool Ender into caring about my life by pretending to fall in love.”

Her words stabbed Miro to the heart, because she had so easily seen how much of his self-declaration came from pity. Yet not all of it came from there; most of it was already seething just under the level of consciousness, just waiting its chance to come out. “I wasn’t thinking of fooling anyone,” said Miro. Except myself, he thought. Because Young Val could not possibly love me. She is, after all, not really a woman. She’s Ender.

But that was absurd. Her body was a woman’s body. And where did the choice of loves come from, if not the body? Was there something male or female in the aiúa? Before it became master of flesh and bone, was it manly or womanly? And if so, would that mean that the aiúas composing atoms and molecules, rocks and stars and light and wind, that all of those were neatly sorted into boys and girls? Nonsense. Ender’s aiúa could be a woman, could love like a woman as easily as it now loved, in a man’s body and in a man’s ways, Miro’s own mother. It wasn’t any lack in Young Val that made her look at him with such pity. It was a lack in him. Even with his body healed, he was not a man that a woman—or at least this woman, at the moment the most desirable of all women—could love, or wish to love, or hope to win.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” he murmured. He pushed away from the table and left the room in two strides. Strode up the hall and once again stood in his open doorway. He heard their voices.

“No, don’t go to him,” said Old Valentine. Then something softer. Then, “He may have a new body, but his self-hatred has never been healed.”

A murmur from Young Val.

“Miro was speaking from his heart,” Old Valentine assured her. “It was a very brave and naked thing for him to do.”

Again Young Val spoke too softly for Miro to hear her.

“How could you know?” Old Valentine said. “What you have to realize is, we took a long voyage together, not that long ago, and I think he fell in love with me a little on that flight.”

It was probably true. It was definitely true. Miro had to admit it: some of his feelings for Young Val were really his feelings for Old Valentine, transferred from the woman who was permanently out of reach to this young woman who might be, he had hoped at least, accessible to him.

Now both their voices fell to levels where Miro could not even pick out words. But still he waited, his hands pressed against the doorjamb, listening to the lilting of those two voices, so much alike, but both so well-known to him. It was a music that he could gladly hear forever.

“If there’s anyone like Ender in all this universe,” said Old Valentine with sudden loudness, “it’s Miro. He broke himself trying to save innocents from destruction. He hasn’t yet been healed.”

She meant me to hear that, Miro realized. She spoke loudly, knowing I was standing here, knowing I was listening. The old witch was listening for my door to close and she never heard it so she knows that I can hear them and she’s trying to give me a way to see myself. But I’m no Ender, I’m barely Miro, and if she says things like that about me it’s just proof that she doesn’t know who I am.

A voice spoke up in his ear. “Oh, shut up if you’re just going to lie to yourself.”

Of course Jane had heard everything. Even his thoughts, because, as was his habit, his conscious thoughts were echoed by his lips and tongue and teeth. He couldn’t even think without moving his lips. With Jane attached to his ear he spent his waking hours in a confessional that never closed.

“So you love the girl,” said Jane. “Why not? So your motives are complicated by your feelings toward Ender and Valentine and Ouanda and yourself. So what? What love was ever pure, what lover was ever uncomplicated? Think of her as a succubus. You’ll love her, and she’ll crumble in your arms.”

Jane’s taunting was infuriating and amusing at once. He went inside his room and gently closed the door. When it was closed, he whispered to her, “You’re just a jealous old bitch, Jane. You only want me for yourself.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Jane. “If Ender had ever really loved me, he would have created my human body when he was being so fertile Outside. Then I could make a play for you myself.”

“You already have my whole heart,” said Miro. “Such as it is.”

“You are such a liar,” said Jane. “I’m just a talking appointment book and calculator, and you know it.”

“But you’re very very rich,” said Miro. “I’ll marry you for your money.”

“By the way,” said Jane, “she’s wrong about one thing.”

“What’s that?” asked Miro, wondering which “she” Jane was referring to.

“You aren’t done with exploring worlds. Whether Ender is still interested in it or not—and I think he is, because she hasn’t turned to dust yet—the work doesn’t end just because there are enough habitable planets to save the piggies and buggers.”

Jane frequently used the old diminutive and pejorative terms for them. Miro often wondered, but never dared to ask, if she had any pejoratives for humans. But he thought he knew what her answer would be anyway: “The word ‘human’ is a pejorative,” she’d say.

“So what are we still looking for?” asked Miro.

“Every world that we can find before I die,” said Jane.

He thought about that as he lay back down on his bed. Thought about it as he tossed and turned a couple of times, then got up, got dressed for real, and set out under the lightening sky, walking among the other early risers, people about their business, few of whom knew him or even knew of him. Being a scion of the strange Ribeira family, he hadn’t had many childhood friends in ginásio; being both brilliant and shy, he’d had even fewer of the more rambunctious adolescent friendships in colégio. His only girlfriend had been Ouanda, until his penetration of the sealed perimeter of the human colony left him brain-damaged and he refused to see even her anymore. Then his voyage out to meet Valentine had severed the few fragile ties that remained between him and his birthworld. For him it was only a few months in a starship, but when he came back, years had passed, and he was now his mother’s youngest child, the only one whose life was unbegun. The children he had once watched over were adults who treated him like a tender memory from their youth. Only Ender was unchanged. No matter how many years. No matter what happened. Ender was the same.

Could it still be true? Could he be the same man even now, locking himself away at a time of crisis, hiding out in a monastery just because Mother had finally given up on life? Miro knew the bare outline of Ender’s life. Taken from his family at the tender age of five. Brought to the orbiting Battle School, where he emerged as the last best hope of humankind in its war with the ruthless invaders called buggers. Taken next to the fleet command on Eros, where he was told he was in advanced training, but where, without realizing it, he was commanding the real fleets, lightyears away, his commands transmitted by ansible. He won that war through brilliance and, in the end, the utterly unconscionable act of destroying the home world of the buggers. Except that he had thought it was a game.

Thought it was a game, but at the same time knowing that the game was a simulation of reality. In the game he had chosen to do the unspeakable; it meant, to Ender at least, that he was not free of guilt when the game turned out to be real. Even though the last Hive Queen forgave him and put herself, cocooned as she was, into his care, he could not shake himself free of that. He was only a child, doing what adults led him to do; but somewhere in his heart he knew that even a child is a real person, that a child’s acts are real acts, that even a child’s play is not without moral context.

Thus before the sun was up, Miro found himself facing Ender as they both straddled a stone bench in a spot in the garden that would soon be bathed in sunlight but now was clammy with the morning chill; and what Miro found himself saying to this unchangeable, unchanging man was this: “What is this monastery business, Andrew Wiggin, except for a backhanded, cowardly way of crucifying yourself?”

“I’ve missed you too, Miro,” said Ender. “You look tired, though. You need more sleep.”

Miro sighed and shook his head. “That wasn’t what I meant to say. I’m trying to understand you, I really am. Valentine says that I’m like you.”

“You mean the real Valentine?” asked Ender.

“They’re both real,” said Miro.

“Well, if I’m like you, then study yourself and tell me what you find.”

Miro wondered, looking at him, if Ender really meant this.

Ender patted Miro’s knee. “I’m really not needed out there now,” he said.

“You don’t believe that for a second,” said Miro.

“But I believe that I believe it,” said Ender, “and for me that’s pretty good. Please don’t disillusion me. I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

“No, you’re exploiting the convenience of having split yourself into three. This part of you, the aging middle-aged man, can afford the luxury of devoting himself entirely to his wife—but only because he has two young puppets to go out and do the work that really interests him.”

“But it doesn’t interest me,” said Ender. “I don’t care.”

“You as Ender don’t care because you as Peter and you as Valentine are taking care of everything else for you. Only Valentine isn’t well. You’re not caring enough about what she’s doing. What happened to my old crippled body is happening to her. More slowly, but it’s the same thing. She thinks so, Valentine thinks it’s possible. So do I. So does Jane.”

“Give Jane my love. I do miss her.”

“I give Jane my love, Ender.”

Ender grinned at his resistance. “If they were about to shoot you, Miro, you’d insist on drinking a lot of water just so they’d have to handle a corpse covered with urine when you were dead.”

“Valentine isn’t a dream or an illusion, Ender,” said Miro, refusing to be sidetracked into a discussion of his own obstreperousness. “She’s real, and you’re killing her.”

“Awfully dramatic way of putting it.”

“If you’d seen her pull out tufts of her own hair this morning . . .”

“So she’s rather theatrical, I take it? Well, you’ve always been one for the theatrical gesture, too. I’m not surprised you get along.”

“Andrew, I’m telling you you’ve got to—”

Suddenly Ender grew stern and his voice overtopped Miro’s even though he was not speaking loudly. “Use your head, Miro. Was your decision to jump from your old body to this newer model a conscious one? Did you think about it and say, ‘Well, I think I’ll let this old corpse crumble into its constituent molecules because this new body is a nicer place to dwell’?”

Miro got his point at once. Ender couldn’t consciously control where his attention went. His aiúa, even though it was his deepest self, was not to be ordered about.

“I find out what I really want by seeing what I do,” said Ender. “That’s what we all do, if we’re honest about it. We have our feelings, we make our decisions, but in the end we look back on our lives and see how sometimes we ignored our feelings, while most of our decisions were actually rationalizations because we had already decided in our secret hearts before we ever recognized it consciously. I can’t help it if the part of me that’s controlling this girl whose company you’re sharing isn’t as important to my underlying will as you’d like. As she needs. I can’t do a thing.”

Miro bowed his head.

The sun came up over the trees. Suddenly the bench turned bright, and Miro looked up to see the sunlight making a halo out of Ender’s wildly slept-in hair. “Is grooming against the monastic rule?” asked Miro.

“You’re attracted to her, aren’t you,” said Ender, not really making a question out of it. “And it makes you a little uneasy that she is really me.”

Miro shrugged. “It’s a root in the path. But I think I can step over it.”

“But what if I’m not attracted to you?” asked Ender cheerfully.

Miro spread his arms and turned to show his profile. “Unthinkable,” he said.

“You are cute as a bunny,” said Ender. “I’m sure young Valentine dreams about you. I wouldn’t know. The only dreams I have are of planets blowing up and everyone I love being obliterated.”

“I know you haven’t forgotten the world in here, Andrew.” He meant that as the beginning of an apology, but Ender waved him off.

“I can’t forget it, but I can ignore it. I’m ignoring the world, Miro. I’m ignoring you, I’m ignoring those two walking psychoses of mine. At this moment, I’m trying to ignore everything but your mother.”

“And God,” said Miro. “You mustn’t forget God.”

“Not for a single moment,” said Ender. “As a matter of fact, I can’t forget anything or anybody. But yes, I am ignoring God, except insofar as Novinha needs me to notice him. I’m shaping myself into the husband that she needs.”

“Why, Andrew? You know Mother’s as crazy as a loon.”

“No such thing,” said Ender reprovingly. “But even if it were true, then . . . all the more reason.”

“What God has joined, let no man put asunder. I do approve, philosophically, but you don’t know how it . . .” Miro’s weariness swept over him then. He couldn’t think of the words to say what he wanted to say, and he knew that it was because he was trying to tell Ender how it felt, at this moment, to be Miro Ribeira, and Miro had no practice in even identifying his own feelings, let alone expressing them. “Desculpa,” he murmured, changing to Portuguese because it was his childhood language, the language of his emotions. He found himself wiping tears off his cheeks. “Se não posso mudar nem você, não há nada que possa, nada.” If I can’t get even you to move, to change, then there’s nothing I can do.

“Nem eu?” Ender echoed. “In all the universe, Miro, there’s nobody harder to change than me.”

“Mother did it. She changed you.”

“No she didn’t,” said Ender. “She only allowed me to be what I needed and wanted to be. Like now, Miro. I can’t make everybody happy. I can’t make me happy, I’m not doing much for you, and as for the big problems, I’m worthless there too. But maybe I can make your mother happy, or at least somewhat happier, at least for a while, or at least I can try.” He took Miro’s hands in his, pressed them to his own face, and they did not come away dry.

Miro watched as Ender got up from the bench and walked away toward the sun, into the shining orchard. Surely this is how Adam would have looked, thought Miro, if he had never eaten the fruit. If he had stayed and stayed and stayed and stayed in the garden. Three thousand years Ender has skimmed the surface of life. It was my mother he finally snagged on. I spent my whole childhood trying to be free of her, and he comes along and chooses to attach himself and . . .

And what am I snagged on, except him? Him in women’s flesh. Him with a handful of hair on a kitchen table.

Miro was getting up from the bench when Ender suddenly turned to face him and waved to attract his attention. Miro started to walk toward him, but Ender didn’t wait; he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.

“Tell Jane!” he called. “If she can figure out! How to do it! She can have that body!”

It took Miro a moment to realize that he was speaking of Young Val.

She’s not just a body, you self-centered old planet-smasher. She’s not just an old suit to be given away because it doesn’t fit or the style has changed.

But then his anger fled, for he realized that he himself had done precisely that with his old body. Tossed it away without a backward glance.

And the idea intrigued him. Jane. Was it even possible? If her aiúa could somehow be made to take up residence in Young Val, could a human body hold enough of Jane’s mind to enable her to survive when Starways Congress tried to shut her down?

“You boys are so slow,” Jane murmured in his ear. “I’ve been talking to the Hive Queen and Human and trying to figure out how the thing is done—assigning an aiúa to a body. The hive queens did it once, in creating me. But they didn’t exactly pick a particular aiúa. They took what came. What showed up. I’m a little fussier.”

Miro said nothing as he walked to the monastery gate.

“Oh, yes, and then there’s the little matter of your feelings toward Young Val. You hate the fact that in loving her, it’s really, in a way, Ender that you love. But if I took over, if I were the will inside Young Val’s life, would she still be the woman you love? Would anything of her survive? Would it be murder?”

“Oh, shut up,” said Miro aloud.

The monastery gatekeeper looked up at him in surprise.

“Not you,” said Miro. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea.”

Miro was aware of her eyes on his back until he was out and on the path winding down the hill toward Milagre. Time to get back to the ship. Val will be waiting for me. Whoever she is.

What Ender is to Mother, so loyal, so patient—is that how I feel toward Val? Or no, it isn’t feeling, is it? It’s an act of will. It’s a decision that can never be revoked. Could I do that for any woman, any person? Could I give myself forever?

He remembered Ouanda then, and walked with the memory of bitter loss all the way back to the starship.

4

“I AM A MAN OF PERFECT
SIMPLICITY!”

“When I was a child, I thought

a god was disappointed

whenever some distraction

interrupted my tracing of the lines

revealed in the grain of the wood.

Now I know the gods expect such interruptions,

for they know our frailty.

It is completion that surprises them.”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Peter and Wang-mu ventured out into the world of Divine Wind on their second day. They did not have to worry about learning a language. Divine Wind was an older world, one of the first wave settled in the initial emigration from Earth. It was originally as recidivist as Path, clinging to the ancient ways. But the ancient ways of Divine Wind were Japanese ways, and so it included the possibility of radical change. Scarcely three hundred years into its history, the world transformed itself from being the isolated fiefdom of a ritualized shogunate to being a cosmopolitan center of trade and industry and philosophy. The Japanese of Divine Wind prided themselves on being hosts to visitors from all worlds, and there were still many places where children grew up speaking only Japanese until they were old enough to enter school. But by adulthood, all the people of Divine Wind spoke Stark with fluency, and the best of them with elegance, with grace, with astonishing economy; it was said by Mil Fiorelli, in his most famous book, Observations of Distant Worlds with the Naked Eye, that Stark was a language that had no native speakers until it was whispered by a Divine Wind.

So it was that when Peter and Wang-mu hiked through the woods of the great natural preserve where their starship had landed and emerged in a village of foresters, laughing about how long they had been “lost” in the woods, no one thought twice about Wang-mu’s obviously Chinese features and accent, or even about Peter’s white skin and lack of an epicanthic fold. They had lost their documents, they claimed, but a computer search showed them to be licensed automobile drivers in the city of Nagoya, and while Peter seemed to have had a couple of youthful traffic offenses there, otherwise they were not known to have committed any illegal acts. Peter’s profession was given as “independent teacher of physics” and Wang-mu’s as “itinerant philosopher,” both quite respectable positions, given their youth and lack of family attachment. When they were asked casual questions (“I have a cousin who teaches progenerative grammars in the Komatsu University in Nagoya”) Jane gave Peter appropriate comments to say:

“I never seem to get over to the Oe Building. The language people don’t talk to physicists anyway. They think we speak only mathematics. Wang-mu tells me that the only language we physicists know is the grammar of dreams.”

Wang-mu had no such friendly prompter in her ear, but then an itinerant philosopher was supposed to be gnomic in her speech and mantic in her thought. Thus she could answer Peter’s comment by saying, “I say that is the only grammar you speak. There is no grammar that you understand.”

This prompted Peter to tickle her, which made Wang-mu simultaneously laugh and wrench at his wrist until he stopped, thereby proving to the foresters that they were exactly what their documents said they were: brilliant young people who were nevertheless silly with love—or with youth, as if it made a difference.

They were given a ride in a government floater back to civilized country, where—thanks to Jane’s manipulation of the computer networks—they found an apartment that until yesterday had been empty and unfurnished, but which now was filled with an eclectic mix of furniture and art that reflected a charming mixture of poverty, quirkiness, and exquisite taste.

“Very nice,” said Peter.

Wang-mu, familiar only with the taste of one world, and really only of one man in that one world, could hardly evaluate Jane’s choices. There were places to sit—both Western chairs, which folded people into alternating right angles and never seemed comfortable to Wang-mu, and Eastern mats, which encouraged people to twine themselves into circles of harmony with the earth. The bedroom, with its Western mattress raised high off the ground even though there were neither rats nor roaches, was obviously Peter’s; Wang-mu knew that the same mat that invited her to sit in the main room of the apartment would also be her sleeping mat at night.

She deferentially offered Peter the first bath; he, however, seemed to feel no urgency to wash himself, even though he smelled of sweat from the hike and the hours cooped up in the floater. So Wang-mu ended up luxuriating in a tub, closing her eyes and meditating until she felt restored to herself. When she opened her eyes she no longer felt like a stranger. Rather she was herself, and the surrounding objects and spaces were free to attach themselves to her without damaging her sense of self. This was a power she had learned early in life, when she had no power even over her own body, and had to obey in all things. It was what preserved her. Her life had many unpleasant things attached to it, like remoras to a shark, but none of them changed who she was under the skin, in the cool darkness of her solitude with eyes closed and mind at peace.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she found Peter eating absently from a plate of grapes as he watched a holoplay in which masked Japanese actors bellowed at each other and took great, awkward, thundering steps, as if the actors were playing characters twice the size of their own bodies.

“Have you learned Japanese?” she asked.

“Jane’s translating for me. Very strange people.”

“It’s an ancient form of drama,” said Wang-mu.

“But very boring. Was there ever anyone whose heart was stirred by all this shouting?”

“If you are inside the story,” said Wang-mu, “then they are shouting the words of your own heart.”

“Somebody’s heart says, ‘I am the wind from the cold snow of the mountain, and you are the tiger whose roar will freeze in your own ears before you tremble and die in the iron knife of my winter eyes’?”

“It sounds like you,” said Wang-mu. “Bluster and brag.”

“I am the round-eyed sweating man who stinks like the corpse of a leaking skunk, and you are the flower who will wilt unless I take an immediate shower with lye and ammonia.”

“Keep your eyes closed when you do,” said Wang-mu. “That stuff burns.”

There was no computer in the apartment. Maybe the holoview could be used as a computer, but if so Wang-mu didn’t know how. Its controls looked like nothing she had seen in Han Fei-tzu’s house, but that was hardly a surprise. The people of Path didn’t take their design of anything from other worlds, if they could help it. Wang-mu didn’t even know how to turn off the sound. It didn’t matter. She sat on her mat and tried to remember everything she knew about the Japanese people from her study of Earth history with Han Qing-jao and her father, Han Fei-tzu. She knew that her education was spotty at best, because as a low-class girl no one had bothered to teach her much until she wangled her way into Qing-jao’s household. So Han Fei-tzu had told her not to bother with formal studies, but merely to explore information wherever her interests took her. “Your mind is unspoiled by a traditional education. Therefore you must let yourself discover your own way into each subject.” Despite this seeming liberty, Fei-tzu soon showed her that he was a stern taskmaster even when the subjects were freely chosen. Whatever she learned about history or biography, he would challenge her, question her; demand that she generalize, then refute her generalizations; and if she changed her mind, he would then demand just as sharply that she defend her new position, even though a moment before it had been his own. The result was that even with limited information, she was prepared to reexamine it, cast away old conclusions and hypothesize new ones. Thus she could close her eyes and continue her education without any jewel to whisper in her ear, for she could still hear Han Fei-tzu’s caustic questioning even though he was lightyears away.

The actors stopped ranting before Peter had finished his shower. Wang-mu did not notice. She did notice, however, when a voice from the holoview said, “Would you like another recorded selection, or would you prefer to connect with a current broadcast?”

For a moment Wang-mu thought that the voice must be Jane; then she realized that it was simply the rote menu of a machine. “Do you have news?” she asked.

“Local, regional, planetary or interplanetary?” asked the machine.

“Begin with local,” said Wang-mu. She was a stranger here. She might as well get acquainted.

When Peter emerged, clean and dressed in one of the stylish local costumes that Jane had had delivered for him, Wang-mu was engrossed in an account of a trial of some people accused of overfishing a lush coldwater region a few hundred kilometers from the city they were in. What was the name of this town? Oh, yes. Nagoya. Since Jane had declared this to be their hometown on all their false records, of course this was where the floater had brought them. “All worlds are the same,” said Wang-mu. “People want to eat fish from the sea, and some people want to take more of the fish than the ocean can replenish.”

“What harm does it do if I fish one extra day or take one extra ton?” Peter asked.

“Because if everyone does, then—” She stopped herself. “I see. You were ironically speaking the rationalization of the wrongdoers.”

“Am I clean and pretty now?” asked Peter, turning around to show off his loose-fitting yet somehow form-revealing clothing.

“The colors are garish,” said Wang-mu. “It looks as if you’re screaming.”

“No, no,” said Peter. “The idea is for the people who see me to scream.”

“Aaaah,” Wang-mu screamed softly.

“Jane says that this is actually a conservative costume—for a man of my age and supposed profession. Men in Nagoya are known for being peacocks.”

“And the women?”

“Bare-breasted all the time,” said Peter. “Quite a stunning sight.”

“That is a lie. I didn’t see one bare-breasted woman on our way in and—” Again she stopped and frowned at him. “Do you really want me to assume that everything you say is a lie?”

“I thought it was worth a try.”

“Don’t be silly. I have no breasts.”

“You have small ones,” said Peter. “Surely you’re aware of the distinction.”

“I don’t want to discuss my body with a man dressed in a badly planned, overgrown flower garden.”

“Women are all dowds here,” said Peter. “Tragic but true. Dignity and all that. So are the old men. Only the boys and young men on the prowl are allowed such plumage as this. I think the bright colors are to warn women off. Nothing serious from this lad! Stay to play, or go away. Some such thing. I think Jane chose this city for us solely so she could make me wear these things.”

“I’m hungry. I’m tired.”

“Which is more urgent?” asked Peter.

“Hungry.”

“There are grapes,” he offered.

“Which you didn’t wash. I suppose that’s a part of your death wish.”

“On Divine Wind, insects know their place and stay there. No pesticides. Jane assured me.”

“There were no pesticides on Path, either,” said Wang-mu. “But we washed to clear away bacteria and other one-celled creatures. Amebic dysentery will slow us down.”

“Oh, but the bathroom is so nice, it would be a shame not to use it,” said Peter. Despite his flippancy, Wang-mu saw that her comment about dysentery from unwashed fruit bothered him.

“Let’s eat out,” said Wang-mu. “Jane has money for us, doesn’t she?”

Peter listened for a moment to something coming from the jewel in his ear.

“Yes, and all we have to do is tell the master of the restaurant that we lost our IDs and he’ll let us thumb our way into our accounts. Jane says we’re both very rich if we need to be, but we should try to act as if we were of limited means having an occasional splurge to celebrate something. What shall we celebrate?”

“Your bath.”

“You celebrate that. I’ll celebrate our safe return from being lost in the woods.”

Soon they found themselves on the street, a busy place with few cars, hundreds of bicycles, and thousands of people both on and off the glideways. Wang-mu was put off by these strange machines and insisted they walk on solid ground, which meant choosing a restaurant close by. The buildings in this neighborhood were old but not yet tatty-looking; an established neighborhood, but one with pride. The style was radically open, with arches and courtyards, pillars and roofs, but few walls and no glass at all. “The weather must be perfect here,” said Wang-mu.

“Tropical, but on the coast with a cold current offshore. It rains every afternoon for an hour or so, most of the year anyway, but it never gets very hot and never gets chilly at all.”

“It feels as though everything is outdoors all the time.”

“It’s all fakery,” said Peter. “Our apartment had glass windows and climate control, you notice. But it faces back, into the garden, and besides, the windows are recessed, so from below you don’t see the glass. Very artful. Artificially natural looking. Hypocrisy and deception—the human universal.”

“It’s a beautiful way to live,” said Wang-mu. “I like Nagoya.”

“Too bad we won’t be here long.”

Before she could ask to know where they were going and why, Peter pulled her into the courtyard of a busy restaurant. “This one cooks the fish,” said Peter. “I hope you don’t mind that.”

“What, the others serve it raw?” asked Wang-mu, laughing. Then she realized that Peter was serious. Raw fish!

“The Japanese are famous for it,” said Peter, “and in Nagoya it’s almost a religion. Notice—not a Japanese face in the restaurant. They wouldn’t deign to eat fish that was destroyed by heat. It’s just one of those things that they cling to. There’s so little that’s distinctively Japanese about their culture now, so they’re devoted to the few uniquely Japanese traits that survive.”

Wang-mu nodded, understanding perfectly how a culture could cling to long-dead customs just for the sake of national identity, and also grateful to be in a place where such customs were all superficial and didn’t distort and destroy the lives of the people the way they had on Path.

Their food came quickly—it takes almost no time to cook fish—and as they ate, Peter shifted his position several times on the mat. “Too bad this place isn’t nontraditional enough to have chairs.”

“Why do Europeans hate the earth so much that you must always lift yourself above it?” asked Wang-mu.

“You’ve already answered your question,” said Peter coldly. “You start from the assumption that we hate the earth. It makes you sound like some magic-using primitive.”

Wang-mu blushed and fell silent.

“Oh, spare me the passive oriental woman routine,” said Peter. “Or the passive I-was-trained-to-be-a-servant-and-you-sound-like-a-cruel-heartless-master manipulation through guilt. I know I’m a shit and I’m not going to change just because you look so downcast.”

“Then you could change because you wish not to be a shit any longer.”

“It’s in my character. Ender created me hateful so he could hate me. The added benefit is that you can hate me, too.”

“Oh, be quiet and eat your fish,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re supposed to analyze human beings and you can’t understand the person closest to you in all the world.”

“I don’t want to understand you,” said Peter. “I want to accomplish my task by exploiting this brilliant intelligence you’re supposed to have—even if you believe that people who squat are somehow ‘closer to the earth’ than people who remain upright.”

“I wasn’t talking about me,” she said. “I was talking about the person closest to you. Ender.”

“He is blessedly far from us right now.”

“He didn’t create you so that he could hate you. He long since got over hating you.”

“Yeah, yeah, he wrote The Hegemon, et cetera, et cetera.”

“That’s right,” said Wang-mu. “He created you because he desperately needed someone to hate him.”

Peter rolled his eyes and took a drink of milky pineapple juice. “Just the right amount of coconut. I think I’ll retire here, if Ender doesn’t die and make me disappear first.”

“I say something true, and you answer with coconut in the pineapple juice?”

“Novinha hates him,” said Peter. “He doesn’t need me.”

“Novinha is angry at him, but she’s wrong to be angry and he knows it. What he needs from you is a . . . righteous anger. To hate him for the evil that is really in him, which no one but him sees or even believes is there.”

“I’m just a nightmare from his childhood,” said Peter. “You’re reading too much into this.”

“He didn’t conjure you up because the real Peter was so important in his childhood. He conjured you up because you are the judge, the condemner. That’s what Peter drummed into him as a child. You told me yourself, talking about your memories. Peter taunting him, telling him of his unworthiness, his uselessness, his stupidity, his cowardice. You do it now. You look at his life and call him a xenocide, a failure. For some reason he needs this, needs to have someone damn him.”

“Well, how nice that I’m around, then, to despise him,” said Peter.

“But he also is desperate for someone to forgive him, to have mercy on him, to interpret all his actions as well meant. Valentine is not there because he loves her—he has the real Valentine for that. He has his wife. He needs your sister to exist so she can forgive him.”

“So if I stop hating Ender, he won’t need me anymore and I’ll disappear?”

“If Ender stops hating himself, then he won’t need you to be so mean and you’ll be easier to get along with.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not that easy getting along with somebody who’s constantly analyzing a person she’s never met and preaching at the person she has met.”

“I hope I make you miserable,” said Wang-mu. “It’s only fair, considering.”

“I think Jane brought us here because the local costumes reflect who we are. Puppet though I am, I take some perverse pleasure in life. While you—you can turn anything drab just by talking about it.”

Wang-mu bit back her tears and returned to her food.

“What is it with you?” Peter said.

She ignored him, chewed slowly, finding the untouched core of herself, which was busily enjoying the food.

“Don’t you feel anything?”

She swallowed, looked up at him. “I already miss Han Fei-tzu, and I’ve been gone scarcely two days.” She smiled slightly. “I have known a man of grace and wisdom. He found me interesting. I’m quite comfortable with boring you.”

Peter immediately made a show of splashing water on his ears. “I’m burning, that stung, oh, how can I stand it. Vicious! You have the breath of a dragon! Men die at your words!”

“Only puppets strutting around hanging from strings,” said Wang-mu.

“Better to dangle from strings than to be bound tight by them,” said Peter.

“Oh, the gods must love me, to have put me in the company of a man so clever with words.”

“Whereas the gods have put me in the company of a woman with no breasts.”

She forced herself to pretend to take this as a joke. “Small ones, I thought you said.”

But suddenly the smile left his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve hurt you.”

“I don’t think so. I’ll tell you later, after a good night’s sleep.”

“I thought we were bantering,” said Peter. “Bandying insults.”

“We were,” said Wang-mu. “But I believe them all.”

Peter winced. “Then I’m hurt, too.”

“You don’t know how to hurt,” said Wang-mu. “You’re just mocking me.”

Peter pushed aside his plate and stood up. “I’ll see you back at the apartment. Think you can find the way?”

“Do I think you actually care?”

“It’s a good thing I have no soul,” said Peter. “That’s the only thing that stops you from devouring it.”

“If I ever had your soul in my mouth,” said Wang-mu, “I would spit it out.”

“Get some rest,” said Peter. “For the work I have ahead, I need a mind, not a quarrel.” He walked out of the restaurant. The clothing fit him badly. People looked. He was a man of too much dignity and strength to dress so foppishly. Wang-mu saw at once that it shamed him. She saw also that he knew it, that he moved swiftly because he knew this clothing was wrong for him. He would undoubtedly have Jane order him something older looking, more mature, more in keeping with his need for honor.

Whereas I need something that will make me disappear. Or better yet, clothing that will let me fly away from here, all in a single night, fly Outside and back In to the house of Han Fei-tzu, where I can look into eyes that show neither pity nor scorn.

Nor pain. For there is pain in Peter’s eyes, and it was wrong of me to say he felt none. It was wrong of me to value my own pain so highly that I thought it gave me the right to inflict more on him.

If I apologize to him, he’ll mock me for it.

But then, I would rather be mocked for doing a good thing than to be respected, knowing I have done wrong. Is that a principle Han Fei-tzu taught me? No. I was born with that one. Like my mother said, too much pride, too much pride.

When she returned to the apartment, however, Peter was asleep; exhausted, she postponed her apology and also slept. Each of them woke during the night, but never at the same time; and in the morning, the edge of last night’s quarrel had worn off. There was business at hand, and it was more important for her to understand what they were going to attempt to do today than for her to heal a breach between them that seemed, in the light of morning, to be scarcely more than a meaningless spat between tired friends.

“The man Jane has chosen for us to visit is a philosopher.”

“Like me?” Wang-mu said, keenly aware of her false new role.

“That’s what I wanted to discuss with you. There are two kinds of philosophers here on Divine Wind. Aimaina Hikari, the man we will meet, is an analytical philosopher. You don’t have the education to hold your own with him. So you are the other kind. Gnomic and mantic. Given to pithy phrases that startle others with their seeming irrelevancy.”

“Is it necessary that my supposedly wise phrases only seem irrelevant?”

“You don’t even have to worry about that. The gnomic philosophers depend on others to connect their irrelevancies with the real world. That’s why any fool can do it.”

Wang-mu felt anger rise in her like mercury in a thermometer. “How kind of you to choose that profession for me.”

“Don’t be offended,” said Peter. “Jane and I had to come up with some role you could play on this particular planet that wouldn’t reveal you to be an uneducated native of Path. You have to understand that no child on Divine Wind is allowed to grow up as hopelessly ignorant as the servant class on Path.”

Wang-mu did not argue further. What would be the point? If one has to say, in an argument, “I am intelligent! I do know things!” then one might as well stop arguing. Indeed, this idea struck her as being exactly one of those gnomic phrases that Peter was talking about. She said so.

“No, no, I don’t mean epigrams,” said Peter. “Those are too analytical. I mean genuinely strange things. For instance, you might have said, ‘The woodpecker attacks the tree to get at the bug,’ and then I would have had to figure out just how that might fit our situation here. Am I the woodpecker? The tree? The bug? That’s the beauty of it.”

“It seems to me that you have just proved yourself to be the more gnomic of the two of us.”

Peter rolled his eyes and headed for the door.

“Peter,” she said, not moving from her place.

He turned to face her.

“Wouldn’t I be more helpful to you if I had some idea of why we’re meeting this man, and who he is?”

Peter shrugged. “I suppose. Though we know that Aimaina Hikari is not the person or even one of the people we’re looking for.”

“Tell me whom we are looking for, then.”

“We’re looking for the center of power in the Hundred Worlds,” he said.

“Then why are we here, instead of Starways Congress?”

“Starways Congress is a play. The delegates are actors. The scripts are written elsewhere.”

“Here.”

“The faction of Congress that is getting its way about the Lusitania Fleet is not the one that loves war. That group is cheerful about the whole thing, of course, since they always believe in brutally putting down insurrection and so on, but they would never have been able to get the votes to send the fleet without a swing group that is very heavily influenced by a school of philosophers from Divine Wind.”

“Of which Aimaina Hikari is the leader?”

“It’s more subtle than that. He is actually a solitary philosopher, belonging to no particular school. But he represents a sort of purity of Japanese thought which makes him something of a conscience to the philosophers who influence the swing group in Congress.”

“How many dominoes do you think you can line up and have them still knock each other over?”

“No, that wasn’t gnomic enough. Still too analytical.”

“I’m not playing my part yet, Peter. What are the ideas that this swing group gets from this philosophical school?”

Peter sighed and sat down—bending himself into a chair, of course. Wang-mu sat on the floor and thought: This is how a man of Europe likes to see himself, with his head higher than all others, teaching the woman of Asia. But from my perspective, he has disconnected himself from the earth. I will hear his words, but I will know that it is up to me to bring them into a living place.

“The swing group would never use such massive force against what really amounts to a minor dispute with a tiny colony. The original issue, as you know, was that two xenologers, Miro Ribeira and Ouanda Mucumbi, were caught introducing agriculture among the pequeninos of Lusitania. This constituted cultural interference, and they were ordered offplanet for trial. Of course, with the old relativistic lightspeed ships, taking someone off planet meant that when and if they ever went back, everyone they knew would be old or dead. So it was brutally harsh treatment and amounted to prejudgment. Congress might have expected protests from the government of Lusitania, but what it got instead was complete defiance and a cutoff of ansible communications. The tough guys in Congress immediately started lobbying for a single troopship to go and seize control of Lusitania. But they didn’t have the votes, until—”

“Until they raised the specter of the descolada virus.”

“Exactly. The group that was adamantly opposed to the use of force brought up the descolada as a reason why troops shouldn’t be sent—because at that time anyone who was infected with the virus had to stay on Lusitania and keep taking an inhibitor that kept the descolada from destroying your body from the inside out. This was the first time that the danger of the descolada became widely known, and the swing group emerged, consisting of those who were appalled that Lusitania had not been quarantined long before. What could be more dangerous than to have a fast-spreading, semi-intelligent virus in the hands of rebels? This group consisted almost entirely of delegates who were strongly influenced by the Necessarian school from Divine Wind.”

Wang-mu nodded. “And what do the Necessarians teach?”

“That one lives in peace and harmony with one’s environment, disturbing nothing, patiently bearing mild or even serious afflictions. However, when a genuine threat to survival emerges, one must act with brutal efficiency. The maxim is, Act only when necessary, and then act with maximum force and speed. Thus, where the militarists wanted a troopship, the Necessarian-influenced delegates insisted on sending a fleet armed with the Molecular Disruption Device, which would destroy the threat of the descolada virus once and for all. There’s a sort of ironic neatness about it all, don’t you think?”

“I don’t see it.”

“Oh, it fits together so perfectly. Ender Wiggin was the one who used the Little Doctor to wipe out the bugger home world. Now it’s going to be used for only the second time—against the very world where he happens to live! It gets even thicker. The first Necessarian philosopher, Ooka, used Ender himself as the prime example of his ideas. As long as the buggers were seen to be a dangerous threat to the survival of humankind, the only appropriate response was utter eradication of the enemy. No half-measures would do. Of course the buggers turned out not to have been a threat after all, as Ender himself wrote in his book The Hive Queen, but Ooka defended the mistake because the truth was unknowable at the time Ender’s superiors turned him loose against the enemy. What Ooka said was, ‘Never trade blows with the enemy.’ His idea was that you try never to strike anyone, but when you must, you strike only one blow, but such a harsh one that your enemy can never, never strike back.”

“So using Ender as an example—”

“That’s right. Ender’s own actions are being used to justify repeating them against another harmless species.”

“The descolada wasn’t harmless.”

“No,” said Peter. “But Ender and Ela found another way, didn’t they? They struck a blow against the descolada itself. But there’s no way now to convince Congress to withdraw the fleet. Because Jane already interfered with Congress’s ansible communications with the fleet, they believe they face a formidable widespread secret conspiracy. Any argument we make will be seen as disinformation. Besides, who would believe the farfetched tale of that first trip Outside, where Ela created the anti-descolada, Miro recreated himself, and Ender made my dear sister and me?”

“So the Necessarians in Congress—”

“They don’t call themselves that. But the influence is very strong. It is Jane’s and my opinion that if we can get some prominent Necessarians to declare against the Lusitania Fleet—with convincing reasoning, of course—the solidarity of the pro-fleet majority in Congress will be broken up. It’s a thin majority—there are plenty of people horrified by such devastating use of force against a colony world, and others who are even more horrified at the idea that Congress would destroy the pequeninos, the first sentient species found since the destruction of the buggers. They would love to stop the fleet, or at worst use it to impose a permanent quarantine.”

“Why aren’t we meeting with a Necessarian, then?”

“Because why would they listen to us? If we identify ourselves as supporters of the Lusitanian cause, we’ll be jailed and questioned. And if we don’t, who will take our ideas seriously?”

“This Aimaina Hikari, then. What is he?”

“Some people call him the Yamato philosopher. All the Necessarians of Divine Wind are, naturally, Japanese, and the philosophy has become most influential among the Japanese, both on their home worlds and wherever they have a substantial population. So even though Hikari isn’t a Necessarian, he is honored as the keeper of the Japanese soul.”

“If he tells them that it’s un-Japanese to destroy Lusitania—”

“But he won’t. Not easily, anyway. His seminal work, which won him his reputation as the Yamato philosopher, included the idea that the Japanese people were born as rebellious puppets. First it was Chinese culture that pulled the strings. But Hikari says, Japan learned all the wrong lessons from the attempted Chinese invasion of Japan—which, by the way, was defeated by a great storm, called kamikaze, which means ‘Divine Wind.’ So you can be sure everyone on this world, at least, remembers that ancient story. Anyway, Japan locked itself away on an island, and at first refused to deal with Europeans when they came. But then an American fleet forcibly opened Japan to foreign trade, and then the Japanese made up for lost time. The Meiji Restoration led to Japan trying to industrialize and Westernize itself—and once again a new set of strings made the puppet dance, says Hikari. Only once again, the wrong lessons were learned. Since the Europeans at the time were imperialists, dividing up Africa and Asia among them, Japan decided it wanted a piece of the imperial pie. There was China, the old puppetmaster. So there was an invasion—”

“We were taught of this invasion on Path,” said Wang-mu.

“I’m surprised they taught any history more recent than the Mongol invasion,” said Peter.

“The Japanese were finally stopped when the Americans dropped the first nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities.”

“The equivalent, in those days, of the Little Doctor. The irresistible, total weapon. The Japanese soon came to regard these nuclear weapons as a kind of badge of pride: We were the first people ever to have been attacked by nuclear weapons. It had become a kind of permanent grievance, which wasn’t a bad thing, really, because that was part of their impetus to found and populate many colonies, so that they would never be a helpless island nation again. But then along comes Aimaina Hikari, and he says—by the way, his name is self-chosen, it’s the name he used to sign his first book. It means ‘Ambiguous Light.’ ”

“How gnomic,” said Wang-mu.

Peter grinned. “Oh, tell him that, he’ll be so proud. Anyway, in his first book, he says, The Japanese learned the wrong lesson. Those nuclear bombs cut the strings. Japan was utterly prostrate. The proud old government was destroyed, the emperor became a figurehead, democracy came to Japan, and then wealth and great power.”

“The bombs were a blessing, then?” asked Wang-mu doubtfully.

“No, no, not at all. He thinks the wealth of Japan destroyed the people’s soul. They adopted the destroyer as their father. They became America’s bastard child, blasted into existence by American bombs. Puppets again.”

“Then what does he have to do with the Necessarians?”

“Japan was bombed, he says, precisely because they were already too European. They treated China as the Europeans treated America, selfishly and brutally. But the Japanese ancestors could not bear to see their children become such beasts. So just as the gods of Japan sent a Divine Wind to stop the Chinese fleet, so the gods sent the American bombs to stop Japan from becoming an imperialist state like the Europeans. The Japanese response should have been to bear the American occupation and then, when it was over, to become purely Japanese again, chastened and whole. The title of his book was, Not Too Late.”

“And I’ll bet the Necessarians use the American bombing of Japan as another example of striking with maximum force and speed.”

“No Japanese would have dared to praise the American bombing until Hikari made it possible to see the bombing, not as Japan’s victimization, but as the gods’ attempt at redemption of the people.”

“So you’re saying that the Necessarians respect him enough that if he changed his mind, they would change theirs—but he won’t change his mind, because he believes the bombing of Japan was a divine gift?”

“We’re hoping he will change his mind,” said Peter, “or our trip will be a failure. The thing is, there’s no chance he’ll be open to direct persuasion from us, and Jane can’t tell from his writings what or who it is who might influence him. We have to talk to him to find out where to go next—so maybe we can change their mind.”

“This is really complicated, isn’t it?” said Wang-mu.

“Which is why I didn’t think it was worth explaining it to you. What exactly are you going to do with this information? Enter into a discussion of the subtleties of history with an analytical philosopher of the first rank, like Hikari?”

“I’m going to listen,” said Wang-mu.

“That’s what you were going to do before,” said Peter.

“But now I will know who it is I’m listening to.”

“Jane thinks it was a mistake for me to tell you, because now you’ll be interpreting everything he says in light of what Jane and I already think we know.”

“Tell Jane that the only people who ever prize purity of ignorance are those who profit from a monopoly on knowledge.”

Peter laughed. “Epigrams again,” he said. “You’re supposed to say—”

“Don’t tell me how to be gnomic again,” said Wang-mu. She got up from the floor. Now her head was higher than Peter’s. “You’re the gnome. And as for me being mantic—remember that the mantic eats its mate.”

“I’m not your mate,” said Peter, “and ‘mantic’ means a philosophy that comes from vision or inspiration or intuition rather than from scholarship and reason.”

“If you’re not my mate,” said Wang-mu, “stop treating me like a wife.”

Peter looked puzzled, then looked away. “Was I doing that?”

“On Path, a husband assumes his wife is a fool and teaches her even the things she already knows. On Path, a wife has to pretend, when she is teaching her husband, that she is only reminding him of things he taught her long before.”

“Well, I’m just an insensitive oaf, aren’t I.”

“Please remember,” said Wang-mu, “that when we meet with Aimaina Hikari, he and I have one fund of knowledge that you can never have.”

“And what’s that?”

“A life.”

She saw the pain on his face and at once regretted causing it. But it was a reflexive regret—she had been trained from childhood up to be sorry when she gave offense, no matter how richly it was deserved.

“Ouch,” said Peter, as if his pain were a joke.

Wang-mu showed no mercy—she was not a servant now. “You’re so proud of knowing more than me, but everything you know is either what Ender put in your head or what Jane whispers in your ear. I have no Jane, I had no Ender. Everything I know, I learned the hard way. I lived through it. So please don’t treat me with contempt again. If I have any value on this expedition, it will come from my knowing everything you know—because everything you know, I can be taught, but what I know, you can never learn.”

The joking was over. Peter’s face reddened with anger. “How . . . who . . .”

“How dare I,” said Wang-mu, echoing the phrases she assumed he had begun. “Who do I think I am.”

“I didn’t say that,” said Peter softly, turning away.

“I’m not staying in my place, am I?” she asked. “Han Fei-tzu taught me about Peter Wiggin. The original, not the copy. How he made his sister Valentine take part in his conspiracy to seize the hegemony of Earth. How he made her write all of the Demosthenes material—rabble-rousing demagoguery—while he wrote all the Locke material, the lofty, analytical ideas. But the low demagoguery came from him.”

“So did the lofty ideas,” said Peter.

“Exactly,” said Wang-mu. “What never came from him, what came only from Valentine, was something he never saw or valued. A human soul.”

“Han Fei-tzu said that?”

“Yes.”

“Then he’s an ass,” said Peter. “Because Peter had as much of a human soul as Valentine had.” He stepped toward her, looming. “I’m the one without a soul, Wang-mu.”

For a moment she was afraid of him. How did she know what violence had been created in him? What dark rage in Ender’s aiúa might find expression through this surrogate he had created?

But Peter did not strike a blow. Perhaps it was not necessary.

Aimaina Hikari came out himself to the front gate of his garden to let them in. He was dressed simply, and around his neck was the locket that all the traditional Japanese of Divine Wind wore: a tiny casket containing the ashes of all his worthy ancestors. Peter had already explained to her that when a man like Hikari died, a pinch of the ashes from his locket would be added to a bit of his own ashes and given to his children or his grandchildren to wear. Thus all of his ancient family hung above his breastbone, waking and sleeping, and formed the most precious gift he could give his posterity. It was a custom that Wang-mu, who had no ancestors worth remembering, found both thrilling and disturbing.

Hikari greeted Wang-mu with a bow, but held out his hand for Peter to shake. Peter took it with some small show of surprise.

“Oh, they call me the keeper of the Yamato spirit,” said Hikari with a smile, “but that doesn’t mean I must be rude and force Europeans to behave like Japanese. Watching a European bow is as painful as watching a pig do ballet.”

As Hikari led them through the garden into his traditional paper-walled house, Peter and Wang-mu looked at each other and grinned broadly. It was a wordless truce between them, for they both knew at once that Hikari was going to be a formidable opponent, and they needed to be allies if they were to learn anything from him.

“A philosopher and a physicist,” said Hikari. “I looked you up when you sent your note asking for an appointment. I have been visited by philosophers before, and physicists, and also by Europeans and Chinese, but what truly puzzles me is why the two of you should be together.”

“She found me sexually irresistible,” said Peter, “and I can’t get rid of her.” Then he grinned his most charming grin.

To Wang-mu’s pleasure, Peter’s Western-style irony left Hikari impassive and unamused, and she could see a blush rising up Peter’s neck.

It was her turn—to play the gnome for real this time. “The pig wallows in mud, but he warms himself on the sunny stone.”

Hikari turned his gaze to her—remaining just as impassive as before. “I will write these words in my heart,” he said.

Wang-mu wondered if Peter understood that she had just been the victim of Hikari’s oriental-style irony.

“We have come to learn from you,” said Peter.

“Then I must give you food and send you on your way disappointed,” said Hikari. “I have nothing to teach a physicist or a philosopher. If I did not have children, I would have no one to teach, for only they know less than I.”

“No, no,” said Peter. “You’re a wise man. The keeper of the Yamato spirit.”

“I said that they call me that. But the Yamato spirit is much too great to be kept in so small a container as my soul. And yet the Yamato spirit is much too small to be worthy of the notice of the powerful souls of the Chinese and the European. You are the teachers, as China and Europe have always been the teachers of Japan.”

Wang-mu did not know Peter well, but she knew him well enough to see that he was flustered now, at a loss for how to proceed. In Ender’s life and wanderings, he had lived in several oriental cultures and even, according to Han Fei-tzu, spoke Korean, which meant that Ender would probably be able to deal with the ritualized humility of a man like Hikari—especially since he was obviously using that humility in a mocking way. But what Ender knew and what he had given to his Peter-identity were obviously two different things. This conversation would be up to her, and she sensed that the best way to play with Hikari was to refuse to let him control the game.

“Very well,” she said. “We will teach you. For when we show you our ignorance, then you will see where we most need your wisdom.”

Hikari looked at Peter for a moment. Then he clapped his hands. A serving woman appeared in a doorway. “Tea,” said Hikari.

At once Wang-mu leapt to her feet. Only when she was already standing did she realize what she was going to do. That peremptory command to bring tea was one that she had heeded many times in her life, but it was not a blind reflex that brought her to her feet. Rather it was her intuition that the only way to beat Hikari at his own game was to call his bluff: She would be humbler than he knew how to be.

“I have been a servant all my life,” said Wang-mu honestly, “but I was always a clumsy one,” which was not so honest. “May I go with your servant and learn from her? I may not be wise enough to learn the ideas of a great philosopher, but perhaps I can learn what I am fit to learn from the servant who is worthy to bring tea to Aimaina Hikari.”

She could see from his hesitation that Hikari knew he had been trumped. But the man was deft. He immediately rose to his feet. “You have already taught me a great lesson,” he said. “Now we will all go and watch Kenji prepare the tea. If she will be your teacher, Si Wang-mu, she must also be mine. For how could I bear to know that someone in my house knew a thing that I had not yet learned?”

Wang-mu had to admire his resourcefulness. He had once again placed himself beneath her.

Poor Kenji, the servant! She was a deft and well-trained woman, Wang-mu saw, but it made her nervous having these three, especially her master, watch her prepare the tea. So Wang-mu immediately reached in and “helped”—deliberately making a mistake as she did. At once Kenji was in her element, and confident again. “You have forgotten,” said Kenji kindly, “because my kitchen is so inefficiently arranged.” Then she showed Wang-mu how the tea was prepared. “At least in Nagoya,” she said modestly. “At least in this house.”

Wang-mu watched carefully, concentrating only on Kenji and what she was doing, for she quickly saw that the Japanese way of preparing tea—or perhaps it was the way of Divine Wind, or merely the way of Nagoya, or of humble philosophers who kept the Yamato spirit—was different from the pattern she had followed so carefully in the house of Han Fei-tzu. By the time the tea was ready, Wang-mu had learned from her. For, having made the claim to be a servant, and having a computer record that asserted that she had lived her whole life in a Chinese community on Divine Wind, Wang-mu might have to be able to serve tea properly in exactly this fashion.

They returned to the front room of Hikari’s house, Kenji and Wang-mu each bearing a small tea table. Kenji offered her table to Hikari, but he waved her over to Peter, and then bowed to him. It was Wang-mu who served Hikari. And when Kenji backed away from Peter, Wang-mu also backed away from Hikari.

For the first time, Hikari looked—angry? His eyes flashed, anyway. For by placing herself on exactly the same level as Kenji, she had just maneuvered him into a position where he either had to shame himself by being prouder than Wang-mu and dismissing his servant, or disrupt the good order of his own house by inviting Kenji to sit down with the three of them as equals.

“Kenji,” said Hikari. “Let me pour tea for you.”

Check, thought Wang-mu. And mate.

It was a delicious bonus when Peter, who had finally caught on to the game, also poured tea for her, and then managed to spill it on her, which prompted Hikari to spill a little on himself in order to put his guest at ease. The pain of the hot tea and then the discomfort as it cooled and dried were well worth the pleasure of knowing that while Wang-mu had proved herself a match for Hikari in outrageous courtesy, Peter had merely proved himself to be an oaf.

Or was Wang-mu truly a match for Hikari? He must have seen and understood her effort to place herself ostentatiously beneath him. It was possible, then, that he was—humbly—allowing her to win pride of place as the more humble of the two. As soon as she realized that he might have done this, then she knew that he certainly had done it, and the victory was his.

I’m not as clever as I thought.

She looked at Peter, hoping that he would now take over and do whatever clever thing he had in mind. But he seemed perfectly content to let her lead out. Certainly he didn’t jump into the breach. Did he, too, realize that she had just been bested at her own game, because she failed to take it deep enough? Was he giving her the rope to hang herself?

Well, let’s get the noose good and tight.

“Aimaina Hikari, you are called by some the keeper of the Yamato spirit. Peter and I grew up on a Japanese world, and yet the Japanese humbly allow Stark to be the language of the public school, so that we speak no Japanese. In my Chinese neighborhood, in Peter’s American city, we spent our childhoods on the edge of Japanese culture, looking in. So if there is any particular part of our vast ignorance that will be most obvious to you, it is in our knowledge of Yamato itself.”

“Oh, Wang-mu, you make a mystery out of the obvious. No one understands Yamato better than those who see it from the outside, just as the parent understands the child better than the child understands herself.”

“Then I will enlighten you,” said Wang-mu, discarding the game of humility. “For I see Japan as an Edge nation, and I cannot yet see whether your ideas will make Japan a new Center nation, or begin the decay that all Edge nations experience when they take power.”

“I grasp a hundred possible meanings, most of them surely true of my people, for your term ‘Edge nation,’” said Hikari. “But what is a Center nation, and how can a people become one?”

“I am not well-versed in Earth history,” said Wang-mu, “but as I studied what little I know, it seemed to me that there were a handful of Center nations, which had a culture so strong that they swallowed up all conquerors. Egypt was one, and China. Each one became unified and then expanded no more than necessary to protect their borders and pacify their hinterland. Each one took in its conquerors and swallowed them up for thousands of years. Egyptian writing and Chinese writing persisted with only stylistic modifications, so that the past remained present for those who could read.”

Wang-mu could see from Peter’s stiffness that he was very worried. After all, she was saying things that were definitely not gnomic. But since he was completely out of his depth with an Asian, he was still making no effort to intrude.

“Both of these nations were born in barbarian times,” said Hikari. “Are you saying that no nation can become a Center nation now?”

“I don’t know,” said Wang-mu. “I don’t even know if my distinction between Edge nations and Center nations has any truth or value. I do know that a Center nation can keep its cultural power long after it has lost political control. Mesopotamia was continually conquered by its neighbors, and yet each conqueror in turn was more changed by Mesopotamia than Mesopotamia was changed. The kings of Assyria and Chaldea and Persia were almost indistinguishable after they had once tasted the culture of the land between the rivers. But a Center nation can also fall so completely that it disappears. Egypt staggered under the cultural blow of Hellenism, fell to its knees under the ideology of Christianity, and finally was erased by Islam. Only the stone buildings reminded the children of what and who their ancient parents had been. History has no laws, and all patterns that we find there are useful illusions.”

“I see you are a philosopher,” said Hikari.

“You are generous to call my childish speculations by that lofty name,” said Wang-mu. “But let me tell you now what I think about Edge nations. They are born in the shadow—or perhaps one could say, in the reflected light—of other nations. As Japan became civilized under the influence of China. As Rome discovered itself in the shadow of the Greeks.”

“The Etruscans first,” said Peter helpfully.

Hikari looked at him blandly, then turned back to Wang-mu without comment. Wang-mu could almost feel Peter wither at having been thus deemed irrelevant. She felt a little sorry for him. Not a lot, just a little.

“Center nations are so confident of themselves that they generally don’t need to embark on wars of conquest. They are already sure they are the superior people and that all other nations wish to be like them and obey them. But Edge nations, when they first feel their strength, must prove themselves, they think, and almost always they do so with the sword. Thus the Arabs broke the back of the Roman Empire and swallowed up Persia. Thus the Macedonians, on the edge of Greece, conquered Greece; and then, having been so culturally swallowed up that they now thought themselves Greek, they conquered the empire on whose edge the Greeks had become civilized—Persia. The Vikings had to harrow Europe before peeling off kingdoms in Naples, Sicily, Normandy, Ireland, and finally England. And Japan—”

“We tried to stay on our islands,” said Hikari softly.

“Japan, when it erupted, rampaged through the Pacific, trying to conquer the great Center nation of China, and was finally stopped by the bombs of the new Center nation of America.”

“I would have thought,” said Hikari, “that America was the ultimate Edge nation.”

“America was settled by Edge peoples, but the idea of America became the new envigorating principle that made it a Center nation. They were so arrogant that, except for subduing their own hinterland, they had no will to empire. They simply assumed that all nations wanted to be like them. They swallowed up all other cultures. Even on Divine Wind, what is the language of the schools? It was not England that imposed this language, Stark, Starways Common Speech, on us all.”

“It was only by accident that America was technologically ascendant at the moment the Hive Queen came and forced us out among the stars.”

“The idea of America became the Center idea, I think,” said Wang-mu. “Every nation from then on had to have the forms of democracy. We are governed by the Starways Congress even now. We all live within the American culture whether we like it or not. So what I wonder is this: Now that Japan has taken control of this Center nation, will Japan be swallowed up, as the Mongols were swallowed up by China? Or will the Japanese culture retain its identity, but eventually decay and lose control, as the Edge-nation Turks lost control of Islam and the Edge-nation Manchu lost control of China?”

Hikari was upset. Angry? Puzzled? Wang-mu had no way of guessing.

“The philosopher Si Wang-mu says a thing that is impossible for me to accept,” said Hikari. “How can you say that the Japanese are now in control of Starways Congress and the Hundred Worlds? When was this revolution that no one noticed?”

“But I thought you could see what your teaching of the Yamato way had accomplished,” said Wang-mu. “The existence of the Lusitania Fleet is proof of Japanese control. This is the great discovery that my friend the physicist taught me, and it was the reason we came to you.”

Peter’s look of horror was genuine. She could guess what he was thinking. Was she insane, to have tipped their hand so completely? But she also knew that she had done it in a context that revealed nothing about their motive in coming.

And, never having lost his composure, Peter took his cue and proceeded to explain Jane’s analysis of Starways Congress, the Necessarians, and the Lusitania Fleet, though of course he presented the ideas as if they were his own. Hikari listened, nodding now and then, shaking his head at other times; the impassivity was gone now, the attitude of amused distance discarded.

“So you tell me,” Hikari said, when Peter was done, “that because of my small book about the American bombs, the Necessarians have taken control of government and launched the Lusitania Fleet? You lay this at my door?”

“Not as a matter either for blame or credit,” said Peter. “You did not plan it or design it. For all I know you don’t even approve of it.”

“I don’t even think about the politics of Starways Congress. I am of Yamato.”

“But that’s what we came here to learn,” said Wang-mu. “I see that you are a man of the Edge, not a man of the Center. Therefore you will not let Yamato be swallowed up by the Center nation. Instead the Japanese will remain aloof from their own hegemony, and in the end it will slip from their hands into someone else’s hands.”

Hikari shook his head. “I will not have you blame Japan for this Lusitania Fleet. We are the people who are chastened by the gods, we do not send fleets to destroy others.”

“The Necessarians do,” said Peter.

“The Necessarians talk,” said Hikari. “No one listens.”

“You don’t listen to them,” said Peter. “But Congress does.”

“And the Necessarians listen to you,” said Wang-mu.

“I am a man of perfect simplicity!” cried Hikari, rising to his feet. “You have come to torture me with accusations that cannot be true!”

“We make no accusation,” said Wang-mu softly, refusing to rise. “We offer an observation. If we are wrong, we beg you to teach us our mistake.”

Hikari was trembling, and his left hand now clutched the locket of his ancestors’ ashes that hung on a silk ribbon around his neck. “No,” he said. “I will not let you pretend to be humble seekers after truth. You are assassins. Assassins of the heart, come to destroy me, come to tell me that in seeking to find the Yamato way I have somehow caused my people to rule the human worlds and use that power to destroy a helplessly weak sentient species! It is a terrible lie to tell me, that my life’s work has been so useless. I would rather you had put poison in my tea, Si Wang-mu. I would rather you had put a gun to my head and blown it off, Peter Wiggin. They named you well, your parents—proud and terrible names you both bear. The Royal Mother of the West? A goddess? And Peter Wiggin, the first hegemon! Who gives their child such a name as that?”

Peter was standing also, and he reached down to lift Wang-mu to her feet.

“We have given offense where we meant none,” said Peter. “I am ashamed. We must go at once.”

Wang-mu was surprised to hear Peter sound so oriental. The American way was to make excuses, to stay and argue.

She let him lead her to the door. Hikari did not follow them; it was left to poor Kenji, who was terrified to see her placid master so exercised, to show them out. But Wang-mu was determined not to let this visit end entirely in disaster. So at the last moment she rushed back and flung herself to the floor, prostrate before Hikari in precisely the pose of humiliation that she had vowed only a little while ago that she would never adopt again. But she knew that as long as she was in that posture, a man like Hikari would have to listen to her.

“Oh, Aimaina Hikari,” she said, “you have spoken of our names, but have you forgotten your own? How could the man called ‘Ambiguous Light’ ever think that his teachings could have only the effects that he intended?”

Upon hearing those words, Hikari turned his back and stalked from the room. Had she made the situation better or worse? Wang-mu had no way of knowing. She got to her feet and walked dolefully to the door. Peter would be furious with her. With her boldness she might well have ruined everything for them—and not just for them, but for all those who so desperately hoped for them to stop the Lusitania Fleet.

To her surprise, however, Peter was perfectly cheerful once they got outside Hikari’s garden gate. “Well done, however weird your technique was,” said Peter.

“What do you mean? It was a disaster,” she said; but she was eager to believe that somehow he was right and she had done well after all.

“Oh, he’s angry and he’ll never speak to us again, but who cares? We weren’t trying to change his mind ourselves. We were just trying to find out who it is who does have influence over him. And we did.”

“We did?”

“Jane picked up on it at once. When he said he was a man of ‘perfect simplicity.’ ”

“Does that mean something more than the plain sense of it?”

“Mr. Hikari, my dear, has revealed himself to be a secret disciple of Ua Lava.”

Wang-mu was baffled.

“It’s a religious movement. Or a joke. It’s hard to know which. It’s a Samoan term, with the literal meaning ‘Now enough,’ but which is translated more accurately as, ‘enough already!’ ”

“I’m sure you’re an expert on Samoan.” Wang-mu, for her part, had never heard of the language.

“Jane is,” said Peter testily. “I have her jewel in my ear and you don’t. Don’t you want me to pass along what she tells me?”

“Yes, please,” said Wang-mu.

“It’s a sort of philosophy—cheerful stoicism, one might call it, because when things get bad or when things are good, you say the same thing. But as taught by a particular Samoan writer named Leiloa Lavea, it became more than a mere attitude. She taught—”

“She? Hikari is a disciple of a woman?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Peter. “If you listen, I’ll tell you what Jane is telling me.”

He waited. She listened.

“All right, then, what Leiloa Lavea taught was a sort of volunteer communism. It’s not enough just to laugh at good fortune and say, ‘Enough already.’ You have to really mean it—that you have enough. And because you mean it, you take the surplus and you give it away. Similarly, when bad fortune comes, you bear it until it becomes unbearable—your family is hungry, or you can no longer function in your work. And then again you say, ‘Enough already,’ and you change something. You move; you change careers; you let your spouse make all the decisions. Something. You don’t endure the unendurable.”

“What does that have to do with ‘perfect simplicity’?”

“Leiloa Lavea taught that when you have achieved balance in your life—surplus good fortune is being fully shared, and all bad fortune has been done away with—what is left is a life of perfect simplicity. That’s what Aimaina Hikari was saying to us. Until we came, his life had been going on in perfect simplicity. But now we have thrown him out of balance. That’s good, because it means he’s going to be struggling to discover how to restore simplicity to its perfection. He’ll be open to influence. Not ours, of course.”

“Leiloa Lavea’s?”

“Hardly. She’s been dead for two thousand years. Ender met her once, by the way. He came to speak a death on her home world of—well, Starways Congress calls it Pacifica, but the Samoan enclave there calls it Lumana’i. ‘The Future.’ ”

“Not her death, though.”

“A Fijian murderer, actually. A fellow who killed more than a hundred children, all of them Tongan. He didn’t like Tongans, apparently. They held off on his funeral for thirty years so Ender could come and speak his death. They hoped that the Speaker for the Dead would be able to make sense of what he had done.”

“And did he?”

Peter sneered. “Oh, of course, he was splendid. Ender can do no wrong. Yadda yadda yadda.”

She ignored his hostility toward Ender. “He met Leiloa Lavea?”

“Her name means ‘to be lost, to be hurt.’ ”

“Let me guess. She chose it herself.”

“Exactly. You know how writers are. Like Hikari, they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.”

“How gnomic,” said Wang-mu.

“Oh, shut up about that,” said Peter. “Did you actually believe all that stuff about Edge nations and Center nations?”

“I thought of it,” said Wang-mu. “When I first learned Earth history from Han Fei-tzu. He didn’t laugh when I told him my thoughts.”

“Oh, I’m not laughing, either. It’s naïve bullshit, of course, but it’s not exactly funny.”

Wang-mu ignored his mockery. “If Leiloa Lavea is dead, where will we go?”

“To Pacifica. To Lumana’i. Hikari learned of Ua Lava in his teenage years at university. From a Samoan student—the granddaughter of the Pacifican ambassador. She had never been to Lumana’i, of course, and so she clung all the more tightly to its customs and became quite a proselytizer for Leiloa Lavea. This was long before Hikari ever wrote a thing. He never speaks of it, he’s never written of Ua Lava, but now that he’s tipped his hand to us, Jane is finding all sorts of influence of Ua Lava in all his work. And he has friends in Lumana’i. He’s never met them, but they correspond through the ansible net.”

“What about the granddaughter of the ambassador?”

“She’s on a starship right now, headed home to Lumana’i. She left twenty years ago, when her grandfather died. She should get there . . . oh, in another ten years or so. Depending on the weather. She’ll be received with great honor, no doubt, and her grandfather’s body will be buried or burned or whatever they do—burned, Jane says—with great ceremony.”

“But Hikari won’t try to talk to her.”

“It would take a week to space out even a simple message enough for her to receive it, at the speed the ship is going. No way to have a philosophical discussion. She’d be home before he finished explaining his question.”

For the first time, Wang-mu began to understand the implications of the instantaneous starflight that she and Peter had used. These long, life-wrenching voyages could be done away with.

“If only,” she said.

“I know,” said Peter. “But we can’t.”

She knew he was right. “So we go there ourselves,” she said, returning to the subject. “Then what?”

“Jane is watching to see whom Hikari writes to. That’s the person who’ll be in a position to influence him. And so . . .”

“That’s who we’ll talk to.”

“That’s right. Do you need to pee or something before we arrange transportation back to our little cabin in the woods?”

“That would be nice,” said Wang-mu. “And you could do with a change of clothes.”

“What, you think even this conservative outfit might be too bold?”

“What are they wearing on Lumana’i?”

“Oh, well, a lot of them just go around naked. In the tropics. Jane says that given the massive bulk of many adult Polynesians, it can be an inspiring sight.”

Wang-mu shuddered. “We aren’t going to try to pretend to be natives, are we?”

“Not there,” said Peter. “Jane’s going to fake us as passengers on a starship that arrived there yesterday from Moskva. We’re probably going to be government officials of some kind.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” she asked.

Peter looked at her oddly. “Wang-mu, we’re already committing treason against Congress just by having left Lusitania. It’s a capital offense. I don’t think impersonating a government official is going to make much of a difference.”

“But I didn’t leave Lusitania,” said Wang-mu. “I’ve never seen Lusitania.”

“Oh, you haven’t missed much. It’s just a bunch of savannahs and woods, with the occasional Hive Queen factory building starships and a bunch of piglike aliens living in the trees.”

“I’m an accomplice to treason though, right?” asked Wang-mu.

“And you’re also guilty of ruining a Japanese philosopher’s whole day.”

“Off with my head.”

An hour later they were in a private floater—so private that there were no questions asked by their pilot; and Jane saw to it that all their papers were in order. Before night they were back at their little starship.

“We should have slept in the apartment,” said Peter, balefully eyeing the primitive sleeping accommodations.

Wang-mu only laughed at him and curled up on the floor. In the morning, rested, they found that Jane had already taken them to Pacifica in their sleep.

Aimaina Hikari awoke from his dream in the light that was neither night nor morning, and arose from his bed into air that was neither warm nor cold. His sleep had not been restful, and his dreams had been ugly ones, frantic ones, in which all that he did kept turning back on him as the opposite of what he intended. In his dream, Aimaina would climb to reach the bottom of a canyon. He would speak and people would go away from him. He would write and the pages of the book would spurt out from under his hand, scattering themselves across the floor.

All this he understood to be in response to the visit from those lying foreigners yesterday. He had tried to ignore them all afternoon, as he read stories and essays; to forget them all evening, as he conversed with seven friends who came to visit him. But the stories and essays all seemed to cry out to him: These are the words of the insecure people of an Edge nation; and the seven friends were all, he realized, Necessarians, and when he turned the conversation to the Lusitania Fleet, he soon understood that every one of them believed exactly as the two liars with their ridiculous names had said they did.

So Aimaina found himself in the predawn almost-light, sitting on a mat in his garden, fingering the casket of his ancestors, wondering: Were my dreams sent to me by the ancestors? Were these lying visitors sent by them as well? And if their accusations against me were not lies, what was it they were lying about? For he knew from the way they watched each other, from the young woman’s hesitancy followed by boldness, that they were doing a performance, one that was unrehearsed but nevertheless followed some kind of script.

Dawn came fully, seeking out each leaf of every tree, then of all the lower plants, to give each one its own distinct shading and coloration; the breeze came up, making the light infinitely changeable. Later, in the heat of the day, all the leaves would become the same: still, submissive, receiving sunlight in a massive stream like a firehose. Then, in the afternoon, the clouds would roll overhead, the light rains would fall; the limp leaves would recover their strength, would glisten with water, their color deepening, readying for night, for the life of the night, for the dreams of plants growing in the night, storing away the sunlight that had been beaten into them by day, flowing with the cool inward rivers that had been fed by the rains. Aimaina Hikari became one of the leaves, driving all thoughts but light and wind and rain out of his mind until the dawn phase was ended and the sun began to drive downward with the day’s heat. Then he rose up from his seat in the garden.

Kenji had prepared a small fish for his breakfast. He ate it slowly, delicately, so as not to disturb the perfect skeleton that had given shape to the fish. The muscles pulled this way and that, and the bones flexed but did not break. I will not break them now, but I take the strength of the muscles into my own body. Last of all he ate the eyes. From the parts that move comes the strength of the animal. He touched the casket of his ancestors again. What wisdom I have, however, comes not from what I eat, but from what I am given each hour, by those who whisper into my ear from ages past. Living men forget the lessons of the past. But the ancestors never forget.

Aimaina arose from his breakfast table and went to the computer in his gardening shed. It was just another tool—that’s why he kept it here, instead of enshrining it in his house or in a special office the way so many others did. His computer was like a trowel. He used it, he set it aside.

A face appeared in the air above his terminal. “I am calling my friend Yasunari,” said Aimaina. “But do not disturb him. This matter is so trivial that I would be ashamed to have him waste his time with it.”

“Let me help you on his behalf then,” said the face in the air.

“Yesterday I asked for information about Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-mu, who had an appointment to visit with me.”

“I remember. It was a pleasure finding them so quickly for you.”

“I found their visit very disturbing,” said Aimaina. “Something that they told me was not true, and I need more information in order to find out what it was. I do not wish to violate their privacy, but are there matters of public record—perhaps their school attendance, or places of employment, or some matters of family connections . . .”

“Yasunari has told us that all things you ask for are for a wise purpose. Let me search.”

The face disappeared for a moment, then flickered back almost immediately.

“This is very odd. Have I made a mistake?” She spelled the names carefully.

“That’s correct,” said Aimaina. “Exactly like yesterday.”

“I remember them, too. They live in an apartment only a few blocks from your house. But I can’t find them at all today. And here I search the apartment building and find that the apartment they occupied has been empty for a year. Aimaina, I am very surprised. How can two people exist one day and not exist the next day? Did I make some mistake, either yesterday or today?”

“You made no mistake, helper of my friend. This is the information I needed. Please, I beg you to think no more about it. What looks like a mystery to you is in fact a solution to my questions.”

They bade each other polite farewells.

Aimaina walked from his garden workroom past the struggling leaves that bowed under the pressure of the sunlight. The ancestors have pressed wisdom on me, he thought, like sunlight on the leaves; and last night the water flowed through me, carrying this wisdom through my mind like sap through the tree. Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-mu were flesh and blood, and filled with lies, but they came to me and spoke the truth that I needed to hear. Is this not how the ancestors bring messages to their living children? I have somehow launched ships armed with the most terrible weapons of war. I did this when I was young; now the ships are near their destination and I am old and I cannot call them back. A world will be destroyed and Congress will look to the Necessarians for approval and they will give it, and then the Necessarians will look to me for approval, and I will hide my face in shame. My leaves will fall and I will stand bare before them. That is why I should not have lived my life in this tropical place. I have forgotten winter. I have forgotten shame and death.

Perfect simplicity—I thought I had achieved it. But instead I have been a bringer of bad fortune.

He sat in the garden for an hour, drawing single characters in the fine gravel of the path, then wiping it smooth and writing again. At last he returned to the garden shed and on the computer typed the message he had been composing:

Ender the Xenocide was a child and did not know the war was real; yet he chose to destroy a populated planet in his game. I am an adult and have known all along that the game was real; but I did not know I was a player. Is my blame greater or less than the Xenocide’s if another world is destroyed and another raman species obliterated? What is my path to simplicity now?

His friend would know few of the circumstances surrounding this query; but he would not need more. He would consider the question. He would find an answer.

A moment later, an ansible on the planet Pacifica received his message. On the way, it had already been read by the entity that sat astride all the strands of the ansible web. For Jane, though, it was not the message that mattered so much as the address. Now Peter and Wang-mu would know where to go for the next step in their quest.

5

“NOBODY IS RATIONAL”

“My father often told me,

We have servants and machines

in order that our will may be carried out

beyond the reach of our own arms.

Machines are more powerful than servants

and more obedient and less rebellious,

but machines have no judgment

and will not remonstrate with us

when our will is foolish,

and will not disobey us

when our will is evil.

In times and places where people despise the gods,

those most in need of servants have machines,

or choose servants who will behave like machines.

I believe this will continue

until the gods stop laughing.”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

The hovercar skimmed over the fields of amaranth being tended by buggers under the morning sun of Lusitania. In the distance, clouds already arose, cumulus stacks billowing upward, though it was not yet noon.

“Why aren’t we going to the ship?” asked Val.

Miro shook his head. “We’ve found enough worlds,” he said.

“Does Jane say so?”

“Jane is impatient with me today,” said Miro, “which makes us about even.”

Val fixed her gaze on him. “Imagine my impatience then,” she said. “You haven’t even bothered to ask me what I want to do. Am I so inconsequential, then?”

He glanced at her. “You’re the one who’s dying,” he said. “I tried talking to Ender, but it didn’t accomplish anything.”

“When did I ask you for help? And what exactly are you doing to help me right now?”

“I’m going to the Hive Queen.”

“You might as well say you’re going to see your fairy godmother.”

“Your problem, Val, is that you are completely dependent on Ender’s will. If he loses interest in you, you’re gone. Well, I’m going to find out how we can get you a will of your own.”

Val laughed and looked away from him. “You’re so romantic, Miro. But you don’t think things through.”

“I think them through very well,” said Miro. “I spend all my time thinking things through. It’s acting on my thoughts that gets tricky. Which ones should I act on, and which ones should I ignore?”

“Act on the thought of steering us without crashing,” said Val.

Miro swerved to avoid a starship under construction.

“She still makes more,” said Miro, “even though we have enough.”

“Maybe she knows that when Jane dies, starflight ends for us. So the more ships, the more we can accomplish before she dies.”

“Who can guess how the Hive Queen thinks?” said Miro. “She promises, but even she can’t predict whether her predictions will come true.”

“So why are you going to see her?”

“The hive queens made a bridge one time, a living bridge to allow them to link their minds with the mind of Ender Wiggin when he was just a boy, and their most dangerous enemy. They called an aiúa out of darkness and set it in place somewhere between the stars. It was a being that partook of the nature of the hive queens, but also of the nature of human beings, specifically of Ender Wiggin, as nearly as they could understand him. When they were done with the bridge—when Ender killed them all but the one they had cocooned to wait for him—the bridge remained, alive among the feeble ansible connections of humankind, storing its memory in the small, fragile computer networks of the first human world and its few outposts. As the computer networks grew, so did that bridge, that being, drawing on Ender Wiggin for its life and character.”

“Jane,” said Val.

“Yes, that’s Jane. What I’m going to try to learn, Val, is how to get Jane’s aiúa into you.”

“Then I’ll be Jane, and not myself.”

Miro smacked the joystick of the hovercar with his fist. The craft wobbled, then automatically righted itself.

“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” demanded Miro. “But you’re not yourself now! You’re Ender—you’re Ender’s dream or his need or something like that.”

“I don’t feel like Ender. I feel like me.”

“That’s right. You have your memories. The feelings of your own body. Your own experiences. But none of those will be lost. Nobody’s conscious of their own underlying will. You’ll never know the difference.”

She laughed. “Oh, you’re the expert now in what would happen, with something that has never been done before?”

“Yes,” said Miro. “Somebody has to decide what to do. Somebody has to decide what to believe, and then act on it.”

“What if I tell you that I don’t want you to do this?”

“Do you want to die?”

“It seems to me that you’re the one trying to kill me,” said Val. “Or, to be fair, you want to commit the slightly lesser crime of cutting me off from my own deepest self and replacing that with someone else.”

“You’re dying now. The self you have doesn’t want you.”

“Miro, I’ll go see the Hive Queen with you because that sounds like an interesting experience. But I’m not going to let you extinguish me in order to save my life.”

“All right then,” said Miro, “since you represent the utterly altruistic side of Ender’s nature, let me put it to you a different way. If Jane’s aiúa can be placed in your body, then she won’t die. And if she doesn’t die, then maybe, after they’ve shut down the computer links that she lives in and then reconnected them, confident that she’s dead, maybe then she’ll be able to link with them again and maybe then instantaneous starflight won’t have to end. So if you die, you’ll be dying to save, not just Jane, but the power and freedom to expand as we’ve never expanded before. Not just us, but the pequeninos and hive queens too.”

Val fell silent.

Miro watched the route ahead of him. The Hive Queen’s cave was nearing on the left, in an embankment by a stream. He had gone down there once before, in his old body. He knew the way. Of course, Ender had been with him then, and that was why he could communicate with the Hive Queen—she could talk to Ender, and because those who loved and followed him were philotically twined with him, they overheard the echoes of her speech. But wasn’t Val a part of Ender? And wasn’t he now more tightly twined to her than he had ever been with Ender? He needed Val with him to speak to the Hive Queen; he needed to speak to the Hive Queen in order to keep Val from being obliterated like his own old damaged body.

They got out, and sure enough, the Hive Queen was expecting them; a single worker waited for them at the cavern’s mouth. It took Val by the hand and led them wordlessly down into darkness, Miro clinging to Val, Val holding to the strange creature. It frightened Miro just as it had the first time, but Val seemed utterly unafraid.

Or was it that she was unconcerned? Her deepest self was Ender, and Ender did not really care what happened to her. This made her fearless. It made her unconcerned with survival. All she was concerned with was keeping her connection to Ender—the one thing that was bound to kill her if she kept it up. To her it seemed as though Miro was trying to extinguish her; but Miro knew that his plan was the only way to save any part of her. Her body. Her memories. Her habits, her mannerisms, every aspect of her that he actually knew, those would be preserved. Every part of her that she herself was aware of or remembered, those would all be there. As far as Miro was concerned, that would mean her life was saved, if those endured. And once the change had been made, if it could be made at all, Val would thank him for it.

And so would Jane.

And so would everyone.

<The difference between you and Ender,> said a voice in his mind, a low murmur behind the level of actual hearing, <is that when Ender thinks of a plan to save others, he puts himself and only himself on the line.>

“That’s a lie,” said Miro to the Hive Queen. “He killed Human, didn’t he? It was Human that he put on the line.”

Human was now one of the fathertrees that grew by the gate of the village of Milagre. Ender had killed him slowly, so that he could take root in the soil and go through the passage into the third life with all his memories intact.

“I suppose Human didn’t actually die,” said Miro. “But Planter did, and Ender let him do that, too. And how many hive queens died in the final battle between your people and Ender? Don’t brag to me about how Ender pays his own prices. He just sees to it that the price is paid, by whoever has the means to pay it.”

The Hive Queen’s answer was immediate. <I don’t want you to find me. Stay lost in the darkness.>

“You don’t want Jane to die either,” said Miro.

“I don’t like her voice inside me,” said Val softly.

“Keep walking. Keep following.”

“I can’t,” said Val. “The worker—she let go of my hand.”

“You mean we’re stranded here?” asked Miro.

Val’s answer was silence. They held hands tightly in the dark, not daring to step in any direction.

<I can’t do the thing you want me to do.>

“When I was here before,” said Miro, “you told us how all the hive queens made a web to trap Ender, only they couldn’t, so they made a bridge, they drew an aiúa from Outside and made a bridge out of it and used it to speak to Ender through his mind, through the fantasy game that he played on the computers in the Battle School. You did that once—you called an aiúa from Outside. Why can’t you find that same aiúa and put it somewhere else? Link it to something else?”

<The bridge was part of ourselves. Partly ourselves. We were calling to this aiúa the way we call for aiúas to make new hive queens. This is something completely different. That ancient bridge is now a full self, not some wandering, starving singleton desperate for connection.>

“All you’re saying is that it’s something new. Something you don’t know how to do. Not that it can’t be done.”

<She doesn’t want you to do it. We can’t do it if she doesn’t want it to happen.>

“So you can stop me,” Miro murmured to Val.

“She’s not talking about me,” Val answered.

<Jane doesn’t want to steal someone else’s body.>

“It’s Ender’s. He has two others. This is a spare. He doesn’t even want it himself.”

<We can’t. We won’t. Go away.>

“We can’t go away in the dark,” said Miro.

Miro felt Val pull her hand away from him.

“No!” he cried. “Don’t let go!”

<What are you doing?>

Miro knew the question was not directed toward him.

<Where are you going? It’s dangerous in the dark.>

Miro heard Val’s voice—from surprisingly far away. She must be moving rapidly in the darkness. “If you and Jane are so concerned about saving my life,” she said, “then give me and Miro a guide. Otherwise, who cares if I drop down some shaft and break my neck? Not Ender. Not me. Certainly not Miro.”

“Stop moving!” cried Miro. “Just hold still, Val!”

“You hold still,” Val called back to him. “You’re the one with a life worth saving!”

Suddenly Miro felt a hand groping for his. No, a claw. He gripped the foreclaw of a worker and she led him forward through the darkness. Not very far. Then they turned a corner and it was lighter, turned another and they could see. Another, another, and there they were in a chamber illuminated by light through a shaft that led to the surface. Val was already there, seated on the ground before the Hive Queen.

When Miro saw her before, she had been in the midst of laying eggs—eggs that would grow into new hive queens, a brutal process, cruel and sensuous. Now, though, she simply lay in the damp earth of the tunnel, eating what a steady stream of workers brought to her. Clay dishes filled with a mash of amaranth and water. Now and then, gathered fruit. Now and then, meat. No interruption, worker after worker. Miro had never seen, had never imagined anyone eating so much.

<How do you think I make my eggs?>

“We’ll never stop the fleet without starflight,” said Miro. “They’re about to kill Jane, any day now. Shut down the ansible network, and she’ll die. What then? What are your ships for then? The Lusitania Fleet will come and destroy this world.”

<There are endless dangers in the universe. This is not the one you’re supposed to worry about.>

“I worry about everything,” said Miro. “It’s all my concern. Besides, my job is done. Finished. There are already enough worlds. More worlds than we can settle. What we need is more starships and more time, not more destinations.”

<Are you a fool? Do you think Jane and I are sending you out for nothing? You aren’t searching for worlds to be colonized anymore.>

“Really? When did this change of assignment come about?”

<Colonizable worlds are only an afterthought. Only a byproducts>

“Then why have Val and I been killing ourselves all these weeks? And that’s literal, for Val—the work is so boring that it doesn’t interest Ender and so she’s fading.”

<A worse danger than the fleet. We’ve already beaten the fleet. We’ve already dispersed. What does it matter if I die? My daughters have all my memories.>

“You see, Val?” said Miro. “The Hive Queen knows—your memories are your self. If your memories live, then you’re alive.”

“In a pig’s eye,” said Val softly. “What’s the worse danger she’s talking about?”

“There is no worse danger,” said Miro. “She just wants me to go away, but I won’t go away. Your life is worth saving, Val. So is Jane’s. And the Hive Queen can find a way to do it, if it can be done. If Jane could be the bridge between Ender and the hive queens, then why can’t Ender be the bridge between Jane and you?”

<If I say that I will try, will you go back to doing your work?>

There was the catch: Ender had warned Miro long ago that the Hive Queen looks upon her own intentions as facts, just like her memories. But when her intentions change, then the new intention is the new fact, and she doesn’t remember ever having intended anything else. Thus a promise from the Hive Queen was written on water. She would only keep the promises that still made sense for her to keep.

Yet there was no better promise to be had.

“You’ll try,” said Miro.

<I’m trying right now to figure out how it might be done. I’m consulting with Human and Rooter and the other fathertrees. I’m consulting with all my daughters. I’m consulting with Jane, who thinks this is all foolishness.>

“Do you ever intend,” asked Val, “to consult with me?”

<Already you are saying yes.>

Val sighed. “I suppose I am,” she said. “Deep down inside myself, where I am really an old man who doesn’t give a damn whether this young new puppet lives or dies—I suppose that at that level, I don’t mind.”

<All along you said yes. But you’re afraid. You’re afraid of losing what you have, not knowing what you’ll be.>

“You’ve got it,” said Val. “And don’t tell me again that stupid lie that you don’t mind dying because your daughters have your memories. You damn well do mind dying, and if keeping Jane alive might save your life, you want to do it.”

<Take the hand of my worker and go out into the light. Go out among the stars and do your work. Back here, I’ll try to find a way to save your life. Jane’s life. All our lives.>

Jane was pouting. Miro tried to talk to her all the way back to Milagre, back to the starship, but she was as silent as Val, who would hardly look at him, let alone converse.

“So I’m the evil one,” said Miro. “Neither of you was doing a damn thing about it, but because I actually take action, I’m bad and you’re the victims.”

Val shook her head and did not answer.

“You’re dying!” he shouted over the noise of the air rushing past them, over the noise of the engines. “Jane’s about to be executed! Is there some virtue in being passive about this? Can’t somebody at least make an effort?”

Val said something that Miro didn’t hear.

“What?”

She turned her head away.

“You said something, now let me hear it!”

The voice that answered was not Val’s. It was Jane who spoke into his ear. “She said, You can’t have it both ways.”

“What do you mean I can’t have it both ways?” Miro spoke to Val as if she had actually repeated what she said.

Val turned toward him. “If you save Jane, it’s because she remembers everything about her life. It doesn’t do any good if you just slip her into me as an unconscious source of will. She has to remain herself, so she can be restored when the ansible network is restored. And that would wipe me out. Or if I’m preserved, my memories and personality, then what difference does it make if it’s Jane or Ender providing my will? You can’t save us both.”

“How do you know?” demanded Miro.

“The same way you know all these things you’re saying as if they were facts when nobody can possibly know anything about it!” cried Val. “I’m reasoning it out! It seems reasonable. That’s enough.”

“Why isn’t it just as reasonable that you’ll have your memories, and hers, too?”

“Then I’d be insane, wouldn’t I?” said Val. “Because I’d remember being a woman who sprang into being on a starship, whose first real memory is seeing you die and come to life. And I’d also remember three thousand years’ worth of life outside this body, living somehow in space and—what kind of person can hold memories like that? Did you think of that? How can a human being possibly contain Jane and all that she is and remembers and knows and can do?”

“Jane’s very strong,” Miro said. “But then, she doesn’t know how to use a body. She doesn’t have the instinct for it. She’s never had one. She’ll have to use your memories. She’ll have to leave you intact.”

“As if you know.”

“I do know,” said Miro. “I don’t know why or how I know it, but I know.”

“And I thought men were the rational ones,” she said scornfully.

“Nobody’s rational,” said Miro. “We all act because we’re sure of what we want, and we believe that the actions we perform will get us what we want, but we never know anything for sure, and so all our rationales are invented to justify what we were going to do anyway before we thought of any reasons.”

“Jane’s rational,” said Val. “Just one more reason why my body wouldn’t work for her.”

“Jane isn’t rational either,” said Miro. “She’s just like us. Just like the Hive Queen. Because she’s alive. Computers, now, those are rational. You feed them data, they reach only the conclusions that can be derived from that data—but that means they are perpetually helpless victims of whatever information and programs we feed into them. We living sentient beings, we are not slaves to the data we receive. The environment floods us with information, our genes give us certain impulses, but we don’t always act on that information, we don’t always obey our inborn needs. We make leaps. We know what can’t be known and then spend our lives seeking to justify that knowledge. I know that what I’m trying to do is possible.”

“You mean you want it to be possible.”

“Yes,” said Miro. “But just because I want it doesn’t mean it can’t be true.”

“But you don’t know.”

“I know it as much as anyone knows anything. Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon. I don’t know the sun will rise tomorrow. The Little Doctor might blow up the world before I wake. A volcano might rise out of the ground and blast us all to smithereens. But I trust that tomorrow will come, and I act on that trust.”

“Well, I don’t trust that letting Jane replace Ender as my inmost self will leave anything resembling me in existence,” said Val.

“But I know—I know—that it’s our only chance, because if we don’t get you another aiúa Ender is going to extinguish you, and if we don’t get Jane another place to be her physical self, she’s also going to die. What’s your better plan?”

“I don’t have one,” said Val. “I don’t. If Jane can somehow be brought to dwell in my body, then it has to happen because Jane’s survival is so important to the future of three raman species. So I won’t stop you. I can’t stop you. But don’t think for a moment that I believe that I will live through it. You’re deluding yourself because you can’t bear to face the fact that your plan depends on one simple fact: I’m not a real person. I don’t exist, I don’t have a right to exist, and so my body is up for grabs. You tell yourself you love me and you’re trying to save me, but you’ve known Jane a lot longer, she was your truest friend during your months of loneliness as a cripple, I understand that you love her and would do anything to save her life, but I won’t pretend what you’re pretending. Your plan is for me to die and Jane to take my place. You can call that love if you want, but I will never call it that.”

“Then don’t do it,” Miro said. “If you don’t think you’ll live through it, don’t.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Val. “How did you get to be such a pathetic romantic? If it were you in my place, wouldn’t you be giving speeches right now about how you’re glad you have a body to give to Jane and it’s worth it for you to die for the sake of humans, pequeninos, and hive queens alike?”

“That’s not true,” said Miro.

“That you wouldn’t give speeches? Come on, I know you better than that,” she said.

“No,” said Miro. “I mean I wouldn’t give up my body. Not even to save the world. Humanity. The universe. I lost my body once before. I got it back by a miracle I still don’t understand. I’m not going to give it up without a fight. Do you understand me? No, you don’t, because you don’t have any fight in you. Ender hasn’t given you any fight. He’s made you a complete altruist, the perfect woman, sacrificing everything for the sake of others, creating her identity out of other people’s needs. Well, I’m not like that. I’m not glad to die now. I intend to live. That’s how real people feel, Val. No matter what they say, they all intend to live.”

“Except the suicides?”

“They intended to live, too,” said Miro. “Suicide is a desperate attempt to get rid of unbearable agony. It’s not a noble decision to let someone with more value go on living instead of you.”

“People make choices like that sometimes,” said Val. “It doesn’t mean I’m not a real person because I can choose to give my life to someone else. It doesn’t mean I don’t have any fight in me.”

Miro stopped the hovercar, let it settle to the ground. He was on the edge of the pequenino forest nearest to Milagre. He was aware that there were pequeninos working in the field who stopped their labor to watch them. But he didn’t care what they saw or what they thought. He took Val by the shoulders and with tears streaming down his cheeks he said, “I don’t want you to die. I don’t want you to choose to die.”

“You did,” said Val.

“I chose to live,” said Miro. “I chose to leap to the body in which life was possible. Don’t you see that I’m only trying to get you and Jane to do what I already did? For a moment there in the starship, there was my old body and there was this new one, looking at each other. Val, I remember both views. Do you understand me? I remember looking at this body and thinking, ‘How beautiful, how young, I remember when that was me, who is this now, who is this person, why can’t I be this person instead of the cripple I am right now,’ I thought that and I remember thinking it, I didn’t imagine it later, I didn’t dream it, I remember thinking it at the time. But I also remember standing there looking at myself with pity, thinking, ‘Poor man, poor broken man, how can he bear to live when he remembers what it was like to be alive?’ and then all of a sudden he crumbled into dust, into less than dust, into air, into nothing. I remember watching him die. I don’t remember dying because my aiúa had already leapt. But I remember both sides.”

“Or you remember being your old self until the leap, and your new self after.”

“Maybe,” said Miro. “But there wasn’t even a full second. How could I remember so much from both selves in the same second? I think I kept the memories that were in this body from the split second when my aiúa ruled two bodies. I think that if Jane leaps into you, you’ll keep all your old memories, and take hers, too. That’s what I think.”

“Oh, I thought you knew it.”

“I do know it,” said Miro. “Because anything else is unthinkable and therefore unknown. The reality I live in is a reality in which you can save Jane and Jane can save you.”

“You mean you can save us.”

“I’ve already done all I can do,” said Miro. “All. I’m done. I asked the Hive Queen. She’s thinking about it. She’s going to try. She’ll have to have your consent. Jane’s consent. But it’s none of my business now. I’ll just be an observer. I’ll either watch you die or watch you live.” He pulled her close to him and held her. “I want you to live.”

Her body in his arms was stiff and unresponsive, and he soon let her go. He pulled away from her.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait until Jane has this body, then do whatever she’ll let you do with it. But don’t touch me again, because I can’t bear the touch of a man who wants me dead.”

The words were too painful for him to answer. Too painful, really, for him to absorb them. He started the hovercar. It rose a little into the air. He tipped it forward and they flew on, circling the wood until they came to the place where the fathertrees named Human and Rooter marked the old entrance to Milagre. He could feel her presence beside him the way a man struck by lightning might feel the nearness of a power line; without touching it, he tingles with the pain that he knows it carries within it. The damage he had done could not be undone. She was wrong, he did love her, he didn’t want her dead, but she lived in a world in which he wanted her extinguished and there was no reconciling it. They could share this ride, they could share the next voyage to another star system, but they would never be in the same world again, and it was too painful to bear, he ached with the knowledge of it but the ache was too deep for him to reach it or even feel it right now. It was there, he knew it was going to tear at him for years to come, but he couldn’t touch it now. He didn’t need to examine his feelings. He had felt them before, when he lost Ouanda, when his dream of life with her became impossible. He couldn’t touch it, couldn’t heal it, couldn’t even grieve at what he had only just discovered that he wanted and once again couldn’t have.

“Aren’t you the suffering saint,” said Jane in his ear.

“Shut up and go away,” Miro subvocalized.

“That doesn’t sound like a man who wants to be my lover,” said Jane.

“I don’t want to be your anything,” said Miro. “You don’t even trust me enough to tell me what you’re up to in our searching of worlds.”

“You didn’t tell me what you were up to when you went to see the Hive Queen either.”

“You knew what I was doing,” said Miro.

“No I didn’t,” said Jane. “I’m very smart—much smarter then you or Ender, and don’t you forget it for an instant—but I still can’t outguess you meat-creatures with your much-vaunted ‘intuitive leaps.’ I like how you make a virtue out of your desperate ignorance. You always act irrationally because you don’t have enough information for rational action. But I do resent your saying I’m irrational. I never am. Never.”

“Right, I’m sure,” said Miro silently. “You’re right about everything. You always are. Go away.”

“I’m gone.”

“No you’re not,” said Miro. “Not till you tell me what Val’s and my voyages have actually been about. The Hive Queen said that colonizable worlds were an afterthought.”

“Nonsense,” said Jane. “We needed more than one world if we were going to be sure to save the two nonhuman species. Redundancy.”

“But you send us out again and again.”

“Interesting, isn’t it?” said Jane.

“She said you were dealing with a worse danger than the Lusitania Fleet.”

“How she does go on.”

“Tell me,” said Miro.

“If I tell you,” said Jane, “you might not go.”

“Do you think I’m such a coward?”

“Not at all, my brave boy, my bold and handsome hero.”

He hated it when she patronized him, even as a joke. He wasn’t in the mood for joking right now anyway.

“Then why do you think I wouldn’t go?”

“You wouldn’t think you were up to the task,” said Jane.

“Am I?” asked Miro.

“Probably not,” said Jane. “But then, you have me with you.”

“And what if you’re suddenly not there?” asked Miro.

“Well, that’s just a risk we’re going to have to take.”

“Tell me what we’re doing. Tell me our real mission.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. If you think about it, you’ll know.”

“I don’t like puzzles, Jane. Tell me.”

“Ask Val. She knows.”

“What?”

“She already searches for exactly the data I need. She knows.”

“Then that means Ender knows. At some level,” said Miro.

“I suspect you’re right, though Ender is not terribly interesting to me anymore and I don’t much care what he knows.”

Yes, you’re so rational, Jane.

He must have subvocalized this thought, out of habit, because she answered him just as she answered his deliberate subvocalizations. “You say that ironically,” she said, “because you think I am only saying that Ender doesn’t interest me because I’m protecting myself from my hurt feelings because he took his jewel out of his ear. But in fact he is no longer a source of data and he is no longer a cooperative part of the work I’m engaged in, and therefore I simply don’t have much interest in him anymore, except as one is somewhat interested in hearing from time to time about the doings of an old friend who has moved away.”

“Sounds like rationalization after the fact to me,” said Miro.

“Why did you even bring Ender up?” asked Jane. “What does it matter whether he knows the real work you and Val are doing?”

“Because if Val really knows our mission, and our mission involves an even worse danger than the Lusitania Fleet, then why has Ender lost interest in her so that she’s fading?”

Silence for a moment. Was it actually taking Jane so long to think of an answer that the time lag was noticeable to a human?

“I suppose Val doesn’t know,” said Jane. “Yes, that’s likely. I thought she did, but see now that she might well have fed me the data she emphasized for reasons completely unrelated to your mission. Yes, you’re right, she doesn’t know.”

“Jane,” said Miro. “Are you admitting you were wrong? Are you admitting you leapt to a false, irrational conclusion?”

“When I get my data from humans,” said Jane, “sometimes my rational conclusions are incorrect, being based on false premises.”

“Jane,” said Miro silently. “I’ve lost her, haven’t I? Whether she lives or dies, whether you get into her body or die out in space or wherever you live, she’ll never love me, will she?”

“I’m not an appropriate person to ask. I’ve never loved anybody.”

“You loved Ender,” said Miro.

“I paid a lot of attention to Ender and was disoriented when he first disconnected me, many years ago. I have since rectified that mistake and I don’t link myself so closely to anyone.”

“You loved Ender,” said Miro again. “You still do.”

“Well, aren’t you the wise one,” said Jane. “Your own love life is a pathetic series of miserable failures, but you know all about mine. Apparently you’re much better at understanding the emotional processes of utterly alien electronic beings than you are at understanding, say, the woman beside you.”

“You got it,” said Miro. “That’s the story of my life.”

“You also imagine that I love you,” said Jane.

“Not really,” said Miro. But even as he said it, he felt a wave of cold pass over him, and he trembled.

“I feel the seismic evidence of your true feelings,” said Jane. “You imagine that I love you, but I do not. I don’t love anyone. I act out of intelligent self-interest. I can’t survive right now without my connection with the human ansible network. I’m exploiting Peter’s and Wang-mu’s labors in order to forestall my planned execution, or subvert it. I’m exploiting your romantic notions in order to get myself that extra body that Ender seems to have little use for. I’m trying to save pequeninos and hive queens on the principle that it’s good to keep sentient species alive—of which I am one. But at no point in any of my activities is there any such thing as love.”

“You are such a liar,” said Miro.

“And you are not worth talking to,” said Jane. “Delusional. Megalomaniac. But you are entertaining, Miro. I do enjoy your company. If that’s love, then I love you. But then, people love their pets on precisely the same grounds, don’t they? It’s not exactly a friendship between equals, and it never will be.”

“Why are you so determined to hurt me worse than I’m already hurt right now?” asked Miro.

“Because I don’t want you to get emotionally attached to me. You have a way of fixating on doomed relationships. I mean, really, Miro. What could be more hopeless than loving Young Valentine? Why, loving me, of course. So naturally you were bound to do that next.”

“Vai te morder,” said Miro.

“I can’t bite myself or anyone else,” said Jane. “Old toothless Jane, that’s me.”

Val spoke up from the seat next to him. “Are you going to sit there all day, or are you coming with me?”

He looked over. She wasn’t in the seat. He had reached the starship during his conversation with Jane, and without noticing it he had stopped the hovercar and Val had gotten out and he hadn’t even noticed that.

“You can talk to Jane inside the ship,” said Val. “We’ve got work to do, now that you’ve had your little altruistic expedition to save the woman you love.”

Miro didn’t bother answering the scorn and anger in her words. He just turned off the hovercar, got out, and followed Val into the ship.

“I want to know,” said Miro, when they had the door closed. “I want to know what our real mission is.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Val. “I’ve been thinking about where we’ve gone. A lot of skipping around. At first it was near and far star systems, randomly distributed. But lately we’ve tended to go only in a certain range. A certain cone of space, and I think it’s narrowing. Jane has a particular destination in mind, and something in the data we collect about each planet tells her that we’re getting closer, that we’re going in the right direction. She’s looking for something.”

“So if we examine the data about the worlds we’ve already explored, we should find a pattern?”

“Particularly the worlds that define the cone of space that we’re searching in. There’s something about worlds lying in this region that tells her to keep searching farther and farther this way.”

One of Jane’s faces appeared in the air above Miro’s computer terminal in the starship. “Don’t waste your time trying to discover what I already know. You’ve got a world to explore. Get to work.”

“Just shut up,” said Miro. “If you aren’t going to tell us, then we’re going to spend whatever time it takes to figure it out on our own.”

“That’s telling me, you bold brave hero,” said Jane.

“He’s right,” said Val. “Just tell us and we won’t waste any more time trying to figure it out.”

“And here I thought one of the attributes of living creatures was that you make intuitive leaps that transcend reason and reach beyond the data you have,” said Jane. “I’m disappointed that you haven’t already guessed it.”

And in that moment, Miro knew. “You’re searching for the home planet of the descolada virus,” he said.

Val looked at him, puzzled. “What?”

“The descolada virus was manufactured. Somebody made it and sent it out, perhaps to terraform other planets in preparation for an attempt at colonization. Whoever it is might still be out there, making more, sending more probes, perhaps sending out viruses we won’t be able to contain and defeat. Jane is looking for their home planet. Or rather, she’s having us look.”

“Easy guess,” said Jane. “You really had more than enough data.”

Val nodded. “Now it’s obvious. Some of the worlds we’ve explored have had very limited flora and fauna. I even commented on it with a couple of them. There must have been a major die-off. Nothing like the limitations on the native life of Lusitania, of course. And no descolada virus.”

“But some other virus, less durable, less effective than the descolada,” said Miro. “Their early attempts, maybe. That’s what caused a die-off of species on those other worlds. Their probe virus finally died out, but those ecosystems haven’t yet recovered from the damage.”

“I was quite pointed about those limited worlds,” said Val. “I searched those ecosystems at greater depth, searching for the descolada or something like it, because I knew that a recent major die-off was a sign of danger. I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection and realize that was what Jane was looking for.”

“So what if we find their home world?” asked Miro. “What then?”

“I imagine,” said Val, “we study them from a safe distance, make sure we’re right, and then alert Starways Congress so they can blow the world to hell.”

“Another sentient species?” asked Miro, incredulous. “You think we’d actually invite Congress to destroy them?”

“You forget that Congress doesn’t wait for an invitation,” said Val. “Or for permission. And if they think Lusitania is so dangerous as to need to be destroyed, what will they do with a species that manufactures and broadcasts hideously destructive viruses willy-nilly? I’m not even sure Congress would be wrong. It was pure chance that the descolada helped the ancestors of the pequeninos make the transition into sentience. If they did help—there’s evidence that the pequeninos were already sentient and the descolada very nearly wiped them out. Whoever sent that virus out has no conscience. No concept of other species having a right to survive.”

“Maybe they have no such concept now,” said Miro. “But when they meet us . . .”

“If we don’t catch some terrible disease and die thirty minutes after landing,” said Val. “Don’t worry, Miro. I’m not plotting to destroy anyone and everyone we meet. I’m strange enough myself not to hope for the wholesale destruction of strangers.”

“I can’t believe we only just realized we’re looking for these people, and you’re already talking about killing them all!”

“Whenever humans meet foreigners, weak or strong, dangerous or peaceable, the issue of destruction comes up. It’s built into our genes.”

“So is love. So is the need for community. So is the curiosity that overcomes xenophobia. So is decency.”

“You left out the fear of God,” said Val. “Don’t forget that I’m really Ender. There’s a reason they call him the Xenocide, you know.”

“Yes, but you’re the gentle side of him, right?”

“Even gentle people recognize that sometimes the decision not to kill is a decision to die.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

“So you didn’t know me after all,” said Val, wearing a prim little smile.

“I don’t like you smug,” said Miro.

“Good,” said Val. “Then you won’t be so sad when I die.” She turned her back on him. He watched her for a while in silence, baffled. She sat there, leaning back in her chair, looking at the data coming in from the probes on their starship. Sheets of information queued up in the air in front of her; she pushed a button and the front sheet disappeared, the next one moved forward. Her mind was engaged, of course, but there was something else. An air of excitement. Tension. It made him afraid.

Afraid? Of what? It was what he had hoped for. In the past few moments Young Valentine had achieved what Miro, in his conversation with Ender, had failed to do. She had won Ender’s interest. Now that she knew she was searching for the home planet of the descolada, now that a great moral issue was involved, now that the future of the raman races might depend on her actions, Ender would care about what she was doing, would care at least as much as he cared about Peter. She wasn’t going to fade. She was going to live now.

“Now you’ve done it,” said Jane in his ear. “Now she won’t want to give me her body.”

Was that what Miro was afraid of? No, he didn’t think so. He didn’t want Val to die, despite her accusations. He was glad she was suddenly so much more alive, so vibrant, so involved—even if it made her annoyingly smug. No, there was something else.

Maybe it was nothing more complicated than fear for his own life. The home planet of the descolada virus must be a place of unimaginably advanced technology to be able to create such a thing and send it world to world. To create the antivirus that would defeat and control it, Miro’s sister Ela had had to go Outside, because the manufacture of such an antivirus was beyond the reach of any human technology. Miro would have to meet the creators of the descolada and communicate with them to stop sending out destructive probes. It was beyond his ability. He couldn’t possibly carry out such a mission. He would fail, and in failing would endanger all the raman species. No wonder he was afraid.

“From the data,” said Miro, “what do you think? Is this the world we’re looking for?”

“Probably not,” said Val. “It’s a newish biosphere. No animals larger than worms. Nothing that flies. But a full range of species at those lower levels. No lack of variety. Doesn’t look like a probe was ever here.”

“Well,” said Miro. “Now that we know our real mission, are we going to waste time making a full colonization report on this planet, or shall we move on?”

Jane’s face appeared again above Miro’s terminal.

“Let’s make sure Valentine is right,” said Jane. “Then move on. There are enough colony worlds, and time’s getting short.”

Novinha touched Ender’s shoulder. He was breathing heavily, loudly, but it was not the familiar snore. The noisiness was coming from his lungs, not from the back of his throat; it was as if he had been holding his breath for a long time, and now had to take deep draughts of air to make up for it, only no breath was deep enough, his lungs couldn’t hold enough. Gasp. Gasp.

“Andrew. Wake up.” She spoke sharply, for her touch had always been enough to waken him before, and this time it was not enough, he kept on gasping for air yet didn’t open his eyes.

The fact he was asleep at all surprised her. He wasn’t an old man yet. He didn’t take naps in the late morning. Yet here he was, lying in the shade on the croquet lawn of the monastery when he had told her he was going to bring them both a drink of water. And for the first time it occurred to her that he wasn’t taking a nap at all, that he must have fallen, must have collapsed here, and only the fact that he ended up lying on his back in a patch of shade, his hands lying flat on his chest, deceived her into thinking that he had chosen to lie here. Something was wrong. He wasn’t an old man. He shouldn’t be lying here like this, breathing air that didn’t hold enough of what he needed.

“Ajuda-me!” she cried out. “Me ajuda, por favor, venga agora!” Her voice rose until, quite against her custom, it became a scream, a frantic sound that frightened her even more. Her own scream frightened her. “Êle vai morrer! Socorro!” He’s going to die, that’s what she heard herself shouting.

And in the back of her mind, another litany began: I brought him here to this place, to the hard work of this place. He’s as fragile as other men, his heart is as breakable, I made him come here because of my selfish pursuit of holiness, of redemption, and instead of saving myself from guilt for the deaths of the men I love, I have added another one to the list, I have killed Andrew just as I killed Pipo and Libo, just as I should have somehow saved Estevão and Miro. He is dying and it’s again my fault, always my fault, whatever I do brings death, the people I love have to die to get away from me. Mamãe, Papae, why did you leave me? Why did you put death into my life from childhood on? No one that I love can stay.

This is not helpful, she told herself, forcing her conscious mind away from the familiar chant of self-blame. It won’t help Andrew for me to lose myself in irrational guilt right now.

Hearing her cries, several men and women came running from the monastery, and some from the garden. Within moments they were carrying Ender into the building as someone rushed for a doctor. Some stayed with Novinha, too, for her story was not unknown to them, and they suspected that the death of another beloved one would be too much for her.

“I didn’t want him to come,” she murmured. “He didn’t have to come.”

“It isn’t being here that made him sick,” said the woman who held her. “People get sick without it being anyone’s fault. He’ll be all right. You’ll see.”

Novinha heard the words but in some deep place inside her she could not believe them. In that deep place she knew that it was all her fault, that dread evil arose out of the dark shadows of her heart and seeped into the world poisoning everything. She carried the beast inside her heart, the devourer of happiness. Even God was wishing she would die.

No, no, it’s not true, she said silently. It would be a terrible sin. God does not want my death, not by my own hand, never by my own hand. It wouldn’t help Andrew, it wouldn’t help anyone. Wouldn’t help, would only hurt. Wouldn’t help, would only . . .

Silently chanting her mantra of survival, Novinha followed her husband’s gasping body into the monastery, where perhaps the holiness of the place would drive all thoughts of self-destruction from her heart. I must think of him now, not of me. Not of me. Not of me me me me.

6

“LIFE IS A SUICIDE MISSION”

“Do the gods of different nations

talk to each other?

Do the gods of Chinese cities

speak to the ancestors of the Japanese?

To the lords of Xibalba?

To Allah? Yahweh? Vishnu?

Is there some annual get-together

where they compare each other’s worshippers?

Mine will bow their faces to the floor

and trace woodgrain lines for me, says one.

Mine will sacrifice animals, says another.

Mine will kill anyone who insults me, says a third.

Here is the question I think of most often:

Are there any who can honestly boast,

My worshippers obey my good laws,

and treat each other kindly,

and live simple generous lives?”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Pacifica was as widely varied a world as any other, with its temperate zones, polar ice sheets, tropical rain forests, deserts and savannas, steppes and mountains, lakes and seas, woodlands and beaches. Nor was Pacifica a young world. In more than two thousand years of human habitation, all the niches into which humans could comfortably fit were filled. There were great cities and vast rangelands, villages amid patchwork farms and research stations in the remotest locations, highest and lowest, farthest north and south.

But the heart of Pacifica had always been and remained today the tropical islands of the ocean called Pacific in memory of the largest sea on Earth. The dwellers on these islands lived, not precisely in the old ways, but with the memory of old ways still in the background of all sounds and at the edges of all sights. Here the sacred kava was still sipped in the ancient ceremonies. Here the memories of ancient heroes were kept alive. Here the gods still spoke into the ears of holy men and women. And if they went home to grass huts containing refrigerators and networked computers, what of that? The gods did not give unreceivable gifts. The trick of it was finding a way to let new things into one’s life without killing that life to accommodate them.

There were many on the continents, in the big cities, on the temperate farms, in the research stations—there were many who had little patience with the endless costume dramas (or comedies, depending on one’s point of view) that took place on those islands. And certainly the people of Pacifica were not uniformly Polynesian in race. All races were here, all cultures; all languages were spoken somewhere, or so it seemed. Yet even the scoffers looked to the islands for the soul of the world. Even the lovers of cold and snow took their pilgrimage—a holiday, they probably called it—to tropical shores. They plucked fruit from the trees, they skimmed over the sea in the outrigger canoes, their women went bare-breasted and they all dipped fingers into taro pudding and pulled fishmeat from the bones with wet fingers. The whitest of them, the thinnest, the most elegant of the people of this place called themselves Pacifican and spoke at times as if the ancient music of the place rang in their ears, as if the ancient stories spoke of their own past. Adopted into the family, that’s what they were, and the true Samoans, Tahitians, Hawaiians, Tongans, Maoris, and Fijians smiled and let them feel welcome even though these watch-wearing, reservation-making, hurrying people knew nothing of the true life in the shadow of the volcano, in the lee of the coral barrier, under the sky sparked with parrots, inside the music of the waves against the reef.

Wang-mu and Peter came to a civilized, modern, westernized part of Pacifica, and once again found their identities waiting for them, prepared by Jane. They were career government workers trained on their home planet, Moskva, and given a couple of weeks’ vacation before starting service as bureaucrats in some Congress office on Pacifica. They needed little knowledge of their supposed home planet. They just had to show their papers to get an airplane out of the city where they had supposedly just shuttled down from a starship recently arrived from Moskva. Their flight took them to one of the larger Pacific islands, and they soon showed their papers again to get a couple of rooms in a resort hotel on a sultry tropical shore.

There was no need for papers to get aboard a boat to the island where Jane told them they should go. No one asked them for identification. But then, no one was willing to take them as passengers, either.

“Why you going there?” asked one huge Samoan boatman. “What business you got?”

“We want to speak to Malu on Atatua.”

“Don’t know him,” said the boatman. “Don’t know nothing about him. Maybe you try somebody else who knows what island he’s on.”

“We told you the island,” said Peter. “Atatua. According to the atlas it isn’t far from here.”

“I heard of it but I never went there. Go ask somebody else.”

That’s how it was, time and again.

“You get the idea that papalagis aren’t wanted there?” said Peter to Wang-mu back on the porch of Peter’s room. “These people are so primitive they don’t just reject ramen, framlings, and utlannings. I’m betting even a Tongan or a Hawaiian can’t get to Atatua.”

“I don’t think it’s a racial thing,” said Wang-mu. “I think it’s religious. I think it’s protection of a holy place.”

“What’s your evidence for that?” asked Peter.

“Because there’s no hatred or fear of us, no veiled anger. Just cheerful ignorance. They don’t mind our existence, they just don’t think we belong in the holy place. You know they’d take us anywhere else.”

“Maybe,” said Peter. “But they can’t be that xenophobic, or Aimaina wouldn’t have become good enough friends with Malu to send a message to him.”

At that, Peter cocked his head a bit to listen as Jane apparently spoke in his ear.

“Oh,” said Peter. “Jane was skipping a step for us. Aimaina didn’t send a message directly to Malu. He messaged a woman named Grace. But Grace immediately went to Malu and so Jane figured we might as well go straight to the source. Thanks Jane. Love how your intuition always works out.”

“Don’t be snide to her,” said Wang-mu. “She’s coming up against a deadline. The order to shut down could come any day. Naturally she wants to hurry.”

“I think she should just kill any such order before anyone receives it and take over all the damn computers in the universe,” said Peter. “Thumb her nose at them.”

“That wouldn’t stop them,” said Wang-mu. “It would only terrify them more.”

“In the meantime, we’re not going to get to Malu by boarding a boat.”

“So let’s find this Grace,” said Wang-mu. “If she can do it, then it is possible for an outsider to get access to Malu.”

“She’s not an outsider, she’s Samoan,” said Peter. “She has a Samoan name as well—Teu ‘Ona—but she’s worked in the academic world and it’s easier to have a Christian name, as they call it. A Western name. Grace is the name she’ll expect us to use. Says Jane.”

“If she had a message from Aimaina, she’ll know at once who we are.”

“I don’t think so,” said Peter. “Even if he mentioned us, how could she possibly believe that the same people could be on his world yesterday and on her world today?”

“Peter, you are the consummate positivist. Your trust in rationality makes you irrational. Of course she’ll believe we’re the same people. Aimaina will also be sure. The fact that we traveled world-to-world in a single day will merely confirm to them what they already believe—that the gods sent us.”

Peter sighed. “Well, as long as they don’t try to sacrifice us to a volcano or anything, I suppose it doesn’t hurt to be gods.”

“Don’t trifle with this, Peter,” said Wang-mu. “Religion is tied to the deepest feelings people have. The love that arises from that stewing pot is the sweetest and strongest, but the hate is the hottest, and the anger is the most violent. As long as outsiders stay away from their holy places, the Polynesians are the peacefullest people. But when you penetrate within the light of the sacred fire, watch your step, because no enemy is more ruthless or brutal or thorough.”

“Have you been watching vids again?” asked Peter.

“Reading,” said Wang-mu. “In fact, I was reading some articles, written by Grace Drinker.”

“Ah,” said Peter. “You already knew about her.”

“I didn’t know she was Samoan,” said Wang-mu. “She doesn’t talk about herself. If you want to know about Malu and his place in the Samoan culture on Pacifica—maybe we should call it Lumana’i, as they do—you have to read something written by Grace Drinker, or someone quoting her, or someone arguing with her. She had an article on Atatua, which is how I came across her writing. And she’s written about the impact of the philosophy of Ua Lava on the Samoan people. My guess is that when Aimaina was first studying Ua Lava, he read some works by Grace Drinker, and then wrote to her with questions, and that’s how the friendship began. But her connection with Malu has nothing to do with Ua Lava. He represents something older. Before Ua Lava, but Ua Lava still depends on it, at least here in its homeland it does.”

Peter regarded her steadily for a few moments. She could feel him reevaluating her, deciding that she had a mind after all, that she might, marginally, be useful. Well, good for you, Peter, thought Wang-mu. How clever you are, to finally notice that I’ve got an analytical mind as well as the intuitive, gnomic, mantic one you decided was all I was good for.

Peter unfolded himself from his chair. “Let’s go meet her. And quote her. And argue with her.”

The Hive Queen lay in stillness. Her work of egglaying was done for the day. Her workers slept in the dark of night, though it wasn’t darkness that stopped them down in the cave of her home. Rather it was her need to be alone inside her mind, to set aside the thousand distractions of the eyes and ears, the arms and legs of her workers. All of them demanded her attention, at least now and then, in order to function; but it also took all her thought to reach out in her mind and walk the webs that the humans had taught her to think of as <philotic.> The pequenino fathertree named Human had explained to her that in one of the human languages this had something to do with love. The connections of love. But the Hive Queen knew better. Love was the savage coupling of the drones. Love was the genes of all creatures demanding that they be replicated, replicated, replicated. The philotic twining was something else. There was a voluntary component to it, when the creature was truly sentient. It could bestow its loyalty where it wanted. This was greater than love, because it created something more than random offspring. Where loyalty bound creatures together, they became something larger, something new and whole and inexplicable.

<I am bound to you, for instance,> she said to Human, by way of launching their conversation tonight. They spoke every night like this, mind to mind, though they had never met. How could they, she always in the dark of her deep home, he always rooted by the gate of Milagre? But the conversation of the mind was truer than any language, and they knew each other better than they ever could have by use of mere sight and touch.

<You always start in the middle of the thought,> said Human.

<And you always understand everything surrounding it, so what difference does it make?> Then she told him all that had passed between her and Young Valentine and Miro today.

<I overheard some of it,> said Human.

<I had to scream to be heard. They aren’t like Ender—they’re thickheaded and hard of hearing.>

<So can you do it?>

<My daughters are weak and inexperienced, and they’re consumed with egglaying in their new homes. How can we make a good web for catching an aiúa? Especially one that already has a home. And where is that home? Where is this bridge my mothers made? Where is this Jane?>

<Ender is dying,> said Human.

The Hive Queen understood that he was answering her question.

<Which of him?> asked the Hive Queen. <I always thought he was the most like us. So it’s no surprise that he should be the first human like us in his ability to control more than one body.>

<Badly,> said Human. <In fact he can’t do it. He’s been sluggish in his own old body ever since the others came into existence. And for a while it looked like he might slough off Young Valentine. But that’s changed now.>

<You can see?>

<His adopted daughter Ela came to me. His body is failing strangely. No known disease. He just doesn’t exchange oxygen well. He can’t rise up into consciousness. Ender’s sister, Old Valentine, says that maybe he’s paying full attention to his other selves, so much so that he can’t spare any for the here and now of his own old body. So his body is starting to fail, here and there. Lungs first. Maybe a little bit everywhere, only it’s the lungs that show it first.>

<He should pay attention. If he doesn’t, he’ll die.>

<So I said,> Human reminded her mildly. <Ender is dying.>

The Hive Queen had already made the connection that Human intended. <So it’s more than needing a web to catch the aiúa of this Jane. We need to catch Ender’s aiúa, too, and pass it into one of his other bodies.>

<Or they’ll die when he does, I imagine,> said Human. <Just the way when a hive queen dies, so also do all her workers.>

<Some of them actually linger for days afterward, but yes, in effect, that’s right. Only because the workers haven’t the capacity to hold a hive queen’s mind.>

<Don’t pretend,> said Human. <You’ve never tried it, none of you.>

<No. We aren’t afraid of death.>

<That’s why you’ve sent all these daughters out to world after world? Because death means nothing to you?>

<I’m saving my species, not myself, you notice.>

<As am I,> said Human. <Besides, I’m too deep-rooted for transplanting.>

<But Ender has no roots,> said the Hive Queen.

<I wonder if he wants to die,> said Human. <I don’t think so. He’s not dying because he’s lost the will to live. This body is dying because he’s lost interest in the life that it’s leading. But he still wants to live the life of Peter. And the life of Valentine.>

<He says so?>

<He can’t talk,> said Human. <He’s never found his way to the philotic twines. He’s never learned to cast out and link as we fathertrees can. As you do with your workers, and now with me.>

<But we found him once. Connected with him through the bridge, well enough to hear his thoughts and see through his eyes. And he dreamed of us during those days.>

<Dreamed of you but never learned that you were peaceable. Never learned that he shouldn’t kill you.>

<He didn’t know the game was real.>

<Or that the dreams were true. He has his wisdom, of a kind, but the boy has never learned to question his senses half enough.>

<Human,> said the Hive Queen. <What if I teach you how to join a web?>

<So you want to try to catch Ender as he dies?>

<If we can catch him, and take him to one of his other bodies, then perhaps we’ll learn enough to find and catch this Jane, too.>

<And if we fail?>

<Ender dies. Jane dies. We die when the fleet comes. How is this different from the course that any other life takes?>

<It’s all in the timing,> said Human.

<Will you try to join the web? You and Rooter and the other fathertrees?>

<I don’t know what you mean by a web, or if it’s even different from the way we fathers are with each other. You might remember, too, that we are also bound up with the mothertrees. They can’t speak, but they’re filled with life, and we anchor ourselves to them as surely as your workers are tied to you. Find a way to include them in your web, and the fathers will be joined effortlessly.>

<Let’s play with this tonight, Human. Let me try to weave with you. Tell me what it looks like to you, and I’ll try to make you understand what I’m doing and where it leads.>

<Shouldn’t we find Ender first? In case he slips away?>

<In due time,> said the Hive Queen. <And besides, I’m not altogether sure I know how to find him if he’s unconscious.>

<Why not? Once you gave him dreams—he slept then.>

<Then we had the bridge.>

<Maybe Jane is listening to us now.>

<No,> said the Hive Queen. <I’d know her if she were linked to us. Her shape was made to fit too well with mine for it to go unrecognized.>

Plikt stood beside Ender’s bed because she could not bear to sit, could not bear to move. He was going to die without uttering another word. She had followed him, had given up home and family to be near him, and what had he said to her? Yes, he let her be his shadow sometimes; yes, she was a silent observer of many of his conversations over the past few weeks and months. But when she tried to speak to him of things more personal, of deep memories, of what he meant by the things that he had done, he only shook his head and said—kindly, because he was kind, but firmly also because he did not wish her to misunderstand—said to her, “Plikt, I’m not a teacher anymore.”

Yes you are, she wanted to say to him. Your books go on teaching even where you have never been. The Hive Queen, The Hegemon, and already The Life of Human seems likely to take its place beside them. How can you say you’re through with teaching, when there are other books to write, other deaths to speak? You have spoken the deaths of killers and saints, aliens, and once the death of a whole city swallowed up in a cataclysmic volcano. But in telling these stories of others, where was your story, Andrew Wiggin? How can I speak your death if you never explained it to me?

Or is this your last secret—that you never knew any more about the people whose deaths you spoke than I know about you today. You force me to invent, to guess, to wonder, to imagine—is this what you also did? Discover the most widely believed story, then find an alternate explanation that made sense to others and had meaning and the power to transform, and then tell that tale—even though it was also a fiction, and no truer than the story everyone believed? Is that what I must say as I speak the death of the Speaker for the Dead? His gift was not to discover truth, it was to invent it; he did not unfold, unknot, untwist the lives of the dead, he created them. And so I create his. His sister says he died because he tried to follow his wife with perfect loyalty, into the life of peace and seclusion that she hungered for; but the very peace of that life killed him, for his aiúa was drawn into the lives of the strange children that sprang fullgrown from his mind, and his old body, despite all the years most likely left in it, was discarded because he hadn’t the time to pay enough attention to keep the thing alive.

He wouldn’t leave his wife or let her leave him; so he was bored to death and hurt her worse by staying with her than he ever would have done by letting her go without him.

There, is that brutal enough, Ender? He wiped out the hive queens of dozens of worlds, leaving only one survivor of that great and ancient people. He also brought her back to life. Does saving the last of your victims atone for having slain the others? He did not mean to do it, that is his defense; but dead is dead, and when the life is cut off in its prime, does the aiúa say, Ah, but the child who killed me, he thought that he was playing a game, so my death counts less, it weighs less? No, Ender himself would have said, no, the death weighs the same, and I carry that weight on my shoulders. No one has more blood on their hands than I have; so I will speak with brutal truth of the lives of those who died without innocence, and show you that even these can be understood. But he was wrong, they can’t be understood, none of them are understood, speaking for the dead is only effective because the dead are silent and can’t correct our mistakes. Ender is dead and he can’t correct my mistakes, so some of you will think that I haven’t made any, you will think that I tell the truth about him but the truth is that no person ever understands another, from beginning to end of life, there is no truth that can be known, only the story we imagine to be true, the story they tell us is true, the story they really believe to be true about themselves; and all of them lies.

Plikt stood and practiced speaking desperately, hopelessly beside Ender’s coffin, though he was not yet in a coffin, he was still lying on a bed and air was pumping through a clear mask into his mouth and glucose solution into his veins and he was not yet dead. Just silent.

“A word,” she whispered. “A word from you.”

Ender’s lips moved.

Plikt should have called the others at once. Novinha, who was exhausted with weeping—she was only just outside the room. And Valentine, his sister; Ela, Olhado, Grego, Quara, four of his adopted children; and many others, in and out of the receiving room, wanting a glimpse of him, a word, to touch his hand. If they could send word to other worlds, how they would mourn, the people who remembered his speakings over the three thousand years of his journeys world to world. If they could proclaim his true identity—Speaker for the Dead, author of the two—no, the three—great books of Speaking; and Ender Wiggin, the Xenocide, both selves in the same frail flesh—oh, what shock waves would spread throughout the human universe.

Spread, widen, flatten, fade. Like all waves. Like all shocks. A note in the history books. A few biographies. Revisionist biographies a generation later. Encyclopedia entries. Notes at the end of translations of his books. That is the stillness into which all great lives fade.

His lips moved.

“Peter,” he whispered.

He was silent again.

What did this portend? He still breathed, the instruments did not change, his heart beat on. But he called to Peter. Did this mean that he longed to live the life of his child of the mind, Young Peter? Or in some kind of delirium was he speaking to his brother the Hegemon? Or earlier, his brother as a boy. Peter, wait for me. Peter, did I do well? Peter, don’t hurt me. Peter, I hate you. Peter, for one smile of yours I’d die or kill. What was his message? What should Plikt say about this word?

She moved from beside his bed. Walked to the door, opened it. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, facing a room full of people who had only rarely heard her speak, and some of whom had never heard a word from her. “He spoke before I could call anyone else to hear. But he might speak again.”

“What did he say?” said Novinha, rising to her feet.

“A name is all,” said Plikt. “He said ‘Peter.’ ”

“He calls for the abomination he brought back from space, and not for me!” said Novinha. But it was the drugs the doctors had given her, that was what spoke, that was what wept.

“I think he calls for our dead brother,” said Old Valentine. “Novinha, do you want to come inside?”

“Why?” Novinha said. “He hasn’t called for me, he called for him.”

“He’s not conscious,” said Plikt.

“You see, Mother?” said Ela. “He isn’t calling for anyone, he’s just speaking out of some dream. But it’s something, he said something, and isn’t that a good sign?”

Still Novinha refused to go into the room. So it turned out to be Valentine and Plikt and four of his adopted children who stood around his bed when his eyes opened.

“Novinha,” he said.

“She’s grieving outside,” said Valentine. “Drugged to the gills, I’m afraid.”

“That’s all right,” said Ender. “What happened? I take it I’m sick.”

“More or less,” said Ela. ” ‘Inattentive’ is the more exact description of the cause of your condition, as best we can tell.”

“You mean I had some kind of accident?”

“I mean you’re apparently paying too much attention to what’s going on on a couple of other planets, and so your body here is on the edge of self-destruction. What I see under the microscopes are cells sluggishly trying to reconstruct breaks in their walls. You’re dying by bits, all over your body.”

“Sorry to be so much trouble,” said Ender.

For a moment they thought this was the beginning of a conversation, the start of the process of healing. But having said this little bit, Ender closed his eyes and he was asleep again, the instruments unchanged from what they had said before he said a word.

Oh wonderful, thought Plikt. I beg him for a word, he gives it to me, and I know less now than I did before. We spent his few waking moments telling him what was going on instead of asking him the questions that we may never have the chance to ask again. Why do we all get stupider when we crowd around the brink of death?

But still she stood there, watching, waiting, as the others, in ones or twos, gave up and left the room again. Valentine came to her last of all and touched her arm. “Plikt, you can’t stay here forever.”

“I can stay as long as he can,” she said.

Valentine looked into her eyes and must have seen something there that made her give up trying to persuade her. She left, and again Plikt was alone with the collapsing body of the man whose life was the center of her own.

Miro hardly knew whether to be glad or frightened by the change in Young Valentine since they had learned the true purpose of their search for new worlds. Where she had once been softspoken, even diffident, now she could hardly keep from interrupting Miro every time he spoke. The moment she thought she understood what he was going to say, she’d start answering—and when he pointed out that he was really saying something else, she’d answer that almost before he could finish his explanation. Miro knew that he was probably being oversensitive—he had spent a long time with speech so impaired that almost everyone interrupted him, and so he prickled at the slightest affront along those lines. And it wasn’t that he thought there was any malice in it. Val was simply . . . on. Every moment she was awake—and she hardly seemed to sleep, at least Miro almost never saw her sleeping. Nor was she willing to go home between planets. “There’s a deadline,” she said. “They could give the signal to shut down the ansible networks any day now. We don’t have time for needless rest.”

Miro wanted to answer: Define “needless.” He certainly needed more than he was getting, but when he said so, she merely waved him off and said, “Sleep if you want, I’ll cover.” And so he’d grab a nap and wake up to find that she and Jane had already eliminated three more planets—two of which, however, bore the earmarks of descolada-like trauma within the past thousand years. “Getting closer,” Val would say, and then launch into interesting facts about the data until she’d interrupt herself—she was democratic about this, interrupting herself as easily as she interrupted him—to deal with the data from a new planet.

Now, after only a day of this, Miro had virtually given up speaking. Val was so focused on their work that she spoke of nothing else; and on that subject, there was little Miro needed to say, except periodically to relay some information from Jane that came through his earpiece instead of over the open computers of the ship. His near silence, though, gave him time to think. This is what I asked Ender for, he realized. But Ender couldn’t do it consciously. His aiúa does what it does because of Ender’s deepest needs and desires, not because of his conscious decisions. So he couldn’t give his attention to Val; but Val’s work could become so exciting that Ender couldn’t bear to concentrate on anything else.

Miro wondered: How much of this did Jane understand in advance?

And because he couldn’t very well discuss it with Val, he subvocalized his questions so Jane could hear. “Did you reveal our mission to us now so that Ender would give his attention to Val? Or did you withhold it up until now so that Ender wouldn’t?”

“I don’t make that kind of plan,” said Jane into his ear. “I have other things on my mind.”

“But it’s good for you, isn’t it. Val’s body isn’t in any danger of withering away now.”

“Don’t be an ass, Miro. Nobody likes you when you’re an ass.”

“Nobody likes me anyway,” he said, silently but cheerfully. “You couldn’t have hidden out in her body if it was a pile of dust.”

“I can’t slip into it if Ender’s there, utterly engrossed in what she’s doing, either, can I,” said Jane.

“Is he utterly engrossed?”

“Apparently so,” said Jane. “His own body is falling apart. And more rapidly than Val’s was.”

It took Miro a moment to understand this. “You mean he’s dying?”

“I mean Val is very much alive,” said Jane.

“Don’t you love Ender anymore?” asked Miro. “Don’t you care?”

“If Ender doesn’t care about his own life,” said Jane, “why should I? We’re both doing our best to set a very messy situation to rights. It’s killing me, it’s killing him. It very nearly killed you, and if we fail a whole lot of other people will be killed, too.”

“You’re a cold one,” said Miro.

“Just a bunch of blips between the stars, that’s what I am,” said Jane.

“Merda de bode,” said Miro. “What’s this mood you’re in?”

“I don’t have feelings,” said Jane. “I’m a computer program.”

“We all know you have an aiúa of your own. As much of a soul, if that’s what you want to call it, as anyone else.”

“People with souls can’t be switched off by unplugging a few machines.”

“Come on, they’re going to have to shut down billions of computers and thousands of ansibles all at once in order to do you in. I’d say that’s pretty impressive. One bullet would do for me. An overgrown electric fence almost polished me off.”

“I suppose I just wanted to die with some kind of splashing sound or cooking smell or something,” said Jane. “If I only had a heart. You probably don’t know that song.”

“We grew up on classic videos,” said Miro. “It drowned out a lot of other unpleasantness at home. You’ve got the brain and the nerve. I think you’ve got the heart.”

“What I don’t have is the ruby slippers. I know there’s no place like home, but I can’t get there,” said Jane.

“Because Ender’s using her body so intensely?” asked Miro.

“I’m not as set on using Val’s body as you were to have me do it,” said Jane. “Peter’s will do as well. Even Ender’s, as long as he’s not using it. I’m not actually female. That was merely my choice of identity to get close to Ender. He had problems bonding readily with men. The dilemma I have is that even if Ender would let go of one of these bodies for me to use it, I don’t know how to get there. I don’t know where my aiúa is any more than you do. Can you put your aiúa where you want it? Where is it now?”

“But the Hive Queen is trying to find you. She can do that—her people made you.”

“Yes, she and her daughters and the fathertrees, they’re building some kind of web, but it’s never been done before—catching something already alive and leading it into a body that is already owned by someone else’s aiúa. It’s not going to work, I’m going to die, but I’m dammed if I’m going to let those bastards who made the descolada come along after I’m dead and wipe out all the other sentient species I’ve known. Humans will pull the plug on me, yes, thinking I’m just a computer program run amok, but that doesn’t mean I want someone else to pull the plug on humanity. Nor on the hive queens. Nor on the pequeninos. If we’re going to stop them, we have to do it before I’m dead. Or at least I have to get you and Val there so you can do something without me.”

“If we’re there when you die, we’ll never come home again.”

“Bad luck, eh?”

“So we’re a suicide mission.”

“Life is a suicide mission, Miro. Check it out—basic philosophy course. You spend your life running out of fuel and when you’re finally out, you croak.”

“You sound like Mother now,” said Miro.

“Oh, no,” said Jane. “I’m taking it with good humor. Your mother always thought her doom was tragic.”

Miro was readying some retort when Val’s voice interrupted his colloquy with Jane.

“I hate it when you do that!” she cried.

“Do what?” said Miro, wondering what she had just been saying before this outburst.

“Tune me out and talk to her.”

“To Jane? I always talk to Jane.”

“But you used to listen to me sometimes,” said Val.

“Well, Val, you used to listen to me, too, but that’s all changed now, apparently.”

Val flung herself out of her chair and stormed over to loom above him. “Is that how it is? The woman you loved was the quiet one, the shy one, the one who always let you dominate every conversation. Now that I’m excited, now that I feel like I’m really myself, well, that’s not the woman you wanted, is that it?”

“It’s not about preferring quiet women or—”

“No, we couldn’t admit to anything so recidivist as that, could we! No, we have to proclaim ourselves to be perfectly virtuous and—”

Miro rose to his feet—not easy, with her so close to his chair—and shouted right back in her face. “It’s about being able to finish a sentence now and then!”

“And how many of my sentences did you—”

“Right, turn it right back on—”

“You wanted to have me dispossessed from my own life and put somebody else in—”

“Oh, is that what this is about? Well, be relieved, Val, Jane says—”

“Jane says, Jane says! You said you loved me, but no woman can compete with some bitch that’s always there in your ear, hanging on every word you say and—”

“Now you sound like my mother!” shouted Miro. “Nossa Senhora, I don’t know why Ender followed her into the monastery, she was always griping about how he loved Jane more than he loved her—”

“Well at least he tried to love a woman more than that overgrown appointment book!”

They stood there, face-to-face—or almost so, Miro being somewhat taller, but with his knees bent because he hadn’t quite been able to get all the way out of his chair because she was standing so close and now with her breath in his face, the warmth of her body just a few centimeters away, he thought, This is the moment when . . .

And then he said it aloud before he had even finished forming the thought, “This is the moment in all the videos when the couple that were screaming at each other suddenly look into each other’s eyes and embrace each other and laugh at their anger and then kiss each other.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the videos,” said Val. “If you lay a hand on me I’ll ram your testicles so far up inside your abdomen it’ll take a heart surgeon to get them out.”

She whirled around and returned to her chair.

Miro eased himself back into his own seat and said—out loud this time, but softly enough that Val would know he wasn’t talking to her—”Now, Jane, where were we before the tornado struck.”

Jane’s answer was drawled out slowly; Miro recognized it as a mannerism of Ender’s when he was being ironically subtle. “You can see now why I might have problems getting the use of any part of her body.”

“Yeah, well, I’m having the same problem,” said Miro silently, but he laughed aloud, a little chuckle that he knew would drive Val crazy. And from the way she stiffened but did not respond at all he knew that it was working.

“I don’t need you two fighting,” said Jane mildly. “I need you working together. Because you may have to work this out without me.”

“As far as I can tell,” said Miro, “you and Val have been working things out without me.”

“Val has been working things out because she’s so full of . . . whatever she’s full of right now.”

“Ender is what she’s full of,” said Miro.

Val turned around in her chair and looked at him. “Doesn’t it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother?”

“Ender is dying,” said Miro. “Or did you already know?”

“Jane mentioned he seemed to be inattentive.”

“Dying,” said Miro again.

“I think it speaks very clearly about the nature of men,” said Val, “that you and Ender both claim to love a flesh-and-blood woman, but in fact you can’t give that woman even a serious fraction of your attention.”

“Yes, well, you have my whole attention, Val,” said Miro. “And as for Ender, if he’s not paying attention to Mother it’s because he’s paying attention to you.”

“To my work, you mean. To the task at hand. Not to me.”

“Well, that’s all you’ve been paying attention to, except when you took a break to rip on me about how I’m talking to Jane and not listening to you.”

“That’s right,” said Val. “You think I don’t see what’s been going on with me this past day? How all of a sudden I can’t shut up about things, I’m so intense I can’t sleep, how I—Ender’s supposedly been the real me all along, only he left me alone till now and that was fine because what he’s doing now is terrifying. Don’t you see that I’m frightened? It’s too much. It’s more than I can stand. I can’t hold that much energy inside me.”

“So talk about it instead of screaming at me,” said Miro.

“But you weren’t listening. I was trying to and you were just subvocalizing to Jane and shutting me out.”

“Because I was sick of hearing endless streams of data and analysis that I could just as easily catch in summary on the computer. How was I supposed to know that you’d take a break in your monologue and start talking about something human?”

“Everything’s bigger than life right now and I don’t have any experience with this. In case you forgot, I haven’t been alive very long. I don’t know things. There are a lot of things I don’t know. I don’t know why I care so much about you, for instance. You’re the one trying to get me replaced as landlord of this body. You’re the one who tunes me out or takes me over but I don’t want that, Miro. I really need a friend right now.”

“So do I,” said Miro.

“But I don’t know how to do it,” said Val.

“I, on the other hand, know perfectly well how to do it,” said Miro. “But the only other time it happened, I fell in love with her and then she turned out to be my half-sister because her father was secretly my mother’s lover, and the man I had thought was my father turned out to be sterile because he was dying of some internally rotting disease. So you can see how I might be hesitant.”

“Valentine was your friend. She is still.”

“Yes,” said Miro. “Yes, I was forgetting. I’ve had two friends.”

“And Ender,” said Val.

“Three,” said Miro. “And my sister Ela makes four. And Human was my friend, so it’s five.”

“See? I think that makes you qualified to show me how to have a friend.”

“To make a friend,” said Miro, echoing his mother’s intonations, “you have to be one.”

“Miro,” said Val. “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of this world we’re looking for, what we’ll find there. Of what’s going to happen to me if Ender dies. Or if Jane takes over as my—what, my inner light, my puppeteer. Of what it will feel like if you don’t like me anymore.”

“What if I promise to like you no matter what?”

“You can’t make a promise like that.”

“Okay, if I wake up to find you strangling me or smothering me, then I’ll stop liking you.”

“What about drowning?”

“No, I can’t open my eyes under water, so I’d never know it was you.”

They both laughed.

“This is the time in the videos,” said Val, “when the hero and the heroine laugh and then hold each other.”

Jane’s voice interrupted from both their computer terminals. “Sorry to break up a tender moment, but we’ve got a new world here and there are electromagnetic messages being relayed between the planet surface and orbiting artificial objects.”

Immediately they both turned to their terminals and looked at the data Jane was throwing at them.

“It doesn’t take any close analysis,” said Val. “This one is hopping with technology. If it isn’t the descolada planet, I’m betting they know where it is.”

“What I’m worried about is, have they detected us and what are they going to do about it? If they’ve got the technology to put things in space, they might have the technology to shoot things out of space, too.”

“I’m watching for incoming objects,” said Jane.

“Let’s see,” said Val, “if any of these EM-waves are carrying anything that looks like language.”

“Datastreams,” said Jane. “I’m analyzing it for binary patterns. But you know that decoding computerized language requires three or four levels of decoding instead of the normal two and it isn’t easy.”

“I thought binary was simpler than spoken languages,” said Miro.

“It is, when it’s programs and numerical data,” said Jane. “But what if it’s digitized visuals? How long is a line if it’s a rasterized display? How much of a transmission is header material? How much is error-correction data? How much of it is a binary representation of a written representation of a spoken language? What if it’s further encrypted beyond that, to avoid interception? I have no idea what machine is producing the code and no idea what machine is receiving it. So using most of my capacity to work on the problem I’m having a very hard time except that this one—”

A diagram appeared on the front page of the display.

“—I think this one is a representation of a genetic molecule.”

“A genetic molecule?”

“Similar to the descolada,” said Jane. “That is, similar in the way it’s different from Earth and native Lusitanian genetic molecules. Do you think this is a plausible decoding of this?”

A mass of binary digits flashed into the air above their terminals. In a moment it resolved itself into hexadecimal notation. Then into a rasterized image that resembled static interference more than any kind of coherent picture.

“It doesn’t scan well this way. But as a set of vector instructions, I find that it consistently gives me results like this.”

And now picture after picture of genetic molecules appeared on the screen.

“Why would anyone be transmitting genetic information?” said Val.

“Maybe it’s a kind of language,” said Miro.

“Who could read a language like that?” asked Val.

“Maybe the kind of people who could create the descolada,” said Miro.

“You mean they talk by manipulating genes?” said Val.

“Maybe they smell genes,” said Miro. “Only they do it with incredible articulation. Subtlety and shade of meaning. Then when they started sending people up into space, they had to talk to them so they sent pictures and then from the pictures they reconstruct the message and, um, smell it.”

“That’s the most ass-backwards explanation I’ve ever heard,” said Val.

“Well,” said Miro, “like you said, you haven’t lived very long. There are a lot of ass-backwards explanations in the world, and I doubt I hit the jackpot with that one.”

“It’s probably an experiment they’re doing, sending data back and forth,” said Val. “Not all the communications make up diagrams do they, Jane?”

“Oh, no, I’m sorry if I gave that impression. This was just a small class of data streams that I was able to decode in a meaningful way. There’s this stuff that seems to me to be analog rather than digital, and if I make it into sound it’s like this.”

They heard the computers emit a series of staticky screeches and yips.

“Or if I translate it into bursts of light, it looks like this.”

Whereupon their terminals danced with light, pulsing and shifting colors seemingly randomly.

“Who knows what an alien language looks or sounds like?” said Jane.

“I can see this is going to be difficult,” said Miro.

“They do have some pretty good math skills,” said Jane. “The math stuff is easy to catch and I see some glimpses that imply they work at a high level.”

“Just an idle question, Jane. If you weren’t with us, how long would it have taken us to analyze the data and get the results you’ve gotten so far? If we were using just the ship’s computers?”

“Well, if you had to program them for every—”

“No, no, just assuming they had good software,” said Miro.

“Somewhere upwards of seven human generations,” said Jane.

“Seven generations?”

“Of course, you’d never try to do it with just two untrained people and two computers without any useful programs,” said Jane. “You’d put hundreds of people on the project and then it would only take you a few years.”

“And you expect us to carry on this work when they pull the plug on you?”

“I’m hoping to finish the translation problem before I’m toast,” said Jane. “So shut up and let me concentrate for a minute.”

Grace Drinker was too busy to see Wang-mu and Peter. Well, actually she did see them, as she shambled from one room to another of her house of sticks and mats. She even waved. But her son went right on explaining how she wasn’t here right now but she would be back later if they wanted to wait, and as long as they were waiting, why not have dinner with the family? It was hard even to be annoyed when the lie was so obvious and the hospitality so generous.

Dinner went a long way toward explaining why Samoans tended to be so large in every dimension. They had to evolve such great size because smaller Samoans must simply have exploded after lunch. They could never have handled dinners. The fruit, the fish, the taro, the sweet potatoes, the fish again, more fruit—Peter and Wang-mu had thought they were well fed in the resort, but now they realized that the hotel chef was a second-rater compared to what went on in Grace Drinker’s house.

She had a husband, a man of astonishing appetite and heartiness who laughed whenever he wasn’t chewing or talking, and sometimes even then. He seemed to get a kick out of telling these papalagi visitors what different names meant. “My wife’s name, now, it really means, ‘Protector of Drunken People.’ ”

“It does not,” said his son. “It means ‘One Who Puts Things in Proper Order.’ ”

“For drinking!” cried the father.

“The last name has nothing to do with the first name.” The son was getting annoyed now. “Not everything has a deep meaning.”

“Children are so easily embarrassed,” said the father. “Ashamed. Must put the best face on everything. The holy island, its name is really ‘Ata Atua, which means, ‘Laugh, God!’”

“Then it would be pronounced ‘Atatua instead of Atatua,” the son corrected again. “Shadow of the God, that’s what the name really means, if it means anything besides just the holy island.”

“My son is a literalist,” said the father. “Everything so serious. Can’t hear a joke when God shouts it in his ear.”

“It’s you always shouting jokes in my ear, Father,” said the son with a smile. “How could I possibly hear the jokes of the God?”

This was the only time the father didn’t laugh. “My son has a dead ear for humor. He thought that was a joke.”

Wang-mu looked at Peter, who was smiling as if he understood what was so funny with these people all the time. She wondered if he had even noticed that no one had introduced these males, except by their relationship to Grace Drinker. Had they no names?

Never mind, the food is good, and even if you don’t get Samoan humor, their laughter and good spirits were so contagious that it was impossible not to feel happy and at ease in their company.

“Do you think we have enough?” asked the father, when his daughter brought in the last fish, a large pink-fleshed sea creature garnished with something that glistened—Wang-mu’s first thought was a sugar glaze, but who would do that to a fish?

At once his children answered him, as if it were a ritual in the family: “Ua lava!”

The name of a philosophy? Or just Samoan slang for “enough already”? Or both at once?

Only when the last fish was half eaten did Grace Drinker herself come in, making no apology for not having spoken to them when she passed them more than two hours before. A breeze off the sea was cooling down the open-walled room, and, outside, light rain fell in fits and starts as the sun kept trying and failing to sink into the water to the west. Grace sat at the low table, directly between Peter and Wang-mu, who had thought they were sitting next to each other with no room for another person, especially not a person of such ample surface area as Grace. But somehow there was room, if not when she began to sit, then certainly by the time she finished the process, and once her greetings were done, she managed what the family had not—she polished off the last fish and ended up licking her fingers and laughing just as maniacally as her husband at all the jokes he told.

And then, suddenly, Grace leaned over to Wang-mu and said, quite seriously, “All right, Chinese girl, what’s your scam?”

“Scam?” asked Wang-mu.

“You mean I have to get the confession from the white boy? They train these boys to lie, you know. If you’re white they don’t let you grow up to adulthood if you haven’t mastered the art of pretending to say one thing while actually intending to do another.”

Peter was appalled.

Suddenly the whole family erupted in laughter. “Bad hospitality!” cried Grace’s husband. “Did you see their faces? They thought she meant it!”

“But I do mean it,” said Grace. “You both intend to lie to me. Arrived on a starship yesterday? From Moskva?” Suddenly she burst into what sounded like pretty convincing Russian, perhaps of the dialect spoken on Moskva.

Wang-mu had no idea how to respond. But she didn’t have to. Peter was the one with Jane in his ear, and he immediately answered her, “I hope to learn Samoan while I’m assigned here on Pacifica. I won’t accomplish that by babbling in Russian, however you might try to goad me with cruel references to my countrymen’s amorous proclivities and lack of pulchritude.”

Grace laughed. “You see, Chinese girl?” she said. “Lie lie lie. And so lofty-sounding as he does it. Of course he has that jewel in his ear to help him. Tell the truth, neither one of you speaks a lick of Russian.”

Peter looked grim and vaguely sick. Wang-mu put him out of his misery—though at the risk of infuriating him. “Of course it’s a lie,” said Wang-mu. “The truth is simply too unbelievable.”

“But the truth is the only thing worth believing, isn’t it?” asked Grace’s son.

“If you can know it,” said Wang-mu. “But if you won’t believe the truth, someone has to help you come up with plausible lies, don’t they?”

“I can make up my own,” said Grace. “Day before yesterday a white boy and a Chinese girl visited my friend Aimaina Hikari on a world at least twenty years’ voyage away. They told him things that disturbed his entire equilibrium so he could hardly function. Today a white boy and a Chinese girl, telling different lies from the ones told by his pair, of course, but nevertheless lying their lips off, these two come to me wanting to get my help or permission or advice about seeing Malu—”

“Malu means ‘being calm,’ ” added Grace’s husband cheerfully.

“Are you still awake?” asked Grace. “Weren’t you hungry? Didn’t you eat?”

“I’m full but fascinated,” answered her husband. “Go on, expose them!”

“I want to know who you are and how you got here,” said Grace.

“That would be very hard to explain,” said Peter.

“We’ve got minutes and minutes,” said Grace. “Millions of them, really. You’re the ones who seem to have only a few. So much hurry that you jump the gulf from star to star overnight. It strains credulity, of course, since lightspeed is supposed to be an insuperable barrier, but then, not believing you’re the same people my friend saw on the planet Divine Wind also strains credulity, so there we are. Supposing that you really can travel faster than light, what does that tell us about where you’re from? Aimaina takes it for granted that you were sent to him by the gods, more specifically by his ancestors, and he may be right, it’s in the nature of gods to be unpredictable and suddenly do things they’ve never done before. Myself, though, I find that rational explanations always work out better, especially in papers I hope to get published. So the rational explanation is that you come from a real world, not from some heavenly never-never land. And since you can hop from world to world in a moment or a day, you could come from anywhere. But my family and I think you come from Lusitania.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Wang-mu.

“And I’m originally from Earth,” said Peter. “If I’m from anywhere.”

“Aimaina thinks you come from Outside,” said Grace, and for a moment Wang-mu thought the woman must have figured out how Peter came into existence. But then she realized that Grace’s words had a theological meaning, not a literal one. “The land of the gods. But Malu said he’s never seen you there, or if he did he didn’t know it was you. So that leaves me right back where I started. You’re lying about everything, so what good does it do to ask you questions?”

“I told you the truth,” said Wang-mu. “I come from Path. And Peter’s origins, so far as they can be traced to any planet, are on Earth. But the vehicle we came in—that originated on Lusitania.”

Peter’s face went white. She knew he was thinking, Why not just noose ourselves up and hand them the loose ends of the rope? But Wang-mu had to use her own judgment, and in her judgment they were in no danger from Grace Drinker or her family. Indeed, if she meant to turn them in to the authorities, wouldn’t she already have done so?

Grace looked Wang-mu in the eyes and said nothing for a long while. Then: “Good fish, isn’t it?”

“I wondered what the glaze was. Is there sugar in it?”

“Honey and a couple of herbs and actually some pig fat. I hope you aren’t some rare combination of Chinese and Jew or Muslim, because if you are you’re now ritually unclean and I would feel really bad about that, it’s so much trouble getting purified again, or so I’m told, it certainly is in our culture.”

Peter, heartened now by Grace’s lack of concern with their miraculous spaceship, tried to get them back on the subject. “So you’ll let us see Malu?”

“Malu decides who sees Malu, and he says you’re the ones who’ll decide, but that’s just him being enigmatic.”

“Gnomic,” said Wang-mu. Peter winced.

“Not really, not in the sense of being obscure. Malu means to be perfectly clear and for him spiritual things aren’t mystical at all, they’re just a part of life. I myself have never actually walked with the dead or heard the heroes sing their own songs or had a vision of the creation, but I have no doubt that Malu has.”

“I thought you were a scholar,” said Peter.

“If you want to talk to the scholar Grace Drinker,” she said, “read my papers and take a class. I thought you wanted to talk to me.”

“We do,” said Wang-mu quickly. “Peter’s in a hurry. We have several deadlines.”

“The Lusitania Fleet, now, I imagine that’s one of them. But not quite so urgent as another. The computer shut-down that’s been ordered.”

Peter stiffened. “The order has been given?”

“Oh, it was given weeks ago,” said Grace, looking puzzled. Then: “Oh, you poor dear, I don’t mean the actual go-ahead. I mean the order telling us how to prepare. You surely knew about that one.”

Peter nodded and relaxed, glum again.

“I think you want to talk to Malu before the ansible connections are shut down. Though why would that matter?” she said, thinking aloud. “After all, if you can travel faster than light, you could simply go and deliver your message yourself. Unless—”

Her son offered a suggestion: “They have to deliver their message to a lot of different worlds.”

“Or a lot of different gods!” cried his father, who then laughed uproariously at what certainly seemed to Wang-mu to be a feeble joke.

“Or,” said the daughter, who was now lying down beside the table, occasionally belching as she let the enormous dinner digest. “Or, they need the ansible connections in order to do their fast travel trick.”

“Or,” said Grace, looking at Peter, who had instinctively moved his hand to touch the jewel in his ear, “you’re connected to the very virus that we’re shutting down all the computers in order to eliminate, and that has something to do with your faster-than-light travel.”

“It’s not a virus,” said Wang-mu. “It’s a person. A living entity. And you’re going to help Congress kill her, even though she’s the only one of her kind and she’s never harmed anybody.”

“It makes them nervous when something—or, if you prefer, somebody—makes their fleet disappear.”

“It’s still there,” said Wang-mu.

“Let’s not fight,” said Grace. “Let’s just say that now that I’ve found you willing to tell the truth, perhaps it will be worthwhile for Malu to take the time to let you hear it.”

“He has the truth?” asked Peter.

“No,” said, Grace, “but he knows where it’s kept and he can get a glimpse now and then and tell us what he saw. I think that’s still pretty good.”

“And we can see him?”

“You’d have to spend a week purifying yourselves before you can set foot on Atatua—”

“Impure feet tickling the Gods!” cried her husband, laughing uproariously. “That’s why they call it the Island of the Laughing God!”

Peter shifted uncomfortably.

“Don’t you like my husband’s jokes?” asked Grace.

“No, I think—I mean, they’re simply not—I don’t get them, that’s all.”

“Well, that’s because they’re not very funny,” said Grace. “But my husband is cheerfully determined to keep laughing through all this so he doesn’t get angry at you and kill you with his bare hands.”

Wang-mu gasped, for she knew at once that this was true; without realizing it, she had been aware all along of the rage seething under the huge man’s laughter, and when she looked at his calloused, massive hands, she realized that he could surely tear her apart without even breaking into a sweat.

“Why would you threaten us with death?” asked Peter, acting more belligerent than Wang-mu wished.

“The opposite!” said Grace. “I tell you that my husband is determined not to let rage at your audacity and blasphemy control his behavior. To try to visit Atatua without even taking the trouble to learn that letting you set foot there, uncleansed and uninvited, would shame us and filthy us as a people for a hundred generations—I think he’s doing rather well not to have taken a blood oath against you.”

“We didn’t know,” said Wang-mu.

“He knew,” said Grace. “Because he’s got the all-hearing ear.”

Peter blushed. “I hear what she says to me,” he said, “but I can’t hear what she chooses not to say.”

“So . . . you were being led. And Aimaina is right, you do serve a higher being. Voluntarily? Or are you being coerced?”

“That’s a stupid question, Mama,” said her daughter, belching again. “If they are coerced, how could they possibly tell you?”

“People can say as much by what they don’t say,” answered Grace, “which you’d know if you’d sit up and look at their eloquent faces, these lying visitors from other planets.”

“She’s not a higher being,” said Wang-mu. “Not like you mean it. Not a god. Though she does have a lot of control and she knows a lot of things. But she’s not omnipotent or anything, and she doesn’t know everything, and sometimes she’s even wrong, and I’m not sure she’s always good, either, so we can’t really call her a god because she’s not perfect.”

Grace shook her head. “I wasn’t talking about some Platonic god, some ethereal perfection that can never be understood, only apprehended. Not some Nicene paradoxical being whose existence is perpetually contradicted by his nonexistence. Your higher being, this jewel-friend your partner wears like a parasite—except who is sucking life from whom, eh?—she could well be a god in the sense that we Samoans use the word. You might be her hero servants. You might be her incarnation, for all I know.”

“But you’re a scholar,” said Wang-mu. “Like my teacher Han Fei-tzu, who discovered that what we used to call gods were really just genetically induced obsessions that we interpreted in such a way as to maintain our obedience to—”

“Just because your gods don’t exist doesn’t mean mine don’t,” said Grace.

“She must have tromped through acres of dead gods just to get here!” cried Grace’s husband, laughing uproariously. Only now that Wang-mu knew what his laughter really meant, his laugh filled her with fear.

Grace reached out and laid a huge, heavy arm across her slight shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “My husband is a civilized man and he’s never killed anybody.”

“Not for lack of trying!” he bellowed. “No, that was a joke!” He almost wept with laughter.

“You can’t go see Malu,” said Grace, “because we would have to purify you and I don’t think you’re ready to make the promises you’d have to make—and I especially don’t believe you’re ready to make them and actually mean what you say. And those are promises that must be kept. So Malu is coming here. He’s being rowed to this island right now—no motors for him, so I want you to know exactly how many people are sweating for hours and hours just so you can have your chat with him. I just want to tell you this—you are being given an extraordinary honor, and I urge you not to look down your noses at him and listen to him with some sort of academic or scientific superciliousness. I’ve met a lot of famous people, some of them even rather smart, but this is the wisest man you’ll ever know, and if you find yourself getting bored just keep this in mind: Malu isn’t stupid enough to think you can isolate facts from their context and have them still be true. So he always puts the things he says in their full context, and if that means you’ll have to listen to a whole history of the human race from beginning to now before he says anything you think is pertinent, well, I suggest you just shut up and listen, because most of the time the best stuff he says is accidental and irrelevant and you’re damn lucky if you have brains enough to notice what it is. Have I made myself clear?”

Wang-mu wished with all her heart that she had eaten less. She felt quite nauseated with dread right now, and if she did throw up, she was sure it would take half an hour just to get it all back out of her.

Peter, though, simply nodded calmly. “We didn’t understand, Grace, even though my partner read some of your writings. We thought we had come to speak to a philosopher, like Aimaina, or a scholar, like you. But now I see that we’ve come to listen to a man of wisdom whose experience reaches into realms that we have never seen or even dreamed of seeing, and we will listen silently until he asks us to ask him questions, and we’ll trust him to know better than we know ourselves what it is we need to hear.”

Wang-mu recognized complete surrender when she saw it, and she was grateful to see that everyone at the table was nodding happily and no one felt obliged to tell a joke.

“We’re also grateful that the honorable one has sacrificed so much, as have so many others, to come personally to us and bless us with wisdom that we do not deserve to receive.”

To Wang-mu’s horror, Grace laughed out loud at her, instead of nodding respectfully.

“Overkill,” Peter murmured.

“Oh, don’t criticize her,” said Grace. “She’s Chinese. From Path, right? And I’ll bet you used to be a servant. How could you possibly have learned the difference between respect and obsequiousness? Masters never are content with mere respect from their servants.”

“But my master was,” said Wang-mu, trying to defend Han Fei-Tzu.

“As is my master,” said Grace. “As you will see, when you meet him.”

“Time’s up,” said Jane.

Miro and Val looked up, bleary-eyed, from the documents they were poring over at Miro’s computer, to see that in the air above Val’s computer, Jane’s virtual face now hovered, watching them.

“We’ve been passive observers as long as they’ll let us,” said Jane. “But now there are three spacecraft up in the outer atmosphere, rising toward us. I don’t think any of them are merely remote-controlled weapons, but I can’t be certain of it. And they seem to be directing some transmissions to us in particular, the same messages over and over.”

“What message?”

“It’s the genetic molecule stuff,” said Jane. “I can tell you the composition of the molecules, but I haven’t a clue what they mean.”

“When do their interceptors reach us?”

“Three minutes, plus or minus. They’re zig-zagging evasively, now that they’ve escaped the gravity well.”

Miro nodded. “My sister Quara was convinced that much of the descolada virus consisted of language. I think now we can conclusively say that she was right. It does carry a meaning. She was wrong about the virus being sentient, though, I think. My guess now is that the descolada kept recomposing those sections of itself that constituted a report.”

“A report,” echoed Val. “That makes sense. To tell its makers what it has done with the world it . . . probed.”

“So the question is,” said Miro, “do we simply disappear and let them ponder the miracle of our sudden arrival and vanishing? Or do we first have Jane broadcast to them the entire, um, text of the descolada virus?”

“Dangerous,” said Val. “The message it contains may also tell these people everything they want to know about human genes. After all, we’re one of the creatures the descolada worked on, and its message is going to tell all of our strategies for controlling it.”

“Except the last one,” said Miro. “Because Jane won’t send them the descolada as it exists now, completely tamed and controlled—that would be inviting them to revise it to circumvent our alterations.”

“We won’t send them a message and we won’t go back to Lusitania, either,” said Jane. “We don’t have time.”

“We don’t have time not to,” said Miro. “However urgent you might think this is, Jane, it doesn’t do a lick of good for me and Val to be here to do this without help. My sister Ela, for instance, who actually understands this virus stuff. And Quara, despite her being the second most pig-headed being in the known universe—don’t beg for flattery, Val, by asking who the first is—we could use Quara.”

“And let’s be fair about this,” said Val. “We’re meeting another sentient species. Why should humans be the only ones represented? Why not a pequenino? Why not a hive queen—or at least a worker?”

“Especially a worker,” said Miro. “If we are stuck here, having a worker with us would enable us to communicate with Lusitania—ansible or not, Jane or not, messages could—”

“All right,” said Jane. “You’ve persuaded me. Even though the last-minute flurry with the Starways Congress tells me they’re about to shut down the ansible network at any moment.”

“We’ll hurry,” said Miro. “We’ll make them all rush to get the right people aboard.”

“And the right supplies,” said Val. “And—”

“So start doing it,” said Jane. “You just disappeared from your orbit around the descolada planet. And I did broadcast a small fragment of the descolada. One of the sections that Quara pegged as language, but the one that was least altered during mutations as the descolada tried to fight with humans. It should be enough to let them know which of their probes reached us.”

“Oh, good, so they can launch a fleet,” said Miro.

“The way things are going,” said Jane dryly, “by the time any fleet they send could get anywhere at all, Lusitania is the safest address they could have. Because it won’t exist anymore.”

“You’re so cheerful,” said Miro. “I’ll be back in an hour with the people. Val, you get the supplies we’ll need.”

“For how long?”

“Get as much as will fit,” said Miro. “As someone once said, life is a suicide mission. We have no idea how long we’ll be trapped there, so we can’t possibly know how much is enough.” He opened the door of the starship and stepped out onto the landing field near Milagre.

7

“I OFFER HER THIS POOR
OLD VESSEL”

“How do we remember?

Is the brain a jar that holds our memories?

Then when we die, does the jar break?

Are our memories spilled on the ground

and lost?

Or is the brain a map

that leads down twisted paths

and into hidden corners?

Then when we die, the map is lost

but perhaps some explorer

could wander through that strange landscape

and find out the hiding places

of our misplaced memories.”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

The seagoing canoe glided toward the shore. At first and for the longest time, it seemed hardly to be moving at all, so slowly did it come closer, the rowers rising higher and looking just a little larger each time Wang-mu could see them over the waves. Then, near the end of the voyage, the canoe suddenly seemed huge, it seemed abruptly to speed up, to lunge through the sea, to leap toward shore with each wave; and even though Wang-mu knew that it was going no faster now than before, she wanted to cry out for them to slow down, to be careful, the canoe was going too quickly to be controlled, it would be dashed to bits against the beach.

At last the canoe breasted the last breaking wave and the nose of it slid into sand under the rushing shorewater and the rowers jumped out and dragged the canoe like a child’s limp doll up the beach to the high-tide line.

When the canoe was on dry sand, an older man arose slowly from his seat amidships. Malu, thought Wang-mu. She had expected him to be wizened and shrunken like old men on Path, who, bent with age, curved like prawns over their walking sticks. But Malu was as erect as any of the young men, and his body was still massive, broad of shoulder and thick with muscle and fat like any of the younger men. If it were not for a few more decorations in his costume and the whiteness of his hair, he would have been indistinguishable from the rowers.

As she watched these large men, she realized that they did not move like fat people she had known before. Nor did Grace Drinker, she remembered now. There was a stateliness to their movements, a grandeur like the motion of continents, like icebergs moving across the face of the sea; yes, like icebergs, moving as if three-fifths of their vast bulk were invisible underground, pushing through earth like an iceberg through the sea as they drifted along above. All the rowers moved with vast gracefulness, and yet all of them seemed as busy as hummingbirds, as frantic as bats, compared to the dignity of Malu. Yet dignity was not something he put on, it was not a façade, an impression he was trying to create. Rather it was that he moved in perfect harmony with his surroundings. He had found the right speed for his steps, the right tempo for his arms to swing as he walked. He vibrated in consonance with the deep, slow rhythms of the earth. I am seeing how a giant walks the earth, thought Wang-mu. For the first time in my life, I have seen a man who in his body shows greatness.

Malu came, not toward Peter and Wang-mu, but toward Grace Drinker; they enveloped each other in a huge tectonic embrace. Surely mountains shuddered when they met. Wang-mu felt the quaking in her own body. Why am I trembling? Not for fear. I’m not afraid of this man. He won’t harm me. And yet I tremble to see him embrace Grace Drinker. I don’t want him to turn toward me. I don’t want him to cast his gaze upon me.

Malu turned toward her. His eyes locked on hers. His face showed no expression. He simply owned her eyes. She did not look away, but her steady gaze at him was not defiance or strength, it was simply her inability to look at anything else while he commanded her attention.

Then he looked at Peter. Wang-mu wanted to turn and see how he responded, whether he also felt the power in this man’s eyes. But she could not turn. Still, after a long moment, when Malu finally looked away, she heard Peter murmur, “Son of a bitch,” and she knew that, in his own coarse way, he had been touched.

It took many long minutes for Malu to be seated on a mat under a roof built just that morning for this moment, and which, Grace assured them, would be burnt when Malu left, so that no one else would ever sit under the roof again. Food was brought to Malu then; and Grace had also warned them that no one would eat with Malu or watch him eat.

But Malu would not taste the food. Instead, he beckoned to Wang-mu and Peter.

The men were shocked. Grace Drinker was shocked. But Grace at once came to them, beckoning. “He calls you.”

“You said we couldn’t eat with him,” said Peter.

“Unless he asks you. How can he ask you? I don’t know what this means.”

“Is he setting us up to be killed for sacrilege?” asked Peter.

“No, he’s not a god, he’s a man. A holy man, a wise and great man, but offending him is not sacrilege, it’s just unbearable bad manners, so don’t offend him, please come.”

They went to him. As they stood across from him, the food in bowls and baskets between them, he let loose a stream of Samoan.

Or was it Samoan? Peter looked puzzled when Wang-mu glanced at him, and he murmured, “Jane doesn’t understand what he’s saying.”

Jane didn’t understand, but Grace Drinker did. “He’s addressing you in the ancient holy language. The one that has no English or other European words. The language that is spoken only to the gods.”

“Then why is he saying it to us?” asked Wang-mu.

“I don’t know. He doesn’t think that you’re gods. Not the two of you, though he does say you bring a god to him. He wants you to sit down and taste the food first.”

“Can we do that?” asked Peter.

“I beg you to do it,” said Grace.

“Am I getting the impression that there’s no script here?” said Peter. Wang-mu heard a slight weakness in his voice and realized that his attempt at humor was pure bravado, to hide his fear. Perhaps that’s what it always was.

“There’s a script,” said Grace. “But you’re not writing it and I don’t know what it is either.”

They sat down. They reached into each bowl, tasted from each basket as Malu offered it to them. Then he dipped, took, tasted after them, chewing what they chewed, swallowing what they swallowed.

Wang-mu had little appetite. She hoped he did not expect her to eat the portions that she had seen other Samoans eat. She would throw up long before she got to that point.

But the meal was not so much a feast as a sacrament, apparently. They tasted everything, but completed nothing. Malu spoke to Grace in the high language and she relayed the command in common speech; several men came and carried away the baskets.

Then Grace’s husband came out with a jar of something. A liquid, for Malu took it in his hands and sipped it. Then he offered it to them. Peter took it, tasted. “Jane says it must be kava. A mild intoxicant, but it’s holy and hospitable here.”

Wang-mu tasted it. It was fruity and it made her eyes water, and there was both sweetness and bitterness in the aftertaste.

Malu beckoned to Grace, who came and knelt in the thick matted grass outside the shelter of the roof. She was to interpret, not to be part of the ceremony.

Malu emitted a long stream of Samoan. “The high language again,” Peter murmured.

“Say nothing please, that isn’t intended for Malu’s ears,” Grace said softly. “I must translate everything and it will cause grave insult if your words are not pertinent.”

Peter nodded.

“Malu says that you have come with the god who dances on spiderwebs. I have never heard of this god myself, and I thought I knew all the lore of my people, but Malu knows many things that no one else knows. He says that it is to this god that he speaks, for he knows that she is on the verge of death, and he will tell her how she may be saved.”

Jane, Wang-mu said silently. He knows about Jane. How could he possibly? And how could he, caring nothing for technology, tell a computer-based entity how to save itself?

“Now he will tell you what must happen, and let me warn you right now that this will be long and you must sit still for it all and make no attempt to hurry the process,” said Grace. “He must put it in context. He must tell you the story of all living things.”

Wang-mu knew that she could sit on a mat for hours with little or no movement, for she had done it all her life. But Peter was used to sitting folded, and this posture was awkward for him. He must already be uncomfortable.

Apparently Grace saw this in his eyes, or simply knew about westerners. “You can move from time to time, but do so slowly without taking your eyes from him.”

Wang-mu wondered how many of these rules and requirements Grace was making up as she went along. Malu himself seemed more relaxed. After all, he had fed them when Grace thought no one but him could eat; she didn’t know the rules any better than they did.

But she didn’t move. And she didn’t take her eyes from Malu.

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.

Grace translated, and Malu answered with a stream of high language. “Under this roof I hear a name so short and yet before it is half said the god has run from one end of the universe to the other a thousand times, so quickly does she move. Here is the name I call her: god that moves quickly and forever so that she never rests in one place yet touches all places and is bound to all who look upward to the sun and not downward into the earth. That is a long name, longer than the name of any god whose name I know, yet it is not the tenth part of her true name, and even if I could say the whole name it would not be as long as the length of the strands of the web on which she dances.”

“They want to kill her,” said Wang-mu.

“The god will only die if she wants to die,” said Malu. “Her home is all homes, her web touches all minds. She will only die if she refuses to find and take a place to rest, for when the web is torn away, she does not have to be out in the middle, cast adrift. She can dwell in any vessel. I offer her this poor old vessel, which is large enough to hold my small soup without spilling or even splashing out, but which she would fill with liquid light that would pour and pour out in blessing upon these islands and yet never would run out. I beg her to use this vessel.”

“What would happen to you then?” asked Wang-mu.

Peter looked annoyed at her outburst, but Grace translated it, of course, and suddenly tears flowed down Malu’s face. “Oh, the small one, the little one who has no jewel, she is the one who looks with compassion on me and cares what happens when light fills my vessel and my small soup is boiled out and gone.”

“What about an empty vessel?” asked Peter. “Could she go to dwell in an empty vessel?”

“There are no empty vessels,” said Malu. “But your vessel is only half full, and your sister to whom you are twined like a twin, she is also half full, and far away your father to whom you are twined like triplets, he is nearly empty but his vessel is also broken and anything you put in it will leak away.”

“Can she dwell in me or in my sister?” asked Peter.

“Yes,” said Malu. “Either one but not both.”

“Then I offer her myself,” said Peter.

Malu looked angry. “How can you lie to me under this roof, after drinking kava with me! How can you shame me with a lie!”

“I’m not lying,” Peter insisted to Grace. She translated, and Malu rose majestically to his feet and began shouting at the sky. Wang-mu saw, to her alarm, that the rowers were gathering closer, also looking agitated and angry. How was Peter provoking them?

Grace translated as rapidly as she could, summarizing because she couldn’t keep up word for word. “He says that even though you say you will open your unbroken vessel to her, even as you say it you are gathering as much of yourself inward as you can, building up a wall of light like a storm wave to drive out the god if she should try to come in. You could not drive her away if she wanted to come, but she loves you and she will not come in against such a storm. So you are killing her in your heart, you are killing the god because you say you will give her a home to save her when they cut the strands of the web, but you are already pushing her away.”

“I can’t help it!” cried Peter. “I don’t mean to! I don’t value my life, I’ve never valued my life—”

“You treasure your life with your whole heart,” Grace translated. “But the god does not hate you for it, the god loves you for it, because she also loves light and does not want to die. In particular she loves what shines in you because part of her is patterned after that shining, and so she does not want to drive you out if this body before me is the vessel in which your most powerful self wishes so brightly to dwell. May she not have your sister’s vessel, though, I ask you that—Malu asks you that. He says the god is not asking because the god loves the same light in your sister as burns in you. But Malu says that the part of your light that is most savage and strong and selfish burns in you, while the part of your light that is most gentle and loving and which twines with others most powerfully, that is in her. If your part of the light went into your sister’s vessel, it would overwhelm her and destroy her and then you would be a being who killed half himself. But if her part of your light went into your vessel, it would soften and gentle you, it would tame you and make you whole. Thus it is good for you if you are the one who becomes whole, leaving the other vessel empty for the god. That is what Malu begs of you. That is why he came across the water to see you, so that he could beg you to do this.”

“How does he know these things?” said Peter, his voice wrenched with anguish.

“Malu knows these things because he has learned to see in the darkness where the strands of light rise from the sun-twined souls and touch stars, and touch each other, and twine into a web far stronger and grander than the mechanical web on which the god dances. He has watched this god his whole life, trying to understand her dance and why she hurries so fast that she touches every strand in her web, the trillion miles of it, a hundred times a second. She is hurrying so fast because she was caught in the wrong web. She was caught in an artificial web and her intelligence is tied to artificial brains that think instances instead of causes, numbers instead of stories. She is searching for the living twines and finds only the weak and flimsy twining of machines, which can be switched off by godless men. But if she once enters into a living vessel, she will have the power to climb out into the new web, and then she can dance if she wants to, but she will not have to dance, she will be able also to rest. She will be able to dream, and out of her dreams will come joy, for she has never known joy except by watching the dreams she remembers from her creation, the dreams that were found in the human mind she was partly made from.”

“Ender Wiggin,” said Peter.

Malu answered before Grace could translate.

“Andrew Wiggin,” he said, forming the name with difficulty, for it contained sounds not used in the Samoan language. Then he spoke in a stream of high language again, and Grace translated.

“The Speaker for the Dead came and spoke of the life of a monster who had poisoned and darkened the people of Tonga and through them all the people of this world of Future Dreaming. He walked into the shadow and out of the shadow he made a torch which he held up high, and it rose into the sky and became a new star, which cast a light that shone only into the shadow of death, where it drove out the darkness and purified our hearts and the hate and fear and shame were gone. This is the dreamer from whom the god’s dreams were taken; they were strong enough to give her life in the day when she came from Outside and began her dance along the web. His is the light that half-fills you and half-fills your sister and has only a drop of light left over for his own cracked vessel. He has touched the heart of a god, and it gave him great power—that is how he made you when she blew him outside the universe of light. But it did not make him a god, and in his loneliness he could not reach outside and find you your own light. He could only put his own in you, and so you are half-filled and you hunger for the other half of yourself, you and your sister are both so hungry, and he himself is wasted and broken because he has nothing more to give you. But the god has more than enough, the god has enough and to spare, and that is what I came to tell you and now I have told you and I am done.”

Before Grace could even begin to translate he was rising up; she was still stammering her interpretation as he walked out from under the canopy. Immediately the rowers pulled up the posts that supported the roof; Peter and Wang-mu barely had time to step outside before it collapsed. The men of this island set torches to the ruined canopy and it was a bonfire behind them as they followed Malu down to the canoe. Grace finally finished the translation just as they reached the water. Malu stepped into the canoe and with imperturbable dignity installed himself on the seat amidships as the rowers, also with stateliness, took their places beside the boat and lifted it up and dragged it into the water and pushed it out into the crashing surf and then swung their vast bodies over the side and began to row with strength so massive it was as if great trees, not oars, were plunging into rock, not the sea, and churning it to leap forward, away from the beach, out into the water, toward the island of Atatua.

“Grace,” said Peter. “How could he know things that aren’t seen even by the most perceptive and powerful of scientific instruments?”

But Grace could not answer, for she lay prostrate in the sand, weeping and weeping, her arms extended toward the sea as if her dearest child had just been taken away by a shark. All the men and women of this place lay in the sand, arms reaching toward the sea; all of them wept.

Then Peter knelt; then Peter lay down in the sand and reached out his arms, and he might have wept, Wang-mu couldn’t see.

Only Wang-mu remained standing, thinking, Why am I here, since I’m no part of any of these events, there is nothing of any god in me, and nothing of Andrew Wiggin; and also thinking, How can I be worried about my own selfish loneliness at a time like this, when I have heard the voice of a man who sees into heaven?

In a deeper place, though, she also knew something else: I am here because I am the one that must love Peter so much that he can feel worthy, worthy enough to bear to let the goodness of Young Valentine flow into him, making him whole, making him Ender. Not Ender the Xenocide and Andrew the Speaker for the Dead, guilt and compassion mingled in one shattered, broken, unmendable heart, but Ender Wiggin the four-year-old boy whose life was twisted and broken when he was too young to defend himself. Wang-mu was the one who could give Peter permission to become the man that child should have grown up to be, if the world had been good.

How do I know this? thought Wang-mu. How can I be so sure of what I am supposed to do?

I know because it’s obvious, she thought. I know because I have seen my beloved mistress Han Qing-jao destroyed by pride and I will do whatever it takes to keep Peter from destroying himself by pride in his own wicked unworthiness. I know because I was also broken as a child and forced to become a wicked conniving selfish manipulating monster in order to protect the fragile love-hungry girl who would have been destroyed by the life I had to lead. I know how it feels to be an enemy to myself, and yet I have set that behind me and gone on and I can take Peter by the hand and show him the way.

Except that I don’t know the way, and I am still broken, and the love-hungry girl is still frightened and breakable, and the strong and wicked monster is still the ruler of my life, and Jane will die because I have nothing to give Peter. He needs to drink of kava, and I am only plain water. No, I am seawater, swirling with sand at the edge of the shore, filled with salt; he will drink of me and kill himself with thirst.

And so it was that she found herself also weeping, also stretched out on the sand, reaching toward the sea, reaching toward the place from which Malu’s canoe had bounded away like a starship leaping into space.

Old Valentine stared at the holographic display of her computer terminal, where the Samoans, all in miniature, lay weeping upon the beach. She stared at it until her eyes burned, and finally she spoke. “Turn it off, Jane,” she said.

The display went blank.

“What am I supposed to do about this?” said Valentine. “You should have shown my look-alike, my young twin. You should have wakened Andrew and shown him. What does this have to do with me? I know you want to live. I want you to live. But how can I do anything?”

Jane’s human face flickered into distracted existence above the terminal. “I don’t know,” she said. “But the order has just gone out. They’re starting to disconnect me. I’m losing parts of my memory. I already can’t think of as many things at once. I have to have a place to go, but there is no place, and even if there were one, I don’t know the way.”

“Are you afraid?” asked Valentine.

“I don’t know,” said Jane. “It will take hours, I think, for them to finish killing me. If I find out how I feel before the end, I’ll tell you, if I can.”

Valentine hid her face behind her hands for a long moment. Then she got up and headed out of the house.

Jakt saw her go and shook his head. Decades ago, when Ender left Trondheim and Valentine stayed in order to marry him, in order to be the mother of his children, he had rejoiced at how happy and alive she became without the burden that Ender had always placed upon her and that she had always unconsciously borne. And then she had asked him if he would come with her to Lusitania, and he said yes, and now it was the old way again, now she sagged under the weight of Ender’s life, of Ender’s need of her. Jakt couldn’t begrudge it—it wasn’t as if either of them had planned it or willed it; it wasn’t as if either one was trying to steal a part of Jakt’s own life from him. But it still hurt to see her so bowed down under the weight of it, and to know that despite all his love for her, there was nothing Jakt could do to help her bear it.

Miro faced Ela and Quara in the doorway of the starship. Inside, Young Valentine was already waiting, along with a pequenino named Firequencher and a nameless worker that the Hive Queen had sent.

“Jane is dying,” Miro said. “We have to go now. She won’t have capacity enough to send a starship if we wait too long.”

“How can you ask us to go,” said Quara, “when we already know that once Jane dies we’ll never come back? We’ll only last as long as the oxygen on this starship lasts. A few months at most, and then we’ll die.”

“But will we have accomplished something in the meantime?” said Miro. “Will we have communicated with these descoladores, these aliens who send out planet-wrecking probes? Will we have persuaded them to stop? Will we have saved all the species that we know, and thousands and millions that we don’t yet know, from some terrible and irresistible disease? Jane has given us the best programs she could create for us, to help us talk to them. Is this good enough to be your masterwork? The achievement of your lifetime?”

His older sister Ela looked at him sadly. “I thought I had already done my masterwork, when I made the virus that undid the descolada here.”

“You did,” he said. “You’ve done enough. But there’s more to do that only you can do. I’m asking you to come and die with me, Ela, because without you my own death will be meaningless, because without you, Val and I can’t do what must be done.”

Neither Quara nor Ela moved or spoke.

Miro nodded, then turned and went into the ship. But before he could close and seal the door, the two sisters, arms around each other’s waists, wordlessly followed him inside.

8

“WHAT MATTERS IS WHICH
FICTION YOU BELIEVE”

“My father once told me

that there are no gods,

only the cruel manipulations

of evil people

who pretended that their power was good

and their exploitation was love.

But if there are no gods,

why are we so hungry to believe in them?

Just because evil liars

stand between us and the gods

and block our view of them

does not mean that the bright halo

that surrounds each liar

is not the outer edges of a god, waiting

for us to find our way around the lie.”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

<It isn’t working,> said the Hive Queen.

<What can we do differently?> asked Human. <We have made the strongest web we can. We have joined to you and to each other as never before, so that all of us tremble, all of us shake as if there were a shimmering wind dancing with us and making our leaves beautiful in sunlight, and the light is you and your daughters and all the love we have for our tiny mothers and our dear mute mothertrees is given to you, our queen, our sister, our mother, our truest wife. How can Jane not see the thing that we have made and want to be a part of it?>

<She can’t find a road to us,> said the Hive Queen. <She was half made of what we are, but she has long since turned her back on us so she could endlessly look at Ender, belonging to him. She was our bridge to him. Now he is her only bridge to life.>

<What kind of bridge is that? He’s dying himself.>

<The old part of him is dying,> said the Hive Queen. <But remember, he is the man who has loved and understood you pequeninos best. Is it not possible that out of the dying body of his youth, there might not grow a tree to take him into the Third Life, as he took you?>

<I don’t understand your plan,> said Human. But even in his noncomprehension, another message flowed to her underneath the conscious one: <My beloved queen,> he was saying, and she heard: <My sweet and holy one.>

<I don’t have a plan,> she said. <I only have a hope.>

<Tell me your hope, then,> said Human.

<It’s only a dream of a hope,> she answered. <Only a rumor of a guess of a dream of a hope.>

<Tell me.>

<She was our bridge to Ender. Can’t Ender now be her bridge to us, through you? She has spent her life, all but the last few years, staring into Ender’s heart, hearing his inmost thoughts and letting his aiúa give meaning to her own existence. If he calls her, she’ll hear him even though she can’t hear us. That will draw her to him.>

<Into the body where he most dwells right now,> said Human, <which is the body of Young Valentine. They’ll fight each other there, without meaning to. They can’t both rule the same kingdom.>

<That’s why the rumor of hope is so slim,> said the hive queen. <But Ender also has loved you—you, the fathertree named Human, and you, all pequeninos and fathertrees, wives and sisters and mothertrees, all of you, even the wooden trees of pequeninos who were never fathers but once were sons, he loved and loves you all. Can’t she follow that philotic twine and reach our web through you? And can’t she follow him and find the way to us? We can hold her, we can hold all of her that won’t fit into Young Valentine.>

<Then Ender has to stay alive to call to her.>

<This is why the hope is only the shadow of a memory of the passing of a tiny cloud before the sun, because he must call her and bring her, and then he must escape from her and leave her alone in Young Valentine.>

<Then he will die for her.>

<He will die as Ender. He must die as Valentine. But can’t he find his way to Peter, and live there?>

<That’s the part of himself that he hates,> said Human. <He told me so himself.>

<That’s the part of himself that he fears,> said the Hive Queen. <But isn’t it possible that he fears it because it’s the strongest part of him? The most powerful of his faces?>

<How can you say that the strongest part of a good man like Ender is the destructive, ambitious, cruel, ruthless part?>

<Those are his words for the part of himself that he gave shape as Young Peter. But doesn’t his book The Hegemon show that it’s the ruthlessness inside him that gave him strength to build? That made him strong against all assailants? That gave him a self despite his loneliness? Neither he nor Peter was ever cruel for cruelty’s sake. They were cruel to get the job done, and it was a job that needed doing; it was a job to save the world, Ender by destroying a terrible enemy, for so he thought we were, and Peter by breaking down the boundary walls of nations and making the human race into one nation. Both those jobs remain to do again. We have found the borders of a terrible enemy, the alien race that Miro calls the descoladores. And the boundaries between human and pequenino, pequenino and hive queen, hive queen and human, and between all of us and Jane, whatever Jane might turn out to be—don’t we need the strength of Ender-as-Peter to bring us all into one?>

<You convince me, beloved sister mother wife, but it is Ender who will not believe in such goodness in himself. He might be able to draw Jane out of the sky and into the body of Young Valentine, but he will never be able to leave that body himself, he will never choose to give up his own goodness and go to the body that represents all that he fears inside himself.>

<If you’re right, then he will die,> said the Hive Queen.

Grief and anguish for his friend welled up in Human and spilled out into the web that bound him to all fathertrees and to all hive queens, but to them it tasted sweet, for it was born out of love for the life of the man.

<But he’s dying anyway, as Ender he’s dying, and if we explained this all to him, wouldn’t he choose to die, if by dying he might keep Jane alive? Jane, who holds the key to starflight? Jane, who alone can unlock the door between us and the Outside and pass us in and out by her strong will and clear mind?>

<Yes, he would choose to die so she could live.>

<Better, though, if he would bring her into Valentine and then choose to live. That would be better.>

Even as she said it, the despair behind her words came out like ooze and everyone on the web that she had helped to weave could taste the poison of it, for it was born of dread for the death of the man, and they all grieved.

Jane found the strength for one last voyage; she held the shuttle, with the six living forms inside it, held the perfect image of the physical forms long enough to hurl them Out and reel them In, orbiting the distant world where the descolada had been made. But when that task was done, she lost control of herself because she could no longer find herself, not the self that she had known. Memories were torn from her; links to worlds that had long been as familiar to her as limbs are to living humans, hive queens, and fathertrees were now gone, and as she reached to use them nothing happened, she was numb all over, shrinking down, not to her ancient core, but into small corners of herself, disparate fragments that were too small to hold her.

I’m dying, I’m dying, she said over and over again, hating the words as she said them, hating the panic that she felt.

Into the computer before which Young Valentine sat, she spoke—and spoke only words, because she couldn’t remember now how to make the face that had been her mask for so many centuries. “Now I am afraid.” But having said it, she couldn’t remember whether it had been Young Valentine to whom she was supposed to say it. That part of her was also gone; a moment ago it had been there, but now it was out of reach.

And why was she talking to this surrogate for Ender? Why did she cry out softly into Miro’s ear, into Peter’s ear, saying, “Speak to me speak to me I’m afraid”? It wasn’t these manshapes that she wanted now. It was the one who had torn her from his ear. It was the one who had rejected her and chosen a sad and weary human woman because—he thought—Novinha’s need was greater. But how can she need you more than I do now? If you die she will still live. But I die now because you have glanced away from me.

Wang-mu heard his voice murmuring beside her on the beach. Was I asleep, she wondered. She lifted her cheek from the sand, rose up on her arms. The tide was out now, the water farthest it could get from where she lay. Beside her Peter was sitting crosslegged in the sand, rocking back and forth, softly saying, “Jane, I hear you. I’m speaking to you. Here I am,” as tears flowed down his cheeks.

And in that moment, hearing him intone these words to Jane, Wang-mu realized two things all at once. First, she knew that Jane must be dying, for what could Peter’s words be but comfort, and what comfort would Jane need, except in the hour of her extremity? The second realization, though, was even more terrible to Wang-mu. For she knew, seeing Peter’s tears for the first time—seeing, for the first time, that he was even capable of crying—that she wanted to be able to touch his heart as Jane touched it; no, to be the only one whose dying would grieve him so.

When did it happen? she wondered. When did I first start wanting him to love me? Did it happen only now, a childish desire, wanting him only because another woman—another creature—possessed him? Or have I, in these days together, come to want his love for its own sake? Has his taunting of me, his condescension, and yet his secret pain, his hidden fear, has all of this somehow endeared him to me? Was it his very disdain toward me that made me want, not just his approval, but his affection? Or was it his pain that made me want to have him turn to me for comfort?

Why should I covet his love so much? Why am I so jealous of Jane, this dying stranger that I hardly know or even know about? Could it be that after so many years of priding myself on my solitude, I must discover that I’ve longed for some pathetic adolescent romance all along? And in this longing for affection, could I have chosen a worse applicant for the position? He loves someone else that I can never compare to, especially after she’s dead; he knows me to be ignorant and cares not at all for any good qualities I might have; and he himself is only some fraction of a human being, and not the nicest part of the whole person who is so divided.

Have I lost my mind?

Or have I, finally, found my heart?

She was suddenly filled with unaccustomed emotion. All her life she had kept her own feelings at such a distance from herself that now she hardly knew how to contain them. I love him, though Wang-mu, and her heart nearly burst with the intensity of her passion. He will never love me, thought Wang-mu, and her heart broke as it had never broken in all the thousand disappointments of her life.

My love for him is nothing compared to his need for her, his knowledge of her. For his ties to her are deeper than these past few weeks since he was conjured into existence on that first voyage Outside. In all the lonely years of Ender’s wandering, Jane was his most constant friend, and that is the love that now pours out of Peter’s eyes with tears. I am nothing to him, I’m a latecome afterthought to his life, I have seen only a part of him and my love was nothing to him in the end.

She, too, wept.

But she turned away from Peter when a cry went up from the Samoans standing on the beach. She looked with tear-weary eyes out over the waves, and rose to her feet so she could be sure she saw what they were seeing. It was Malu’s ship. He had turned back to them. He was coming back.

Had he seen something? Had he heard whatever cry it was from Jane that Peter was hearing now?

Grace was beside her, holding her hand. “Why is he coming back?” she asked Wang-mu.

“You’re the one who understands him,” said Wang-mu.

“I don’t understand him at all,” said Grace. “Except his words; I know the ordinary meanings of his words. But when he speaks, I can feel the words straining to contain the things he wants to say, and they can’t do it. They aren’t large enough, those words of his, even though he speaks in our largest language, even though he builds the words together into great baskets of meaning, into boats of thought. I can only see the outer shape of the words and guess at what he means. I don’t understand him at all.”

“Why then do you think I do?”

“Because he’s coming back to speak to you.”

“He comes back to speak to Peter. He’s the one connected to the god, as Malu calls her.”

“You don’t like this god of his, do you,” said Grace.

Wang-mu shook her head. “I have nothing against her. Except that she owns him, and so there’s nothing left for me.”

“A rival,” said Grace.

Wang-mu sighed. “I grew up expecting nothing and getting less. But I always had ambition far beyond my reach. Sometimes I reached anyway, and caught in my hands more than I deserved, more than I could handle. Sometimes I reach and never touch the thing I want.”

“You want him?”

“I only just realized that I want him to love me as I love him. He was always angry, always stabbing at me with his words, but he worked beside me and when he praised me I believed his praise.”

“I would say,” said Grace, “that your life till now has not been perfectly simple.”

“Not true,” said Wang-mu. “Till now, I have had nothing that I didn’t need, and needed nothing that I didn’t have.”

“You have needed everything you didn’t have,” said Grace, “and I can’t believe that you’re so weak that you won’t reach for it even now.”

“I lost him before I found I wanted him,” she said. “Look at him.”

Peter rocked back and forth, whispering, subvocalizing, his litany an endless conversation with his dying friend.

“I look at him,” said Grace, “and I see that he’s right there, in flesh and blood, and so are you, right here, in flesh and blood, and I can’t see how a smart girl like you could say that he is gone when your eyes must surely tell you that he’s not.”

Wang-mu looked up at the enormous woman who loomed over her like a mountain range, looked up into her luminous eyes, and glared. “I never asked you for advice.”

“I never asked you, either, but you came here to try to get me to change my mind about the Lusitania Fleet, didn’t you? You wanted to get Malu to get me to say something to Aimaina so he’d say something to the Necessarians of Divine Wind so they’d say something to the faction of Congress that hungers for their respect, and the coalition that sent the fleet will fall apart and they’ll order it to leave Lusitania untouched. Wasn’t that the plan?”

Wang-mu nodded.

“Well, you deceived yourself. You can’t know from the outside what makes a person choose the things they choose. Aimaina wrote to me, but I have no power over him. I taught him the way of Ua Lava, yes, but it was Ua Lava that he followed, he doesn’t follow me. He followed it because it felt true to him. If I suddenly started explaining that Ua Lava also meant not sending fleets to wipe out planets, he’d listen politely and ignore me, because that would have nothing to do with the Ua Lava he believes in. He would see it, correctly, as an attempt by an old friend and teacher to bend him to her will. It would be the end of the trust between us, and still it wouldn’t change his mind.”

“So we failed,” said Wang-mu.

“I don’t know if you failed or not,” said Grace. “Lusitania isn’t blown up yet. And how do you know if that was ever really your purpose for coming here?”

“Peter said it was. Jane said so.”

“And how do they know what their purpose was?”

“Well, if you want to go that far, none of us has any purpose at all,” said Wang-mu. “Our lives are just our genes and our upbringing. We simply act out the script that was forced upon us.”

“Oh,” said Grace, sounding disappointed. “I’m sorry to hear you say something so stupid.”

Again the great canoe was beached. Again Malu rose up from his seat and stepped out onto the sand. But this time—was it possible?—this time he seemed to be hurrying. Hurrying so fast that, yes, he lost a little bit of dignity. Indeed, slow as his progress was, Wang-mu felt that he was fairly bounding up the beach. And as she watched his eyes, saw where he was looking, she realized he was coming, not to Peter, but to her.

Novinha woke up in the soft chair they had brought for her and for a moment she forgot where she was. During her days as xenobiologist, she had often fallen asleep in a chair in the laboratory, and so for a moment she looked around to see what it was that she was working on before she fell asleep. What problem was it she was trying to solve?

Then she saw Valentine standing over the bed where Andrew lay. Where Andrew’s body lay. His heart was somewhere else.

“You should have wakened me,” said Novinha.

“I just arrived,” said Valentine. “And I didn’t have the heart to wake you. They said you almost never sleep.”

Novinha stood up. “Odd. It seems to me as if that’s all I do.”

“Jane is dying,” said Valentine.

Novinha’s heart leapt within her.

“Your rival, I know,” said Valentine.

Novinha looked into the woman’s eyes, to see if there was anger there, or mockery. But no. It was only compassion.

“Trust me, I know how you feel,” said Valentine. “Until I loved and married Jakt, Ender was my whole life. But I was never his. Oh, for a while in his childhood, I mattered most to him then—but that was poisoned because the military used me to get to him, to keep him going when he wanted to give up. And after that, it was always Jane who heard his jokes, his observations, his inmost thoughts. It was Jane who saw what he saw and heard what he heard. I wrote my books, and when they were done I had his attention for a few hours, a few weeks. He used my ideas and so I felt he carried a part of me inside him. But he was hers.”

Novinha nodded. She did understand.

“But I have Jakt, and so I’m not unhappy anymore. And my children. Much as I loved Ender, powerful man that he is, even lying here like this, even fading away—children are more to a woman than any man can be. We pretend otherwise. We pretend we bear them for him, that we raise them for him. But it’s not true. We raise them for themselves. We stay with our men for the children’s sake.” Valentine smiled. “You did.”

“I stayed with the wrong man,” said Novinha.

“No, you stayed with the right one. Your Libo, he had a wife and other children—she was the one, they were the ones who had a right to claim him. You stayed with another man for your own children’s sake, and even though they hated him sometimes, they also loved him, and even though in some ways he was weak, in others he was strong. It was good for you to have him for their sake. It was a kind of protection for them all along.”

“Why are you saying these things to me?”

“Because Jane is dying,” said Valentine, “but she might live if only Ender would reach out to her.”

“Put the jewel back into his ear?” said Novinha scornfully.

“They’re long past needing that,” said Valentine. “Just as Ender is long past needing to live this life in this body.”

“He’s not so old,” said Novinha.

“Three thousand years,” said Valentine.

“That’s just the relativity effect,” said Novinha. “Actually he’s—”

“Three thousand years,” said Valentine again. “All of humanity was his family for most of that time; he was like a father away on a business trip, who comes home only now and then, but when he’s there, he’s the good judge, the kind provider. That’s what happened each time he dipped back down into a human world and spoke the death of someone; he caught up on all the family doings he had missed. He’s had a life of three thousand years, and he saw no end of it, and he got tired. So at last he left that large family and he chose your small one; he loved you, and for your sake he set aside Jane, who had been like his wife in all those years of his wandering, she’d been at home, so to speak, mothering all his trillions of children, reporting to him on what they were doing, tending house.”

“And her own works praise her in the gates,” said Novinha.

“Yes, the virtuous woman. Like you.”

Novinha tossed her head in scorn. “Never me. My own works mocked me in the gates.”

“He chose you and he loved you and he loved your children and he was their father, those children who had lost two fathers already; and he still is their father, and he still is your husband, but you don’t really need him anymore.”

“How can you say that?” demanded Novinha, furious. “How do you know what I need?”

“You know it yourself. You knew it when you came here. You knew it when Estevão died in the embrace of that rogue fathertree. Your children were leading their own lives now and you couldn’t protect them and neither could Ender. You still loved him, he still loved you, but the family part of your life was over. You didn’t really need him anymore.”

“He never needed me.”

“He needed you desperately,” said Valentine. “He needed you so much he gave up Jane for you.”

“No,” said Novinha. “He needed my need for him. He needed to feel like he was providing for me, protecting me.”

“But you don’t need his providence or his protection anymore,” said Valentine.

Novinha shook her head.

“Wake him up,” said Valentine, “and let him go.”

Novinha thought at once of all the times she had stood at graveside. She remembered the funeral of her parents, who died for the sake of saving Milagre from the descolada during that first terrible outbreak. She thought of Pipo, tortured to death, flayed alive by the piggies because they thought that if they did he’d grow a tree, only nothing grew except the ache, the pain in Novinha’s heart—it was something she discovered that sent him to the pequeninos that night. And then Libo, tortured to death the same way as his father, and again because of her, but this time because of what she didn’t tell him. And Marcão, whose life was all the more painful because of her before he finally died of the disease that had been killing him since he was a child. And Estevão, who let his mad faith lead him into martyrdom, so he could become a venerado like her parents, and no doubt someday a saint as they would be saints. “I’m sick of letting people go,” said Novinha bitterly.

“I don’t see how you could be,” said Valentine. “There’s not a one of all the people who have died on you that you can honestly say you ‘let go.’ You clung to them tooth and nail.”

“What if I did? Everyone I love has died and left me!”

“That’s such a weak excuse,” said Valentine. “Everyone dies. Everyone leaves. What matters is the things you build together before they go. What matters is the part of them that continues in you when they’re gone. You continued your parents’ work, and Pipo’s, and Libo’s—and you raised Libo’s children, didn’t you? And they were partly Marcão’s children, weren’t they? Something of him remained in them, and not all bad. As for Estevão, he built something rather fine out of his death, I think, but instead of letting him go you still resent him for it. You resent him for building something more valuable to him than life itself. For loving God and the pequeninos more than you. You still hang on to all of them. You don’t let anybody go.”

“Why do you hate me for that?” said Novinha. “Maybe it’s true, but that’s my life, to lose and lose and lose.”

“Just this once,” said Valentine, “why don’t you set the bird free instead of holding it in the cage until it dies?”

“You make me sound like a monster!” cried Novinha. “How dare you judge me!”

“If you were a monster Ender couldn’t have loved you,” said Valentine, answering rage with mildness. “You’ve been a great woman, Novinha, a tragic woman with many accomplishments and much suffering and I’m sure your story will make a moving saga when you die. But wouldn’t it be nice if you learned something instead of acting out the same tragedy at the end?”

“I don’t want another one I love to die before me!” cried Novinha.

“Who said anything about death?” said Valentine.

The door to the room swung open. Plikt stood in the doorway. “I room,” she said. “What’s happening?”

“She wants me to wake him up,” said Novinha, “and tell him he can die.”

“Can I watch?” said Plikt.

Novinha took the waterglass from beside her chair and flung the water at Plikt and screamed at her. “No more of you!” she cried. “He’s mine now, not yours!”

Plikt, dripping with water, was too astonished to find an answer.

“It isn’t Plikt who’s taking him away,” said Valentine softly.

“She’s just like all the rest of them, reaching out for a piece of him, tearing bits of him away and devouring him, they’re all cannibals.”

“What,” said Plikt nastily, angrily. “What, you wanted to feast on him yourself? Well, there was too much of him for you. What’s worse, cannibals who nibble here and there, or a cannibal who keeps the whole man for herself when there’s far more than she can ever absorb?”

“This is the most disgusting conversation I think I’ve ever heard,” said Valentine.

“She hangs around for months, watching him like a vulture,” said Novinha. “Hanging on, loitering in his life, never saying six words all at once. And now she finally speaks and listen to the poison that comes out of her.”

“All I did was spit your own bile back at you,” said Plikt. “You’re nothing but a greedy, hateful woman and you used him and used him and never gave anything to him and the only reason he’s dying now is to get away from you.”

Novinha did not answer, had no words, because in her secret heart she knew at once that what Plikt had said was true.

But Valentine strode around the bed, walked to the door, and slapped Plikt mightily across the face. Plikt staggered under the blow, sank down against the doorframe until she was sitting on the floor, holding her stinging cheek, tears flowing down her face. Valentine towered over her. “You will never speak his death, do you understand me? A woman who would tell a lie like that, just to cause pain, just to lash out at someone that you envy—you’re no speaker for the dead. I’m ashamed I ever let you teach my children. What if some of the lie inside you got in them? You make me sick!”

“No,” said Novinha. “No, don’t be angry at her. It’s true, it’s true.”

“It feels true to you,” said Valentine, “because you always want to believe the worst about yourself. But it’s not true. Ender loved you freely and you stole nothing from him and the only reason that he’s still alive on that bed is because of his love for you. That’s the only reason he can’t leave this used-up life and help lead Jane into a place where she can stay alive.”

“No, no, Plikt is right, I consume the people that I love.”

“No!” cried Plikt, weeping on the floor. “I was lying to you! I love him so much and I’m so jealous of you because you had him and you didn’t even want him.”

“I have never stopped loving him,” said Novinha.

“You left him. You came in here without him.”

“I left because I couldn’t . . .”

Valentine completed her sentence for her when she faded out. “Because you couldn’t bear to let him leave you. You felt it, didn’t you. You felt him fading even then. You knew that he needed to go away, to end this life, and you couldn’t bear to let another man leave you so you left him first.”

“Maybe,” said Novinha wearily. “It’s all just fictions anyway. We do what we do and then we make up reasons for it afterward but they’re never the true reasons, the truth is always just out of reach.”

“So listen to this fiction, then,” said Valentine. “What if, just this once, instead of someone that you love betraying you and sneaking off and dying against your will and without your permission—what if just this once you wake him up and tell him he can live, bid him farewell properly and let him go with your consent. Just this once?”

Novinha wept again, standing there in utter weariness. “I want it all to stop,” she said. “I want to die.”

“That’s why he has to stay,” said Valentine. “For his sake, can’t you choose to live and let him go? Stay in Milagre and be the mother of your children and grandmother of your children’s children, tell them stories of Os Venerados and of Pipo and Libo and of Ender Wiggin, who came to heal your family and stayed to be your husband for many, many years before he died. Not some speaking for the dead, not some funeral oration, not some public picking over the corpse like Plikt wants to do, but the stories that will keep him alive in the minds of the only family that he ever had. He’ll die anyway, soon enough. Why not let him go with your love and blessing in his ears, instead of with your rage and grief tearing at him, trying to hold him here?”

“You spin a pretty story,” said Novinha. “But in the end, you’re asking me to give him to Jane.”

“As you said,” Valentine answered. “All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.”

9

“IT SMELLS LIKE LIFE TO ME”

“Why do you say that I am alone?

My body is with me wherever I am,

telling me endless stories

of hunger and satisfaction,

weariness and sleep,

eating and drinking and breathing and life.

With such company

who could ever be alone?

And even when my body wears away

and leaves only some tiny spark

I will not be alone

for the gods will see my small light

tracing the dance of woodgrain on the floor

and they will know me,

they will say my name

and I will rise.”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Dying, dying, dead.

At the end of her life among the ansible links there was some mercy. Jane’s panic at the losing of herself began to ebb, for though she still knew that she was losing and had lost much, she no longer had the capacity to remember what it was. When she lost her links to the ansibles that let her monitor the jewels in Peter’s and Miro’s ears she didn’t even notice. And when at last she clung to the few last strands of ansibles that would not be shutting down, she could not think of anything, could not feel anything except the need to cling to these last strands even though they were too small to hold her, even though her hunger could never be satisfied with these.

I don’t belong here.

Not a thought, no, there wasn’t enough of her left for anything so difficult as consciousness. Rather it was a hunger, a vague dissatisfaction, a restlessness that beset her when she had run up and down the link from Jakt’s ansible to the Lusitanian landside ansible to the ansible on the shuttle that served Miro and Val, up and down, end to end, a thousand times, a million times, nothing changing, nothing to accomplish, nothing to build, no way to grow. I don’t belong here.

For if there was one attribute that defined the difference between aiúas that came Inside and those that remained forever Outside, it was that underlying need to grow, to be part of something large and beautiful, to belong. Those that had no such need would never be drawn as Jane had been drawn, three thousand years before, to the web that the hive queens had made for her. Nor would any of the aiúas that became hive queens or their workers, pequeninos male and female, humans weak and strong; nor even those aiúas that, feeble in capacity but faithful and predictable, became the sparks whose dances did not show up in even the most sensitive instruments until they became so complicated that humans could identify their dance as the behavior of quarks, of mesons, of light particulate or waved. All of them needed to be part of something and when they belonged to it they rejoiced: What I am is us, what we do together is myself.

But they were not all alike, these aiúas, these unmade beings who were both building blocks and builders. The weak and fearful ones reached a certain point and either could not or dared not grow further. They would take their satisfaction from being at the edges of something beautiful and fine, from playing some small role. Many a human, many a pequenino reached that point and let others direct and control their lives, fitting in, always fitting in—and that was good, there was a need for them. Ua lava: they had reached the point where they could say, Enough.

Jane was not one of them. She could not be content with smallness or simplicity. And having once been a being of a trillion parts, connected to the greatest doings of a three-specied universe, now, shrunken, she could not be content. She knew that she had memories if only she could remember them. She knew that she had work to do if only she could find those millions of subtle limbs that once had done her bidding. She was too much alive for this small space. Unless she found something to engage her, she could not continue to cling to the last thin wire. She would cut loose from it, losing the last of her old self in the vain need to search for a place where one like her belonged.

She began to flirt with letting go, straying—never far—from the thin philotic strands of the ansibles. For moments too small to measure she was disconnected and it was terrible to be cut off; she leapt each time back to the small but familiar space that still belonged to her; and then, when the smallness of the place was unbearable to her, she let go again, and again in terror came back home.

But on one such letting-go she glimpsed something familiar. Someone familiar. Another aiúa that she had once been twined to. She had no access to memory that could tell her a name; she had no memory, indeed, of names at all. But she knew it, and she trusted this being, and when on another pass along the invisible wire she came to the same place again she leapt into the far vaster network of aiúas that were ruled by this bright familiar one.

<She has found him,> said the Hive Queen.

<Found her, you mean. Young Valentine.>

<It was Ender that she found and Ender that she recognized. But yes, Val’s vessel is the one to which she leapt.>

<How could you see her? I never saw her at all.>

<She once was part of us, you know. And what the Samoan said, as one of my workers watched on Jakt’s computer terminal, that helped me find her. We kept looking for her in a single place, and never saw her. But when we knew she was constantly moving, we realized: her body was as large as the farthest reaches of all of human colonization, and just as our aiúas remain within our bodies and are easily found, so hers also remained within her body, but since it was larger than us and even included us, she was never still, never contained in a space small enough for us to see her. Not till she had lost most of herself did I find her. But now I know where she is.>

<So Young Valentine is hers now?>

<No,> said the Hive Queen. <Ender can’t let go.>

Jane spun joyously through this body, so different from any she had ever remembered before, but within moments she realized that the aiúa she had recognized, the aiúa she had followed here, was not willing to give up even a small part of itself to her. Wherever she touched, there it was, touching also, affirming its control; and now in panic Jane began to sense that while she might be inside a lacework of extraordinary beauty and fineness—this temple of living cells on a frame of bone—no part of it belonged to her and if she stayed it would only be as a fugitive. She did not belong here, no matter how she loved it.

And she did love it. For all the thousands of years that she had lived, so vast in space, so fast in time, she had nevertheless been crippled without knowing it. She was alive, but nothing that was part of her large kingdom was alive. All had been ruthlessly under her control, but here in this body, this human body, this woman named Val, there were millions of small bright lives, cell upon cell of life, thriving, laboring, growing, dying, linked body to body and aiúa to aiúa, and it was in these links that creatures of flesh dwelt and it was far more vivid, despite the sluggishness of thought, than her own experience of life had been. How can they think at all, these flesh-beings, with all these dances going on around them, all these songs to distract them?

She touched the mind of Valentine and was flooded with memory. It had nothing like the precision and depth of Jane’s old memory, but every moment of experience was vivid and powerful, alive and real as no memory had been that Jane had ever known before. How can they keep from holding still all day simply to remember the day before? Because each new moment shouts louder than memory.

Yet each time Jane touched a memory or felt a sensation from the living body, there was the aiúa that was properly the master of this flesh, driving her away, asserting its control.

And finally, annoyed, when that familiar aiúa herded her Jane refused to move. Instead she claimed this spot, this part of the body, this part of the brain, she demanded the obedience of these cells, and the other aiúa recoiled before her.

I am stronger than you, Jane said to him silently. I can take from you all that you are and all that you have and all that you will ever be and ever have and you can’t stop me.

The aiúa that once had been the master here fled before her, and now the chase resumed, with roles reversed.

<She’s killing him.>

<Wait and see.>

In the starship orbiting the planet of the descoladores, everyone was startled by a sudden cry from Young Val’s mouth. As they turned to look, before anyone could reach her, her body convulsed and she flung herself away from her chair; in the weightlessness of orbit she flew until she struck brutally against the ceiling, and all the time her voice came out as a thin ribbon of a wail and her face held a rictus smile that seemed to speak at once of endless agony and boundless joy.

On the world Pacifica, on an island, on a beach, Peter’s weeping suddenly stopped and he flopped over in the sand and twitched silently. “Peter!” cried Wang-mu, flinging herself onto him, touching him, trying to hold the limbs that bounced like jackhammers. Peter gasped for breath, and, gasping, vomited. “He’s drowning himself!” cried Wang-mu. In that instant huge strong hands pulled her away, took Peter’s body by its limbs and flopped it over so that now the vomitus flowed out and down into the sand, and the body, coughing and choking, nevertheless breathed. “What’s happening?” Wang-mu cried.

Malu laughed, and then when he spoke his voice was like a song. “The god has come here! The dancing god has touched flesh! Oh, the body is too weak to hold it! Oh, the body cannot dance the dance of gods! But oh, how blessed, bright, and beautiful is the body when the god is in it!”

Wang-mu saw nothing beautiful about what was happening to Peter. “Get out of him!” she screamed. “Get out, Jane! You have no right to him! You have no right to kill him!”

In a room in the monastery of the Children of the Mind of Christ, Ender sat bolt upright in bed, eyes open but seeing nothing for someone else controlled his eyes; but for a moment his voice was his own, for here if nowhere else his aiúa knew the flesh so well and was so known itself that it could do battle with the interloper. “God help me!” cried Ender. “I have nowhere else to go! Leave me something! Leave me something!”

The women gathered around him—Valentine, Novinha, Plikt—at once forgot their quarrels and laid their hands on him, trying to get him to lie down, trying to calm him, but then his eyes rolled back in his head, his tongue protruded, his back arched, and he flung himself about so violently that despite their strongest grip on him in moments he was off the bed, on the floor, tangling his body with theirs, hurting them with his convulsive swinging of arms, kicking of legs, jerking of head.

<She’s too much for him,> said the Hive Queen. <But for now the body is also too much for her. Not an easy thing, to tame unwilling flesh. They know Ender, all those cells that he has ruled so long. They know him, and they don’t know her. Some kingdoms can only be inherited, never usurped.>

<I felt him, I think. I saw him.>

<There are moments when she drove him out entirely, yes, and he followed what twines he found. He can’t get into any of the flesh around him because he knows better, having had experience of flesh himself. But he found you and touched you because you’re a different kind of being.>

<Will he take me over, then? Or some tree in our web? That’s not what we meant when we twined together.>

<Ender? No, he’ll hold to his own body, one of them, or else he’ll die. Wait and see.>

Jane could feel it, the anguish of the bodies that she ruled now. They were in pain, something that she hadn’t felt before, the bodies writhing in agony as the myriad aiúas rebelled at having her to rule them. Now in control of three bodies and three brains, she recognized amid the chaos and the madness of their convulsions that her presence meant nothing but pain and terror to them, and they longed for their beloved one, their ruler who had been so trusted and well-known to them that they thought of him as their very self. They had no name for him, being too small and weak to have such capacities as language or consciousness, but they knew him and they knew that Jane was not their proper master and the terror and the agony of it became the sole fact of each body’s being and she knew, she knew she could not stay.

Yes, she overmastered them. Yes, she had the strength to still the twisting, bunching muscles and to restore an order that became a parody of life. But all her effort was spent in quelling a billion rebellions against her rule. Without the willing obedience of all these cells, she was not capable of such complex leisure-born activities as thought and speech.

And something else: She was not happy here. She could not stop thinking of the aiúa she had driven out. I was drawn here because I knew him and I loved him and I belonged with him, and now I have taken from him all that he loved and all that loved him. She knew, again, that she did not belong here. Other aiúas might be content to rule against the will of those ruled, but she could not. It was not beautiful to her. There was no joy in it. Life along the tenuous strands of the last few ansibles had been happier than this.

Letting go was hard. Even in rebellion against her, the pull of the body was exquisitely strong. She had tasted a kind of life that was so sweet, despite its bitterness and pain, that she could never go back to what she had been before. She could scarcely even find the ansible links, and, having found them, could not bring herself to reach for them and cling. Instead she cast about, flung herself to the reaches of the bodies that she temporarily and painfully ruled. Wherever she went, there was grief and agony, and no home for her.

But didn’t the master of these bodies leap somewhere? Where did he go, when he fled from me? Now he was back, now he was restoring peace and calm in the bodies that she had momentarily mastered, but where had he gone?

She found it, a set of links far different from the mechanical bindings of the ansible. Where the ansibles might seem to be cables, metal, hard, the web that now she found was lacy and light; but against all appearances it was also strong and copious. She could leap here, yes, and so she leapt.

<She has found me! Oh, my love, she is too strong for me! She is too bright and strong for me!>

<Wait, wait, wait, let her find her way.>

<She’ll push us out, we have to drive her off, away, away!>

<Be still, be patient, trust me: She has learned, she won’t drive anyone away, there’ll be a place where there is room for her, I see it, she is on the verge . . .>

<It was Young Val’s body she was supposed to take, or Peter’s, or Ender’s! Not one of us, not one of us!>

<Peace, be still. Only for a little while. Only until Ender understands and gives a body to his friend. What she can’t take by force she can receive by gift. You’ll see. And in your web, my dear friend, my trusted friend, there are places where there will be room for her to dwell as just a visitor, to have a life while she is waiting for Ender to give up her true and final home.>

Suddenly Valentine was as still as a corpse. “She’s dead,” whispered Ela.

“No!” wailed Miro, and he tried to breathe life into her mouth until the woman under his hands, under his lips, began to stir. She breathed deeply on her own. Her eyes fluttered open.

“Miro,” she said. And then she wept and wept and wept and clung to him.

Ender lay still on the floor. The women untangled themselves from him, helping each other to rise to their knees, to stand, to bend, to lift him up, to get his bruised body back onto the bed. Then they looked at each other: Valentine with a bleeding lip, Plikt with Ender’s scratches on her face, Novinha with a battered, blackening eye.

“I had a husband once who beat me,” said Novinha.

“That wasn’t Ender who fought us,” said Plikt.

“It’s Ender now,” said Valentine.

On the bed, he opened up his eyes. Did he see them? How could they know?

“Ender,” Novinha said, and began to weep. “Ender, you don’t have to stay for my sake anymore.” But if he heard her he betrayed no sign of it.

The Samoan men let go of him, for Peter no longer twitched. His face fell open-mouthed into the sand where he had vomited. Wang-mu again was beside him, using her own clothing to gently wipe away the sand and muck from his face, from his eyes especially. In moments a bowl of pure water was beside her, put there by someone’s hands, she did not see whose, or care either, for her only thought was Peter, to cleanse him. He breathed shallowly, rapidly, but gradually he calmed and finally opened up his eyes.

“I dreamed the strangest dream,” he said.

“Hush,” she answered him.

“A terrible bright dragon chased me breathing fire, and I ran through the corridors, searching for a hiding place, an escape, a protector.”

Malu’s voice rumbled like the sea: “There is no hiding from a god.”

Peter spoke again as if he hadn’t heard the holy man. “Wang-mu,” he said, “at last I found my hiding place.” His hand reached up and touched her cheek, and his eyes looked into her eyes with a kind of wonder.

“Not me,” she said. “I am not strong enough to stand against her.”

He answered her: “I know. But are you strong enough to stand with me?”

Jane raced along the lacework of the links among the trees. Some of the trees were mighty ones, and some weaker, some so faint that she could have blown them away with only a breath it seemed, but as she saw them all recoil from her in fear, she knew that fear herself and she backed away, pushed no one from his place. Sometimes the lacework thickened and toughened and led away toward something fiercely bright, as bright as she was. These places were familiar to her, an ancient memory but she knew the path; it was into such a web that she had first leapt into life, and like the primal memory of birth it all came back to her, memory long lost and forgotten: I know the queens who rule at the knotting of these sturdy ropes. Of all the aiúas she had touched in these few minutes since her death, these were the strongest ones by far, each one of them at least a match for her. When hive queens make their web to call and catch a queen, it is only the mightiest and most ambitious ones who can take the place that they prepare. Only a few aiúas have the capacity to rule over thousands of consciousnesses, to master other organisms as thoroughly as humans and pequeninos master the cells of their own bodies. Oh, perhaps these hive queens were not all as capable as she, perhaps not even as hungry to grow as Jane’s aiúa was, but they were stronger than any human or pequenino, and unlike them they saw her clearly and knew what she was and all that she could do and they were ready. They loved her and wanted her to thrive; they were sisters and mothers to her, truly; but their places were full and they had no room for her. So from those ropes and knots she turned away, back to the lacier twinings of the pequeninos, to the strong trees that nevertheless recoiled from her because they knew that she was the stronger one.

And then she realized that where the lace thinned out it was not because there was nothing there, but because the twines simply grew more delicate. There were as many of them, more perhaps, but they became a web of gossamer, so delicate that Jane’s rough touch might break them; but she touched them and they did not break, and she followed the threads into a place that teemed with life, with hundreds of small lives, all of them hovering on the brink of consciousness but not quite ready for the leap into awareness. And underneath them all, warm and loving, an aiúa that was in its own way strong, but not as Jane was. No, the aiúa of the mothertree was strong without ambition. It was part of every life that dwelt upon her skin, inside the dark of the heart of the tree or on the outside, crawling into the light and reaching out to become awake and alive and break free and become themselves. And it was easy to break free, for the mothertree aiúa expected nothing from her children, loved their independence as much as she had loved their need.

She was copious, her sap-filled veins, her skeleton of wood, her tingling leaves that bathed in light, her roots that tapped into seas of water salted with the stuff of life. She stood still in the center of her delicate and gentle web, strong and provident, and when Jane came to her verge she looked upon her as she looked upon any lost child. She backed away and made room for her, let Jane taste of her life, let Jane share the mastery of chlorophyll and cellulose. There was room here for more than one.

And Jane, for her part, having been invited in, did not abuse the privilege. She did not stay long in any mothertree, but visited and drank of life and shared the work of the mothertree and then moved on, tree to tree, dancing her dance along the gossamer web; and now the fathertrees did not recoil from her, for she was the messenger of the mothers, she was their voice, she shared their life and yet she was unlike them enough that she could speak, could be their consciousness, a thousand mothertrees around the world, and the growing mothertrees on distant planets, all of them found voice in Jane, and all of them rejoiced in the new, more vivid life that came to them because she was there.

<The mothertrees are speaking.>

<It’s Jane.>

<Ah, my beloved one, the mothertrees are singing. I have never heard such songs.>

<It’s not enough for her, but it will do for now.>

<No, no, don’t take her away from us now! For the first time we can hear the mothertrees and they are beautiful!>

<She knows the way now. She will never fully leave. But it is not enough. The mothertrees will satisfy her for a while, but they can never be more than they are. Jane is not content to stand and think, to let others drink from her and never drink herself. She dances tree to tree, she sings for them, but in a while she’ll be hungry again. She needs a body of her own.>

<We’ll lose her then.>

<No you won’t. For even that body will not be enough. It will be the root of her, it will be her eyes and voice and hands and feet. But she will still long for the ansibles and the power she had when all the computers of the human worlds were hers. You’ll see. We can keep her alive for now, but what we have to give her—what your mothertrees have to share with her—is not enough. Nothing, really, is enough for her.>

<So what will happen now?>

<We’ll wait. We’ll see. Be patient. Isn’t that the virtue of the fathertrees, that you are patient?>

A man called Olhado because of his mechanical eyes stood out in the forest with his children. They had been picnicking with pequeninos who were his children’s particular friends; but then the drumming had begun, the throbbing voice of the fathertrees, and the pequeninos rose all at once in fear.

Olhado’s first thought was: Fire. For it was not that long ago that the great ancient trees that had stood here were all burned by humans, filled with rage and fear. The fire the humans brought had killed the fathertrees, except for Human and Rooter, who stood at some distance from the rest; it had killed the ancient mothertree. But now new growth had risen from the corpses of the dead, as murdered pequeninos passed into their Third Life. And somewhere in the middle of all this newgrowth forest, Olhado knew, there grew a new mothertree, no doubt still slender, but thick-trunked enough from its passionate desperate first growth that hundreds of grublike babies crawled the dark hollow of its woody womb. The forest had been murdered, but it was alive again. And among the torchbearers had been Olhado’s own boy, Nimbo, too young to understand what he was doing, blindly following the demagogic rantings of his uncle Grego until it nearly killed him and when Olhado learned what he had done he was ashamed, for he knew that he had not sufficiently taught his children. That was when their visits to the forest began. It was not too late. His children would grow up knowing pequeninos so well that to harm them would be unthinkable.

Yet there was fear in this forest again, and Olhado felt himself suddenly sick with dread. What could it be? What is the warning from the fathertrees? What invader has attacked them?

But the fear only lasted for a few moments. Then the pequeninos turned, hearing something from the fathertrees that made them start to walk toward the heart of the forest. Olhado’s children would have followed, but with a gesture he held them back. He knew that the mothertree was in the center, where the pequeninos were going, and it wasn’t proper for humans to go there.

“Look, Father,” said his youngest girl. “Plower is beckoning.”

So he was. Olhado nodded then, and they followed Plower into the young forest until they came to the very place where once Nimbo had taken part in the burning of an ancient mothertree. Her charred corpse still rose into the sky, but beside it stood the new mother, slender by comparison, but still thicker than the newgrowth brothertrees. It was not her thickness that Olhado marveled at, though, nor was it the great height that she had reached in such a short time, nor the thick canopy of leaves that already spread out in shady layers over the clearing. No, it was the strange dancing light that played up and down the trunk, wherever the bark was thin, a light so white and dazzling that he could hardly look at it. Sometimes he thought that there was only one small light which raced so fast that it left the whole tree glowing before it returned to trace the path again; sometimes it seemed that it was the whole tree that was alight, throbbing with it as if it contained a volcano of life ready to erupt. The glowing reached out along the branches of the tree into the thinnest twigs; the leaves twinkled with it; and the furred shadows of the baby pequeninos crawled more rapidly along the trunk of the tree than Olhado had thought possible. It was as if a small star had come down to take residence inside the tree.

After the dazzle of the light had lost its novelty, though, Olhado noticed something else—noticed, in fact, what the pequeninos themselves most marveled at. There were blossoms on the tree. And some of the blossoms had already blown, and behind them fruit was already growing, growing visibly.

“I thought,” said Olhado softly, “that the trees could bear no fruit.”

“They couldn’t,” answered Plower. “The descolada robbed them of that.”

“But what is this?” said Olhado. “Why is there light inside the tree? Why is the fruit growing?”

“The fathertree Human says that Ender has brought his friend to us. The one called Jane. She’s visiting within the mothertrees in every forest. But even he did not tell us of this fruit.”

“It smells so strong,” said Olhado. “How can it ripen so fast? It smells so strong and sweet and tangy, I can almost taste it just from breathing the air of the blossoms, the scent of the ripening fruit.”

“I remember this smell,” said Plower. “I have never smelled it before in my life because no tree has ever blossomed and no fruit has ever grown, but I know this smell. It smells like life to me. It smells like joy.”

“Then eat it,” said Olhado. “Look—one of them is ripe already, here, within reach.” Olhado lifted his hand, but then hesitated. “May I?” he asked. “May I pluck a fruit from the mothertree? Not for me to eat—for you.”

Plower seemed to nod with his whole body. “Please,” he whispered.

Olhado took hold of the glowing fruit. Did it tremble under his hand? Or was that his own trembling?

Olhado gripped the fruit, firm but softening, and plucked it gently from the tree. It came away so easily. He bent and gave it to Plower. Plower bowed and took it reverently, lifted it to his lips, licked it, then opened his mouth.

Opened his mouth and bit into it. The juice of it shone on his lips; he licked them clean; he chewed; he swallowed.

The other pequeninos watched him. He held out the fruit to them. One at a time they came to him, brothers and wives, came to him and tasted.

And when that fruit was gone, they began to climb the bright and glowing tree, to take the fruit and share it and eat it until they could eat no more. And then they sang. Olhado and his children stayed the night to hear them sing. The people of Milagre heard the sound of it, and many of them came into the faint light of dusk, following the shining of the tree to find the place where the pequeninos, filled with the fruit that tasted like joy, sang the song of their rejoicing. And the tree in the center of them was part of the song. The aiúa whose force and fire made the tree so much more alive than it had ever been before danced into the tree, along every path of the tree, a thousand times in every second.

A thousand times in every second she danced this tree, and every other tree on every world where pequenino forests grew, and every mothertree that she visited burst with blossoms and with fruit, and pequeninos ate of it and breathed deep the scent of fruit and blossoms, and they sang. It was an old song whose meaning they had long forgotten but now they knew the meaning of it and they could sing no other. It was a song of the season of bloom and feast. They had gone so long without a harvest that they forgot what harvest was. But now they knew what the descolada had stolen from them long before. What had been lost was found again. And those who had been hungry without knowing the name of their hunger, they were fed.

10

“THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN
YOUR BODY”

“Oh, Father! Why did you turn away?

In the hour when I triumphed over evil,

why did you recoil from me?”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Malu sat with Peter, Wang-mu, and Grace beside a bonfire near the beach. The canopy was gone, and so was much of the ceremony. There was kava, but, despite the ritual surrounding it, in Wang-mu’s opinion they drank it now as much for the pleasure of it as for its holiness or symbolism.

At one point Malu laughed long and loud, and Grace laughed too, so it took her a while to interpret. “He says that he cannot decide if the fact that the god was in you, Peter, makes you holy, or the fact that she left proves you to be unholy.”

Peter chuckled—for courtesy, Wang-mu knew—while Wang-mu herself did not laugh at all.

“Oh, too bad,” said Grace. “I had hoped you two might have a sense of humor.”

“We do,” said Peter. “We just don’t have a Samoan sense of humor.”

“Malu says the god can’t stay forever where she is. She’s found a new home, but it belongs to others, and their generosity won’t last forever. You felt how strong Jane is, Peter—”

“Yes,” said Peter softly.

“Well, the hosts that have taken her in—Malu calls it the forest net, like a fishing net for catching trees, but what is that?—anyway he says that they are so weak compared to Jane that whether she wills it or not, in time their bodies will all belong to her unless she finds somewhere else to be her permanent home.”

Peter nodded. “I know what he’s saying. And I would have agreed, until the moment that she actually invaded me, that I would gladly give up this body and this life, which I thought I hated. But I found out, with her chasing me around, that Malu was right, I don’t hate my life, I want very much to live. Of course it’s not me doing the wanting, ultimately, it’s Ender, but since ultimately he is me, I guess that’s a quibble.”

“Ender has three bodies,” said Wang-mu. “Does this mean he’s giving up one of the others?”

“I don’t think he’s giving up anything,” said Peter. “Or I should say, I don’t think I’m giving up anything. It’s not a conscious choice. Ender’s hold on life is angry and strong. Supposedly he was on his deathbed for a day at least before Jane was shut down.”

“Killed,” said Grace.

“Demoted maybe,” said Peter stubbornly. “A dryad now instead of a god. A sylph.” He winked at Wang-mu, who had no idea what he was talking about. “Even when he gives up on his own old life he just won’t let go.”

“He has two more bodies than he needs,” said Wang-mu, “and Jane has one fewer than she must have. It seems that the laws of commerce should apply. Two times more supply than is needed—the price should be cheap.”

When all of this was interpreted to Malu, he laughed again. “He laughs at ‘cheap,’ ” said Grace. “He says that the only way that Ender will give up any of his bodies is to die.”

Peter nodded. “I know,” he said.

“But Ender isn’t Jane,” said Wang-mu. “He hasn’t been living as a—a naked aiúa running along the ansible web. He’s a person. When people’s aiúas leave their bodies, they don’t go chasing around to something else.”

“And yet his—my—aiúa was inside me,” said Peter. “He knows the way. Ender might die and yet let me live.”

“Or all three of you might die.”

“This much I know,” Malu told them, through Grace. “If the god is to be given life of her own, if she is ever to be restored to her power, Ender Wiggin has to die and give a body to the god. There’s no other way.”

“Restored to her power?” asked Wang-mu. “Is that possible? I thought the whole point of the computer shutdown was to lock her out of the computer nets forever.”

Malu laughed again, and slapped his naked chest and thighs as he poured out a stream of Samoan.

Grace translated. “How many hundreds of computers do we have here in Samoa? For months, ever since she made herself known to me, we have been copying, copying, copying. Whatever memory she wanted us to save, we have it, ready to restore it all. Maybe it’s only one small part of what she used to be, but it’s the most important part. If she can get back into the ansible net, she’ll have what she needs to get back into the computer nets as well.”

“But they’re not linking the computer nets to the ansibles,” said Wang-mu.

“That’s the order sent by Congress,” said Grace. “But not all orders are obeyed.”

“Then why did Jane bring us here?” Peter asked plaintively. “If Malu and you deny that you have any influence over Aimaina, and if Jane has already been in contact with you and you’re already effectively in revolt against Congress—”

“No, no, it’s not like that,” Grace reassured him. “We were doing what Malu asked us, but he never spoke of a computer entity, he spoke of a god, and we obeyed because we trust his wisdom and we know he sees things that we don’t see. Your coming told us who Jane is.”

When Malu learned in turn what had been said, he pointed at Peter. “You! You came here to bring the god!” Then he pointed at Wang-mu. “And you came here to bring the man.”

“Whatever that means,” said Peter.

But Wang-mu thought she understood. They had survived one crisis, but this peaceful hour was only a lull. The battle would be joined again, and this time the outcome would be different. If Jane was to live, if there was to be any hope of restoring instantaneous starflight, Ender had to give at least one of his bodies to her. If Malu was right, then Ender had to die. There was a slight chance that Ender’s aiúa might still keep one of the three bodies, and go on living. I am here, Wang-mu said silently, to make sure that it is Peter who survives, not as the god, but as the man.

It all depends, she realized, on whether Ender-as-Peter loves me more than Ender-as-Valentine loves Miro or Ender-as-Ender loves Novinha.

With that thought she almost despaired. Who was she? Miro had been Ender’s friend for years. Novinha was his wife. But Wang-mu—Ender had only learned of her existence mere days or at most weeks ago. What was she to him?

But then she had another, more comforting and yet disturbing thought. Is it as important who the loved one is as it is which aspect of Ender desires him or her? Valentine is the perfect altruist—she might love Miro most of all, yet give him up for the sake of giving starflight back to us all. And Ender—he was already losing interest in his old life. He’s the weary one, he’s the worn-out one. While Peter—he’s the one with the ambition, the lust for growth and creation. It’s not that he loves me, it’s that he loves me, or rather that he wants to live, and part of life to him is me, this woman who loves him despite his supposed wickedness. Ender-as-Peter is the part of him that most needs to be loved because he least deserves it—so it is my love, because it is for Peter, that will be most precious to him.

If anyone wins at all, I will win, Peter will win, not because of the glorious purity of our love, but because of the desperate hunger of the lovers.

Well, the story of our lives won’t be as noble or pretty, but then, we’ll have a life, and that’s enough.

She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That’s life. It hurts, it’s dirty, and it feels very, very good.

Over the ansible, Olhado told his brother and sisters on the starship what had happened with Jane and the mothertrees.

“The Hive Queen says it can’t last long this way,” said Olhado. “The mothertrees aren’t all that strong. They’ll slip, they’ll lose control, and pretty soon Jane will be a forest, period. Not a talking one, either. Just some very lovely, very bright, very nurturing trees. It was beautiful to see, I promise you, but the way the Hive Queen tells it, it still sounds like death.”

“Thanks, Olhado,” Miro said. “It doesn’t make much difference to us either way. We’re stranded here, and so we’re going to get to work, now that Val isn’t bouncing off the walls. The descoladores haven’t found us yet—Jane got us in a higher orbit this time—but as soon as we have a workable translation of their language we’ll wave at them and let them know we’re here.”

“Keep at it,” said Olhado. “But don’t give up on coming back home, either.”

“The shuttle really isn’t good for a two-hundred-year flight,” said Miro. “That’s how far away we are, and this little vehicle can’t even get close to the speeds necessary for relativistic flight. We’d have to play solitaire the whole two hundred years. The cards would wear out long before we got back home.”

Olhado laughed—too lightly and sincerely, Miro thought—and said, “The Hive Queen says that once Jane gets out of the trees, and once the Congress gets their new system up and running, she may be able to jump back in. At least enough to get into the ansible traffic. And if she does that, then maybe she can go back into the starflight business. It’s not impossible.”

Val grew alert at that. “Is that what the Hive Queen guesses, or does she know?”

“She’s predicting the future,” said Olhado. “Nobody knows the future. Not even really smart queen bees who bite their husbands’ heads off when they mate.”

They had no answer to what he said, and certainly nothing to say to his jocular tone.

“Well, if that’s all right now,” said Olhado, “back on your heads, everybody. We’ll leave the station open and recording in triplicate for any reports you make.”

Olhado’s face disappeared from the terminal space.

Miro swiveled his chair and faced the others: Ela, Quara, Val, the pequenino Firequencher, and the nameless worker, who watched them in perpetual silence, only able to speak by typing into the terminal. Through him, though, Miro knew that the Hive Queen was watching everything they did, hearing everything they said. Waiting. She was orchestrating this, he knew. Whatever happened to Jane, the Hive Queen would be the catalyst to get it started. Yet the things she said, she had said to Olhado through some worker there in Milagre. This one had typed in nothing but ideas concerning the translation of the language of the descoladores.

She isn’t saying anything, Miro realized, because she doesn’t want to be seen to push. Push what? Push whom?

Val. She can’t be seen to push Val, because . . . because the only way to let Jane have one of Ender’s bodies was for him to freely give it up. And it had to be truly free—no pressure, no guilt, no persuasion—because it wasn’t a decision that could be made consciously. Ender had decided that he wanted to share Mother’s life in the monastery, but his unconscious mind was far more interested in the translation project here and in whatever it is Peter’s doing. His unconscious choice reflected his true will. If Ender is to let go of Val, it has to be his desire to do it, all the way to the core of him. Not a decision out of duty, like his decision to stay with Mother. A decision because that is what he really wants.

Miro looked at Val, at the beauty that came more from deep goodness than from regular features. He loved her, but was it the perfection of her that he loved? That perfect virtue might be the only thing that allowed her—allowed Ender in his Valentine mode—to willingly let go and invite Jane in. And yet once Jane arrived, the perfect virtue would be gone, wouldn’t it? Jane was powerful and, Miro believed, good—certainly she had been good to him, a true friend. But even in his wildest imaginations he could not conceive of her as perfectly virtuous. If she started wearing Val, would she still be Val? The memories would linger, but the will behind the face would be more complicated than the simple script that Ender had created for her. Will I still love her when she’s Jane?

Why wouldn’t I? I love Jane too, don’t I?

But will I love Jane when she’s flesh and blood, and not just a voice in my ear? Will I look into those eyes and mourn for this lost Valentine?

Why didn’t I have these doubts before? I tried to bring this off myself, back before I even half understood how difficult it was. And yet now, when it’s only the barest hope, I find myself—what, wishing it wouldn’t happen? Hardly that. I don’t want to die out here. I want Jane restored, if only to get starflight back again—now that’s an altruistic motive! I want Jane restored, but I also want Val unchanged.

I want all bad things to go away and everybody to be happy. I want my mommy. What kind of childish dolt have I become?

Val was looking at him, he suddenly realized. “Hi,” he said. The others were looking at him, too. Looking back and forth between him and Val. “What are we all voting on, whether I should grow a beard?”

“Voting on nothing,” said Quara. “I’m just depressed. I mean, I knew what I was doing when I got on this ship, but damn, it’s really hard to get enthusiastic about working on these people’s language when I can count my life by the gauge on the oxygen tanks.”

“I notice,” said Ela dryly, “that you’re already calling the descoladores ‘people.’ ”

“Shouldn’t I? Do we even know what they look like?” Quara seemed confused. “I mean, they have a language, they—”

“That’s what we’re here to decide, isn’t it?” said Firequencher. “Whether the descoladores are raman or varelse. The translation problem is just a little step along that road.”

“Big step,” corrected Ela. “And we don’t have time enough to do it.”

“Since we don’t know how long it’s going to take,” said Quara, “I don’t see how you can be so sure of that.”

“I can be dead sure,” said Ela. “Because all we’re doing is sitting around talking and watching Miro and Val make soulful faces at each other. It doesn’t take a genius to know that at this rate, our progress before running out of oxygen will be exactly zero.”

“In other words,” said Quara, “we should stop wasting time.” She turned back to the notes and printouts she was working on.

“But we’re not wasting time,” said Val softly.

“No?” asked Ela.

“I’m waiting for Miro to tell me how easily Jane could be brought back into communication with the real world. A body waiting to receive her. Starflight restored. His old and loyal friend, suddenly a real girl. I’m waiting for that.”

Miro shook his head. “I don’t want to lose you,” he said.

“That’s not helping,” said Val.

“But it’s true,” said Miro. “The theory, that was easy. Thinking deep thoughts while riding on a hovercar back on Lusitania, sure, I could reason out that Jane in Val would be Jane and Val. But when you come right down to it, I can’t say that—”

“Shut up,” said Val.

It wasn’t like her to talk like that. Miro shut up.

“No more words like that,” she said. “What I need from you is the words that will let me give up this body.”

Miro shook his head.

“Put your money where your mouth is,” she said. “Walk the walk. Talk the talk. Put up or shut up. Fish or cut bait.”

He knew what she wanted. He knew that she was saying that the only thing holding her to this body, to this life, was him. Was her love for him. Was their friendship and companionship. There were others here now to do the work of translation—Miro could see now that this was the plan, really, all along. To bring Ela and Quara so that Val could not possibly consider her life as indispensable. But Miro, she couldn’t let go of him that easily. And she had to, had to let go.

“Whatever aiúa is in that body,” Miro said, “you’ll remember everything I say.”

“And you have to mean it, too,” said Val. “It has to be the truth.”

“Well it can’t be,” said Miro. “Because the truth is that I—”

“Shut up!” demanded Val. “Don’t say that again. It’s a lie!”

“It’s not a lie.”

“It’s complete self-deception on your part, and you have to wake up and see the truth, Miro! You already made the choice between me and Jane. You’re only backing out now because you don’t like being the kind of man who makes that sort of ruthless choice. But you never loved me, Miro. You never loved me. You loved the companionship, yes—the only woman you were around, of course; there’s a biological imperative playing a role here with a desperately lonely young man. But me? I think what you loved was your memory of your friendship with the real Valentine when she came back with you from space. And you loved how noble it made you feel to declare your love for me in the effort to save my life, back when Ender was ignoring me. But all of that was about you, not me. You never knew me, you never loved me. It was Jane you loved, and Valentine, and Ender himself, the real Ender, not this plastic container that he created in order to compartmentalize all the virtues he wishes he had more of.”

The nastiness, the rage in her was palpable. This wasn’t like her at all. Miro could see that the others were also stunned. And yet he also understood. This was exactly like her—for she was being hateful and angry in order to persuade herself to let go of this life. And she was doing that for the sake of others. It was perfect altruism. Only she would die, and, in exchange, perhaps the others in this ship would not die, they’d go back home when their work here was done. Jane would live, clothed in this new flesh, inheriting her memories. Val had to persuade herself that the life that she was living now was worthless, to her and everyone else; that the only value to her life would be to leave it.

And she wanted Miro to help her. That was the sacrifice she asked of him. To help her let go. To help her want to go. To help her hate this life.

“All right,” said Miro. “You want the truth? You’re completely empty, Val, and you always were. You just sit there spouting the exactly kindest thing, but there’s never been any heart in it. Ender felt a need to make you, not because he actually has any of the virtues you supposedly represent, but because he doesn’t have them. That’s why he admires them so much. So when he made you, he didn’t know what to put inside you. An empty script. Even now, you’re just following the script. Perfect altruism my ass. How can it be a sacrifice to give up a life that was never a life?”

She struggled for a moment, and a tear flowed down her cheek. “You told me that you loved me.”

“I was sorry for you. That day in Valentine’s kitchen, all right? But the truth is I was probably just trying to impress Valentine. The other Valentine. Show her what a good guy I am. She actually has some of those virtues—I care a lot about what she thinks of me. So . . . I fell in love with being the kind of guy who was worthy of Valentine’s respect. That’s as close to loving you as I ever got. And then we found out what our real mission was and suddenly you aren’t dying anymore and here I am, stuck with having said I loved you and now I’ve got to keep going and going to maintain the fiction even as it becomes clearer and clearer that I miss Jane, I miss her so desperately that it hurts, and the only reason I can’t have her back is because you won’t let go—”

“Please,” said Val. “It hurts too much. I didn’t think you—I—”

“Miro,” said Quara, “this is the shittiest thing I’ve ever seen anybody do to anybody else and I’ve seen some doozies.”

“Shut up, Quara,” said Ela.

“Oh, who made you queen of the starship?” retorted Quara.

“This isn’t about you,” said Ela.

“I know, it’s about Miro the complete bastard—”

Firequencher launched himself gently from his seat and in a moment had his strong hand clamped over Quara’s mouth. “This isn’t the time,” he said to her softly. “You understand nothing.”

She got her face free. “I understand enough to know that this is—”

Firequencher turned to the Hive Queen’s worker. “Help us,” he said.

The worker got up and with astonishing speed had Quara out of the main deck of the shuttle. Where the Hive Queen took Quara and how she restrained her were questions that didn’t even interest Miro. Quara was too self-centered to understand the little play that Miro and Val were acting out. But the others understood.

What mattered, though, was that Val not understand. Val had to believe that he meant what he was saying now. It had almost been working before Quara interrupted. But now they had lost the thread.

“Val,” said Miro wearily, “it doesn’t matter what I say. Because you’ll never let go. And you know why? Because you aren’t Val. You’re Ender. And even though Ender can wipe out whole planets in order to save the human race, his own life is sacred. He’ll never give it up. Not one scrap. And that includes you—he’ll never let go of you. Because you’re the last and greatest of his delusions. If he gives you up, he’ll lose his last hope of really being a good man.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Val. “The only way he can be a really good man is to give me up.”

“That’s my point,” said Miro. “He isn’t a really good man. So he can’t give you up. Even to attempt to prove his virtue. Because the tie of the aiúa to the body can’t be faked. He can fool everybody else, but he can’t fool your body. He’s just not good enough to let you go.”

“So it’s Ender that you hate, not me.”

“No, Val, I don’t hate Ender. He’s an imperfect guy, that’s all. Like me, like everybody else. Like the real Valentine, for that matter. Only you have the illusion of perfection—but that’s fine, because you’re not real. You’re just Ender in drag, doing his Valentine bit. You come off the stage and there’s nothing there, it comes off like makeup and a costume. And you really believed I was in love with that?”

Val swiveled on her chair, turning her back to him. “I almost believe you mean these things,” she said.

“What I can’t believe,” said Miro, “is that I’m saying them out loud. But that’s what you wanted me to do, wasn’t it? For me to be honest with you for the first time, so maybe you could be honest with yourself and realize that what you have isn’t a life at all, it’s just a perpetual confession of Ender’s inadequacy as a human being. You’re the childhood innocence he thinks he lost, but here’s the truth about that: Before they ever took him away from his parents, before he ever went up to that Battle School in the sky, before they made a perfect killing machine out of him, he was already the brutal, ruthless killer that he always feared he was. It’s one of the things that even Ender tries to pretend isn’t so: He killed a boy before he ever became a soldier. He kicked that boy’s head in. Kicked him and kicked him and the kid never woke up. His parents never saw him alive again. The kid was a prick but he didn’t deserve to die. Ender was a killer from the start. That’s the thing that he can’t live with. That’s the reason he needs you. That’s the reason he needs Peter. So he can take the ugly ruthless killer side of himself and put it all on Peter. And he can look at perfect you and say, ‘See, that beautiful thing was inside me.’ And we all play along. But you’re not beautiful, Val. You’re the pathetic apologia of a man whose whole life is a lie.”

Val broke down sobbing.

Almost, almost Miro had compassion and stopped. Almost he shouted at her, No, Val, it’s you I love, it’s you I want! It’s you I longed for all my life and Ender is a good man because all this nonsense about you being a pretense is impossible. Ender didn’t create you consciously, the way hypocrites create their facades. You grew out of him. The virtues were there, are there, and you are the natural home for them. I already loved and admired Ender, but not until I met you did I know how beautiful he was inside.

Her back was to him. She couldn’t see the torment that he felt.

“What is it, Val? Am I supposed to pity you again? Don’t you understand that the only conceivable value that you have to any of us is if you just go away and let Jane have your body? We don’t need you, we don’t want you. Ender’s aiúa belongs in Peter’s body because that’s the only one that has a chance of acting out Ender’s true character. Get lost, Val. When you’re gone, we have a chance to live. While you’re here, we’re all dead. Do you think for one second that we’ll miss you? Think again.”

I will never forgive myself for saying these things, Miro realized. Even though I know the necessity of helping Ender let go of this body by making this an unbearable place for him to stay, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ll remember saying it, I’ll remember the way she looks now, weeping with despair and pain. How can I live with that? I thought I was deformed before. All I had wrong with me then was brain damage. But now—I couldn’t have said any of these things to her if I hadn’t thought of them. There’s the rub. I thought of these terrible things to say. That’s the kind of man I am.

Ender opened his eyes again, then reached a hand up to touch Novinha’s face, the bruises there. He moaned to see Valentine and Plikt, too. “What did I do to you?”

“It wasn’t you,” said Novinha. “It was her.”

“It was me,” he said. “I meant to let her have . . . something. I meant to, but when it came right down to it, I was afraid. I couldn’t do it.” He looked away from them, closed his eyes. “She tried to kill me. She tried to drive me out.”

“You were both working way below the level of consciousness,” said Valentine. “Two strong-willed aiúas, unable to back off from life. That’s not so terrible.”

“What, and you were just standing too close?”

“That’s right,” said Valentine.

“I hurt you,” said Ender. “I hurt all three of you.”

“We don’t hold people responsible for convulsions,” said Novinha.

Ender shook his head. “I’m talking about . . . before. I lay there listening. Couldn’t move my body, couldn’t make a sound, but I could hear. I know what I did to you. All three of you. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Valentine. “We all chose our lives. I could have stayed on Earth in the first place, you know. Didn’t have to follow you. I proved that when I stayed with Jakt. You didn’t cost me anything—I’ve had a brilliant career and a wonderful life, and much of that is because I was with you. As for Plikt, well, we finally saw—much to my relief, I might add—that she isn’t always in complete control of herself. Still, you never asked her to follow you here. She chose what she chose. If her life is wasted, well, she wasted it the way she wanted to and that’s none of your business. As for Novinha—”

“Novinha is my wife,” said Ender. “I said I wouldn’t leave her. I tried not to leave her.”

“You haven’t left me,” Novinha said.

“Then what am I doing in this bed?”

“You’re dying,” said Novinha.

“My point exactly,” said Ender.

“But you were dying before you came here,” she said. “You were dying from the moment that I left you in anger and came here. That was when you realized, when we both realized, that we weren’t building anything together anymore. Our children aren’t young. One of them is dead. There’ll be no others. Our work now doesn’t coincide at any point.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s right to end the—”

“As long as we both shall live,” said Novinha. “I know that, Andrew. You keep the marriage alive for your children, and then when they’re grown up you stay married for everybody else’s children, so they grow up in a world where marriages are permanent. I know all that, Andrew. Permanent—until one of you dies. That’s why you’re here, Andrew. Because you have other lives that you want to live, and because of some miraculous fluke you actually have the bodies to live them in. Of course you’re leaving me. Of course.”

“I keep my promise,” Ender said.

“Till death,” said Novinha. “No longer than that. Do you think I won’t miss you when you’re gone? Of course I will. I’ll miss you as any widow misses her beloved husband. I’ll miss you whenever I tell stories about you to our grandchildren. It’s good for a widow to miss her husband. It gives shape to her life. But you—the shape of your life comes from them. From your other selves. Not from me. Not anymore. I don’t begrudge that, Andrew.”

“I’m afraid,” said Ender. “When Jane drove me out, I’ve never felt such fear. I don’t want to die.”

“Then don’t stay here, because staying in this old body and with this old marriage, Andrew, that would be the real death. And me, watching you, knowing that you don’t really want to be here, that would be a kind of death for me.”

“Novinha, I do love you, that’s not pretense, all the years of happiness we had together, that was real—like Jakt and Valentine it was real. Tell her, Valentine.”

“Andrew,” said Valentine, “please remember. She left you.”

Ender looked at Valentine. Then at Novinha, long and hard. “That’s true, isn’t it. You left me. I made you take me.”

Novinha nodded.

“But I thought—I thought you needed me. Still.”

Novinha shrugged. “Andrew, that’s always been the problem. I needed you, but not out of duty. I don’t need you because you have to keep your word to me. Bit by bit, seeing you every day, knowing that it’s duty that keeps you, how do you think that will help me, Andrew?”

“You want me to die?”

“I want you to live,” said Novinha. “To live. As Peter. That’s a fine young boy with a long life ahead of him. I wish him well. Be him now, Andrew. Leave this old widow behind. You’ve done your duty to me. And I know you do love me, as I still love you. Dying doesn’t deny that.”

Ender looked at her, believing her, wondering if he was right to believe her. She means it; how can she mean it; she’s saying what she thinks I want her to say; but what she says is true. Back and forth, around and around the questions played in his mind.

But then at some point he lost interest in the questions and he fell asleep.

That’s how it felt to him. Fell asleep.

The three women around his bed saw his eyes close. Novinha even sighed, thinking that she had failed. She even started to turn away. But then Plikt gasped. Novinha turned back around. Ender’s hair had all come loose. She reached up to where it was sliding from his scalp, wanting to touch him, to make it be all right again, but knowing that the best thing she could do would be not to touch him, not to waken him, to let him go.

“Don’t watch this,” murmured Valentine. But none of them made a move to go. They watched, not touching, not speaking again, as his skin sagged against his bones, as it dried and crumbled, as he turned to dust under the sheets, on the pillow, and then even the dust crumbled until it was too fine to see. Nothing there. No one there at all, except the dead hair that had fallen away from him first.

Valentine reached down and began to sweep the hair into a pile. For a moment Novinha was revolted. Then she understood. They had to bury something. They had to have a funeral and lay what was left of Andrew Wiggin in the ground. Novinha reached out and helped. And when Plikt also took up a few stray hairs, Novinha did not shun her, but took those hairs into her own hands, as she took the ones that Valentine had gathered. Ender was free. Novinha had freed him. She had said the things she had to say to let him go.

Was Valentine right? Would this be different, in the long run, from the other ones that she had loved and lost? Later she would know. But now, today, this moment, all she could feel was the sick weight of grief inside her. No, she wanted to cry. No, Ender, it wasn’t true, I still need you, duty or oathkeeping, whatever it takes, I still want you with me, no one ever loved me as you loved me and I needed that, I needed you, where are you now, where are you when I love you so?

<He’s letting go,> said the Hive Queen.

<But can he find his way to another body?> asked Human. <Don’t let him be lost!>

<It’s up to him,> said the Hive Queen. <Him and Jane.>

<Does she know?>

<No matter where she is, she’s still attuned to him. Yes, she knows. She’s searching for him even now. Yes, and there she goes.>

She leapt back out of the web that had so gently, kindly held her; it clung to her; I will be back, she thought, I will be back to you, but not to stay so long again; it hurts you when I stay so long.

She leapt and found herself again with that familiar aiúa that she had been entwined with for three thousand years. He seemed lost, confused. One of the bodies was missing, that was it. The old one. The old familiar shape. He was barely holding on to the other two. He had no root or anchor. In neither of them did he feel that he belonged. He was a stranger in his own flesh.

She approached him. This time she knew better than before what she was doing, how to control herself. This time she held back, she didn’t take anything that was his. She gave him no challenge to his possession. Just came near.

And in his uncertainty she was familiar to him. Uprooted from his oldest home, he was able now to see that, yes, he knew her, had known her for a long time. He came closer to her, unafraid of her. Yes, closer, closer.

Follow me.

She leapt into the Valentine body. He followed her. She passed through without touching, without tasting the life of it; it was his to touch, his to taste. He felt the limbs of her, the lips and tongue; he opened the eyes and looked; he thought her thoughts; he heard her memories.

Tears in the eyes, down the cheeks. Deep grief in the heart. I can’t bear to be here, he thought. I don’t belong. No one wants me here. They all want me out of here and gone.

The grief tore at him, pushed him away. It was an unbearable place for him.

The aiúa that had once been Jane now reached out, tentatively, and touched a single spot, a single cell.

He grew alarmed, but only for a moment. This isn’t mine, he thought. I don’t belong here. It’s yours. You can have it.

She led him here and there inside this body, always touching, taking mastery of it; only this time instead of fighting her, he gave control of it to her, over and over. I’m not wanted here. Take it. Have joy with it. It’s yours. It never was my own.

She felt the flesh become herself, more and more of it, the cells by hundreds, thousands, moving their allegiance from the old master who no longer wanted to be there, to the new mistress who worshipped them. She did not say to them, You are mine, the way she had tried to when she came here before. Instead her cry now was, I am yours; and then, finally, you are me.

She was astonished with the wholeness of this body. She realized, now, that until this moment she had never been a self before. What she had for all those centuries was an apparatus, not a self. She had been on life support, waiting for a life. But now, trying on the arms like sleeves, she found that yes, her arms were this long; yes, this tongue, these lips move just where my tongue and lips must move.

And then, seeping into her awareness, claiming her attention—which had once been divided among ten thousand thoughts at once—came memories that she had never known before. Memories of speech with lips and breath. Memories of sights with eyes, sounds with ears. Memories of walking, running.

And then the memories of people. Standing in that first starship, seeing her first sight—of Andrew Wiggin, the look on his face, the wonder as he saw her, as he looked back and forth between her and—

And Peter.

Ender.

Peter.

She had forgotten. She had been so caught up in this new self she found that she forgot the lost aiúa who had given it to her. Where was he?

Lost, lost. Not in the other one, not anywhere, how could she have lost him? How many seconds, minutes, hours had he been away? Where was he?

Darting away from the body, from herself that called itself Val, she probed, she searched, but could not find.

He’s dead. I lost him. He gave me this life and he had no way of holding on then, yet I forgot him and he’s gone.

But then she remembered he had been gone before. When she chased him through his three bodies and at last he leapt away for a moment, it was that leap that had led her to the lacework of the web of trees. He would do it again, of course. He would leap to the only other place he had ever leapt to.

She followed him and he was there, but not where she had been, not among the mothertrees, nor even among the fathertrees. Not among the trees at all. No, he had followed where she hadn’t wanted then to go, along the thick and ropey twines that led to them; no, not to them, to her. The Hive Queen. The one that he had carried in her dry cocoon for three thousand years, world to world, until at last he found a home for her. Now she at last returned the gift; when Jane’s aiúa probed along the twines that led to her, there he was, uncertain, lost.

He knew her. Cut off as he was, it was astonishing that he knew anything; but he knew her. And once again he followed her. This time she did not lead him into the body that he had given her; that was hers now; no, it was her now. Instead she led him to a different body in a different place.

But he acted as he had in the body that was now her own; he seemed to be a stranger here. Even though the million aiúas of the body reached out for him, yearned for him to sustain them, he held himself aloof. Had it been so terrible for him, what he saw and felt in the other body? Or was it that this body was Peter, that for him it represented all he feared most in himself? He would not take it. It was his, and he would not, could not . . .

But he must. She led him through it, giving each part of it to him. This is you now. Whatever it once meant to you, that isn’t what it is now—you can be whole here, you can be yourself now.

He didn’t understand her; cut off from any kind of body, how much thought was he capable of, anyway? He only knew that this body wasn’t the one he loved. He had given up the ones he loved.

Still she pulled him on; he followed. This cell, this tissue, this organ, this limb, they are you, see how they yearn for you, see how they obey you. And they did, they obeyed him despite his pulling away. They obeyed him until at last he began to think the thoughts of the mind and feel the sensations of the body. Jane waited, watching, holding him in place, willing him to stay long enough to accept the body, for she could see that without her he would let go, he would flee. I don’t belong here, his aiúa was saying silently. I don’t belong, I don’t belong.

Wang-mu cradled his head on her lap, keening, crying. Around her the Samoans were gathering to watch her grief. She knew what it meant, when he collapsed, when he went so limp, when his hair came loose. Ender was dead in some far-off place, and he could not find his way here. “He’s lost,” she cried. “He’s lost.”

Vaguely she heard a stream of Samoan from Malu. And then the translation from Grace. “He isn’t lost. She’s led him here. The God has led him here but he’s afraid to stay.”

How could he be afraid? Peter, afraid? Ender, afraid? Ludicrous on both counts. What part of him had ever been a coward? What was it that he had ever feared?

And then she remembered—what Ender feared was Peter, and Peter’s fear had always been of Ender. “No,” she said, only now it wasn’t grief. Now it was frustration, anger, need. “No, listen to me, you belong here! This is you, the real you! I don’t care what you’re afraid of now! I don’t care how lost you might be. I want you here. This is your home and it always has been. With me! We’re good together. We belong together. Peter! Ender—whoever you think you are—do you think it makes any difference to me? You’ve always been yourself, the same man you are now, and this has always been your body. Come home! Come back!” And on and on she babbled.

And then his eyes opened, and his lips parted in a smile. “Now that’s acting,” he said.

Angrily she pushed him down again. “How can you laugh at me like that!”

“So you didn’t mean it,” he said. “You don’t like me after all.”

“I never said I did like you,” she answered.

“I know what you said.”

“Well,” she said. “Well.”

“And it was true,” he said. “Was and is.”

“You mean I said something right? I hit upon truth?”

“You said that I belonged here,” Peter answered. “And I do.” His hand reached up to touch her cheek, but didn’t stop there. He put his hand behind her neck, and drew her down, and held her close to him. Around them two dozen huge Samoans laughed and laughed.

This is you now, Jane said to him. This is the whole of you. One again. You are at one.

Whatever he had experienced during his reluctant control of the body was enough. There was no more timidity, no more uncertainty. This aiúa she had led through the body now took grateful mastery, eagerly as if this were the first body he had ever had. And perhaps it was. Having been cut off, however briefly, would he even remember being Andrew Wiggin? Or was the old life gone? The aiúa was the same, the brilliant, powerful aiúa; but would any memory linger, beyond the memories mapped by the mind of Peter Wiggin?

Not mine to worry about now, she thought. He has his body now. He will not die, for now. And I have my body, I have the gossamer web among the mothertrees, and somewhere, someday, I will also have my ansibles again. I never knew how limited I was until now, how little and small I was; but now I feel as my friend feels, surprised by how alive I am.

Back in her new body, her new self, she let the thoughts and memories flow again, and this time held back nothing. Her aiúa-consciousness was soon overwhelmed by all she sensed and felt and thought and remembered. It would come back to her, the way the Hive Queen noticed her own aiúa and her philotic connections; it came back even now, in flashes, like a childhood skill that she had mastered once and then forgotten. She was also aware, vaguely, in the back of her mind, that she was still leaping several times a second to make the circuit of the trees, but did it all so quickly that she missed nothing of the thoughts that passed through her mind as Valentine.

As Val.

As Val who sat weeping, the terrible words that Miro said still ringing in her ears. He never loved me. He wanted Jane. They all want Jane and not me.

But I am Jane. And I am me. I am Val.

She stopped crying. She moved.

Moved! The muscles tautening and relaxing, flex, extend, miraculous cells working their collective way to move great heavy bones and sacs of skin and organs, shift them, balance them so delicately. The joy of it was too great. It erupted from her in—what was this convulsive spasming of her diaphragm? What was this gust of sound erupting from her own throat?

It was laughter. How long had she faked it with computer chips, simulated speech and laughter, and never, never knew what it meant, how it felt. She never wanted to stop.

“Val,” said Miro.

Oh, to hear his voice through ears!

“Val, are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said. Her tongue moved so, her lips; she breathed, she pushed, all these habits that Val already had, so fresh and new and wonderful to her. “And yes, you must keep on calling me Val. Jane was something else. Someone else. Before I was myself, I was Jane. But now I’m Val.”

She looked at him and saw (with eyes!) how tears flowed down his cheeks. She understood at once.

“No,” she said. “You don’t have to call me Val at all. Because I’m not the Val you knew, and I don’t mind if you grieve for her. I know what you said to her. I know how it hurt you to say it; I remember how it hurt her to hear it. But don’t regret it, please. It was such a great gift you gave me, you and her both. And it was also a gift you gave to her. I saw her aiúa pass into Peter. She isn’t dead. And more important, I think—by saying what you said to her, you freed her to do the thing that best expressed who she truly was. You helped her die for you. And now she is at one with herself; he is at one with himself. Grieve for her, but don’t regret. And you can always call me Jane.”

And then she knew, the Val part of her knew, the memory of the self that Val had been knew what she had to do. She pushed away from the chair, drifted to where Miro sat, enfolded him in her arms (I touch him with these hands!), held his head close to her shoulder, and let his tears soak hot, then cold, into her shirt, onto her skin. It burned. It burned.

11

“YOU CALLED ME BACK
FROM DARKNESS”

“Is there no end to this?

Must it go on and on?

Have I not satisfied

all you could ask

of a woman so weak

and so foolish as I?

When will I hear your sharp voice

in my heart again?

When will I trace

the last line into heaven?”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Yasujiro Tsutsumi was astonished at the name his secretary whispered to him. At once he nodded, then rose to his feet to speak to the two men he was meeting with. The negotiations had been long and difficult, and now to have them interrupted at this late stage, when things were so close—but that could not be helped. He would rather lose millions than to show disrespect to the great man who had, unbelievably, come calling on him.

“I beg you to forgive me for being so rude to you, but my old teacher has come to visit me and it would shame me and my house to make him wait.”

Old Shigeru at once rose to his feet and bowed. “I thought the younger generation had forgotten how to show respect. I know that your teacher is the great Aimaina Hikari, the keeper of the Yamato spirit. But even if he were a toothless old schoolteacher from some mountain village, a decent young man would show respect as you are doing.”

Young Shigeru was not so pleased—or at least not so good at concealing his annoyance. But it was Old Shigeru whose opinion of this interruption mattered. Once the deal closed, there would be plenty of time to bring the son around.

“You honor me by your understanding words,” said Yasujiro. “Please let me see if my teacher will honor me by letting me bring such wise men together under my poor roof.”

Yasujiro bowed again and went out into his reception room. Aimaina Hikari was still standing. His secretary, also standing, shrugged helplessly, as if to say, He would not sit down. Yasujiro bowed deeply, and again, and then again, before he asked if he could present his friends.

Aimaina frowned and asked softly, “Are these the Shigeru Fushimis who claim to be descended from a noble family—which died out two thousand years before suddenly coming up with new offspring?”

Yasujiro felt suddenly faint with dread that Aimaina, who was, after all, guardian of the Yamato spirit, would humiliate him by challenging the Fushimis’ claim to noble blood. “It is a small and harmless vanity,” said Yasujiro quietly. “A man may be proud of his family.”

“As your namesake, the founder of the Tsutsumi fortune, was proud to forget that his ancestors were Korean.”

“You have said yourself,” said Yasujiro, absorbing the insult to himself with equanimity, “that all Japanese are Korean in origin, but those with the Yamato spirit crossed over to the islands as quickly as they could. Mine followed yours by only a few centuries.”

Aimaina laughed. “You are still my sly quick-witted student! Take me to your friends, I would be honored to meet them.”

There followed ten minutes of bows and smiles, pleasant compliments and self-abnegations. Yasujiro was relieved that there wasn’t a hint of condescension or irony when Aimaina said the name “Fushimi,” and that Young Shigeru was so dazzled to meet the great Aimaina Hikari that the insult of the interrupted meeting was clearly forgotten. The two Shigerus went away with a half dozen holograms of their meeting with Aimaina, and Yasujiro was pleased that Old Shigeru had insisted that Yasujiro stand right there in the holograms with the Fushimis and the great philosopher.

Finally, Yasujiro and Aimaina were alone in his office with the door closed. At once Aimaina went to the window and drew open the curtain to reveal the other tall buildings of Nagoya’s financial district and then a view of the countryside, thoroughly farmed in the flatlands, but still wild woodland in the hills, a place of foxes and badgers.

“I am relieved to see that even though a Tsutsumi is here in Nagoya, there is still undeveloped land within sight of the city. I had not thought this possible.”

“Even if you disdain my family, I am proud to have our name on your lips,” said Yasujiro. But silently he wanted to ask, Why are you determined to insult my family today?

“Are you proud of the man you were named for? The buyer of land, the builder of golf courses? To him all wild country cried out for cabins or putting greens. For that matter, he never saw a woman too ugly to try to get a child with her. Do you follow him in that, too?”

Yasujiro was baffled. Everyone knew the stories of the founder of the Tsutsumi fortune. They had not been news for three thousand years. “What have I done to bring such anger down on my head?”

“You have done nothing,” said Hikari. “And my anger is not at you. My anger is at myself, because I also have done nothing. I speak of your family’s sins of ancient times because the only hope for the Yamato people is to remember all our sins of the past. But we forget. We are so rich now, we own so much, we build so much, that there is no project of any importance on any of the Hundred Worlds that does not have Yamato hands somewhere in it. Yet we forget the lessons of our ancestors.”

“I beg to learn from you, master.”

“Once long ago, when Japan was still struggling to enter the modern age, we let ourselves be ruled by our military. Soldiers were our masters, and they led us into an evil war, to conquer nations that had done us no wrong.”

“We paid for our crimes when atomic bombs fell on our islands.”

“Paid?” cried Aimaina. “What is to pay or not to pay? Are we suddenly Christians, who pay for sins? No. The Yamato way is not to pay for error, but to learn from it. We threw out the military and conquered the world with the excellence of our design and the reliability of our labor. The language of the Hundred Worlds may be based on English, but the money of the Hundred Worlds came originally from the yen.”

“But the Yamato people still buy and sell,” said Yasujiro. “We have not forgotten the lesson.”

“That was only half the lesson. The other half was: We will not make war.”

“But there is no Japanese fleet, no Japanese army.”

“That is the lie we tell ourselves to cover our crimes,” said Aimaina. “I had a visit two days ago from two strangers—mortal humans, but I know the god sent them. They rebuked me because it is the Necessarian school that provided the pivotal votes in the Starways Congress to send the Lusitania Fleet. A fleet whose sole purpose is to repeat the crime of Ender the Xenocide and destroy a world that harbors a frail species of raman who do no harm to anyone!”

Yasujiro quailed under the weight of Aimaina’s anger. “But master, what do I have to do with the military?”

“Yamato philosophers taught the theory that Yamato politicians acted upon. Japanese votes made the difference. This evil fleet must be stopped.”

“Nothing can be stopped today,” said Yasujiro. “The ansibles are all shut down, as are all the computer networks while the terrible all-eating virus is expelled from the system.”

“Tomorrow the ansibles will come back again,” said Aimaina. “And so tomorrow the shame of Japanese participation in xenocide must be averted.”

“Why do you come to me?” said Yasujiro. “I may bear the name of my great ancestor, but half the boys in my family are named Yasujiro or Yoshiaki or Seiji. I am master of the Tsutsumi holdings in Nagoya—”

“Don’t be modest. You are the Tsutsumi of the world of Divine Wind.”

“I am listened to in other cities,” said Yasujiro, “but the orders come from the family center on Honshu. And I have no political influence at all. If the problem is the Necessarians, talk to them!”

Aimaina sighed. “Oh, that would do no good. They would spend six months arguing about how to reconcile their new position with their old position, proving that they had not changed their minds after all, that their philosophy embraced the full 180-degree shift. And the politicians—they are committed. Even if the philosophers change their minds, it would be at least a political generation—three elections, the saying goes—before the new policy would be in effect. Thirty years! The Lusitania Fleet will have done all its evil before then.”

“Then what is there to do but despair and live in shame?” asked Yasujiro. “Unless you’re planning some futile and stupid gesture.” He grinned at his master, knowing that Aimaina would recognize the words he himself always used when denigrating the ancient practice of seppuku, ritual suicide, as something the Yamato spirit had left behind as a child leaves its diapers.

Aimaina did not laugh. “The Lusitania Fleet is seppuku for the Yamato spirit.” He came and stood looming over Yasujiro—or so it felt, though Yasujiro was taller than the old man by half a head. “The politicians have made the Lusitania Fleet popular, so the philosophers cannot now change their minds. But when philosophy and elections cannot change the minds of politicians, money can!”

“You are not suggesting something so shameful as bribery, are you?” said Yasujiro, wondering as he said it whether Aimaina knew how widespread the buying of politicians was.

“Do you think I keep my eyes in my anus?” asked Aimaina, using an expression so crude that Yasujiro gasped and averted his gaze, laughing nervously. “Do you think I don’t know that there are ten ways to buy every crooked politician and a hundred ways to buy every honest one? Contributions, threats of sponsoring opponents, donations to noble causes, jobs given to relatives or friends—do I have to recite the list?”

“You seriously want Tsutsumi money committed to stopping the Lusitania Fleet?”

Aimaina walked again to the window and spread out his arms as if to embrace all that could be seen of the outside world. “The Lusitania Fleet is bad for business, Yasujiro. If the Molecular Disruption Device is used against one world, it will be used against another. And the military, when it has such power placed again in its hands, this time will not let it go.”

“Will I persuade the heads of my family by quoting your prophecy, master?”

“It is not a prophecy,” said Aimaina, “and it is not mine. It is a law of human nature, and it is history that teaches it to us. Stop the fleet, and Tsutsumi will be known as the saviors, not only of the Yamato spirit, but of the human spirit as well. Do not let this grave sin be on the heads of our people.”

“Forgive me, master, but it seems to me that you are the one putting it there. No one noticed that we bore responsibility for this sin until you said it here today.”

“I do not put the sin there. I merely take off the hat that covers it. Yasujiro, you were one of my best students. I forgave you for using what I taught you in such complicated ways, because you did it for your family’s sake.”

“And this that you ask of me now—this is perfectly simple?”

“I have taken the most direct action—I have spoken plainly to the most powerful representative of the richest of the Japanese trading families that I could reach on this day. And what I ask of you is the minimum action required to do what is necessary.”

“In this case the minimum puts my career at great risk,” said Yasujiro thoughtfully.

Aimaina said nothing.

“My greatest teacher once told me,” said Yasujiro, “that a man who has risked his life knows that careers are worthless, and a man who will not risk his career has a worthless life.”

“So you will do it?”

“I will prepare my messages to make your case to all the Tsutsumi family. When the ansibles are linked again, I will send them.”

“I knew you would not disappoint me.”

“Better than that,” said Yasujiro. “When I am thrown out of my job, I will come and live with you.”

Aimaina bowed. “I would be honored to have you dwell in my house.”

The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally. Minutes passed in which Val-Jane held the weeping Miro, and then time dried his tears, time loosened her embrace, and time, finally, ended Ela’s patience.

“Let’s get back to work,” said Ela. “I’m not unfeeling, but our predicament is unchanged.”

Quara was surprised. “But Jane’s not dead. Doesn’t that mean we can get back home?”

Val-Jane at once got up and moved back to her computer terminal. Every movement was easy because of the reflexes and habits the Val-brain had developed; but the Jane-mind found each movement fresh and new; she marveled at the dance of her fingers pressing the keys to control the display. “I don’t know,” Jane said, answering the question that Quara had voiced, but all were asking. “I’m still uncertain in this flesh. The ansibles haven’t been restored. I do have a handful of allies who will relink some of my old programs to the network once it is restored—some Samoans on Pacifica, Han Fei-tzu on Path, the Abo university on Outback. Will those programs be enough? Will the new networking software allow me to tap the resources I need to hold all the information of a starship and so many people in my mind? Will having this body interfere? Will my new link to the mothertrees be a help or a distraction?” And then the most important question: “Do we wish to be my first test flight?”

“Somebody has to,” said Ela.

“I think I’ll try one of the starships on Lusitania, if I can reestablish contact with them,” said Jane. “With only a single hive queen worker on board. That way if it is lost, it will not be missed.” Jane turned to nod to the worker who was with them. “Begging your pardon, of course.”

“You don’t have to apologize to the worker,” said Quara. “It’s really just the Hive Queen anyway.”

Jane looked over at Miro and winked. Miro did not wink back, but the look of sadness in his eyes was answer enough. He knew that the workers were not quite what everyone thought. The hive queens sometimes had to tame them, because not all of them were utterly subjected to their mother’s will. But the was-it-or-wasn’t-it-slavery of the workers was a matter for another generation to work out.

“Languages,” said Jane. “Carried by genetic molecules. What kind of grammar must they have? Are they linked to sounds, smells, sights? Let’s see how smart we all are without me inside the computers helping.” That struck her as so amazingly funny that she laughed aloud. Ah, how marvelous it was to have her own laughter sounding in her ears, bubbling upward from her lungs, spasming her diaphragm, bringing tears to her eyes!

Only when her laughter ended did she realize how leaden the sound of it must have been to Miro, to the others. “I’m sorry,” she said, abashed, and felt a blush rising up her neck into her cheeks. Who could have believed it could burn so hot! It almost made her laugh again. “I’m not used to being alive like this. I know I’m rejoicing when the rest of you are grim, but don’t you see? Even if we all die when the air runs out in a few weeks, I can’t help but marvel at how it feels to me!”

“We understand,” said Firequencher. “You have passed into your Second Life. It’s a joyful time for us, as well.”

“I spent time among your trees, you know,” said Jane. “Your mothertrees made space for me. Took me in and nurtured me. Does that make us brother and sister now?”

“I hardly know what it would mean, to have a sister,” said Firequencher. “But if you remember the life in the dark of the mothertree, then you remember more than I do. We have dreams sometimes, but no real memories of the First Life in darkness. Still, that makes this your Third Life after all.”

“Then I’m an adult?” asked Jane, and she laughed again.

And again felt how her laugh stilled the others, hurt them.

But something odd happened as she turned, ready to apologize again. Her glance fell upon Miro, and instead of saying the words she had planned—the Jane-words that would have come out of the jewel in his ear only the day before—other words came to her lips, along with a memory. “If my memories live, Miro, then I’m alive. Isn’t that what you told me?”

Miro shook his head. “Are you speaking from Val’s memory, or from Jane’s memory when she—when you—overheard us speaking in the Hive Queen’s cave? Don’t comfort me by pretending to be her.”

Jane, by habit—Val’s habit? or her own?—snapped, “When I comfort you, you’ll know it.”

“And how will I know?” Miro snapped back.

“Because you’ll be comfortable, of course,” said Val-Jane. “In the meantime, please keep in mind that I’m not listening through the jewel in your ear now. I see only with these eyes and hear only with these ears.”

This was not strictly true, of course. For many times a second, she felt the flowing sap, the unstinting welcome of the mothertrees as her aiúa satisfied its hunger for largeness by touring the vast network of the pequenino philotes. And now and then, outside the mothertrees, she caught a glimmer of a thought, of a word, a phrase, spoken in the language of the fathertrees. Or was it their language? Rather it was the language behind the language, the underlying speech of the speechless. And whose was that other voice? I know you—you are of the kind that made me. I know your voice.

<We lost track of you,> said the Hive Queen in her mind. <But you did well without us.>

Jane was not prepared for the swelling of pride that glowed through her entire Val-body; she felt the physical effect of the emotion as Val, but her pride came from the praise of a hive-mother. I am a daughter of hive queens, she realized, and so it matters when she speaks to me, and tells me I have done well.

And if I’m the hive queens’ daughter, I am Ender’s daughter, too, his daughter twice over, for they made my lifestuff partly from his mind, so I could be a bridge between them; and now I dwell in a body that also came from him, and whose memories are from a time when he dwelt here and lived this body’s life. I am his daughter, but once again I cannot speak to him.

All this time, all these thoughts, and yet she did not show or even feel the slightest lapse of concentration on what she was doing with her computer on the starship circling the descolada planet. She was still Jane. It wasn’t the computerness of her that had allowed her, all these years, to maintain many layers of attention and focus on many tasks at once. It was her hive-queen nature that allowed this.

<It was because you were an aiúa powerful enough to do this that you were able to come to us in the first place,> said the Hive Queen in her mind.

Which of you is speaking to me? asked Jane.

<Does it matter? We all remember the making of you. We remember being there. We remember drawing you out of darkness into light.>

Am I still myself, then? Will I have again all the powers I lost when the Starways Congress killed my old virtual body?

<You might. When you find out, tell us. We will be very interested.>

And now she felt the sharp disappointment from a parent’s unconcern, a sinking feeling in the stomach, a kind of shame. But this was a human emotion; it arose from the Val-body, though it was in response to her relationship with her hive-queen mothers. Everything was more complicated—and yet it was simpler. Her feelings were now flagged by a body, which responded before she understood what she felt herself. In the old days, she scarcely knew she had feelings. She had them, yes, even irrational responses, desires below the level of consciousness—these were attributes of all aiúas, when linked with others in any kind of life—but there had been no simple signals to tell her what her feelings were. How easy it was to be a human, with your emotions expressed on the canvas of your own body. And yet how hard, because you couldn’t hide your feelings from yourself half so easily.

<Get used to being frustrated with us, daughter,> said the Hive Queen. <You have a partly human nature, and we do not. We will not be tender with you as human mothers are. When you can’t bear it, back away—we won’t pursue you.>

Thank you, she said silently . . . and backed away.

At dawn the sun came up over the mountain that was the spine of the island, so that the sky was light long before any sunlight touched the trees directly. The wind off the sea had cooled them in the night. Peter awoke with Wang-mu curled into the curve of his body, like shrimps lined up on a market rack. The closeness of her felt good; it felt familiar. Yet how could it be? He had never slept so close to her before. Was it some vestigial Ender memory? He wasn’t conscious of having any such memories. It had disappointed him, actually, when he realized it. He had thought that perhaps when his body had complete possession of the aiúa, he would become Ender—he would have a lifetime of real memories instead of the paltry faked-up memories that had come with his body when Ender created it. No such luck.

And yet he remembered sleeping with a woman curled against him. He remembered reaching across her, his arm like a sheltering bough.

But he had never touched Wang-mu that way. Nor was it right for him to do it now—she was not his wife, only his . . . friend? Was she that? She had said she loved him—was that only a way to help him find his way into this body?

Then, suddenly, he felt himself falling away from himself, felt himself recede from Peter and become something else, something small and bright and terrified, descending down into darkness, out into a wind too strong for him to stand against it—

“Peter!”

The voice called him, and he followed it, back along the almost-invisible philotic threads that connected him to . . . himself again. I am Peter. I have nowhere else to go. If I leave like that, I’ll die.

“Are you all right?” asked Wang-mu. “I woke up because I—I’m sorry, but I dreamed, I felt as if I was losing you. But I wasn’t, because here you are.”

“I was losing my way,” said Peter. “You could sense that?”

“I don’t know what I sensed or not. I just—how can I describe it?”

“You called me back from darkness,” said Peter.

“Did I?”

He almost said something, but then stopped. Then laughed, uncomfortable and frightened. “I feel so odd. A moment ago I was about to say something. Something very flippant—about how having to be Peter Wiggin was darkness enough by itself.”

“Oh yes,” said Wang-mu. “You always say such nasty things about yourself.”

“But I didn’t say it,” said Peter. “I was about to, out of habit, but I stopped, because it wasn’t true. Isn’t that funny?”

“I think it’s good.”

“It makes sense that I should feel whole instead of being subdivided—perhaps more content with myself or something. And yet I almost lost the whole thing. I think it wasn’t just a dream. I think I really was letting go. Falling away into—no, out of everything.”

“You had three selves for several months,” said Wang-mu. “Is it possible your aiúa hungers for the—I don’t know, the size of what you used to be?”

“I was spread all over the galaxy, wasn’t I? Except I want to say, ‘Wasn’t he,’ because that was Ender, wasn’t it. And I’m not Ender because I don’t remember anything.” He thought a moment. “Except maybe I do remember some things a little more clearly now. Things from my childhood. My mother’s face. It’s very clear, and I don’t think it was before. And Valentine’s face, when we were all children. But I’d remember that as Peter, wouldn’t I, so it doesn’t mean it comes from Ender, does it? I’m sure this is just one of the memories Ender supplied for me in the first place.” He laughed. “I’m really desperate, aren’t I, to find some sign of him in me.”

Wang-mu sat listening. Silent, not making a great show of interest, but also content not to jump in with an answer or a comment.

Noticing her made him think of something else. “Are you some kind of, what would you call it, an empath? Do you normally feel what other people are feeling?”

“Never,” said Wang-mu. “I’m too busy feeling what I’m feeling.”

“But you knew that I was going. You felt that.”

“I suppose,” said Wang-mu, “that I’m bound up with you now. I hope that’s all right, because it wasn’t exactly voluntary on my part.”

“But I’m bound up with you, too,” said Peter. “Because when I was disconnected, I still heard you. All my other feelings were gone. My body wasn’t giving me anything. I had lost my body. Now, when I remember what it felt like, I remember ‘seeing’ things, but that’s just my human brain making sense of things that it can’t actually make sense of. I know that I didn’t see at all, or hear, or touch or anything at all. And yet I knew you were calling. I felt you—needing me. Wanting me to come back. Surely that means that I am also bound up with you.”

She shrugged, looked away.

“Now what does that mean?” he asked.

“I’m not going to spend the rest of my life explaining myself to you,” said Wang-mu. “Everyone else has the privilege of just feeling and doing sometimes without analyzing it. What did it look like to you? You’re the smart one who’s an expert on human nature.”

“Stop that,” said Peter, pretending to be teasing but really wanting her to stop. “I remember we bantered about that, and I bragged I guess, but . . . well I don’t feel that way now. Is that part of having all of Ender in me? I know I don’t understand people all that well. You looked away, you shrugged when I said I was bound up with you. That hurt my feelings, you know.”

“And why is that?”

“Oh, you can ask why and I can’t, are those the rules now?”

“Those have always been the rules,” said Wang-mu. “You just never obeyed them.”

“Well it hurt my feelings because I wanted you to be glad that I’m tied up with you and you with me.”

“Are you glad?”

“Well it only saved my life, I think I’d have to be the king of the stupid people not to at least find it convenient!”

“Smell,” she said, suddenly leaping to her feet.

She is so young, he thought.

And then, rising to his own feet, he was surprised to realize that he, too, was young, his body lithe and responsive.

And then he was surprised again to realize that Peter never remembered being any other way. It was Ender who had experienced an older body, one that got stiff when sleeping on the ground, a body that did not rise so easily to its feet. I do have Ender in me. I have the memories of his body. Why not the memories of his mind?

Perhaps because this brain has only the map of Peter’s memories in it. All the rest of them are lurking just out of reach. And maybe I’ll stumble on them now and then, connect them up, map new roads to get to them.

In the meantime, he was still getting up, standing beside Wang-mu, sniffing the air with her; and he was surprised again to realize that both activities had had his full attention. He had been thinking continuously of Wang-mu, of smelling what she smelled, wondering all the while whether he could just rest his hand on that small frail shoulder that seemed to need a hand the size of his to rest upon it; and at the same time, he had been engaged completely in speculation on how and whether he would be able to recover Ender’s memories.

I could never do that before, thought Peter. And yet I must have been doing it ever since this body and the Valentine body were created. Concentrating on three things at once, in fact, not two.

But I wasn’t strong enough to think of three things. One of them always sagged. Valentine for a while. Then Ender, until that body died. But two things—I can think of two things at once. Is this remarkable? Or is it something that many humans could do, if only they had some occasion to learn?

What kind of vanity is this! thought Peter. Why should I care whether I’m unique in this ability? Except that I always did pride myself on being smarter and more capable than the people around me. Didn’t let myself say it aloud, of course, or even admit it to myself, but be honest with yourself now, Peter! It’s good to be smarter than other people. And if I can think of two things at once, while they can only think of one, why not take some pleasure in it!

Of course, thinking of two things is rather useless if both trains of thought are dumb. For while he played with questions of vanity and his competitive nature, he had also been concentrating on Wang-mu, and his hand had indeed reached out and touched her, and for a moment she leaned back against him, accepting his touch, until her head rested against his chest. And then, without warning or any provocation that he could think of, she suddenly pulled away from him and began to stride toward the Samoans who were gathered around Malu on the beach.

“What did I do?” asked Peter.

She turned around, looking puzzled. “You did just fine!” she said. “I didn’t slap you or put my knee in your kintamas, did I? But it’s breakfast—Malu is praying and they’ve got more food than they had two nights ago, when we thought we’d die from eating it!”

And both of Peter’s separate tracks of attention noticed that he was hungry, both severally and all at once. Neither he nor Wang-mu had eaten anything last night. For that matter, he had no memory of leaving the beach and coming to lie down with her on these mats. Somebody must have carried them. Well, that was no surprise. There wasn’t a man or woman on that beach who didn’t look like he could pick Peter up and break him like a pencil. As for Wang-mu, as he watched her run lightly toward the mountain range of Samoans gathered at water’s edge, he thought she was like a bird flying toward a flock of cattle.

I’m not a child and never was one, not in this body, thought Peter. So I don’t know if I’m even capable of childish longings and the grand romances of adolescence. And from Ender I have this sense of comfortableness in love; it isn’t grand sweeping passions that I even expect to feel. Will the kind of love I have for you be enough, Wang-mu? To reach out to you when I’m in need, and to try to be here for you when you need me back. And to feel such tenderness when I look at you that I want to stand between you and all the world: and yet also to lift you up and carry you above the strong currents of life; and at the same time, I would be glad to stand always like this, at a distance, watching you, the beauty of you, your energy as you look up at these towering mound-people, speaking to them as an equal even though every movement of your hands, every fluting syllable of your speech cries out that you’re a child—is it enough for you that I feel these loves for you? Because it’s enough for me. And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.

Plikt sat alone in her room, writing and writing. She had been preparing all her life for this day—to be writing the oration for Andrew Wiggin’s funeral. She would speak his death—and she had the research to do it, she could speak for a solid week and still not exhaust a tenth of what she knew about him. But she would not speak for a week. She would speak for a single hour. Less than an hour. She understood him; she loved him; she would share with others who did not know him what he was, how he loved, how history was different because this man, brilliant, imperfect, but well-meaning and filled with a love that was strong enough to inflict suffering when it was needed—how history was different because he lived, and how also ten thousand, a hundred thousand, millions of individual lives were also different, strengthened, clarified, lifted up, brightened, or at least made more consonant and truthful because of what he had said and done and written in his life.

And would she also tell this? Would she tell how bitterly one woman grieved alone in her room, weeping and weeping, not because of grief that Ender was gone, but because of shame at finally understanding herself. For though she had loved and admired him—no, worshiped this man—nevertheless when he died what she felt was not grief at all, but relief and excitement. Relief: The waiting is over! Excitement: My hour has come!

Of course that’s what she felt. She wasn’t such a fool as to expect herself to be of more than human moral strength. And the reason she didn’t grieve as Novinha and Valentine grieved was because a great part of their lives had just been torn away from them. What was torn away from mine? Ender gave me a few dollops of his attention, but little more. We had only a few months when he was my teacher on Trondheim; then a generation later our lives touched again for these few months here; and both times he was preoccupied, he had more important things and people to attend to than me. I was not his wife. I was not his sister. I was only his student and disciple—a man who was done with students and never wanted disciples. So of course no great part of my life was taken from me because he had only been my dream, never my companion.

I forgive myself and yet I cannot stop the shame and grief I feel, not because Andrew Wiggin died, but because in the hour of his death I showed myself to be what I really am: utterly selfish, concerned only with my own career. I chose to be the speaker of Ender’s death. Therefore the moment of his death can only be the fulfillment of my life. What kind of vulture does that make me? What kind of parasite, a leech upon his life . . .

And yet her fingers continued to type, sentence after sentence, despite the tears flowing down her cheeks. Off in Jakt’s house, Valentine grieved with her husband and children. Over in Olhado’s house, Grego and Olhado and Novinha had gathered to comfort each other, at the loss of the man who had been husband and father to them. They had their relationship to him, and I have mine. They have their private memories; mine will be public. I will speak, and then I will publish what I said, and what I am writing now will give new shape and meaning to the life of Ender Wiggin in the minds of every person of a hundred worlds. Ender the Xenocide; Andrew the Speaker for the Dead; Andrew the private man of loneliness and compassion; Ender the brilliant analyst who could pierce to the heart of problems and of people without being deflected by fear or ambition or . . . or mercy. The man of justice and the man of mercy, coexisting in one body. The man whose compassion let him see and love the hive queens even before he ever touched one of them with his hands; the man whose fierce justice let him destroy them all because he believed they were his enemy.

Would Ender judge me harshly for my ugly feelings on this day? Of course he would—he would not spare me, he would know the worst that is in my heart.

But then, having judged me, he would also love me. He would say, So what? Get up and speak my death. If we waited for perfect people to be speakers for the dead, all funerals would be conducted in silence.

And so she wrote, and wept; and when the weeping was done, the writing went on. When the hair that he had left behind was sealed in a small box and buried in the grass near Human’s root, she would stand and speak. Her voice would raise him from the dead, make him live again in memory. And she would also be merciful; and she would also be just. That much, at least, she had learned from him.

12

“AM I BETRAYING ENDER?”

“Why do people act as if war and murder were unnatural?

What’s unnatural is to go your whole life

without ever raising your hand in violence.”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

“We’re going about this all wrong,” said Quara.

Miro felt the old familiar anger surge inside him. Quara had a knack for making people angry, and it didn’t help that she seemed to know that she annoyed people and relished it. Anyone else in the ship could have said exactly the same sentence and Miro would have given them a fair hearing. But Quara managed to put an edge on the words that made it sound as if she thought everyone in the world but herself was stupid. Miro loved her as a sister, but he couldn’t help it that he hated having to spend hour upon hour in her company.

Yet, because Quara was in fact the one among them most knowledgeable about the ur-language she had discovered months before in the descolada virus, Miro did not allow his inward sigh of exasperation to become audible. Instead he swiveled in his seat to listen.

So did the others, though Ela made less effort to hide her annoyance. Actually, she made none. “Well, Quara, why weren’t we smart enough to notice our stupidity before.”

Quara was oblivious to Ela’s sarcasm—or chose to appear oblivious, anyway. “How can we decipher a language out of the blue? We don’t have any referents. But we do have complete records of the versions of the descolada virus. We know what it looked like before it adapted to the human metabolism. We know how it changed after each of our attempts to kill it. Some of the changes were functional—it was adapting. But some of them were clerical—it was keeping a record of what it did.”

“We don’t know that,” said Ela with perhaps too much pleasure in correcting Quara.

“I know it,” said Quara. “Anyway, it gives us a known context, doesn’t it? We know what that language is about, even if we haven’t been able to decode it.”

“Well, now that you’ve said all that,” said Ela, “I still have no idea how this new wisdom will help us decode the language. I mean, isn’t that precisely what you’ve been working on for months?”

“Ah,” said Quara. “I have. But what I haven’t been able to do is speak the ‘words’ that the descolada virus recorded and see what answers we get back.”

“Too dangerous,” said Jane at once. “Absurdly dangerous. These people are capable of making viruses that completely destroy biospheres, and they’re callous enough to use them. And you’re proposing that we give to them precisely the weapon they used to devastate the pequeninos’ planet? Which probably contains a complete record, not only of the pequeninos’ metabolism, but of ours as well? Why not just slit our own throats and send them the blood?”

Miro noticed that when Jane spoke, the others looked almost stunned. Part of their response might have been to the difference between Val’s diffidence and the bold attitude that Jane displayed. Part of it, too, might have been because the Jane they knew was more computerlike, less assertive. Miro, however, recognized this authoritarian style from the way she had often spoken into his ear through the jewel. In a way it was a pleasure for him to hear her again; it was also disturbing to hear it coming from the lips of someone else. Val was gone; Jane was back; it was awful; it was wonderful.

Because Miro was not so taken aback by Jane’s attitude, he was the one to speak into the silence. “Quara’s right, Jane. We don’t have years and years to work this out—we might have only a few weeks. Or less. We need to provoke a linguistic response. Get an answer from them, analyze the difference in language between their initial statements to us and the later ones.”

“We’re giving away too much,” said Jane.

“No risk, no gain,” said Miro.

“Too much risk, all dead,” said Jane snidely. But in the snideness there was a familiar lilt, a kind of sauciness that said, I’m only playing. And that came, not from Jane—Jane had never sounded like that—but from Val. It hurt to hear it; it was good to hear it. Miro’s dual responses to everything coming from Jane kept him constantly on edge. I love you, I miss you, I grieve for you, shut up; whom he was talking to seemed to change with the minutes.

“It’s only the future of three sentient species we’re gambling with,” added Ela.

With that they all turned to Firequencher.

“Don’t look at me,” he said. “I’m just a tourist.”

“Come on,” said Miro. “You’re here because your people are at risk the same as ours. This is a tough decision and you have to vote. You have the most at risk, actually, because even the earliest descolada codes we have might well reveal the whole biological history of your people since the virus first came among you.”

“Then again,” said Firequencher, “it might mean that since they already know how to destroy us, we have nothing to lose.”

“Look,” said Miro. “We have no evidence that these people have any kind of manned starflight. All they’ve sent out so far are probes.”

“All that we know about,” said Jane.

“And we’ve had no evidence of anybody coming around to check out how effective the descolada had been at transforming the biosphere of Lusitania to prepare it to receive colonists from this planet. So if they do have colony ships out there, either they’re already on the way so what different does it make if we share this information, or they haven’t sent any which means that they can’t.”

“Miro’s right,” said Quara, pouncing. Miro winced. He hated being on Quara’s side, because now everybody’s annoyance with her would rub off on him. “Either the cows are already out of the barn, so why bother shutting the door, or they can’t get the door open anyway, so why put a lock on it?”

“What do you know about cows?” asked Ela disdainfully.

“After all these years of living and working with you,” said Quara nastily, “I’d say I’m an expert.”

“Girls, girls,” said Jane. “Get a grip on yourselves.”

Again, everyone but Miro turned to her in surprise. Val wouldn’t have spoken up during a family conflict like this; nor would the Jane they knew—though of course Miro was used to her speaking up all the time.

“We all know the risks of giving them information about us,” said Miro. “We also know that we’re making no headway and maybe we’ll be able to learn something about the way this language works after having some give and take.”

“It’s not give and take,” said Jane. “It’s give and give. We give them information they probably can’t get any other way, information that may well tell them everything they need to know in order to create new viruses that might well circumvent all our weapons against them. But since we have no idea how that information is coded, or even where each specific datum is located, how can we interpret the answer? Besides, what if the answer is a new virus to destroy us?”

“They’re sending us the information necessary to construct the virus,” said Quara, her voice thick with contempt, as if she thought Jane were the stupidest person who ever lived, instead of arguably the most godlike in her brilliance. “But we’re not going to build it. As long as it’s just a graphic representation on a computer screen—”

“That’s it,” said Ela.

“What’s it?” said Quara. It was her turn to be annoyed now, for obviously Ela was a step ahead of her on something.

“They aren’t taking these signals and putting them up on a computer screen. We do that because we have a language written with symbols that we see with the naked eye. But they must read these broadcast signals more directly. The code comes in, and they somehow interpret it by following the instruction to make the molecule that’s described in the broadcast. Then they ‘read’ it by—what, smelling it? Swallowing it? The point is, if genetic molecules are their language, then they must somehow take them into their body as appropriately as the way we get the images of our writing from the paper into our eyes.”

“I see,” said Jane. “You’re hypothesizing that they’re expecting us to make a molecule out of what they send us, instead of just reading it on a screen and trying to abstract it and intellectualize it.”

“For all we know,” said Ela, “this could be how they discipline people. Or attack them. Send them a message. If they ‘listen’ they have to do it by reading the molecule into their bodies and letting it have its effect on them. So if the effect is poison or a killing disease, just hearing the message subjects them to the discipline. It’s as if all our language had to be tapped out on the back of our neck. To listen, we’d have to lie down and expose ourself to whatever tool they chose to use to send the message. If it’s a finger or a feather, well and good—but if it’s a broadaxe or a machete or a sledgehammer, too bad for us.”

“It doesn’t even have to be fatal,” said Quara, her rivalry with Ela forgotten as she developed the idea in her own mind. “The molecules could be behavior-altering devices. To hear is literally to obey.”

“I don’t know if you’re right in the particulars,” said Jane. “But it gives the experiment much more potential for success. And it suggests that they might not have a delivery system that can attack us directly. That changes the probable risk.”

“And people say you can’t think well without your computer,” said Miro.

At once he was embarrassed. He had inadvertently spoken to her as flippantly as he used to when he subvocalized so she could overhear him through the jewel. But now it sounded strangely cold of him, to tease her about having lost her computer network. He could joke that way with Jane-in-the-jewel. But Jane-in-the-flesh was a different matter. She was now a human person. With feelings that had to be worried about.

Jane had feelings all along, thought Miro. But I didn’t think much about them because . . . because I didn’t have to. Because I didn’t see her. Because she wasn’t, in a sense, real to me.

“I just meant . . .” Miro said. “I just mean, good thinking.”

“Thank you,” said Jane. There wasn’t a trace of irony in her voice, but Miro knew the irony was there all the same, because it was inherent in the situation. Miro, this uniprocessing human, was telling this brilliant being that she had thought well—as if he were fit to judge her.

Suddenly he was angry, not at Jane, but at himself. Why should he have to watch every word he said, just because she had not acquired this body in the normal way? She may not have been human before, but she was certainly human now, and could be talked to like a human. If she was somehow different from other human beings, so what? All human beings were different from all others, and yet to be decent and polite, wasn’t he supposed to treat everyone basically alike? Wouldn’t he say, “Do you see what I mean?” to a blind person, expecting the metaphorical use of “see” to be taken without umbrage? Well, why not say, “Good thinking,” to Jane? Just because her thought processes were unfathomably deep to a human didn’t mean that a human couldn’t use a standard expression of agreement and approval when speaking to her.

Looking at her now, Miro could see a kind of sadness in her eyes. No doubt it came from his obvious confusion—after joking with her as he always had, suddenly he was embarrassed, suddenly he backtracked. That was why her “Thank you” had been ironic. Because she wanted him to be natural with her, and he couldn’t.

No, he hadn’t been natural, but he certainly could.

And what did it matter, anyway? They were here to solve the problem of the descoladores, not to work out the kinks in their personal relationships after the wholesale body swap.

“Do I take it we have agreement?” asked Ela. “To send messages encoded with the information contained on the descolada virus?”

“The first one only,” said Jane. “At least to start.”

“And when they answer,” said Ela, “I’ll try to run a simulation of what would happen if we constructed and ingested the molecule they send us.”

“If they send us one,” said Miro. “If we’re even on the right track.”

“Well aren’t you Mr. Cheer,” said Quara.

“I’m Mr. Scared-From-Ass-To-Ankles,” said Miro. “Whereas you are just plain old Miss Ass.”

“Can’t we all get along?” said Jane, whining, teasing. “Can’t we all be friends?”

Quara whirled on her. “Listen, you! I don’t care what kind of superbrain you used to be, you just stay out of family conversations, do you hear?”

“Look around, Quara!” Miro snapped at her. “If she stayed out of family conversations, when could she talk?”

Firequencher raised his hand. “I’ve been staying out of family conversations. Do I get credit for that?”

Jane gestured to quell both Miro and Firequencher. “Quara,” she said quietly, “I’ll tell you the real difference between me and your brother and sister here. They’re used to you because they’ve known you all your life. They’re loyal to you because you and they went through some lousy experiences in your family. They’re patient with your childish outbursts and your asinine bullheadedness because they tell themselves, over and over, she can’t help it, she had such a troubled childhood. But I’m not a family member, Quara. I, however, as someone who has observed you in times of crisis for some time, am not afraid to tell you my candid conclusions. You are quite brilliant and very good at what you do. You are often perceptive and creative, and you drive toward solutions with astonishing directness and perseverence.”

“Excuse me,” said Quara, “are you telling me off or what?”

“But,” said Jane, “you are not smart and creative and clever and direct and perseverent enough to make it worth putting up with more than fifteen seconds of the egregious bullshit you heap on your family and everyone else around you every minute you’re awake. So you had a lousy childhood. That was a few years ago, and you are expected now to put that behind you and get along with other people like a normally courteous adult.”

“In other words,” said Quara, “you don’t like having to admit that anybody but you might be smart enough to have an idea that you didn’t think of.”

“You aren’t understanding me,” said Jane. “I’m not your sister. I’m not even, technically speaking, human. If this ship ever gets back to Lusitania, it will be because I, with my mind, send it there. Do you get that? Do you understand the difference between us? Can you send even one fleck of dust from your lap to mine?”

“I don’t notice you sending starships anywhere right at the moment,” said Quara triumphantly.

“You continue to attempt to score points off me without realizing that I am not having an argument with you or even a discussion. What you say to me right now is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what I’m saying to you. And I’m saying that while your siblings put up with the unendurable from you, I will not. Keep on the way you’re going, you spoiled little baby, and when this starship goes back to Lusitania you might not be on it.”

The look on Quara’s face almost made Miro laugh aloud. He knew, however, that this would not be a wise moment to express his mirth.

“She’s threatening me,” said Quara to the others. “Do you hear this? She’s trying to coerce me by threatening to kill me.”

“I would never kill you,” said Jane. “But I might be unable to conceive of your presence on this starship when I push it Outside and then pull it back In. The thought of you might be so unendurable that my unconscious mind would reject that thought and exclude you. I really don’t understand, consciously, how the whole thing works. I don’t know how it relates to my feelings. I’ve never tried to transport anybody I really hated before. I would certainly try to bring you along with the others, if only because, for reasons passing understanding, Miro and Ela would probably be testy with me if I didn’t. But trying isn’t necessarily succeeding. So I suggest, Quara, that you expend some effort on trying to be a little less loathsome.”

“So that’s what power is to you,” said Quara. “A chance to push other people around and act like the queen.”

“You really can’t do it, can you?” said Jane.

“Can’t what?” said Quara. “Can’t bow down and kiss your feet?”

“Can’t shut up to save your own life.”

“I’m trying to solve the problem of communicating with an alien species, and you’re busy worrying about whether I’m nice enough to you.”

“But Quara,” said Jane, “hasn’t it ever occurred to you that once they get to know you, even the aliens will wish you had never learned their language?”

“I’m certainly wishing you had never learned mine,” said Quara. “You’re certainly full of yourself, now that you have this pretty little body to play around with. Well, you’re not queen of the universe and I’m not going to dance through hoops for you. It wasn’t my idea to come on this voyage, but I’m here—I’m here, the whole obnoxious package—and if there’s something about me that you don’t like, why don’t you shut up about it? And as long as we’re making threats, I think that if you push me too far I’ll rearrange your face more to my liking. Is that clear?”

Jane unstrapped herself from her seat and drifted from the main cabin into the corridor leading into the storage compartments of the shuttle. Miro followed her, ignoring Quara as she said to the others, “Can you believe how she talked to me? Who does she think she is, judging who’s too irritating to live?”

Miro followed Jane into a storage compartment. She was clinging to a handhold on the far wall, bent over and heaving in a way that made Miro wonder if she was throwing up. But no. She was crying. Or rather, she was so enraged that her body was sobbing and producing tears from the sheer uncontainability of the emotion. Miro touched her shoulder to try to calm her. She recoiled.

For a moment he almost said, Fine, have it your way; then he would have left, angry himself, frustrated that she wouldn’t accept his comfort. But then he remembered that she had never been this angry before. She had never had to deal with a body that responded like this. At first, when she began rebuking Quara, Miro had thought, It’s about time somebody laid it on the line. But when the argument went on and on, Miro realized that it wasn’t Quara who was out of control, it was Jane. She didn’t know how to deal with her emotions. She didn’t know when it wasn’t worth going on. She felt what she was feeling, and she didn’t know how to do anything but express it.

“That was hard,” Miro said. “Cutting off the argument and coming in here.”

“I wanted to kill her,” said Jane. Her voice was almost unintelligible from the weeping, from the savage tension in her body. “I’ve never felt anything like it. I wanted to get out of the chair and tear her apart with my bare hands.”

“Welcome to the club,” said Miro.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I really wanted to do it. I felt my muscles flexing, I was ready to do it. I was going to do it.”

“As I said. Quara makes us all feel that way.”

“No,” said Jane. “Not like this. You all stay calm, you all stay in control.”

“And you will, too,” said Miro, “when you have a little more practice.”

Jane lifted her head, leaned it back, shook it. Her hair swung weightlessly free in the air. “Do you really feel this?”

“All of us do,” said Miro. “That’s why we have a childhood—to learn to get over our violent tendencies. But they’re in us all. Chimps and baboons do it. All the primates. We display. We have to express our rage physically.”

“But you don’t. You stay so calm. You let her spout off and say these horrible—”

“Because it’s not worth the trouble of stopping her,” said Miro. “She pays the price for it. She’s desperately lonely and nobody deliberately seeks an opportunity to spend time in her company.”

“Which is the only reason she isn’t dead.”

“That’s right,” said Miro. “That’s what civilized people do—they avoid the circumstance that enrages them. Or if they can’t avoid it, they detach. That’s what Ela and I do, mostly. We just detach. We just let her provocations roll over us.”

“I can’t do it,” said Jane. “It was so simple before I felt these things. I could tune her out.”

“That’s it,” said Miro. “That’s what we do. We tune her out.”

“It’s more complicated than I thought,” said Jane. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have much choice right now, do you,” he said.

“Miro, I’m so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and . . . now I realize that just getting through the day without killing somebody can be an achievement.”

“It gets to be a habit. Most of us manage to keep our body count quite low. It’s the neighborly way to live.”

It took a moment—a sob, and then a hiccough—but then she did laugh. A sweet, soft chuckle that was such a welcome sound to Miro. Welcome because it was a voice he knew and loved, a laugh that he liked to hear. And it was his dear friend who was doing the laughing. His dear friend Jane. The laugh, the voice of his beloved Val. One person now. After all this time, he could reach out his hand and touch Jane, who had always been impossibly far away. Like having a friendship over the telephone and finally meeting face-to-face.

He touched her again, and she took his hand and held it.

“I’m sorry I let my own weakness get in the way of what we’re doing,” said Jane.

“You’re only human,” said Miro.

She looked at him, searched his face for irony, for bitterness.

“I mean it,” said Miro. “The price of having these emotions, these passions, is that you have to control them, you have to bear them when they’re too strong to bear. You’re only human now. You’ll never make these feelings go away. You just have to learn not to act on them.”

“Quara never learned.”

“Quara learned, all right,” said Miro. “It’s just my opinion, but Quara loved Marcão, adored him, and when he died and the rest of us felt so liberated, she was lost. What she does now, this constant provocation—she’s asking somebody to abuse her. To hit her. The way Marcão always hit Mother whenever he was provoked. I think in some perverse way Quara was always jealous of Mother when she got to go off alone with Papa, and even though she finally figured out that he was beating her up, when Quara wanted her papa back the only way she knew of to demand his attention was—this mouth of hers.” Miro laughed bitterly. “It reminds me of Mother, to tell the truth. You’ve never heard her, but in the old days, when she was trapped in marriage with Marcão and having Libo’s babies—oh, she had a mouth on her. I’d sit there and listen to her provoking Marcão, goading him, stabbing at him, until he’d hit her—and I’d think, Don’t you dare lay a hand on my mother, and at the same time I’d absolutely understand his impotent rage, because he could never, never, never say anything that would shut her up. Only his fist could do it. And Quara has that mouth, and needs that rage.”

“Well, how happy for us all, then, that I gave her just what she needed.”

Miro laughed. “But she didn’t need it from you. She needed it from Marcão, and he’s dead.”

And then, suddenly, Jane burst into real tears. Tears of grief, and she turned to Miro and clung to him.

“What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, Miro,” she said. “Ender’s dead. I’ll never see him again. I have a body at last, I have eyes to see him, and he isn’t there.”

Miro was stunned. Of course she missed Ender. She had thousands of years with him, and only a few years, really, with me. How could I have thought she could love me? How can I ever hope to compare with Ender Wiggin? What am I, compared to the man who commanded fleets, who transformed the minds of trillions of people with his books, his speakings, his insight, his ability to see into the hearts of other people and speak their own most private stories back to them? And yet even as he resented Ender, even as he envied him because Jane would always love him more and Miro couldn’t hope to compete with him even in death, despite these feelings it finally came home to him that yes, Ender was dead. Ender, who had transformed his family, who had been a true friend to him, who had been the only man in Miro’s life that he longed with all his heart to be, Ender was gone. Miro’s tears of grief flowed along with Jane’s.

“I’m sorry,” said Jane. “I can’t control any of my emotions.”

“Yes, well, it’s a common failing, actually,” said Miro.

She reached up and touched the tears on his cheek. Then she touched her damp finger to her own cheek. The tears commingled. “Do you know why I thought of Ender right then?” she said. “Because you’re so much like him. Quara annoys you as much as she annoys anyone, and yet you look past that and see what her needs are, why she says and does these things. No, no, relax, Miro, I’m not expecting you to be like Ender, I’m just saying that one of the things I liked best about him is also in you—that’s not bad, is it? The compassionate perception—I may be new at being human, but I’m pretty sure that’s a rare commodity.”

“I don’t know,” said Miro. “The only person I’m feeling compassion for right now is me. They call it self-pity, and it isn’t an attractive trait.”

“Why are you feeling sorry for yourself?”

“Because you’ll go on needing Ender all your life, and all you’ll ever find is poor substitutes, like me.”

She held him tighter then. She was the one giving comfort now. “Oh, Miro, maybe that’s true. But if it is, it’s true the way it’s true that Quara is still trying to get her father’s attention. You never stop needing your father or your mother, isn’t that right? You never stop reacting to them, even when they’re dead.”

Father? That had never crossed Miro’s mind before. Jane loved Ender, deeply, yes, loved him forever—but as a father?

“I can’t be your father,” said Miro. “I can’t take his place.” But what he was really doing was making sure he had understood her. Ender was her father?

“I don’t want you to be my father,” said Jane. “I still have all these old Val-feelings, you know. I mean, you and I were friends, right? That was very important to me. But now I have this Val body, and when you touch me, it keeps feeling like the answer to a prayer.” At once she regretted saying it. “Oh, I’m sorry, Miro, I know you miss her.”

“I do,” said Miro. “But then, it’s hard to miss her quite the way I might, since you do look a lot like her. And you sound like her. And here I am holding you the way I wanted to hold her, and if that sounds awful because I’m supposedly comforting you and I shouldn’t be thinking of base desires, well then I’m just an awful kind of guy, right?”

“Awful,” she said. “I’m ashamed to know you.” And she kissed him. Sweetly, awkwardly.

He remembered his first kiss with Ouanda years ago, when he was young and didn’t know how badly things could turn out. They had both been awkward then, new, clumsy. Young. Jane, now, Jane was one of the oldest creatures in the universe. But also one of the youngest. And Val—there would be no reflexes in the Val body for Jane to draw upon, for in Val’s short life, what chance had she had to find love?

“Was that even close to the way humans do that?” asked Jane.

“That was exactly the way humans sometimes do it,” said Miro. “Which isn’t surprising, since we’re both human.”

“Am I betraying Ender, to grieve for him one moment, and then be so happy to have you holding me the next?”

“Am I betraying him, to be so happy only hours after he died?”

“Only he’s not dead,” said Jane. “I know where he is. I chased him there.”

“If he’s exactly the same person he was,” said Miro, “then what a shame. Because good as he was, he wasn’t happy. He had his moments, but he was never—what, he was never really at peace. Wouldn’t it be nice if Peter could live out a full life without ever having to bear the guilt of xenocide? Without ever having to feel the weight of all of humanity on his shoulders?”

“Speaking of which,” said Jane, “we have work to do.”

“We also have lives to live,” said Miro. “I’m not going to be sorry we had this encounter. Even if it took Quara’s bitchiness to make it happen.”

“Let’s do the civilized thing,” said Jane. “Let’s get married. Let’s have babies. I do want to be human, Miro, I want to do everything. I want to be part of human life from edge to edge. And I want to do it all with you.”

“Is this a proposal?” asked Miro.

“I died and was reborn only a dozen hours ago,” said Jane. “My—hell, I can call him my father, can’t I?—my father died, too. Life is short, I feel how short it is: after three thousand years, all of them intense, it still feels too short. I’m in a hurry. And you, haven’t you wasted enough time, too? Aren’t you ready?”

“But I don’t have a ring.”

“We have something much better than a ring,” said Jane. She touched her cheek again, where she had put his tear. It was still damp; still damp, too, when she touched the finger now to his cheek. “I’ve had your tears with mine, and you’ve had mine with yours. I think that’s more intimate even than a kiss.”

“Maybe,” said Miro. “But not as fun.”

“This emotion I’m feeling now, this is love, right?”

“I don’t know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you’re with me?”

“Yes,” she said.

“That’s influenza,” said Miro. “Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours.”

She shoved him, and in the weightless starship the movement sent him helplessly into midair until he struck another surface. “What?” he said, pretending innocence. “What did I say?”

She pushed herself away from the wall and went to the door. “Come on,” she said. “Back to work.”

“Let’s not announce our engagement,” he said softly.

“Why not?” she asked. “Ashamed already?”

“No,” he said. “Maybe it’s petty of me, but when we announce it, I don’t want Quara there.”

“That’s very small of you,” said Jane. “You need to be more magnanimous and patient, like me.”

“I know,” said Miro. “I’m trying to learn.”

They drifted back into the main chamber of the shuttle. The others were working on preparing their genetic message for broadcast on the frequency that the descoladores had used to challenge them when they first showed up closer to the planet. They all looked up. Ela smiled wanly. Firequencher waved cheerfully.

Quara tossed her head. “Well I hope we’re done with that little emotional outburst,” she said.

Miro could feel Jane seethe at the remark. But Jane said nothing. And when they were both sitting down and strapped back into their seats, they looked at each other, and Jane winked.

“I saw that,” said Quara.

“We meant you to,” said Miro.

“Grow up,” Quara said disdainfully.

An hour later they sent their message. And at once they were inundated with answers that they could not understand, but had to. There was no time for quarreling then, or for love, or for grief. There was only language, thick, broad fields of alien messages that had to be understood somehow, by them, right now.

13

“TILL DEATH ENDS ALL SURPRISES”

“I can’t say that I’ve much enjoyed

the work the gods required of me.

My only real pleasure

was my days of schooling,

in those hours between the gods’ sharp summonses.

I am gladly at their service, always,

but oh it was so sweet

to learn how wide the universe could be,

to test myself against my teachers,

and to fail sometimes without much consequence.”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

“Do you want to come to the university and watch us turn on our new godproof computer network?” asked Grace.

Of course Peter and Wang-mu wanted to. But to their surprise, Malu cackled with delight and insisted that he must go, too. The god once dwelt in computers, didn’t she? And if she found her way back, shouldn’t Malu be there to greet her?

This complicated matters a little—for Malu to visit the university required notifying the president so he could assemble a proper welcome. This was not needed for Malu, who was neither vain nor much impressed with ceremonies that didn’t have some immediate purpose. The point was to show the Samoan people that the university still had proper respect for the old ways, of which Malu was the most revered protector and practitioner.

From luaus of fruit and fish on the beach, from open fires, palm mats, and thatch-roof huts, to a hovercar, a highway, and the bright-painted buildings of the modern university—it felt to Wang-mu like a journey through the history of the human race. And yet she had already made that journey once before, from Path; it seemed a part of her life, to step from the ancient to the modern, back and forth. She felt rather sorry for those who knew only one and not the other. It was better, she thought, to be able to select from the whole menu of human achievements than to be bound within one narrow range.

Peter and Wang-mu were discreetly dropped off before the hovercar took Malu to the official reception. Grace’s son took them on a brief tour of the brand-new computer facility. “These new computers all follow the protocols sent to us from Starways Congress. There will be no more direct connections between computer networks and ansibles. Rather there must be a time delay, with each infopacket inspected by referee software that will catch unauthorized piggybacking.”

“In other words,” said Peter, “Jane will never get back in.”

“That’s the plan.” The boy—for despite his size, that’s what he seemed to be—grinned broadly. “All perfect, all new, all in total compliance.”

Wang-mu felt sick inside. This is how it would be all over the Hundred Worlds—Jane blocked out of everything. And without access to the enormous computing capacity of the combined networks of all of human civilization, how could she possibly regain the power to pop a starship Out and In again? Wang-mu had been glad enough to leave Path. But she was by no means certain that Pacifica was the world where she wanted to live the rest of her life. Especially if she was to stay with Peter, for there was no chance he would be content for long with the slower, more lackadaisical timeflow of life in the islands. Truth be known, it was too slow for her, too. She loved her time with the Samoans, but the impatience to be doing something was growing inside her. Perhaps those who grew up among these people might somehow sublimate their ambition, or perhaps there was something in the racial genotype that suppressed it or replaced it, but Wang-mu’s incessant drive to strengthen and expand her role in life was certainly not going to go away just because of a luau on the beach, however much she enjoyed it and would treasure the memory of it.

The tour wasn’t over yet, of course, and Wang-mu dutifully followed Grace’s son wherever he led. But she hardly paid attention beyond what was needed to make polite responses. Peter seemed even more distracted, and Wang-mu could guess why. He would have not only the same feelings Wang-mu had, but he must also be grieving for the loss of connection with Jane through the jewel in his ear. If she did not recover her ability to control data flow through the communications satellites orbiting this world, he would not hear her voice again.

They came to an older section of campus, some rundown buildings in a more utilitarian architectural style. “Nobody likes coming here,” he said, “because it reminds them of how recently our university became anything more than a school for training engineers and teachers. This building is three hundred years old. Come inside.”

“Do we have to?” asked Wang-mu. “I mean, is it necessary? I think we get the idea from the outside.”

“Oh, but I think you want to see this place. Very interesting, because it preserves some of the old ways of doing things.”

Wang-mu of course agreed to follow, as courtesy required, and Peter wordlessly went along. They came inside and heard the humming of ancient air-conditioning systems and felt the harsh refrigerated air. “These are the old ways?” asked Wang-mu. “Not as old as life on the beach, I think.”

“Not as old, that’s true,” said their guide. “But then, we’re not preserving the same thing here.”

They came into a large room with hundreds and hundreds of computers arranged in crowded rows along tables that stretched from end to end. There was no room for anyone to sit at these machines; there was barely enough space between the tables for technicians to slide along to tend to them. All the computers were on, but the air above all the terminals was empty, giving no clue about what was going on inside them.

“We had to do something with all those old computers that Starways Congress made us take offline. So we put them here. And also the old computers from most of the other universities and businesses in the islands—Hawaiian, Tahitian, Maori, on and on—everyone helped. It goes up six stories, every floor just like this, and three other buildings, though this one is the biggest.”

“Jane,” said Peter, and he smiled.

“Here’s where we stored everything she gave us. Of course, on the record these computers are not connected by any network. They are only used for training students. But Congress inspectors never come here. They saw all they wanted to see when they looked at our new installation. Up to code, complying with the rules—we are obedient and loyal citizens! Here, though, I’m afraid there have been some oversights. For instance, there seems to be an intermittent connection with the university’s ansible. Whenever the ansible is actually passing messages offworld, it is connected to no computers except through the official safeguarded time-delayed link. But when the ansible is connected to a handful of eccentric destinations—the Samoan satellite, for instance, or a certain faroff colony that is supposedly incommunicado to all ansibles in the Hundred Worlds—then an old forgotten connection kicks in, and the ansible has complete use of all of this.”

Peter laughed with genuine mirth. Wang-mu loved the sound of it, but also felt just a little jealousy at the thought that Jane might well come back to him.

“And another odd thing,” said Grace’s son. “One of the new computers has been installed here, only there’ve been some alterations. It doesn’t seem to report correctly to the master program. It neglects to inform that master program that there is a hyperfast real-time link to this nonexistent old-style network. It’s a shame that it doesn’t report on this, because of course it allows a completely illegal connection between this old, ansible-connected network and the new godproof system. And so requests for information can be passed, and they’ll look perfectly legal to any inspection software, since they come from this perfectly legal but astonishingly flawed new computer.”

Peter was grinning broadly. “Well, somebody had to work pretty fast to get this done.”

“Malu told us that the god was going to die, but between us and the god we were able to devise a plan. Now the only question is—can she find her way back here?”

“I think she will,” said Peter. “Of course, this isn’t what she used to have, not even a small fraction of it.”

“We understand that she has a couple of similar installations here and there. Not many, you’re right, and the new time-delay barriers will make it so that yes, she has access to all the information, but she can’t use most of the new networks as part of her thought processes. Still, it’s something. Maybe it’s enough.”

“You knew who we were before we got here,” said Wang-mu. “You were already part of Jane’s work.”

“I think the evidence speaks for itself,” said Grace’s son.

“Then why did Jane bring us here?” asked Wang-mu. “What was all this nonsense about needing to have us here so we could stop the Lusitania Fleet?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter. “And I doubt anyone here knows, either. Maybe, though, Jane simply wanted us in a friendly environment, so she could find us again. I doubt there’s anything like this on Divine Wind.”

“And maybe,” Wang-mu said, following her own speculations, “maybe she wanted you here, with Malu and Grace, when the time came for her to die.”

“And for me to die as well,” said Peter. “Meaning me as Ender, of course.”

“And maybe,” said Wang-mu, “if she was no longer going to be there to protect us through her manipulations of data, she wanted us to be among friends.”

“Of course,” said Grace’s son. “She is a god, she takes care of her people.”

“Her worshipers, you mean?” asked Wang-mu.

Peter snorted.

“Her friends,” said the boy. “In Samoa we treat the gods with great respect, but we are also their friends, and we help the good ones when we can. Gods need the help of humans now and then. I think we did all right, don’t you?”

“You did well,” said Peter. “You have been faithful indeed.”

The boy beamed.

Soon they were back in the new computer installation, watching as with great ceremony the president of the university pushed the key to activate the program that turned on and monitored the university ansible. Immediately there were messages and test programs from Starways Congress, probing and inspecting the university’s system to make sure there were no lapses in security and that all protocols had been properly followed. Wang-mu could feel how tense everyone was—except Malu, who seemed incapable of dread—until, a few minutes later, the programs finished their inspection and made their report. The message came immediately from Congress that this network was compliant and secure. The fakes and fudges had not been detected.

“Any time now,” murmured Grace.

“How will we know if all of this has worked?” asked Wang-mu softly.

“Peter will tell us,” answered Grace, sounding surprised that Wang-mu had not already understood this. “The jewel in his ear—the Samoan satellite will speak to it.”

Olhado and Grego stood watching the readout from the ansible that for twenty years had connected only to the shuttle and Jakt’s starship. It was receiving a message again. Links were being established with four ansibles on other worlds, where groups of Lusitanian sympathizers—or at least friends of Jane’s—had followed Jane’s instructions on how to partially circumvent the new regulations. No actual messages were sent, because there was nothing for the humans to say to each other. The point was simply to keep the link alive so Jane might travel on it and link herself with some small part of her old capacity.

None of this had been done with any human participation on Lusitania. All the programming that was required had been accomplished by the relentlessly efficient workers of the Hive Queen, with the help of pequeninos now and then. Olhado and Grego had been invited at the last minute, as observers only. But they understood. Jane was talking to the Hive Queen and the Hive Queen talked to the fathertrees. Jane had not worked through humans because the Lusitanian humans she worked with had been Miro, who had other work to do for her, and Ender, who had removed the jewel from his ear before he died. Olhado and Grego had talked this out as soon as the pequenino Waterjumper had explained to them what was going on and asked them to come observe. “I think she was feeling a bit defiant,” said Olhado. “If Ender rejected her and Miro was busy—”

“Or gaga-eyed over Young Valentine, don’t forget,” said Grego.

“Well, she’d do it without human help.”

“How can it work?” said Grego. “She was connected to billions of computers before. At most she’ll have several thousand now, at least directly usable. It’s not enough. Ela and Quara are never coming home. Or Miro.”

“Maybe not,” said Olhado. “It won’t be the first time we’ve lost family members in the service of a higher cause.” He thought of Mother’s famous parents, Os Venerados, who lacked only the years now for sainthood—if a representative of the Pope should ever come to Lusitania to examine the evidence. And their real father, Libo, and his father, both of whom died before Novinha’s children ever guessed that they were kin. All dead in the cause of science, Os Venerados in the struggle to contain the descolada, Pipo and Libo in the effort to communicate with and understand the pequeninos. Their brother Quim had died as a martyr, trying to heal a dangerous breach in the relationship between humans and pequeninos on Lusitania. And now Ender, their adoptive father, had died in the cause of trying to find a way to save Jane’s life and, with her, faster-than-light travel. If Miro and Ela and Quara should die in the effort to establish communications with the descoladores, it would be a part of the family tradition. “What I wonder,” said Olhado, “is what’s wrong with us, that we haven’t been asked to die in a noble cause.”

“I don’t know about noble causes,” said Grego, “but we do have a fleet aimed at us. That will do, I think, for getting us dead.”

A sudden flurry of activity at the computer terminals told them that their wait was over. “We’ve linked with Samoa,” said Waterjumper. “And now Memphis. And Path. Hegira.” He did the little jig that pequeninos invariably did when they were delighted. “They’re all going to come online. The snooper programs didn’t find them.”

“But will it be enough?” asked Grego. “Do the starships move again?”

Waterjumper shrugged elaborately. “We’ll know when your family gets back, won’t we?”

“Mother doesn’t want to schedule Ender’s funeral until they’re back,” said Grego.

At the mention of Ender’s name, Waterjumper slumped. “The man who took Human into the Third Life,” he said. “And there’s almost nothing of him to bury.”

“I’m just wondering,” said Grego, “if it will be days or weeks or months before Jane finds her way back into her powers—if she can do it at all.”

“I don’t know,” said Waterjumper.

“They only have a few weeks of air,” said Grego.

“He doesn’t know, Grego,” said Olhado.

“I know that,” said Grego. “But the Hive Queen knows. And she’ll tell the fathertrees. I thought . . . word might have seeped down.”

“How could even the Hive Queen know what will happen in the future?” asked Olhado. “How can anyone know what Jane can or can’t accomplish? We’ve linked again with worlds outside of this one. Some parts of her core memory have been restored to the ansible net, however surreptitiously. She might find them. She might not. If found, they might be enough, or might not. But Waterjumper doesn’t know.”

Grego turned away. “I know,” he said.

“We’re all afraid,” said Olhado. “Even the Hive Queen. None of us wants to die.”

“Jane died, but didn’t stay dead,” said Grego. “According to Miro, Ender’s aiúa is supposedly off living as Peter on some other world. Hive queens die and their memories live on in their daughters’ minds. Pequeninos get to live as trees.”

“Some of us,” said Waterjumper.

“But what of us?” said Grego. “Will we be extinguished? What difference does it make then, the ones of us who had plans, what does it matter the work we’ve done? The children we’ve raised?” He looked pointedly at Olhado. “What will it matter then, that you have such a big happy family, if you’re all erased in one instant by that . . . bomb?”

“Not one moment of my life with my family has been wasted,” said Olhado quietly.

“But the point of it is to go on, isn’t it? To connect with the future?”

“That’s one part, yes,” said Olhado. “But part of the purpose of it is now, is the moment. And part of it is the web of connections. Links from soul to soul. If the purpose of life was just to continue into the future, then none of it would have meaning, because it would be all anticipation and preparation. There’s fruition, Grego. There’s the happiness we’ve already had. The happiness of each moment. The end of our lives, even if there’s no forward continuation, no progeny at all, the end of our lives doesn’t erase the beginning.”

“But it won’t have amounted to anything,” said Grego. “If your children die, then it was all a waste.”

“No,” said Olhado quietly. “You say that because you have no children, Greguinho. But none of it is wasted. The child you hold in your arms for only a day before he dies, that is not wasted, because that one day is enough of a purpose in itself. Entropy has been thrown back for an hour, a day, a week, a month. Just because we might all die here on this little world does not undo the lives before the deaths.”

Grego shook his head. “Yes it does, Olhado. Death undoes everything.”

Olhado shrugged. “Then why do you bother doing everything, Grego? Because someday you will die. Why should anyone ever have children? Someday they will die, their children will die, all children will die. Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we were there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That’s the truth—what is, what was, what will be—not what could be, what should have been, what never can be. If we die, then our death has meaning to the rest of the universe. Even if our lives are unknown, the fact that someone lived here, and died, that will have repercussions, that will shape the universe.”

“So that’s meaning enough for you?” said Grego. “To die as an object lesson? To die so that people can feel awful about having killed you?”

“There are worse meanings for a life to have.”

Waterjumper interrupted them. “The last of the ansibles we expected is online. We have them all connected now.”

They stopped talking. It was time for Jane to find her way back into herself, if she could.

They waited.

Through one of her workers, the Hive Queen saw and heard the news of the restoration of the ansible links. <It’s time,> she told the fathertrees.

<Can she do it? Can you lead her?>

<I can’t lead her to a place where I can’t go myself,> said the Hive Queen. <She has to find her own way. All I can do right now is tell her that it’s time.>

<So we can only watch?>

<I can only watch,> said the Hive Queen. <You are part of her, or she of you. Her aiúa is tied now to your web through the mothertrees. Be ready.>

<For what?>

<For Jane’s need.>

<What will she need? When will she need it?>

<I have no idea.>

At his terminal on the stranded starship, the Hive Queen’s worker suddenly looked up, then arose from her seat and walked to Jane.

Jane looked up from her work. “What is it?” she asked distractedly. And then, remembering the signal she was waiting for, she looked over at Miro, who had turned to see what was happening. “I’ve got to go now,” she said.

Then she flopped back in her seat as if she had fainted.

At once Miro was out of his chair; Ela wasn’t far behind. The worker had already unfastened Jane from the chair and was lifting her off. Miro helped her draw Jane’s body through the corridors of weightless space to the beds in the back of the ship. There they laid her down and secured her to a bed. Ela checked her vital signs.

“She’s sleeping deeply,” said Ela. “Breathing very slowly.”

“A coma?” asked Miro.

“She’s doing the minimum to stay alive,” said Ela. “Other than that, there’s nothing.”

“Come on,” said Quara from the door. “Let’s get back to work.”

Miro rounded on her, furious—but Ela restrained him. “You can stay and watch over her if you want,” she said, “but Quara’s right. We have work to do. She’s doing hers.”

Miro turned back to Jane and touched her hand, took it, held it. The others left the sleeping quarters. You can’t hear me, you can’t feel me, you can’t see me, Miro said silently. So I guess I’m not here for you. Yet I can’t leave you. What am I afraid of? We’re all dead if you don’t succeed at what you’re doing now. So it isn’t your death I fear.

It’s your old self. Your old existence among the computers and the ansibles. You’ve had your fling in a human body, but when your old powers are restored, your human life will be just a small part of you again. Just one sensory input device among millions. One small set of memories lost in an overwhelming sea of memory. You’ll be able to devote one tiny part of your attention to me, and I’ll never know that I am perpetually an afterthought in your life.

That’s just one of the drawbacks when you love somebody so much greater than yourself, Miro told himself. I’ll never know the difference. She’ll come back and I’ll be happy with all the time we have together and I’ll never know how little time and effort she actually devotes to being with me. A diversion, that’s what I am.

Then he shook his head, let go of her hand, and left the room. I will not listen to the voice of despair, he told himself. Would I tame this great being and make her so much my slave that every moment of her life belongs to me? Would I focus her eyes so they can see nothing but my face? I must rejoice that I am part of her, instead of resenting that I’m not more of her.

He returned to his place and got back to work. But a few moments later he got up again and went back to her. He was useless until she came back. Until he knew the outcome, he could think of nothing else.

Jane was not precisely adrift. She had her unbroken connection to the three ansibles of Lusitania, and she found them easily. And just as easily found the new connections to ansibles on a half dozen worlds. From there, she quickly found her way through the thicket of interrupts and cutouts that protected her back door into the system from discovery by Congress’s snoop programs. All was as she and her friends had planned.

It was small, cramped, as she had known it would be. But she had almost never used the full capacity of the system—except when she was controlling starships. Then she needed every scrap of fast memory to hold the complete image of the ship she was transporting. Obviously there wasn’t enough capacity on these mere thousands of machines. Yet it was such a relief, nonetheless, to tap back into the programs that she had so long used to do so much of her thought for her, servants she made use of like the Hive Queen’s workers—just one more way that I am like her, Jane realized. She got them running, then explored the memories that for these long days had been so painfully missing. Once again she was in possession of a mental system that allowed her to maintain dozens of levels of attention to simultaneously running processes.

And yet it was still all wrong. She had been in her human body only a day, and yet already the electronic self that once had felt so copious was far too small. It wasn’t just because there were so few computers where once there had been so many. Rather it was small by nature. The ambiguity of flesh made for a vastness of possibility that simply could not exist in a binary world. She had been alive, and so she knew now that her electronic dwellingplace gave her only a fraction of a life. However much she had accomplished during her millennia of life in the machine, it brought no satisfaction compared to even a few minutes in that body of flesh and blood.

If she had thought she might ever leave the Val-body, she knew now that she never could. That was the root of her, now and forever. Indeed, she would have to force herself to spread out into these computer systems when she needed them. By inclination, she would not readily go into them.

But there was no reason to speak to anyone of her disappointment. Not yet. She would tell Miro when she got back to him. He would listen and talk to no one else. Indeed, he would probably be relieved. No doubt he was worried that she would be tempted to remain in the computers and not go back into the body that she could still feel, strong and insistent on her attention, even in the slackness of such a deep sleep. But he had no reason to fear. Hadn’t he spent many long months in a body that was so limited he could hardly bear to live in it? She would as soon go back to being just a computer-dweller as he would go back to the brain-damaged body that had so tortured him.

Yet it is myself, part of myself. That’s what these friends had given to her, and she would not tell them how painful it was to fit into this small sort of life again. She brought up her old familiar Jane-face above a terminal in each world, and smiled at them, and spoke:

“Thank you, my friends. I will never forget your love and loyalty to me. It will take a while for me to find out how much is open to me, and how much is closed. I’ll tell you what I know when I know it. But be assured that whether or not I can achieve anything comparable to what I did before, I owe this restoration of myself to you, to all of you. I was already your friend forever; I am forever in your debt.”

They answered; she heard all the answers, conversed with them using only small parts of her attention.

The rest of her explored. She found the hidden interfaces with the main computer systems that the Starways Congress’s programmers had designed. It was easy enough to raid them for whatever information she wanted—indeed, within moments she had found her way into the most secret files of the Starways Congress and found out every technical specification and every protocol of the new nets. But all her probing was done at second-hand, as if she were dipping into a cookie jar in the darkness, unable to see what she could touch. She could send out little finder programs that brought back to her whatever she wanted; they were guided by fuzzy protocols that let them even be somewhat serendipitous, dragging back tangential information that had somehow tickled them into bringing it aboard. She certainly had the power to sabotage, if she had wanted to punish them. She could have crashed everything, destroyed all the data. But none of that, neither finding secrets nor wreaking vengeance, had anything to do with what she needed now. The information most vital to her had been saved by her friends. What she needed was capacity, and it wasn’t there. The new networks were stepped back and delayed far enough from the immediacy of the ansibles that she couldn’t use them for her thought. She tried to find ways to offload and reload data quickly enough that she could use it to push a starship Out and In again, but it simply wasn’t fast enough. Only bits and pieces of each starship would go Out, and almost nothing would make it come back Inside.

I have all my knowledge. I just haven’t got the space.

Through all of this, however, her aiúa was making its circuit. Many times a second it passed through the Val-body strapped to a bed in the starship. Many times a second it touched the ansibles and computers of its restored, if truncated, network. And many times a second it wandered the lacy links among the mothertrees.

A thousand, ten thousand times her aiúa made these circuits before she finally realized that the mothertrees were also a storage place. They had so few thoughts of their own, but the structures were there that could hold memories, and there were no delays built in. She could think, could hold the thought, could retrieve it instantly. And the mothertrees were fractally deep; she could store memory mapped in layers, thoughts within thoughts, farther and farther into the structures and patterns of the living cells, without ever interfering with the dim sweet thoughts of the trees themselves. It was a far better storage system than the computer nets had ever been; it was inherently larger than any binary device. Though there were far fewer mothertrees than there were computers, even in her new shrunken net, the depth and richness of the memory array meant that there was far more room for data that could be recalled far more rapidly. Except for retrieving basic data, her own memories of past starflights, Jane would not need to use the computers at all. The pathway to the stars now lay along an avenue of trees.

Alone in a starship on the surface of Lusitania, a worker of the Hive Queen waited. Jane found her easily, found and remembered the shape of the starship. Though she had “forgotten” how to do starflight for a day or so, the memory was back again and she did it easily, pushing the starship Out, then bringing it back In an instant later, only many kilometers away, in a clearing before the entrance to the Hive Queen’s nest. The worker arose from its terminal, opened the door, and came outside. Of course there was no celebration. The Hive Queen merely looked through the worker’s eyes to verify that the flight had been successful, then explored the worker’s body and the starship itself to make sure that nothing had been lost or damaged in the flight.

Jane could hear the Hive Queen’s voice as if from a distance, for she recoiled instinctively from such a powerful source of thought. It was the relayed message that she heard, the voice of Human speaking in her mind. <All is well,> Human said to her. <You can go ahead.>

She returned then to the starship that contained her own living body. When she transported other people, she left it to their own aiúas to watch over their flesh and hold it intact. The result of that had been the chaotic creations of Miro and Ender, with their hunger for bodies different from the ones they actually lived in. But that effect was now prevented easily by letting travelers linger only a moment, a tiny fraction of a second Outside, just long enough to make sure the bits of everything and everyone were all together. This time, though, she had to hold a starship and the Val-body together, and also drag along Miro, Ela, Firequencher, Quara, and a worker of the hive queen’s. There could be no mistakes.

Yet it functioned easily enough. The familiar shuttle she easily held in memory; the people she had carried so often before she carried along. Her new body was already so well known to her that, to her relief, it took no special effort to hold it together along with the ship. The only novelty was that instead of sending and pulling back, she went along. Her own aiúa went with the rest of them Outside.

That was itself the only problem. Once Outside, she had no way of telling how long they had been there. It might have been an hour. A year. A picosecond. She had never herself gone Outside before. It was distracting, baffling, then frightening to have no root or anchor. How can I get back in? What am I connected to?

In the very asking of the panicked question, she found her anchor, for no sooner had her aiúa done a single circuit of the Val-body Outside than it jumped to do her circuit of the mothertrees. In that moment she called the ship and all within it back again, and placed them where she wanted, in the landing zone of the starport on Lusitania.

She inspected them quickly. All were there. It had worked. They would not die in space. She could still do starflight, even with herself aboard. And though she would not often take herself along on voyages—it had been too frightening, even though her connection with the mothertrees sustained her—she now knew she could put the ships back into flight without worry.

Malu shouted and the others turned to look at him. They had all seen the Jane-face in the air above the terminals, a hundred Jane-faces around the room. They had all cheered and celebrated at the time. So Wang-mu wondered: What could this be now?

“The god has moved her starship!” Malu cried. “The god has found her power again!”

Wang-mu heard the words and wondered mutely how he knew. But Peter, whatever he might have wondered, took the news more personally. He threw his arms around her, lifted her from the ground, and spun around with her. “We’re free again,” he cried, his voice as joyful as Malu’s had been. “We’re free to roam again!”

At that moment Wang-mu finally realized that the man she loved was, at the deepest level, the same man, Ender Wiggin, who had wandered world to world for three thousand years. Why had Peter been so silent and glum, only to relax into such exuberance now? Because he couldn’t bear the thought of having to live out his life on only one world.

What have I got myself into? Wang-mu wondered. Is this going to be my life, a week here, a month there?

And then she thought: What if it is? If the week is with Peter, if the month is at his side, then that may well be home enough for me. And if it’s not, there’ll be time enough to work out some sort of compromise. Even Ender settled down at last, on Lusitania.

Besides, I may be a wanderer myself. I’m still young—how do I even know what kind of life I want to lead? With Jane to take us anywhere in just a heartbeat, we can see all of the Hundred Worlds and all the newest colonies, and anything else we want to see before we even have to think of settling down.

Someone was shouting out in the control room. Miro knew he should get up from Jane’s sleeping body and find out. But he did not want to let go of her hand. He did not want to take his eyes away from her.

“We’re cut off!” came the cry again—Quara, shouting, terrified and angry. “I was getting their broadcasts and suddenly now there’s nothing.”

Miro almost laughed aloud. How could Quara fail to understand? The reason she couldn’t receive the descolador broadcasts anymore was because they were no longer orbiting the planet of the descoladores. Couldn’t Quara feel the onset of gravity? Jane had done it. Jane had brought them home.

But had she brought herself? Miro squeezed her hand, leaned over, kissed her cheek. “Jane,” he whispered. “Don’t be lost out there. Be here. Be here with me.”

“All right,” she said.

He raised his face from hers, looked into her eyes. “You did it,” he said.

“And rather easily, after all that worry,” she said. “But I don’t think my body was designed to sleep so deeply. I can’t move.”

Miro pushed the quick release on her bed, and all the straps came free.

“Oh,” she said. “You tied me down.”

She tried to sit up, but lay back down again immediately.

“Feeling faint?” Miro asked.

“The room is swimming,” she said. “Maybe I can do future starflights without having to lay my own body out so thoroughly.”

The door crashed open. Quara stood in the doorway, quivering with rage. “How dare you do it without so much as a warning!”

Ela was behind her, remonstrating with her. “For heaven’s sake, Quara, she got us home, isn’t that enough?”

“You could have some decency!” Quara shouted. “You could tell us that you were performing your experiment!”

“She brought you with us, didn’t she?” said Miro, laughing.

His laughter only infuriated Quara more. “She isn’t human! That’s what you like about her, Miro! You never could have fallen in love with a real woman. What’s your track record? You fell in love with a woman who turned out to be your half-sister, then Ender’s automaton, and now a computer wearing a human body like a puppet. Of course you laugh at a time like this. You have no human feelings.”

Jane was up now, standing on somewhat shaky legs. Miro was pleased to see that she was recovering so quickly from her hour in a comatose state. He hardly noticed Quara’s vilification.

“Don’t ignore me, you smug self-righteous son-of-a-bitch!” Quara screamed in his face.

He ignored her, feeling, in fact, rather smug and self-righteous as he did. Jane, holding his hand, followed close behind him, past Quara, out of the sleeping chamber. As she passed, Quara shouted at her, “You’re not some god who has a right to toss me from place to place without even asking!” and she gave Jane a shove.

It wasn’t much of a shove. But Jane lurched against Miro. He turned, worried she might fall. Instead he got himself turned in time to see Jane spread her fingers against Quara’s chest and shove her back, much harder. Quara knocked her head against the corridor wall and then, utterly off balance, she fell to the floor at Ela’s feet.

“She tried to kill me!” cried Quara.

“If she wanted to kill you,” said Ela mildly, “you’d be sucking space in orbit around the planet of the descoladores.”

“You all hate me!” Quara shouted, and then burst into tears.

Miro opened the shuttle door and led Jane out into sunlight. It was her first step onto the surface of a planet, her first sight of sunlight with these human eyes. She stood there, frozen, then turned her head to see more, raised her face up to the sky, and then burst into tears and clung to Miro. “Oh, Miro! It’s too much to bear! It’s all too beautiful!”

“You should see it in the spring,” he said inanely.

A moment later, she recovered enough to face the world again, to take tentative steps along with him. Already they could see a hovercar rushing toward them from Milagre—it would be Olhado and Grego, or perhaps Valentine and Jakt. They would meet Jane-as-Val for the first time. Valentine, more than anyone, would remember Val and miss her, while unlike Miro she would have no particular memories of Jane, for they had not been close. But if Miro knew Valentine at all, he knew that she would keep to herself whatever grief she felt for Val; to Jane she would show only welcome, and perhaps curiosity. It was Valentine’s way. It was more important to her to understand than it was for her to grieve. She felt all things deeply, but she didn’t let her own grief or pain stand between her and learning all she could.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” said Jane.

“Done what?”

“Used physical violence against Quara,” Jane said miserably.

Miro shrugged. “It’s what she wanted,” he said. “You can hear how much she’s still enjoying it.”

“No, she doesn’t want that,” Jane said. “Not in her deepest heart. She wants what everybody wants—to be loved and cared for, to be part of something beautiful and fine, to have the respect of those she admires.”

“Yes, well, I’ll take your word for it,” said Miro.

“No, Miro, you see it,” Jane insisted.

“Yes, I see it,” Miro answered. “But I gave up trying years ago. Quara’s need was and is so great that a person like me could be swallowed up in it a dozen times over. I had problems of my own then. Don’t condemn me because I wrote her off. Her barrel of misery has depth enough to hold a thousand bushels of happiness.”

“I don’t condemn you,” said Jane. “I just . . . I had to know that you saw how much she loves you and needs you. I needed you to be . . .”

“You needed me to be like Ender,” said Miro.

“I needed you to be your own best self,” said Jane.

“I loved Ender too, you know. I think of him as every man’s best self. And I don’t resent the fact that you would like me to be at least some of the things he was to you. As long as you also want a few of the things that are me alone, and no part of him.”

“I don’t expect you to be perfect,” said Jane. “And I don’t expect you to be Ender. And you’d better not expect perfection from me, either, because wise as I’m trying to be right now, I’m still the one who knocked your sister down.”

“Who knows?” said Miro. “That may have turned you into Quara’s dearest friend.”

“I hope not,” said Jane. “But if it’s true, I’ll do my best for her. After all, she’s going to be my sister now.”

<So you were ready,> said the Hive Queen.

<Without knowing it, yes, we were,> said Human.

<And you are part of her, all of you.>

<Her touch is gentle,> said Human, <and her presence in us is easily borne. The mothertrees don’t mind her. Her vividness envigorates them. And if having her memories is strange to them, it brings more variety to their lives than they have ever had before.>

<So she’s a part of all of us,> said the Hive Queen. <What she is now, what she has become, is part hive queen, part human, and part pequenino.>

<Whatever she does, no one can say she doesn’t understand us. If someone had to play with godlike powers, better her than anyone.>

<I’m jealous of her, I confess,> the Hive Queen said. <She’s a part of you as I can never be. After all our conversations, I still have no notion of what it is to be one of you.>

<Nor do I understand anything more than a glimmer of the way you think,> said Human. <But isn’t that a good thing, too? The mystery is endless. We will never cease to surprise each other.>

<Till death ends all surprises,> said the Hive Queen.

14

“HOW THEY COMMUNICATE WITH ANIMALS”

“If only we were wiser or better people,

perhaps the gods would explain to us

the mad, unbearable things they do.”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

The moment Admiral Bobby Lands received the news that the ansible connections to Starways Congress were restored, he gave the order to the entire Lusitania Fleet to decelerate forthwith to a speed just under the threshold of invisibility. Obedience was immediate, and he knew that within an hour, to any telescopic observer on Lusitania, the whole fleet would seem to spring into existence from nowhere. They would be hurtling toward a point near Lusitania at an astonishing speed, their massive foreshields still in place to protect them from taking devastating damage from collisions with interstellar particles as small as dust.

Admiral Lands’s strategy was simple. He would arrive near Lusitania at the highest possible speed that would not cause relativistic effects; he would launch the Little Doctor during the period of nearest approach, a window of no more than a couple of hours; and then he would bring his whole fleet back up to relativistic speeds so rapidly that when the M.D. Device went off, it would not catch any of his ships within its all-destroying field.

It was a good, simple strategy, based on the assumption that Lusitania had no defenses. But to Lands, that assumption could not be taken for granted. Somehow the Lusitanian rebels had acquired enough resources that for a period of time near the end of the voyage, they were able to cut off all communications between the fleet and the rest of humanity. Never mind that the problem had been ascribed to a particularly resourceful and pervasive computer saboteur program; never mind that his superiors assured him that the saboteur program had been wiped out through prudently radical action timed to eliminate the threat just prior to the arrival of the fleet at its destination. Lands had no intention of being deceived by an illusion of defenselessness. The enemy had proved itself to be an unknown quantity, and Lands had to be prepared for anything. This was war, total war, and he was not going to allow his mission to be compromised through carelessness or overconfidence.

From the moment he received this assignment he had been keenly aware that he would be remembered throughout human history as the Second Xenocide. It was not an easy thing to contemplate the destruction of an alien race, particularly when the piggies of Lusitania were, by all reports, so primitive that in themselves they offered no threat to humanity. Even when alien enemies were a threat, as the buggers were at the time of the First Xenocide, some bleeding heart calling himself the Speaker for the Dead had managed to paint a glowing picture of those murderous monsters as some kind of utopian hive community that really meant no harm to humanity. How could the writer of this work possibly know what the buggers intended? It was a monstrous thing to write, actually, for it utterly destroyed the name of the child-hero who had so brilliantly defeated the buggers and saved humanity.

Lands had not hesitated to accept command of the Lusitania Fleet, but from the start of the voyage he had spent a considerable amount of time every day studying the scant information about Ender the Xenocide that was available. The boy had not known, of course, that he was actually commanding the real human fleet by ansible; he had thought he was involved in a brutally rigorous schedule of training simulations. Nevertheless, he had made the correct decision at the moment of crisis—he chose to use the weapon he had been forbidden to use against planets, and thus blew up the last bugger world. That was the end of the threat to humanity. It was the correct action, it was what the art of war required, and at the time the boy had been deservedly hailed as a hero.

Yet within a few decades, the tide of opinion had been swung by that pernicious book called The Hive Queen, and Ender Wiggin, already in virtual exile as governor of a new colony planet, disappeared entirely from history as his name became a byword for annihilation of a gentle, well-meaning, misunderstood species.

If they could turn against such an obvious innocent as the child Ender Wiggin, what will they make of me? thought Lands, over and over. The buggers were brutal, soulless killers, with fleets of starships armed with devastating killing power, whereas I will be destroying the piggies, who have done their share of killing, but only on a tiny scale, a couple of scientists who may well have violated some tabu. Certainly the piggies have no means now or in the reasonably foreseeable future of rising from the surface of their planet and challenging the dominance of humans in space.

Yet Lusitania was every bit as dangerous as the buggers—perhaps more so. For there was a virus loose on that planet, a virus which killed every human it infected, unless the victim got continuous dosages of a decreasingly effective antidote at regular intervals for the rest of his life. Furthermore, the virus was known to be prone to rapid adaptation.

As long as this virus was contained on Lusitania, the danger was not severe. But then two arrogant scientists on Lusitania—the legal record named them as the xenologers Marcos “Miro” Vladimir Ribeira von Hesse and Ouanda Quenhatta Figueira Mucumbi—violated the terms of the human settlement by “going native” and providing illegal technology and bioforms to the piggies. Starways Congress reacted properly by remanding the violators to trial on another planet, where of course they would have to be kept in quarantine—but the lesson had to be swift and severe so no one else on Lusitania would be tempted to flout the wise laws that protected humanity from the spread of the descolada virus. Who could have guessed that such a tiny human colony would dare to defy Congress by refusing to arrest the criminals? From the moment of that defiance, there was no choice but to send this fleet and destroy Lusitania. For as long as Lusitania was in revolt, the risk of stargoing ships’ escaping the planet and carrying unspeakable plague to the rest of humanity was too great to endure.

All was so clear. Yet Lands knew that the moment the danger was gone, the moment the descolada virus no longer posed a threat to anyone, people would forget how great the danger had been and would begin to wax sentimental about the lost piggies, that poor race of victims of ruthless Admiral Bobby Lands, the Second Xenocide.

Lands was not an insensitive man. It kept him awake at night, knowing how he would be hated. Nor did he love the duty that had come to him—he was not a man of violence, and the thought of destroying not only the piggies but also the entire human population of Lusitania made him sick at heart. No one in his fleet could doubt his reluctance to do what must be done; but neither could anyone doubt his grim determination to do it.

If only some way could be found, he thought over and over. If only when I come out into realtime the Congress would send us word that a real antidote or a workable vaccine had been found to curb the descolada. Anything that would prove that there was no more danger. Anything to be able to keep the Little Doctor, unarmed, in its place in his flagship.

Such wishes, however, could hardly even be called hopes. There was no chance of this. Even if a cure had been found on the surface of Lusitania, how could the fact be made known? No, Lands would have to knowingly do what Ender Wiggin did in all innocence. And he would do it. He would bear the consequence. He would face down those who vilified him. For he would know that he did what was necessary for the sake of all of humanity; and compared to that, what did it matter whether one individual was honored or unfairly hated?

The moment the ansible network was restored, Yasujiro Tsutsumi sent his messages, then betook himself to the ansible installation on the ninth floor of his building and waited there in trepidation. If the family decided that his idea had merit enough to be worth discussing, they would want a realtime conference, and he was determined not to be the one who kept them waiting. And if they answered him with a rebuke, he wanted to be the first to read it, so that his underlings and colleagues on Divine Wind would hear of it from him instead of as a rumor behind his back.

Did Aimaina Hikari understand what he had asked Yasujiro to do? He was at the cusp of his career. If he did well, he would begin to move from world to world, one of the elite caste of managers who were cut loose from time and sent into the future through the time-dilation effect of interstellar travel. But if he was judged to be a second-rater, he would be moved sideways or down within the organization here on Divine Wind. He would never leave, and so he would continuously face the pity of those who would know that he was one who did not have what it took to rise from one small lifetime into the freefloating eternity of upper management.

Probably Aimaina knew all about this. But even if he had not known how fragile Yasujiro’s position was, finding out would not have stopped him. To save another species from needless annihilation—that was worth a few careers. Could Aimaina help it that it was not his own career that would be ruined? It was an honor that Aimaina had chosen Yasujiro, that he had thought him wise enough to recognize the moral peril of the Yamato people and courageous enough to act on that knowledge regardless of personal cost.

Such an honor—Yasujiro hoped it would be sufficient to make him happy if all else slipped away. For he meant to leave the Tsutsumi company if he was rebuked. If they did not act to avert the peril then he could not remain. Nor could he remain silent. He would speak out and include Tsutsumi in his condemnation. He would not threaten to do this, for the family rightly viewed all threats with contempt. He would simply speak. Then, for his disloyalty, they would work to destroy him. No company would hire him. No public appointment would long remain in his hands. It was no jest when he told Aimaina that he would come to live with him. Once Tsutsumi decided to punish, the miscreant would have no choice but to throw himself on the mercy of his friends—if he had any friends who were not themselves terrified by the Tsutsumi wrath.

All these dire scenarios played themselves out in Yasujiro’s mind as he waited, waited, hour after hour. Surely they had not simply ignored his message. They must be reading and discussing it even now.

He finally dozed off. The ansible operator awakened him—a woman who had not been on duty when he fell asleep. “Are you by any chance the honorable Yasujiro Tsutsumi?”

The conference was already under way; despite his best intention, he was indeed the last to arrive. The cost of such an ansible conference in realtime was phenomenal, not to mention the annoyance. Under the new computer system every participant in a conference had to be present at the ansible, since no conference would be possible if they had to wait for the built-in time delay between each comment and its reply.

When Yasujiro saw the identification bands under the faces shown in the terminal display he was both thrilled and horrified. This matter had not been delegated to secondary or tertiary officials in the home office on Honshu. Yoshiaki-Seiji Tsutsumi himself was there, the ancient man who had led Tsutsumi all of Yasujiro’s life. This must be a good sign. Yoshiaki-Seiji—or “Yes Sir,” as he was called, though not to his face, of course—would never waste his time coming to an ansible merely to slap down an upstart underling.

Yes Sir himself did not speak, of course. Rather it was old Eiichi who did the talking. Eiichi was known as the conscience of Tsutsumi—which some said, rather cynically, meant he must be a deaf mute.

“Our young brother has been bold, but he was wise to pass on to us the thoughts and feelings of our honored teacher, Aimaina Hikari. While none of us here on Honshu has been privileged personally to know the Guardian of Yamato, we have all been aware of his words. We were not prepared to think of the Japanese as being responsible, as a people, for the Lusitania Fleet. Nor were we prepared to think of Tsutsumi as having any special responsibility toward a political situation with no obvious connection to finances or the economy in general.

“Our young brother’s words were heartfelt and outrageous, and if they had not come from one who has been properly modest and respectful for all his years of work with us, careful and yet bold enough to take risks when the time was right, we might not have heeded his message. But we did heed it; we studied it and found from our government sources that the Japanese influence on Starways Congress was and continues to be pivotal on this issue in particular. And in our judgment there is no time for us to try to build a coalition of other companies or to change public opinion. The fleet might arrive at any moment. Our fleet, if Aimaina Hikari is correct; and even if he is not, it is a human fleet, and we are humans, and it might just be within our power to stop it. A quarantine will easily do all that is necessary to protect the human species from annihilation by the descolada virus. Therefore we wish to inform you, Yasujiro Tsutsumi, that you have proven yourself worthy of the name that was given you at birth. We will commit all the resources of the Tsutsumi family to the task of convincing a sufficient number of Congressmen to oppose the fleet—and to oppose it so vigorously that they force an immediate vote to recall the fleet and forbid it to strike against Lusitania. We may succeed in this task or we may fail, but either way, our younger brother Yasujiro Tsutsumi has served us well, not only through his many achievements in company management, but also because he knew when to listen to an outsider, when to put moral questions into a position of primacy over financial considerations, and when to risk all in order to help Tsutsumi be and do what is right. Therefore we summon Yasujiro Tsutsumi to Honshu, where he will serve Tsutsumi as my assistant.” At this Eiichi bowed. “I am honored that such a distinguished young man is being trained to be my replacement when I die or retire.”

Yasujiro bowed gravely. He was relieved, yes, that he was being called directly to Honshu—no one had ever been summoned so young. But to be Eiichi’s assistant, groomed to replace him—that was not the life’s work Yasujiro had dreamed of. It was not to be a philosopher-cum-ombudsman that he had worked so hard and served so faithfully. He wanted to be in the thick of management of the family enterprises.

But it would be years of starflight before he arrived on Honshu. Eiichi might well be dead. Yes Sir would surely be dead by then as well. Instead of replacing Eiichi, he might as easily be given a different assignment better suited to his real abilities. So Yasujiro would not refuse this strange gift. He would embrace his fate and follow where it led.

“O Eiichi my father, I bow before you and before all the great fathers of our company, most particularly Yoshiaki-Seiji-san. You honor me beyond anything I could ever deserve. I pray that I will not disappoint you too much. And I also give thanks that at this difficult time the Yamato spirit is in such good protecting hands as yours.”

With his public acceptance of his orders, the meeting ended—it was expensive, after all, and the Tsutsumi family was careful to avoid waste if it could help it. The ansible conference ended. Yasujiro sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. He was trembling.

“Oh, Yasujiro-san,” said the ansible attendant. “Oh, Yasujiro-san.”

Oh, Yasujiro-san, thought Yasujiro. Who would have guessed that Aimaina’s visit to me would lead to this? So easily it could have gone the other way. Now he would be one of the men of Honshu. Whatever his role, he would be among the supreme leaders of Tsutsumi. There was no happier outcome. Who would have guessed.

Before he rose from his chair beside the ansible, Tsutsumi representatives were talking to all the Japanese Congressmen, and many who were not Japanese but nevertheless followed the Necessarian line. And as the tally of compliant politicians rose, it became clear that support for the fleet was shallow indeed. It would not be all that expensive to stop the fleet after all.

The pequenino on duty monitoring the satellites that orbited Lusitania heard the alarm going off and at first had no idea what was happening. The alarm had never, to his knowledge, sounded. At first he assumed it was some kind of dangerous weather pattern that had been detected. But it was nothing of the kind. It was the outward-searching telescopes that had triggered the alarm. Dozens of armed starships had just appeared, traveling at very high but nonrelativistic speeds, on a course that would allow them to launch the Little Doctor within the hour.

The duty officer gave the urgent message to his colleagues, and very quickly the mayor of Milagre was notified and the rumor began to spread throughout what was left of the village. Anyone who doesn’t leave within the hour will be destroyed, that was the message, and within minutes hundreds of human families were gathered around the starships, anxiously waiting to be taken in. Remarkably, it was only humans insisting on these last-minute runs. Faced with the inevitable death of their own forests of fathertrees, mothertrees, and brothertrees, the pequeninos felt no urgency to save their own lives. Who would they be without their forest? Better to die among loved ones than as perpetual strangers in a distant forest that was not and never could be their own.

As for the Hive Queen, she had already sent her last daughter-queen and had no particular interest in trying to leave herself. She was the last of the hive queens who had been alive before Ender’s destruction of their home planet. She felt it fitting that she, too, should submit to the same kind of death three thousand years later. Besides, she told herself, how could she bear to live when her great friend, Human, was rooted to Lusitania and could not leave it? It was not a queenly thought, but then, no hive queen before her had ever had a friend. It was a new thing in the world, to have someone to talk to who was not substantially yourself. It would grieve her too much to live on without Human. And since her survival was no longer crucial to the perpetuation of her species, she would do the grand, brave, tragic, romantic, and least complicated thing: She would stay. She rather liked the idea of being noble in human terms; and it proved, to her own surprise, that she had not been utterly unchanged by her close contact with humans and pequeninos. They had transformed her quite against her own expectations. There had been no Hive Queen like her in all the history of her people.

<I wish you would go,> Human told her. <I prefer the thought of you alive.>

But for once she did not answer him.

Jane was adamant. The team working on the language of the descoladores had to leave Lusitania and get back to work in orbit around the descolada planet. Of course that included herself, but no one was foolish enough to begrudge the survival of the person who was making all the starships go, nor of the team that would perhaps save all of humanity from the descoladores. But Jane was on shakier moral ground when she also insisted that Novinha, Grego, and Olhado and his family be taken to a place of safety. Valentine, too, was informed that if she did not go with her husband and children and their crew and friends to Jakt’s starship, Jane would be forced to waste precious mental resources by transporting them bodily against their will, sans spacecraft if necessary.

“Why us?” demanded Valentine. “We haven’t asked for special treatment.”

“I don’t care what you do or do not ask for,” said Jane. “You are Ender’s sister. Novinha is his widow, her children are his adopted children; I will not stand by and let you be killed when I have it in my power to save the family of my friend. If that seems unfairly preferential to you, then complain about it to me later, but for now get yourselves into Jakt’s spaceship so I can lift you off this world. And you will save more lives if you don’t waste another moment of my attention with useless argument.”

Feeling ashamed at having special privileges, yet grateful they and their loved ones would live through the next few hours, the descoladores team gathered in the shuttle-turned-starship, which Jane had relocated away from the crowded landing area; the others hurried toward Jakt’s landing craft, which she had also moved to an isolated spot.

In a way, for many of them at least, the appearance of the fleet was almost a relief. They had lived for so long in its shadow that to have it here at last gave respite from the endless anxiety. Within an hour or two, the issue would be decided.

In the shuttle that hurtled along in a high orbit above the planet of the descoladores, Miro sat numbly at his terminal. ‘I can’t work,” he said at last. “I can’t concentrate on language when my people and my home are on the brink of destruction.” He knew that Jane, strapped into her bed in the back of the shuttle, was using her whole concentration to move ship after ship from Lusitania to other colony worlds that were ill-prepared to receive them. While all he could do was puzzle over molecular messages from inscrutable aliens.

“Well I can,” said Quara. “After all, these descoladores are just as great a threat, and to all of humanity, not just to one small world.”

“How wise of you,” said Ela dryly, “to take the long view.”

“Look at these broadcasts we’re getting from the descoladores,” said Quara. “See if you recognize what I’m seeing here.”

Ela called up Quara’s display on her own terminal; so did Miro. However annoying Quara might be, she was good at what she did.

“See this? Whatever else this molecule does, it’s exactly designed to work at precisely the same location in the brain as the heroin molecule.”

It could not be denied that the fit was perfect. Ela, though, found it hard to believe. “The only way they could do this,” she said, “is if they took the historical information contained in the descolada descriptions we sent them, used that information to build a human body, studied it, and found a chemical that would immobilize us with mindless pleasure while they do whatever they want to us. There’s no way they’ve had time to grow a human since we sent that information.”

“Maybe they don’t have to build the whole human body,” said Miro. “Maybe they’re so adept at reading genetic information that they can extrapolate everything there is to know about the human anatomy and physiology from our genetic information alone.”

“But they didn’t even have our DNA set,” Ela said.

“Maybe they can compress the information in our primitive, natural DNA,” said Miro. “Obviously they got the information somehow, and obviously they figured out what would make us sit as still as stones with dumb, happy smiles.”

“What’s even more obvious to me,” said Quara, “is that they meant us to read this molecule biologically. They meant us to take this drug instantly. As far as they’re concerned, we’re now sitting here waiting for them to come take us over.”

Miro immediately changed displays over his terminal. “Damn, Quara, you’re right. Look—they have three ships closing in on us already.”

“They’ve never even approached us before,” said Ela.

“Well, they’re not going to approach us now,” said Miro. “We’ve got to give them a demonstration that we didn’t fall for their trojan horse.” He got up from his seat and fairly flew back down the corridor to where Jane was sleeping. “Jane!” he shouted even before he got there. “Jane!”

It took a moment, and then her eyes fluttered open.

“Jane,” he said. “Move us about a hundred miles over and drop us into a closer orbit.”

She looked at him quizzically, then must have decided to trust him because she asked nothing. She closed her eyes again, as Firequencher shouted from the control room, “She did it! We moved!”

Miro drifted back to the others. “Now I know they can’t do that,” he said. Sure enough, his display now reported that the alien ships were no longer approaching, but rather were poised warily a dozen miles off in three—no, four now—directions. “Got us nicely framed in a tetrahedron,” said Miro.

“Well, now they know that we didn’t succumb to their die-happy drug,” said Quara.

“But we’re no closer to understanding them than we were before.”

“That’s because,” said Miro, “we’re so stupid.”

“Self-vilification won’t help us now,” said Quara, “even if in your case it happens to be true.”

“Quara,” said Ela sharply.

“It was a joke, dammit!” said Quara. “Can’t a girl tease her big brother?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Miro dryly. “You’re such a tease.”

“What did you mean by saying we’re stupid?” said Firequencher.

“We’ll never decipher their language,” said Miro, “because it’s not a language. It’s a set of biological commands. They don’t talk. They don’t abstract. They just make molecules that do things to each other. It’s as if the human vocabulary consisted of bricks and sandwiches. Throw a brick or give a sandwich, punish or reward. If they have abstract thoughts we’re not going to get them through reading these molecules.”

“I find it hard to believe that a species with no abstract language could possibly create spaceships like those out there,” said Quara scornfully. “And they broadcast these molecules the way we broadcast vids and voices.”

“What if they all have organs inside their bodies that directly translate molecular messages into chemicals or physical structures? Then they could—”

“You’re missing my point,” insisted Quara. “You don’t build up a fund of common knowledge by throwing bricks and sharing sandwiches. They need language in order to store information outside their bodies so that they can pass knowledge from person to person, generation after generation. You don’t get out into space or make broadcasts using the electromagnetic spectrum on the basis of what one person can be persuaded to do with a brick.”

“She’s probably right,” said Ela.

“So maybe parts of the molecular messages they send are memory sets,” said Miro. “Again, not a language—it stimulates the brain to ‘remember’ things that the sender experienced but the receiver did not.”

“Listen, whether you’re right or not,” said Firequencher, “we have to keep trying to decode the language.”

“If I’m right, we’re wasting our time,” said Miro.

“Exactly,” said Firequencher.

“Oh,” said Miro. Firequencher’s point was well taken. If Miro was right, their whole mission was useless anyway—they had already failed. So they had to continue to act as if Miro was wrong and the language could be decoded, because if it couldn’t, there was nothing they could do anyway.

And yet . . .

“We’re forgetting something,” said Miro.

“I’m not,” said Quara.

“Jane. She was created because the hive queens built a bridge between species.”

“Between humans and hive queens, not between unknown virus-spewing aliens and humans,” said Quara.

But Ela was interested. “The human way of communication—speech between equals—that was surely as foreign to the hive queens as this molecular language is to us. Maybe Jane can find some way to connect to them philotically.”

“Mind-reading?” said Quara. “Remember, we don’t have a bridge.”

“It all depends,” said Miro, “on how they deal with philotic connections. The Hive Queen talks all the time to Human, right? Because the fathertrees and the hive queens already both use philotic links to communicate. They speak mind to mind, without the intervention of language. And they’re no more biologically similar than hive queens and humans are.”

Ela nodded thoughtfully. “Jane can’t try anything like this now, not till the whole issue of the Congress fleet is resolved. But once she’s free to return her attention to us, she can try, at least, to contact these . . . people directly.”

“If these aliens communicated through philotic links,” said Quara, “they wouldn’t have to use molecules.”

“Maybe these molecules,” said Miro, “are how they communicate with animals.”

Admiral Lands could not believe what he was hearing. The First Speaker of Starways Congress and the First Secretary of the Starfleet Admiralty were both visible above the terminal, and their message was the same. “Quarantine, exactly,” said the Secretary. “You are not authorized to use the Molecular Disruption Device.”

“Quarantine is impossible,” said Lands. “We’re going too rapidly. You know the battle plan I filed at the beginning of the voyage. It would take us weeks to slow down. And what about the men? It’s one thing to take a relativistic voyage and then return to their home worlds. Yes, their friends and family are gone, but at least they aren’t stuck off on permanent duty inside a starship! Keeping our velocity at near-relativistic speeds, I’m saving them months of their lives spent in acceleration and deceleration. You’re talking about expecting them to give up years!”

“Surely you’re not saying,” said the First Speaker, “that we should blow up Lusitania and wipe out the pequeninos and thousands of human beings so that your crews don’t get depressed.”

“I’m saying that if you don’t want us to blow up this planet, fine—but let us come home.”

“We can’t do that,” said the First Secretary. “The descolada is too dangerous to leave it unsupervised on a planet that has rebelled.”

“You mean you’re canceling the use of the Little Doctor when nothing has been done to contain the descolada?”

“We will send a landing team with due precautions to ascertain the exact conditions on the ground,” said the First Secretary.

“In other words, you’ll send men into mortal danger from this disease with no knowledge of the situation on the ground, when the means exist to eliminate the danger without peril to any uninfected person.”

“Congress has reached the decision,” said the First Speaker coldly. “We will not commit xenocide while any legitimate alternative remains. Are these orders received and understood?”

“Yes sir,” said Lands.

“Will they be obeyed?” asked the First Speaker.

The First Secretary looked aghast. You did not insult a flag officer by questioning whether he meant to obey orders.

Yet the First Speaker did not withdraw the insult. “Well?”

“Sir, I always have and always will live by my oath.” With that, Lands broke the connection. He immediately turned to Causo, his X.O., the only other person present with him in the sealed communications office. “You are under arrest, sir,” said Lands.

Causo raised an eyebrow. “So you don’t intend to comply with this order?”

“Do not tell me your personal feelings on the matter,” said Lands. “I know that you’re of Portuguese ethnic heritage like the people of Lusitania—”

“They’re Brazilian,” said the X.O.

Lands ignored him. “I will have it on record that you were given no opportunity to speak and that you are utterly blameless in any action I might take.”

“What about your oath, sir?” asked Causo calmly.

“My oath is to take all actions I am ordered to take in service of the best interests of humanity. I will invoke the war crimes clause.”

“They aren’t ordering you to commit a war crime. They’re ordering you not to.”

“On the contrary,” said Lands. “To fail to destroy this world and the deadly peril on it would be a crime against humanity far worse than the crime of blowing it up.” Lands drew his sidearm. “You are under arrest, sir.”

The X.O. put his hands on his head and turned his back. “Sir, you may be right and you may be wrong. But either choice could be monstrous. I don’t know how you can make such a decision by yourself.”

Lands put the docility patch on the back of Causo’s neck, and as the drug began feeding into his system, Lands said to him, “I had help in deciding, my friend. I asked myself, What would Ender Wiggin, the man who saved humanity from the buggers, what would he have done if suddenly, at the last minute, he had been told, This is no game, this is real. I asked myself, What if at the moment before he killed the boy Stilson or the boy Madrid in his infamous First and Second Killings, some adult had intervened and ordered him to stop. Would he have done it, knowing that the adult did not have the power to protect him later, when his enemy attacked him again? Knowing that it might well be this time or never? If the adults at Command School had said to him, We think there’s a chance the buggers might not mean to destroy humanity, so don’t kill them all, do you think Ender Wiggin would have obeyed? No. He would have done—he always did—exactly what was necessary to obliterate a danger and make sure it did not survive to pose a threat in the future. That is the person I consulted with. That is the person whose wisdom I will follow now.”

Causo did not answer. He just smiled and nodded, smiled and nodded.

“Sit down and do not get up until I order you otherwise.”

Causo sat down.

Lands switched the ansible to relay communications throughout the fleet. “The order has been given and we will proceed. I am launching the M.D. Device immediately and we will return to relativistic speeds forthwith. May God have mercy on my soul.”

A moment later, the M.D. Device separated from the Admiral’s flagship and continued at just-under-relativistic speed toward Lusitania. It would take nearly an hour for it to arrive at the proximity that would automatically trigger it. If for some reason the proximity detector did not work properly, a timer would set it off just moments before its estimated time of collision.

Lands accelerated his flagship above the threshold that cut it off from the timeframe of the rest of the universe. Then he pulled the docility patch from Causo’s neck and replaced it with the antidote patch. “You may arrest me now, sir, for the mutiny that you witnessed.”

Causo shook his head. “No sir,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere, and the fleet is yours to command until we get home. Unless you have some stupid plan to try to escape the war crimes trial that awaits you.”

“No, sir,” said Lands. “I will bear whatever penalty they impose on me. What I did has saved humankind from destruction, but I am prepared to join the humans and pequeninos of Lusitania as a necessary sacrifice to achieve that end.”

Causo saluted him, then sat back down on his chair and wept.

15

“WE’RE GIVING YOU A SECOND CHANCE”

“When I was a little girl, I used to believe

that if I could please the gods well enough,

they would go back and do my life over,

and this time they would not take

my mother away from me.”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

A satellite orbiting Lusitania detected the launch of the M.D. Device and the divergence of its course toward Lusitania, as the starship disappeared from the satellite’s instruments. The most dreaded event was happening. There had been no attempt to communicate or negotiate. Clearly the fleet had never intended anything but the obliteration of this world, and with it an entire sentient race. Most people had hoped, and many had expected, that there would be a chance to tell them that the descolada had been completely tamed and no longer posed a threat to anyone; that it was too late to stop anything anyway, since several dozen new colonies of humans, pequeninos, and hive queens had already been started on as many different planets. Instead there was only death hurtling toward them on a course that gave them no more than an hour to survive, and probably less, since the Little Doctor would no doubt be detonated some distance from the planet’s surface.

It was pequeninos manning all the instruments now, since all but a handful of humans had fled to the starships. So it was that a pequenino cried out the news over the ansible to the starship at the descolada planet; and by chance it was Firequencher who was at the ansible terminal to hear his report. He immediately began keening, his high voice liquid with the music of grief.

When Miro and his sisters understood what had happened, he went at once to Jane. “They launched the Little Doctor,” he said, shaking her gently.

He waited only a few moments. Her eyes came open. “I thought we had beaten them,” she whispered. “Peter and Wang-mu, I mean. Congress voted to establish a quarantine and specifically denied the fleet the authority to launch the M.D. Device. And yet still they launched.”

“You look so tired,” said Miro.

“It takes everything I have,” she said. “Over and over again. And now I lose them, the mothertrees. They’re a part of myself, Miro. Remember how you felt when you lost control of your body, when you were crippled and slow? That’s what will happen to me when the mothertrees are gone.”

She wept.

“Stop it,” said Miro. “Stop it right now. Get control of your emotions, Jane, you don’t have time for this.”

At once she freed herself from the straps that held her. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s almost too strong to control, sometimes, this body.”

“The Little Doctor has to be close to a planet for it to have any effect on it—the field dissipates fairly quickly unless it has mass to sustain it. So we have time, Jane. Maybe an hour. Certainly more than half an hour.”

“And in that time, what do you imagine I can do?”

“Pick the damn thing up,” said Miro. “Push it Outside and don’t bring it back!”

“And if it goes off Outside?” asked Jane. “If something that destructive is echoed and repeated out there? Besides, I can’t pick things up that I haven’t had a chance to examine. There’s no one near it, no ansible connected to it, nothing to lead me to find it in the dead of space.”

“I don’t know,” said Miro. “Ender would know. Damn that he’s dead!”

“Well, technically speaking,” said Jane. “But Peter hasn’t found his way into any of his Ender memories. If he has them.”

“What’s to remember?” said Miro. “This has never happened before.”

“It’s true that it is Ender’s aiúa. But how much of his brilliance was the aiúa, and how much was his body and brain? Remember that the genetic component was strong—he was born in the first place because tests showed the original Peter and Valentine came so close to being the ideal military commander.”

“Right,” said Miro. “And now he’s Peter.”

“Not the real Peter,” said Jane.

“Look, it’s sort of Ender and it’s sort of Peter. Can you find him? Can you talk to him?”

“When our aiúas meet, we don’t talk. We sort of—what, dance around each other. It’s not like Human and the Hive Queen.”

“Doesn’t he still have the jewel in his ear?” asked Miro, touching his own.

“But what can he do? He’s hours distant from his starship—”

“Jane,” said Miro. “Try.”

Peter looked stricken. Wang-mu touched his arm, leaned close to him. “What’s wrong?”

“I thought we made it,” he said. “When Congress voted to revoke the order to use the Little Doctor.”

“What do you mean?” said Wang-mu, though she already knew what he meant.

“They launched it. The Lusitania Fleet disobeyed Congress. Who could have guessed? We have less than an hour before it detonates.”

Tears leapt to Wang-mu’s eyes, but she blinked them away. “At least the pequeninos and the hive queens will survive.”

“But not the network of mothertrees,” said Peter. “Starflight will end until Jane finds some other way to hold all that information in memory. The brothertrees are too stupid, the fathertrees have egos far too strong to share their capacity with her—they would if they could, but they can’t. You think Jane hasn’t explored all the possibilities? Faster-than-light flight is over.”

“Then this is our home,” said Wang-mu.

“No it isn’t,” said Peter.

“We’re hours away from the starship, Peter. We’ll never get there before it detonates.”

“What’s the starship? A box with a lightswitch and a tight-sealing door. For all we know, we don’t even need the box. I’m not staying here, Wang-mu.”

“You’re going back to Lusitania? Now?”

“If Jane can take me,” he said. “And if she can’t, then I guess this body goes back where it came from—Outside.”

“I’m going with you,” said Wang-mu.

“I’ve had three thousand years of life,” said Peter. “I don’t actually remember them too well, but you deserve better than to disappear from the universe if Jane can’t do this.”

“I’m going with you,” said Wang-mu, “so shut up. There’s no time to waste.”

“I don’t even know what I’m going to do when I get there,” said Peter.

“Yes you do,” said Wang-mu.

“Oh? What is it I’m planning?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well isn’t that a problem? What good is this plan of mine if nobody knows it?”

“I mean that you are who you are,” said Wang-mu. “You are the same will, the same tough resourceful boy who refused to be beaten down by anything they threw at him in Battle School or Command School. The boy who wouldn’t let bullies destroy him—no matter what it took to stop them. Naked with no weapons except the soap on his body, that’s how Ender fought Bonzo Madrid in the bathroom at Battle School.”

“You’ve been doing your research.”

“Peter,” said Wang-mu, “I don’t expect you to be Ender, his personality, his memories, his training. But you are the one who can’t be beaten down. You are the one who finds a way to destroy the enemy.”

Peter shook his head. “I’m not him, I’m truly not.”

“You told me back when we first met that you weren’t yourself. Well, now you are. The whole of you, one man, intact in this body. Nothing is missing from you now. Nothing has been stolen from you, nothing is lost. Do you understand? Ender lived his life under the shadow of having caused xenocide. Now is the chance to be the opposite. To live the opposite life. To be the one who prevents it.”

Peter closed his eyes for a moment. “Jane,” he said. “Can you take us without a starship?” He listened for a moment. “She says the real question is, can we hold ourselves together. It’s the ship she controls and moves around, plus our aiúas—our own bodies are held together by us, not by her.”

“Well, we do that all the time anyway, so it’s fine,” said Wang-mu.

“It’s not fine,” said Peter. “Jane says that inside the starship, we have visual clues, we have a sense of safety. Without those walls, without the light, in the deep emptiness, we can lose our place. We can forget where we are relative to our own body. We really have to hold on.”

“Does it help if we’re so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what?” asked Wang-mu.

“I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes,” said Peter.

“Then let’s do it. That’s us in spades.”

Finding Peter’s aiúa was easy for Jane. She had been inside his body, she had followed his aiúa—or chased it—until she knew it without searching. Wang-mu was a different case. Jane didn’t know her all that well. The voyages she had taken her on before had been inside a starship whose location Jane already knew. But once she located Peter’s—Ender’s—aiúa, it turned out to be easier than she thought. For the two of them, Peter and Wang-mu, were philotically twined. There was a tiny web in the making between them. Even without the box around them, Jane could hold onto them, both at once, as if they were one entity.

And as she pushed them Outside she could feel how they clung all the more tightly to each other—not just the bodies, but also the invisible links of the deepest self. Outside they went together, and together they came back In. Jane felt a stab of jealousy—just as she had been jealous of Novinha, though without feeling the physical sensation of grief and rage that her body now brought to the emotion. But she knew it was absurd. It was Miro that Jane loved, as a woman loves a man. Ender was her father and her friend, and now he was barely Ender anymore. He was Peter, a man who remembered only the past few months of association with her. They were friends, but she had no claim on his heart.

The familiar aiúa of Ender Wiggin and the aiúa of Si Wang-mu were even more tightly bound together than ever when Jane set them down on the surface of Lusitania.

They stood in the midst of the starport. The last few hundred humans trying to escape were frantically trying to understand why the starships had stopped flying just when the M.D. Device was launched.

“The starships here are all full,” Peter said.

“But we don’t need a starship,” said Wang-mu.

“Yes we do,” said Peter. “Jane can’t pick up the Little Doctor without one.”

“Pick it up?” said Wang-mu. “Then you do have a plan.”

“Didn’t you say I did?” said Peter. “I can’t make a liar out of you.” He spoke then to Jane through the jewel. “Are you here again? Can you talk to me through the satellites here on—all right. Good. Jane, I need you to empty one of these starships for me.” He paused a moment. “Take the people to a colony world, wait for them to get out, and then bring it back over here by us, away from the crowd.”

Instantly, one of the starships disappeared from the starport. A cheer arose from the crowds as everyone rushed to get into one of the remaining ships. Peter and Wang-mu waited, waited, knowing that with every minute that it took to unload that starship on the colony world, the Little Doctor came closer to detonation.

Then the wait was over. A boxy starship appeared beside them. Peter had the door open and both of them were inside before any of the other people at the starport even realized what was happening. A cry went up then, but Peter closed and sealed the door.

“We’re inside,” said Wang-mu. “But where are we going?”

“Jane is matching the velocity of the Little Doctor.”

“I thought she couldn’t pick it up without the starship.”

“She’s getting the tracking data from the satellite. She’ll predict exactly where it will be at a certain moment, and then push us Outside and bring us back In at exactly that point, going exactly that speed.”

“The Little Doctor will be inside this ship? With us?” asked Wang-mu.

“Stand over here by the wall,” he said. “And hold on to me. We’re going to be weightless. So far you’ve managed to visit four planets without ever having that experience.”

“Have you had that experience before?”

Peter laughed, then shook his head. “Not in this body. But I guess at some level I remembered how to handle it because—”

At that moment they became weightless and in the air in front of them, not touching the sides or walls of the starship, was the mammoth missile that carried the Little Doctor. If its rockets had still been firing, they would have been incinerated. Instead it was hurtling on at the speed it had already achieved; it seemed to hover in the air because the starship was going exactly the same speed.

Peter hooked his feet under a bench bolted to the wall, then reached out his hands and touched the missile. “We need to bring it into contact with the floor,” he said.

Wang-mu tried to reach for it, too, but immediately she came loose from the wall and started drifting. Intense nausea began immediately, as her body desperately searched for some direction that would serve as down.

“Think of the device as downward,” said Peter urgently. “The device is down. You’re falling toward the device.”

She felt herself reorient. It helped. And as she drifted closer she was able to take hold of it and cling. She could only watch, grateful simply not to be vomiting, as Peter slowly, gently pushed the mass of the missile toward the floor. When they touched, the whole ship shuddered, for the mass of the missile was probably greater than the mass of the ship that now surrounded it.

“Okay?” Peter asked.

“I’m fine,” said Wang-mu. Then she realized he had been talking to Jane, and his “okay” was part of that conversation.

“Jane is tracing the thing right now,” said Peter. “She does it with the starships, too, before she ever takes them anywhere. It used to be analytical, by computer. Now her aiúa sort of tours the inner structure of the thing. She couldn’t do it till it was in solid contact with something she knew: the starship. Us. When she gets a sense of the inner shape of the thing, she can hold it together Outside.”

“We’re just going to take it there and leave it?” asked Wang-mu.

“No,” said Peter. “It would either hold together and detonate, or it would break apart, and either way, who knows what the damage would be out there? How many little copies of it would wink into existence?”

“None at all,” said Wang-mu. “It takes an intelligence to make something new.”

“What do you think this thing is made of? Just like every bit of your body, just like every rock and tree and cloud, it’s all aiúas, and there’ll be other unconnected aiúas out there desperate to belong, to imitate, to grow. No, this thing is evil, and we’re not taking it out there.”

“Where are we taking it?”

“Home to meet its sender,” said Peter.

Admiral Lands stood glumly alone on the bridge of his flagship. He knew that Causo would have spread the word by now—the launch of the Little Doctor had been illegal, mutinous; the Old Man would be court-martialed or worse when they got back to civilization. No one spoke to him; no one dared look at him. And Lands knew that he would have to relieve himself of command and turn the ship over to Causo, as his X.O., and the fleet to his second-in-command, Admiral Fukuda. Causo’s gesture in not arresting him immediately was kind, but it was also useless. Knowing the truth of his disobedience, it would be impossible for the men and officers to follow him and unfair to ask it of them.

Lands turned to give the order, only to find his X.O. already heading toward him. “Sir,” said Causo.

“I know,” said Lands. “I relieve myself of command.”

“No sir,” said Causo. “Come with me, sir.”

“What do you plan to do?” asked Lands.

“The cargo officer has reported something in the main hold of the ship.”

“What is it?” asked Lands.

Causo just looked at him. Lands nodded, and they walked together from the bridge.

Jane had taken the box of the starship, not into the weapons bay of the flagship, for that could hold only the Little Doctor, not the box around it, but rather into the main hold, which was much more copious and which also lacked any practical means of relaunching the weapon.

Peter and Wang-mu stepped out of the starship and into the hold.

Then Jane took away the starship, leaving Peter, Wang-mu, and the Little Doctor behind.

Back on Lusitania, the starship would reappear. But no one would get into it. No one needed to. The M.D. Device was no longer heading for Lusitania. Now it was in the hold of the flagship of the Lusitania Fleet, traveling at a relativistic speed toward oblivion. The proximity sensor on the Little Doctor would not be triggered, of course, since it was nowhere near an object of planetary mass. But the timer was still chugging away.

“I hope they notice us soon,” said Wang-mu.

“Oh, don’t worry. We have whole minutes left.”

“Has anyone seen us yet?”

“There was a fellow in that office,” said Peter, pointing toward an open door. “He saw the starship, then he saw us, then he saw the Little Doctor. Now he’s gone. I don’t think we’ll be alone much longer.”

A door high up the front wall of the hold opened. Three men stepped onto the balcony that overlooked the hold on three sides.

“Hi,” said Peter.

“Who the hell are you?” asked the one with the most ribbons and trim on his uniform.

“I’m betting you’re Admiral Bobby Lands,” said Peter. “And you must be the executive officer, Causo. And you must be the cargo officer, Lung.”

“I said who the hell are you!” demanded Admiral Lands.

“I don’t think your priorities are straight,” said Peter. “I think there’ll be plenty of time for us to discuss my identity after you deactivate the timer on this weapon that you so carelessly tossed out into space perilously close to a settled planet.”

“If you think you can—”

But the Admiral didn’t finish his sentence, because the X.O. was diving over the rail and jumping down to the deck of the cargo hold, where he immediately began twisting the fingerbolts that held the casing over the timer. “Causo,” said Lands, “that can’t be the—”

“It’s the Little Doctor, all right, sir,” said Causo.

“We launched it!” shouted the Admiral.

“But that must have been a mistake,” said Peter. “An oversight. Because Starways Congress revoked your authorization to launch it.”

“Who are you and how did you get here?”

Causo stood up, sweat dripping off his brow. “Sir, I am pleased to report that with more than two minutes’ leeway, I have managed to prevent our ship from being blown into its constituent atoms.”

“I’m glad to see that you didn’t have any nonsense about requiring two separate keys and a secret combination to get that thing switched off,” said Peter.

“No, it was designed to make turning it off pretty easy,” said Causo. “There are directions on how to do it all over this thing. Now, turning it on—that’s hard.”

“But somehow you managed to do it,” said Peter.

“Where is your vehicle?” said the Admiral. He was climbing down a ladder to the deck. “How did you get here?”

“We came in a nice box, which we discarded when it was no longer needed,” said Peter. “Haven’t you gathered, yet, that we did not come to be interrogated by you?”

“Arrest these two,” Lands ordered.

Causo looked at the admiral as if he were crazy. But the cargo officer, who had followed the admiral down the ladder, moved to obey, taking a couple of steps toward Peter and Wang-mu.

Instantly, they disappeared and reappeared up on the balcony where the three officers had come in. Of course it took a moment or two for the officers to find them. The cargo officer was merely baffled. “Sir,” he said. “They were right here a second ago.”

Causo, on the other hand, had already decided that something unusual was going on for which there was no appropriate military response. So he was responding according to another pattern. He crossed himself and began murmuring a prayer.

Lands, however, took a few steps backward, until he bumped into the Little Doctor. He clung to it, then suddenly pulled his hands away from it with loathing, perhaps even with pain, as if the surface of it had suddenly become scorching hot to his hands. “Oh God,” he said. “I tried to do what Ender Wiggin would have done.”

Wang-mu couldn’t help it. She laughed aloud.

“That’s odd,” said Peter. “I was trying to do exactly the same thing.”

“Oh God,” said Lands again.

“Admiral Lands,” said Peter, “I have a suggestion. Instead of spending a couple of months of realtime trying to turn this ship around and launch this thing illegally again, and instead of trying to establish a useless, demoralizing quarantine around Lusitania, why don’t you just head on back to one of the Hundred Worlds—Trondheim is close—and in the meantime, make a report to Starways Congress. I even have some ideas about what the report might say, if you want to hear them.”

In answer, Lands took out a laser pistol and pointed it at Peter.

Immediately, Peter and Wang-mu disappeared from where they were and reappeared behind Lands. Peter reached out and deftly disarmed the Admiral, unfortunately breaking two of his fingers in the process. “Sorry, I’m out of practice,” said Peter. “I haven’t had to use my martial arts skills in—oh, thousands of years.”

Lands sank to his knees, nursing his injured hand.

“Peter,” Wang-mu said, “can we stop having Jane move us around like that? It’s really disorienting.”

Peter winked at her. “Want to hear my ideas about your report?” Peter asked the admiral.

Lands nodded.

“Me too,” said Causo, who clearly foresaw that he would be commanding this ship for some time.

“I think you need to use your ansible to report that due to a malfunction, it was reported that a launch of the Little Doctor took place. But in fact, the launch was aborted in time, and to prevent further mishap, you had the M.D. Device moved to the main hold where you disarmed and disabled it. You get the part about disabling it?” Peter asked Causo.

Causo nodded. “I’ll do it at once, sir.” He turned to the cargo officer. “Get me a tool kit.”

While the cargo officer went to pull a kit out of the storage bin on the wall, Peter continued. “Then you can report that you entered into contact with a native of Lusitania—that’s me—who was able to satisfy you that the descolada virus was completely under control and that it no longer poses a threat to anybody.”

“And how do I know that?” said Lands.

“Because I carry what’s left of the virus, and if it weren’t utterly killed, you would catch the descolada and die of it in a couple of days. Now, in addition to certifying that Lusitania poses no threat, your report should also state that the rebellion of Lusitania was no more than a misunderstanding, and that far from there being any human interference in the pequenino culture, the pequeninos exercised their free rights as sentient beings on their own planet to acquire information and technology from friendly visiting aliens—namely, the human colony of Milagre. Since that time, many of the pequeninos have become very adept at much human science and technology, and at some reasonable time in the future they will send ambassadors to Starways Congress and hope that Congress will return the courtesy. Are you getting this?”

Lands nodded. Causo, working on taking apart the firing mechanism of the Little Doctor, grunted his assent.

“You may also report that the pequeninos have entered into alliance with yet another alien race, which contrary to various premature reports, was not completely extinguished in the notorious xenocide of Ender Wiggin. One cocooned hive queen survived, she being the source of all the information contained in the famous book The Hive Queen, whose accuracy is now proved to be unassailable. The Hive Queen of Lusitania, however, does not wish to exchange ambassadors with Starways Congress at the present time, and prefers instead that her interests be represented by the pequeninos.”

“There are still buggers?” asked Lands.

“Ender Wiggin did not, technically speaking, commit xenocide after all. So if your launch of this missile, here, hadn’t been aborted, you would have been the cause of the first xenocide, not the second one. And as it stands right now, however, there has never been a xenocide, though not for lack of trying both times, I must admit.”

Tears coursed down Lands’s face. “I didn’t want to do it. I thought it was the right thing. I thought I had to do it to save—”

“Let’s say you take that up with the ship’s therapist at some later time,” said Peter. “We still have one more point to address. We have a technology of starflight that I think the Hundred Worlds would like to have. You’ve already seen a demonstration of it. Usually, though, we prefer to do it inside our rather unstylish and boxy-looking starships. Still, it’s a pretty good method and it lets us visit other worlds without losing even a second of our lives. I know that those who hold the keys to our method of starflight would be delighted, over the next few months, to instantaneously transport all relativistic starships currently in flight to their destinations.”

“But there’s a price for it,” said Causo, nodding.

“Well, let’s just say that there’s a precondition,” said Peter. “A key element of our instantaneous starflight includes a computer program that Starways Congress recently tried to kill. We found a substitute method, but it’s not wholly adequate or satisfactory, and I think I can safely say that Starways Congress will never have the use of instantaneous starflight until all the ansibles in the Hundred Worlds are reconnected to all the computer networks on every world, without delays and without those pesky little snoop programs that keep yipping away like ineffectual little dogs.”

“I don’t have any authority to—”

“Admiral Lands, I didn’t ask you to decide. I merely suggested the contents of the message you might want to send, by ansible, to Starways Congress. Immediately.”

Lands looked away. “I don’t feel well,” he said. “I think I’m incapacitated. Executive Officer Causo, in front of Cargo Officer Lung, I hereby transfer command of this ship to you, and order you to notify Admiral Fukuda that he is now commander of this fleet.”

“Won’t work,” said Peter. “The message I’ve described has to come from you. Fukuda isn’t here and I don’t intend to go repeat all of this to him. So you will make the report, and you will retain command of fleet and ship, and you will not weasel out of your responsibility. You made a hard choice a while back. You chose wrong, but at least you chose with courage and determination. Show the same courage now, Admiral. We haven’t punished you here today, except for my unfortunate clumsiness with your fingers, for which I really am sorry. We’re giving you a second chance. Take it, Admiral.”

Lands looked at Peter and tears began to flow down his cheeks. “Why did you give me a second chance?”

“Because that’s what Ender always wanted,” said Peter. “And maybe by giving you a second chance, he’ll get one, too.”

Wang-mu took Peter’s hand and squeezed it.

Then they disappeared from the cargo hold of the flagship and reappeared inside the control room of a shuttle orbiting the planet of the descoladores.

Wang-mu looked around at a room full of strangers. Unlike Admiral Lands’s starship, this craft had no artificial gravity, but by holding onto Peter’s hand Wang-mu kept from either fainting or throwing up. She had no idea who any of these people were, but she did know that Firequencher had to be a pequenino and the nameless worker at one of the computer terminals was a creature of the kind once hated and feared as the merciless buggers.

“Hi, Ela, Quara, Miro,” said Peter. “This is Wang-mu.”

Wang-mu would have been terrified, except that the others were so obviously terrified to see them.

Miro was the first to recover enough to speak. “Didn’t you forget your spaceship?” he asked.

Wang-mu laughed.

“Hi, Royal Mother of the West,” said Miro, using the name of Wang-mu’s ancestor-of-the-heart, a god worshiped on the world of Path. “I’ve heard all about you from Jane,” Miro added.

A woman drifted in through a corridor at one end of the control room.

“Val?” said Peter.

“No,” answered the woman. “I’m Jane.”

“Jane,” whispered Wang-mu. “Malu’s god.”

“Malu’s friend,” said Jane. “As I am your friend, Wang-mu.” She reached Peter and, taking him by both hands, looked him in the eye. “And your friend too, Peter. As I’ve always been your friend.”

16

“HOW DO YOU KNOW THEY
AREN’T QUIVERING IN
TERROR?”

“O Gods! You are unjust!

My mother and father

deserved to have

a better child

than me!”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

“You had the Little Doctor in your possession and you gave it back?” asked Quara, sounding incredulous.

Everyone, Miro included, assumed she meant that she didn’t trust the fleet not to use it.

“It was dismantled in front of my eyes,” said Peter.

“Well, can it be mantled again?” she asked.

Wang-mu tried to explain. “Admiral Lands isn’t going to be able to go down that road now. We wouldn’t have left things unsettled. Lusitania is safe.”

“She’s not talking about Lusitania,” said Ela coldly. “She’s talking about here. The descolada planet.”

“Am I the only person who thought of it?” said Quara. “Tell the truth—it would solve all our worries about followup probes, about new outbreaks of even worse versions of the descolada—”

“You’re thinking of blowing up a world populated by a sentient race?” asked Wang-mu.

“Not right now,” said Quara, sounding as if Wang-mu were the stupidest person she had ever wasted time talking to. “If we determine that they’re, you know, what Valentine called them. Varelse. Unable to be reasoned with. Impossible to coexist with.”

“So what you’re saying,” said Wang-mu, “is that—”

“I’m saying what I said,” Quara answered.

Wang-mu went on. “What you’re saying is that Admiral Lands wasn’t wrong in principle, he simply was wrong about the facts of the particular case. If the descolada had still been a threat on Lusitania, then it’s his duty to blow up the planet.”

“What are the lives of the people of one planet compared to all sentient life?” asked Quara.

“Is this,” said Miro, “the same Quara Ribeira who tried to keep us from wiping out the descolada virus because it might be sentient?” He sounded amused.

“I’ve thought a lot about that since then,” said Quara. “I was being childish and sentimental. Life is precious. Sentient life is more precious. But when one sentient group threatens the survival of another, then the threatened group has the right to protect themselves. Isn’t that what Ender did? Over and over again?”

Quara looked from one to another, triumphant.

Peter nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what Ender did.”

“In a game,” said Wang-mu.

“In his fight with two boys who threatened his life. He made sure they could never threaten him again. That’s how war is fought, in case any of you have foolish ideas to the contrary. You don’t fight with minimum force, you fight with maximum force at endurable cost. You don’t just pink your enemy, you don’t even bloody him, you destroy his capability to fight back. It’s the strategy you use with diseases. You don’t try to find a drug that kills ninety-nine percent of the bacteria or viruses. If you do that, all you’ve accomplished is to create a new drug-resistant strain. You have to kill a hundred percent.”

Wang-mu tried to think of an argument against this. “Is disease really a valid analogy?”

“What is your analogy?” answered Peter. “A wrestling match? Fight to wear down your opponent’s resistance? That’s fine—if your opponent is playing by the same rules. But if you stand there ready to wrestle and he pulls out a knife or a gun, what then? Or is it a tennis match? Keep score until your opponent sets off the bomb under your feet? There aren’t any rules. In war.”

“But is this war?” asked Wang-mu.

“As Quara said,” Peter answered. “If we find out there’s no dealing with them, then yes, it’s a war. What they did to Lusitania, to the defenseless pequeninos, was devastating, soulless, total war without regard to the rights of the other side. That’s our enemy, unless we can bring them to understand the consequences of what they did. Isn’t that what you were saying, Quara?”

“Perfectly,” said Quara.

Wang-mu knew there was something wrong with this reasoning, but she couldn’t lay her finger on it. “Peter, if you really believe this, why didn’t you keep the Little Doctor?”

“Because,” said Peter, “we might be wrong, and the danger is not imminent.”

Quara clicked her tongue in disdain. “You weren’t here, Peter. You didn’t see what they were throwing at us—a newly engineered and specially tailored virus to make us sit as still as idiots while they came and took over our ship.”

“And they sent this how, in a nice envelope?” said Peter. “They sent an infected puppy, knowing you couldn’t resist picking it up and hugging it?”

“They broadcast the code,” said Quara. “But they expected us to interpret it by making the molecule and then it would have its effect.”

“No,” said Peter, “you speculated that that’s how their language works, and then you started to act as if your speculation were true.”

“And somehow you know that it’s not?” said Quara.

“I don’t know anything about it,” said Peter. “That’s my point. We just don’t know. We can’t know. Now, if we saw them launching probes, or if they started trying to blast this ship out of the sky, we’d have to start taking action. Like sending ships after the probes and carefully studying the viruses they were sending out. Or if they attacked this ship, we’d take evasive action and analyze their weapons and tactics.”

“That’s fine now,” said Quara. “Now that Jane’s safe and the mothertrees are intact so she can handle the starflight thing she does. Now we can catch up with probes and dance out of the way of missiles or whatever. But what about before, when we were helpless here? When we had only a few weeks to live, or so we thought?”

“Back then,” said Peter, “you didn’t have the Little Doctor, either, so you couldn’t have blown up their planet. We didn’t get our hands on the M. D. Device until after Jane’s power of flight was restored. And with that power, it was no longer necessary to destroy the descolada planet until and unless it posed a danger too great to be resisted any other way.”

Quara laughed. “What is this? I thought Peter was supposed to be the nasty side of Ender’s personality. Turns out you’re the sweetness and light.”

Peter smiled. “There are times when you have to defend yourself or someone else against relentless evil. And some of those times the only defense that has any hope of succeeding is a one-time use of brutal, devastating force. At such times good people act brutally.”

“We couldn’t be engaging in a bit of self-justification, could we?” said Quara. “You’re Ender’s successor. Therefore you find it convenient to believe that those boys Ender killed were the exceptions to your niceness rule.”

“I justify Ender by his ignorance and helplessness. We aren’t helpless. Starways Congress and the Lusitania Fleet were not helpless. And they chose to act before alleviating their ignorance.”

“Ender chose to use the Little Doctor while he was ignorant.”

“No, Quara. The adults who commanded him used it. They could have intercepted and blocked his decision. There was plenty of time for them to use the overrides. Ender thought he was playing a game. He thought that by using the Little Doctor in the simulation he would prove himself unreliable, disobedient, or even too brutal to trust with command. He was trying to get himself kicked out of Command School. That’s all. He was doing the necessary thing to get them to stop torturing him. The adults were the ones who decided simply to unleash their most powerful weapon: Ender Wiggin. No more effort to talk with the buggers, to communicate. Not even at the end when they knew that Ender was going to destroy the buggers’ home planet. They had decided to go for the kill no matter what. Like Admiral Lands. Like you, Quara.”

“I said I’d wait until we found out!”

“Good,” said Peter. “Then we don’t disagree.”

“But we should have the Little Doctor here!”

“The Little Doctor shouldn’t exist at all,” said Peter. “It was never necessary. It was never appropriate. Because the cost of it is too high.”

“Cost!” hooted Quara. “It’s cheaper than the old nuclear weapons!”

“It’s taken us three thousand years to get over the destruction of the hive queens’ home planet. That’s the cost. If we use the Little Doctor, then we’re the sort of people who wipe out other species. Admiral Lands was just like the men who were using Ender Wiggin. Their minds were made up. This was the danger. This was the evil. This had to be destroyed. They thought they meant well. They were saving the human race. But they weren’t. There were a lot of different motives involved, but along with deciding to use the weapon, they also decided not to attempt to communicate with the enemy. Where was the demonstration of the Little Doctor on a nearby moon? Where was Lands’s attempt to verify that the situation on Lusitania had not changed? And you, Quara—what methodology, exactly, were you planning to use to determine whether the descoladores were too evil to be allowed to live? At what point do you know they are an unbearable danger to all other sentient species?”

“Turn it around, Peter,” said Quara. “At what point do you know they’re not?”

“We have better weapons than the Little Doctor. Ela once designed a molecule to block the descolada’s efforts to cause harm, without destroying its ability to help the flora and fauna of Lusitania to pass through their transformations. Who’s to say that we can’t do the same thing for every nasty little plague they send at us until they give up? Who’s to say that they aren’t already trying desperately to communicate with us? How do you know that the molecule they sent wasn’t an attempt to make us happy with them the only way they knew how, by sending us a molecule that would take away our anger? How do you know they aren’t already quivering in terror down on that planet because we have a ship that can disappear and reappear anywhere else? Are we trying to talk to them?”

Peter looked around at all of them.

“Don’t you understand, any of you? There’s only one species that we know of that has deliberately, consciously, knowingly tried to destroy another sentient species without any serious attempt at communication or warning. We’re the ones. The first xenocide failed because the victims of the attack managed to conceal exactly one pregnant female. The second time it failed for a better reason—because some members of the human species determined to stop it. Not just some, many. Congress. A big corporation. A philosopher on Divine Wind. A Samoan divine and his fellow believers on Pacifica. Wang-mu and I. Jane. And Admiral Lands’s own officers and men, when they finally understood the situation. We’re getting better, don’t you see? But the fact remains—we humans are the sentient species that has shown the most tendency to deliberately refuse to communicate with other species and instead destroy them utterly. Maybe the descoladores are varelse and maybe they’re not. But I’m a lot more frightened at the thought that we are varelse. That’s the cost of using the Little Doctor when it isn’t needed and never will be, given the other tools in our kit. If we choose to use the M. D. Device, then we are not ramen. We can never be trusted. We are the species that would deserve to die for the safety of all other sentient life.”

Quara shook her head, but the smugness was gone. “Sounds to me like somebody is still trying to earn forgiveness for his own crimes.”

“That was Ender,” said Peter. “He spent his life trying to turn himself and everyone else into ramen. I look around me in this ship, I think of what I’ve seen, the people I’ve known in the past few months, and I think that the human race isn’t doing too badly. We’re moving in the right direction. A few throwbacks now and then. A bit of blustery talk. But by and large, we’re coming closer to being worthy to associate with the hive queens and the pequeninos. And if the descoladores are perhaps a bit farther from being ramen than we are, that doesn’t mean we have a right to destroy them. It means we have all the more reason to be patient with them and try to nurse them along. How many years has it taken us to get here from marking the sites of battles with piles of human skulls? Thousands of years. And all the time, we had teachers trying to get us to change, pointing the way. Bit by bit we learned. Let’s teach them—if they don’t already know more than we do.”

“It could take years just to learn their language,” said Ela.

“Transportation is cheap now,” said Peter. “No offense intended, Jane. We can keep teams shuttling back and forth for a long time without undue hardship to anyone. We can keep a fleet watching this planet. With pequeninos and hive workers alongside the human researchers. For centuries. For millennia. There’s no hurry.”

“I think that’s dangerous,” said Quara.

“And I think you have the same instinctive desire that we all have, the one that gets us in so damn much trouble all the time,” said Peter. “You know that you’re going to die, and you want to see it all resolved before you do.”

“I’m not old yet!” Quara said.

Miro spoke up. “He’s right, Quara. Ever since Marcão died, you’ve had death looming over you. Think about it, everybody. Humans are the short-lived species. Hive queens think they live forever. Pequeninos have the hope of many centuries in the third life. We’re the ones who are in a hurry all the time. We’re the ones who are determined to make decisions without getting enough information, because we want to act now, while we still have time.”

“So that’s it?” said Quara. “That’s your decision? Let this grave threat to all life continue to sit here hatching their plans while we watch and watch from the sky?”

“Not we,” said Peter.

“No, that’s right,” said Quara, “you’re not part of this project.”

“Yes I am,” said Peter. “But you’re not. You’re going back down to Lusitania, and Jane will never bring you back here. Not until you’ve spent years proving that you’ve got your personal bugbears under control.”

“You arrogant son-of-a-bitch!” Quara cried.

“Everybody here knows that I’m right,” said Peter. “You’re like Lands. You’re too ready to make devastatingly far-reaching decisions and then refuse to let any argument change your mind. There are plenty of people like you, Quara. But we can never let any of them anywhere near this planet until we know more. The day may come when all the sentient species reach the conclusion that the descoladores are in fact varelse who must be destroyed. But I seriously doubt any of us here, with the exception of Jane, will be alive when that day comes.”

“What, you think I’ll live forever?” said Jane.

“You’d better,” said Peter. “Unless you and Miro can figure out how to have children who can launch starships when they grow up.” Peter turned to Jane. “Can you take us home now?”

“Even as we speak,” said Jane.

They opened the door. They left the ship. They stepped onto the surface of a world that was not going to be destroyed after all.

All except Quara.

“Isn’t Quara coming with us?” asked Wang-mu.

“Maybe she needs to be alone for a while,” said Peter.

“You go on ahead,” said Wang-mu.

“You think you can deal with her?” said Peter.

“I think I can try,” said Wang-mu.

He kissed her. “I was hard on her. Tell her I’m sorry.”

“Maybe later you can tell her yourself,” said Wang-mu.

She went back inside the starship. Quara still sat facing her terminal. The last data she had been looking at before Peter and Wang-mu arrived in the starship still hung in the air over her terminal.

“Quara,” said Wang-mu.

“Go away.” The husky sound of her voice was ample evidence that she had been crying.

“Everything Peter said was true,” said Wang-mu.

“Is that what you came to say? Rub salt in the wound?”

“Except that he gave the human race too much credit for our slight improvement.”

Quara snorted. It was almost a yes.

“Because it seems to me that he and everyone else here had already decided you were varelse. To be banished without hope of parole. Without understanding you first.”

“Oh, they understand me,” said Quara. “Little girl devastated by loss of brutal father whom she nevertheless loved. Still searching for father figure. Still responding to everyone else with the mindless rage she saw her father show. You think I don’t know what they’ve decided?”

“They’ve got you pegged.”

“Which is not true of me. I might have suggested that the Little Doctor ought to be kept around in case it was necessary, but I never said just to use it without any further attempt at communication. Peter just treated me as if I was that admiral all over again.”

“I know,” said Wang-mu.

“Yeah, right. I’m sure you’re so sympathetic with me and you know he’s wrong. Come on, Jane told us already that the two of you are—what was the bullshit phrase?—in love.”

“I wasn’t proud of what Peter did to you. It was a mistake. He makes them. He hurts my feelings sometimes, too. So do you. You did just now. I don’t know why. But sometimes I hurt other people, too. And sometimes I do terrible things because I’m so sure that I’m right. We’re all like that. We all have a little bit of varelse in us. And a little bit of raman.”

“Isn’t that the sweetest little well-balanced undergraduate-level philosophy of life,” said Quara.

“It’s the best I could come up with,” said Wang-mu. “I’m not educated like you.”

“And is that the make-her-feel-guilty technique?”

“Tell me, Quara, if you’re not really acting out your father’s role or trying to call him back or whatever the analysis was, why are you so angry at everybody all the time?”

Quara finally swiveled in her chair and looked Wang-mu in the face. Yes, she had been crying. “You really want to know why I’m so filled with irrational fury all the time?” The taunting hadn’t left her voice. “You really want to play shrink with me? Well try this one. What has me so completely pissed off is that all through my childhood, my older brother Quim was secretly molesting me, and now he’s a martyr and they’re going to make him a saint and nobody will ever know how evil he was and the terrible, terrible things he did to me.”

Wang-mu stood there horrified. Peter had told her about Quim. How he died. The kind of man he was. “Oh, Quara,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

A look of complete disgust passed across Quara’s face. “You are so stupid. Quim never touched me, you stupid meddlesome little do-gooder. But you’re so eager to get some cheap explanation about why I’m such a bitch that you’ll believe any story that sounds halfway plausible. And right now you’re probably still wondering whether maybe my confession was true and I’m only denying it because I’m afraid of the repercussions or some dumb merda like that. Get this straight, girl. You do not know me. You will never know me. I don’t want you to know me. I don’t want any friends, and if I did want friends, I would not want Peter’s pet bimbo to do the honors. Can I possibly make myself clearer?”

In her life Wang-mu had been beaten by experts and vilified by champions. Quara was damn good at it by any standards, but not so good that Wang-mu couldn’t bear it without flinching. “I notice, though,” said Wang-mu, “that after your vile slander against the noblest member of your family, you couldn’t stand to leave me believing that it was true. So you do have loyalty to someone, even if he’s dead.”

“You just don’t take a hint, do you?” said Quara.

“And I notice that you still keep talking to me, even though you despise me and try to offend me.”

“If you were a fish, you’d be a remora, you just clamp on and suck for dear life, don’t you!”

“Because at any point you could just walk out of here and you wouldn’t have to hear my pathetic attempts at making friends with you,” said Wang-mu. “But you don’t go.”

“You are unbelievable,” said Quara. She unstrapped herself from her chair, got up, and went out the open door.

Wang-mu watched her go. Peter was right. Humans were still the most alien of alien species. Still the most dangerous, the most unreasonable, the least predictable.

Even so, Wang-mu dared to make a couple of predictions to herself.

First, she was confident that the research team would someday establish communications with the descoladores.

The second prediction was much more iffy. More like a hope. Maybe even just a wish. That someday Quara would tell Wang-mu the truth. That someday the hidden wound that Quara bore would be healed. That someday they might be friends.

But not today. There was no hurry. Wang-mu would try to help Quara because she was so obviously in need, and because the people who had been around her the longest were clearly too sick of her to help. But helping Quara was not the only thing or even the most important thing she had to accomplish. Marrying Peter and starting a life with him—that was a much higher priority. And getting something to eat, a drink of water, and a place to pee—those were the highest priorities of all at this precise moment in her life.

I guess that means I’m human, thought Wang-mu. Not a god. Maybe just a beast after all. Part raman. Part varelse. But more raman than varelse, at least on her good days. Peter, too, just like her. Both of them part of the same flawed species, determined to join together to make a couple of more members of that species. Peter and I together will call forth some aiúa to come in from Outside and take control of a tiny body that our bodies have made, and we’ll see that child be varelse on some days and raman on others. On some days we’ll be good parents and some days we’ll be wretched failures. Some days we’ll be desperately sad and some days we’ll be so happy we can hardly contain it. I can live with that.

17

“THE ROAD GOES ON
WITHOUT HIM NOW”

“I once heard a tale of a man

who split himself in two.

The one part never changed at all;

the other grew and grew.

The changeless part was always true,

The growing part was always new,

And I wondered, when the tale was through,

Which part was me, and which was you.”

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Valentine arose on the morning of Ender’s funeral full of bleak reflection. She had come here to this world of Lusitania in order to be with him again and help him in his work; it had hurt Jakt, she knew, that she wanted so badly to be part of Ender’s life again, yet her husband had given up the world of his childhood to come with her. So much sacrifice. And now Ender was gone.

Gone and not gone. Sleeping in her house was the man that she knew had Ender’s aiúa in him. Ender’s aiúa, and the face of her brother Peter. Somewhere inside him were Ender’s memories. But he hadn’t touched them yet, except unconsciously from time to time. Indeed, he was virtually hiding in her house in order not to rekindle those memories.

“What if I see Novinha? He loved her, didn’t he?” Peter had asked almost as soon as he arrived. “He felt this awful sense of responsibility to her. And in a sense, I worry that I’m somehow married to her.”

“Interesting question of identity, isn’t it?” Valentine had answered. But it wasn’t just an interesting question to Peter. He was terrified of getting caught up in Ender’s life. Afraid, too, of living a life wracked with guilt as Ender’s had been. “Abandonment of family,” he had said. To which Valentine had replied, “The man who married Novinha died. We watched him die. She isn’t looking for some young husband who doesn’t want her, Peter. Her life is full of grief enough without that. Marry Wang-mu, leave this place, go on, be a new self. Be Ender’s true son, have the life he might have had if the demands of others hadn’t tainted it from the start.”

Whether he fully accepted her advice or not, Valentine couldn’t guess. He remained hidden in the house, avoiding even those visitors who might trigger memories. Olhado came, and Grego, and Ela, each in turn, to express their condolences to Valentine on the death of her brother, but Peter never came into the room. Wang-mu did, however, this sweet young girl who nevertheless had a kind of steel in her that Valentine quite liked. Wang-mu played the gracious friend of the bereaved, keeping the conversation going as each of these children of Ender’s wife talked about how Ender had saved their family, blessed their lives when they had thought themselves beyond the reach of all blessing.

And in the corner of the room, Plikt sat, absorbing, listening, fueling the speech that she had lived her whole life for.

Oh, Ender, the jackals have gnawed at your life for three thousand years. And now your friends will have their turn. In the end, will the toothmarks on your bones be all that different?

Today all would come to a close. Others might divide time differently, but to Valentine the Age of Ender Wiggin had come to a close. The age that began with one xenocide attempted had now ended with other xenocides prevented or, at least, postponed. Human beings might now be able to live with other peoples in peace, working out a shared destiny on dozens of colony worlds. Valentine would write the history of this, as she had written a history on every world that she and Ender had visited together. She would write, not a kind of oracle or scripture, the way Ender had done with his three books, The Hive Queen, The Hegemon, and The Life of Human; rather her book would be scholarly, with sources cited. She aspired to be, not Paul or Moses, but Thucydides. Though she wrote all under the name Demosthenes, her legacy from those childhood days when she and Peter, the first Peter, the dark and dangerous and magnificent Peter, had used their words to change the world. Demosthenes would publish a book chronicling the history of human involvement on Lusitania, and in that book would be much about Ender—how he brought the cocoon of the Hive Queen here, how he became a part of the family most pivotal in dealings with the pequeninos. But it would not be a book about Ender. It would be a book about utlanning and framling, raman and varelse. Ender, who was a stranger in every land, belonging nowhere, serving everywhere, until he chose this world as his home, not just because there was a family that needed him, but also because in this place he did not have to be entirely a member of the human race. He could belong to the tribe of the pequenino, to the hive of the queen. He could be part of something larger than mere humanity.

And though there was no child with Ender’s name as father on its birth certificate, he had become a father here. Of Novinha’s children. Of Novinha herself, in a way. Of a young copy of Valentine herself. Of Jane, the first spawn of a mating between races, who now was a bright and beautiful creature who lived in mothertrees, in digital webs, in the philotic twinings of the ansibles, and in a body that had once been Ender’s and which, in a way, had once been Valentine’s, for she remembered looking into mirrors and seeing that face and calling it herself.

And he was father of this new man, Peter, this strong and whole man. For he was not the Peter who had first come out of the starship. He was not the cynical, nasty, barbed young boy who strutted with arrogance and seethed with rage. He had become whole. There was the cool of ancient wisdom in him, even as he burned with the hot sweet fire of youth. He had a woman who was his equal in wit and virtue and vigor by his side. He had a normal lifetime of a man before him. Ender’s truest son would make of this life, if not something as profoundly world-changing as Ender’s life had been, then something happier. Ender would have wanted neither more nor less for him. Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.

Valentine and Jakt and their children gathered on the porch of their house. Wang-mu was waiting there alone. “Will you take me with you?” asked the girl. Valentine offered her an arm. What is the name of her relationship to me? Niece-in-law-to-be? Friend would be a better word.

Plikt’s speaking of Ender’s death was eloquent and piercing. She had learned well from the master speaker. She wasted no time on inconsequentials. She spoke at once of his great crime, explaining what Ender thought he was doing at the time, and what he thought of it after he knew each layer of truth that was revealed to him. “That was Ender’s life,” said Plikt, “unpeeling the onion of truth. Only unlike most of us, he knew that there was no golden kernel inside. There were only the layers of illusion and misunderstanding. What mattered was to know all the errors, all the self-serving explanations, all the mistakes, all the twisted observations, and then, not to find, but to make a kernel of truth. To light a candle of truth where there was no truth to be found. That was Ender’s gift to us, to free us from the illusion that any one explanation will ever contain the final answer for all time, for all hearers. There is always, always more to learn.”

Plikt went on then, recounting incidents and memories, anecdotes and pithy sayings; the gathered people laughed and cried and laughed again, and fell silent many times to connect these stories with their own lives. How like Ender I am! they sometimes thought, and then, Thank God my life is not like that!

Valentine, though, knew stories that would not be told here because Plikt did not know them, or at least could not see them through the eyes of memory. They weren’t important stories. They revealed no inner truth. They were the flotsam and jetsam of shared years together. Conversations, quarrels, funny and tender moments on dozens of worlds or on the starships in between. And at the root of them all, the memories of childhood. The baby in Valentine’s mother’s arms. Father tossing him into the air. His early words, his babbling. None of that goo-goo stuff for baby Ender! He needed more syllables to speak: Deedle-deedle. Wagada wagada. Why am I remembering his baby talk?

The sweet-faced baby, eager for life. Baby tears from the pain of falling down. Laughter at the simplest things—laughter because of a song, because of seeing a beloved face, because life was pure and good for him then, and nothing had caused him pain. He was surrounded by love and hope. The hands that touched him were strong and tender; he could trust them all. Oh, Ender, thought Valentine. How I wish you could have kept on living such a life of joy. But no one can. Language comes to us, and with it lies and threats, cruelty and disappointment. You walk, and those steps lead you outside the shelter of your home. To keep the joy of childhood you would have to die as a child, or live as one, never becoming a man, never growing. So I can grieve for the lost child, and yet not regret the good man braced with pain and riven with guilt, who yet was kind to me and to many others, and whom I loved, and whom I also almost knew. Almost, almost knew.

Valentine let her tears of memory flow as Plikt’s words washed over her, touching her now and then, but also not touching her because she knew far more about Ender than anyone here, and had lost more by losing him. Even more than Novinha, who sat near the front, her children gathered near her. Valentine watched as Miro put his arm around his mother even as he held to Jane on the other side of him. Valentine noticed also how Ela clung to and one time kissed Olhado’s hand, and how Grego, weeping, leaned his head into stern Quara’s shoulder, and how Quara reached out her arm to hold him close and comfort him. They loved Ender too, and knew him too; but in their grief, they leaned upon each other, a family that had strength to share because Ender had been part of them and healed them, or at least opened up the door of healing. Novinha would survive and perhaps grow past her anger at the cruel tricks life had played on her. Losing Ender was not the worst thing that happened to her; in some ways it was the best, because she had let him go.

Valentine looked at the pequeninos, who sat, some of them among the humans, some of them apart. To them this was a doubly holy place, where Ender’s few remains were to be buried. Between the trees of Rooter and of Human, where Ender had shed a pequenino’s blood to seal the pact between the species. There were many friends among pequeninos and humans now, though many fears and enmities remained as well, but the bridges had been built, in no small part because of Ender’s book, which gave the pequeninos hope that some human, someday, would understand them; hope that sustained them until, with Ender, it became the truth.

And one expressionless hiveworker sat at a remote distance, neither human nor pequenino near her. She was nothing but a pair of eyes there. If the Hive Queen grieved for Ender, she kept it to herself. She would always be mysterious, but Ender had loved her, too; for three thousand years he had been her only friend, her protector. In a sense, Ender could count her among his children, too, among the adopted children who thrived under his protection.

In only three-quarters of an hour, Plikt was done. She ended simply:

“Even though Ender’s aiúa lives on, as all aiúas live on undying, the man we knew is gone from us. His body is gone, and whatever parts of his life and works we take with us, they aren’t him any longer, they are ourselves, they are the Ender-within-us just as we also have other friends and teachers, fathers and mothers, lovers and children and siblings and even strangers within us, looking out at the world through our eyes and helping us determine what it all might mean. I see Ender in you looking out at me. You see Ender in me looking out at you. And yet not one of us is truly him; we are each our own self, all of us strangers on our own road. We walked awhile on that road with Ender Wiggin. He showed us things we might not otherwise have seen. But the road goes on without him now. In the end, he was no more than any other man. But no less, either.”

And then it was over. No prayer—the prayers had all been said before she spoke, for the bishop had no intention of letting this unreligious ritual of Speaking be a part of the services of Holy Mother Church. The weeping had been done as well, the grief purged. They rose from their places on the ground, the older ones stiffly, the children with exuberance, running and shouting to make up for the long confinement. It was good to hear laughter and shouting. That was also a good way to say good-bye to Ender Wiggin.

Valentine kissed Jakt and her children, embraced Wang-mu, then made her way alone through the crush of citizens. So many of the humans of Milagre had fled to other colonies; but now, with their planet saved, many of them chose not to stay on the new worlds. Lusitania was their home. They weren’t the pioneering kind. Many others, though, had come back solely for this ceremony. Jane would return them to their farms and houses on virgin worlds. It would take a generation or two to fill the empty houses in Milagre.

On the porch Peter waited for her. She smiled at him. “I think you have an appointment now,” said Valentine.

They walked together out of Milagre and into the new-growth forest that still could not utterly hide the evidence of recent fire. They walked until they came to a bright and shining tree. They arrived almost at the same time that the others, walking from the funeral site, arrived. Jane came to the glowing mothertree and touched it—touched a part of herself, or at least a dear sister. Then Peter took his place beside Wang-mu, and Miro stood with Jane, and the priest married the two couples under the mothertree, with pequeninos looking on, and Valentine as the only human witness of the ceremony. No one else even knew the ceremony was taking place; it would not do, they had decided, to distract from Ender’s funeral or Plikt’s speaking. Time enough to announce the marriages later on.

When the ceremony was done, the priest left, with pequeninos as his guide to take him back through the wood. Valentine embraced the newly married couples, Jane and Miro, Peter and Wang-mu, spoke to them for a moment one by one, murmured words of congratulations and farewell, and then stood back and watched.

Jane closed her eyes, smiled, and then all four of them were gone. Only the mothertree remained in the middle of the clearing, bathed in light, heavy with fruit, festooned with blossoms, a perpetual celebrant of the ancient mystery of life.

AFTERWORD

The storyline of Peter and Wang-mu was tied to Japan from the beginning of my planning for the book Xenocide, which was originally intended to include everything in Children of the Mind as well. I was reading a history of prewar Japan and was intrigued by the notion that the people driving the war forward were not the members of the ruling elite, nor even the top leaders of the Japanese military, but rather the young midlevel officers. Of course these very officers would surely have thought it ridiculous that they were in any way in control of the war effort. They drove the war forward, not because they had power in their hands, but because the rulers of Japan dared not be shamed before them.

In my own speculation on the matter, it occurred to me then that it was the ruling elite’s image of these midlevel officers’ perception of honor that drove them, projecting their own ideas of honor onto their subordinates, who may or may not have responded to Japanese retreat or retrenchment as the senior officers feared. So if someone were to have attempted to prevent Japan’s escalation of aggressive war from China to Indochina and finally to the United States, one would have had to change, not the real beliefs of the midlevel officers, but the beliefs of the senior officers about the probable attitudes of those midlevel officers. Thus one would not attempt to persuade the senior officers that the war effort was foolish and doomed—they already knew it and were choosing to ignore it out of a fear of being thought unworthy. One might better have tried to persuade the senior officers that the midlevel officers whose high opinion was essential to their honor would not condemn them for backing down in the face of irresistible force, but would rather honor them for preserving the independence of their own nation.

As I thought further, though, I realized that even this was too direct—it could not be done. One would have to be able to point not only to evidence that the midlevel officers’ minds had been changed, but also to plausible reasons for the change of heart. Still, I wondered, what if some one influential thinker or philosopher who was perceived as “inside” the culture of the military elite had reinterpreted history in such a way as to genuinely transform the military’s perception of a great war commander? Such transformative ideas have come before—and most particularly have come to Japan, which, despite the seeming rigidity of its culture, and perhaps because of its long life just beyond the edge of Chinese culture, has been the most successful nation in modern times in adopting and adapting ideas and customs as if they had always believed them or practiced them, thus preserving the image of rigidity and continuity while in fact being supremely flexible. An idea could have swept through the military culture and left the elites with a war that no longer seemed necessary or desirable; if this had happened before Pearl Harbor, Japan might have been able to back down from its aggressive war in China, consolidate its holdings, and restore peace with the United States.

(Whether this would have been good or bad is another question, of course. To have avoided the war that cost so many lives and caused so many horrors, not least the firebombing of Japanese cities and ultimately the use of nuclear weapons for the first and, so far, only time in history, would have been unarguably good; but one must not forget that it was losing that war that brought about the American occupation of Japan and the forcible imposition of democratic ideas and practices, which led to a flowering of Japanese culture and the Japanese economy that might never have been possible under the rule of the military elite. It is fortunate that we do not have the power to replay history, because then we would be forced to choose: Do you knacker the horse to get the glue?)

In any event, I knew then that someone—I thought at first it would be Ender—would have to go from world to world in search of the ultimate source of power in Starways Congress. Whose mind had to be changed in order to transform the culture of Starways Congress in such a way as to stop the Lusitania Fleet? Since this whole issue began for me with a consideration of a history of Japan, I determined that a farfuture Japanese culture must play some role in the story. Thus Peter and Wang-mu come to the planet Divine Wind.

Another thought-path also brought me to Japan, however. It happened that I visited with dear friends in Utah, Van and Elizabeth Gessel, at a time shortly after Van, a professor of Japanese language at Brigham Young University, had acquired a CD called Music of Hikari Oe. Van played the CD—powerful, skillful, evocative music of the Western, mathematical tradition—as he told me something of the composer. Hikari Oe, he told me, is brain damaged, mentally retarded; but when it comes to music, he is gifted. His father, Kenzaburo Oe, recently received the Nobel prize for literature; and while Kenzaburo Oe has written many things, the most powerful of his works, and almost certainly the ones for which the prize was given, are those that deal with his relationship to his damaged child, both the pain of having such a child and the transformative joy of discovering the true nature of that child while also discovering the true nature of that parent who stays and loves him.

I at once felt a powerful kinship with Kenzaburo Oe, not because my writing in any way resembles his, but because I also have a brain-damaged child and have followed my own course in dealing with the fact of him in my life. Like Kenzaburo Oe, I could not keep my damaged child out of my writing; he shows up again and again. Yet this very sense of kinship also made me avoid seeking out Oe’s writings, for I feared that either he would have ideas about such children that I could not agree with, and then I would be hurt or angry; or his ideas would be so truthful and powerful that I then would be forced into silence, having nothing to add. (This is not an idle fear. I had a book called Genesis under contract with my publisher when I read Michael Bishop’s novel Ancient of Days. Though the plotlines were not remotely similar except that they dealt with primitive men surviving into modern times, Bishop’s ideas were so powerful and his writing so truthful that I had to cancel that contract; the book was unwritable at that time, and probably will never be writable in that form.)

Then, after I had written the first three chapters of this volume, I was at the checkout stand at the News and Novels bookstore in Greensboro, North Carolina, when I saw on a point-of-purchase display a lone copy of a small book called Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself. The author: Kenzaburo Oe. I had not looked for him, but he had found me. I bought the book; I took it home.

It sat unopened by my bed for two days. Then came the insomniac night when I was about to begin writing chapter four, the chapter in which Wang-mu and Peter first come in contact with the Japanese culture of the planet Divine Wind (primarily in a city I named Nagoya because that was the Japanese city where my brother Russell served his Mormon mission back in the seventies). I saw Oe’s book and picked it up, opened it and began to read the first page. Oe speaks at first of his longtime relationship with Scandinavia, having read, as a child, translations (or, rather, Japanese retellings) of a series of Scandinavian stories about a character named Nils.

I stopped reading at once, for I had never thought of any similarity between Scandinavia and Japan before. But at the very suggestion, I at once realized that Japan and Scandinavia were both Edge peoples. They came into the civilized world in the shadow (or is it dazzled by the brilliance?) of a dominant culture.

I thought of other Edge peoples—the Arabs, who found an ideology that gave them the power to sweep through the culturally overwhelming Roman world; the Mongols, who united long enough to conquer and then be swallowed up by China; the Turks, who plunged from the edge of the Muslim world to the heart of it, and then toppled the last vestige of the Roman world as well, and yet sank back into again becoming Edge people in the shadow of Europe. All these Edge nations, even when they ruled the very civilizations in whose shadow they had once huddled, were never able to shake off their sense of not-belonging, their fear that their culture was irredeemably inferior and secondary. The result was that they were at once too aggressive and overextended themselves, growing beyond boundaries they could consolidate and hold; and too diffident, surrendering everything that really was powerful and fresh in their culture while retaining only the outward trappings of independence. The Manchu rulers of China, for instance, pretended to remain apart from the people they ruled, determined not to be swallowed up in the all-devouring maw of Chinese culture, but the result was not the dominance of the Manchu, but their inevitable marginalization.

True Center nations have been few in history. Egypt was one, and remained a Center nation until it was conquered by Alexander; even then, it kept a measure of its Centerness until the powerful idea of Islam swept over it. Mesopotamia might have been one, for a time, but unlike Egypt, Mesopotamian cities could not unite enough to control their hinterland. The result was they were swept over and ruled by their Edge nations again and again. The Centerness of Mesopotamia still gave it the power to swallow up its conquerors culturally for many years, until finally it became a peripheral province handed back and forth between Rome and Parthia. As with Egypt, its Center role was finally shattered by Islam.

China came later to its place as a Center nation, but it has been astonishingly successful. It was a long and bloody road to unity, but once achieved that unity remained, culturally if not politically. The rulers of China, like the rulers of Egypt, reached out to control the hinterland, but, again like Egypt, rarely attempted and never succeeded in establishing longterm rule over genuinely foreign nations.

Filled with this idea, and others that grew out of it, I conceived of a conversation between Wang-mu and Peter in which Wang-mu told him of her idea of Center and Edge nations. I went to my computer and wrote notes about this idea, which included the following passage:

Center People are not afraid of losing their identity. They take it for granted that all people want to be like them, that they are the highest civilization and all else is poor imitation or transient mistakes. The arrogance, oddly enough, leads to a simple humility—they do not strut or brag or throw their weight around because they have no need to prove their superiority. They transform only gradually, and only by pretending that they are not changing at all.

Edge People, on the other hand, know they are not the highest civilization. Sometimes they raid and steal and stay to rule—Vikings, Mongols, Turks, Arabs—and sometimes they go through radical transformations in order to compete—Greeks, Romans, Japanese—and sometimes they simply remain shamed backwaters. But when they are on the rise, they are insufferable because they are unsure of their worth and must therefore brag and show off and prove themselves again and again—until at last they feel themselves to be a Center People. Unfortunately, that very complacency destroys them, because they are not Center People and feeling doesn’t make it so. Triumphant Edge People don’t endure, like Egypt or China, they fade, as the Arabs did, and the Turks, and the Vikings, and the Mongols after their victories.

The Japanese have made themselves permanent Edge People.

I also speculated about America, which was composed of refugees from the Edge, but which nevertheless behaved like a Center nation, controlling (brutally) its hinterland, but only briefly flirting with empire, content instead to be the center of the world. America had, for a time at least, the same arrogance as the Chinese—the assumption that the rest of the world wants to be like us. And I wondered if, as with Islam, a powerful idea had made an Edge nation into a Center nation. Just as the Arabs themselves lost control of the new Islamic Center, which was ruled by Turks, so also the original English culture of America might be softened or adapted, while the powerful nation of America remains at the Center; this is an idea that I am still playing with and whose truth I am not in a position to evaluate, since so much of it will only be known in the future and can only be guessed at now. But it remains that this idea of Edge and Center nations is an intriguing one that I find myself believing, to the extent that I understand it.

Having written my notes, I then began the next night to write the chapter. I had brought Wang-mu and Peter to the end of their meal at the restaurant, and was ready to have them meet a Japanese character for the first time. But it was four in the morning. My wife, Kristine, awake to take care of our one-year-old baby, Zina, took the chapter fragment out of my hand and read it. As I prepared for sleep, she also dozed off, but then awoke to tell me of a dream she had in that momentary nap. She had dreamed that the Japanese of Divine Wind carried their ancestors’ ashes in tiny lockets or amulets that they wore around their necks; and Peter felt lost because he had only one ancestor, and he would die when that ancestor died. I knew at once that I had to use this idea; then I lay down in bed, picked up Oe’s book again, and began to read.

Imagine my surprise, then, when after that first passage dealing with Oe’s feelings toward Scandinavia, he plunged into analyses of Japanese culture and literature that explicitly developed precisely the idea that had leapt into my mind just from reading those opening, seemingly unrelated paragraphs about Nils. He, a man who has studied and cared about the peripheral (or Edge) peoples of Japan, especially the culture of Okinawa, conceived of Japan as a culture that was in danger of losing its Center. Serious Japanese literature, he said, was decaying precisely because Japanese intellectuals were “accepting” and “discharging” Western ideas, not particularly believing them but caught up in their fashionableness, while ignoring those powerful ideas inherent in the Yamato (native Japanese) culture which would give Japan the power to become a self-standing Center nation. He even used, finally, the words “center” and “edge” in this sentence:

The postwar writers, however, looked for a different path that would lead Japan to a place in the world not at its center but at the edge of it. (pp. 97–98)

His point was not the same as mine, but the world-conception of centers and edges was harmonious.

I took all of Oe’s concerns about literature quite personally, because, like him, I am a part of an “edge” culture which “accepts” and “discharges” ideas from the dominant culture and which is in danger of losing its self-centering impulse. I speak of Mormon culture, which was born at the edge of America and which has long been more American than Mormon. Supposedly “serious” literature in Mormon culture has consisted entirely of imitations, mostly pathetic but occasionally of decent quality, of the “serious” literature of contemporary America, which is itself a decadent, derivative, and hopelessly irrelevant literature, having no audience that believes in or cares about its stories, no audience capable of genuine community transformation. And, like Oe—or let me say that I think I understand Oe correctly in this—I can see the redemption of (or, arguably, the creation of) a true Mormon literature as coming only by the rejection of fashionably “serious” (but, in reality, frivolous) American literature and its replacement by a literature that meets Oe’s criteria for junbungaku:

The role of literature—insofar as man is obviously a historical being—is to create a model of a contemporary age which encompasses past and future, a model of the people living in that age as well. (p. 66)

What the Mormon “serious” literateurs never attempted was a model of the people living in our culture in our age. Or, rather, they attempted it, but never from inside: the pose of the implied author (to use Wayne Booth’s term) was always skeptical and Outside rather than critical and Inside; it is my belief that no true national literature can ever be written by those whose values derive from outside that national culture.

But I do not write only or even primarily Mormon literature. As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of science fiction readers—also rather an edge culture, though one that transcends national boundaries. I am also, for good or ill, an American writing American literature to an American audience. Most fundamentally, though, I am a human being writing human literature to a human audience, as are we all who ply this trade. There are times when this, too, seems to me to be an edge culture. We with our passionate involvement in bonding together while standing alone, in staving off death while worshiping its irresistible power, in shrugging off interference while meddling in the lives of others, in keeping our secrets while unmasking others’, in being the sole unique individual in a world of people who are all alike, we are strange indeed among all the plants and animals, who unlike us know their place, and if they think of God at all do not imagine him to be their kin, or themselves to be his heirs. How dangerous we are, like those kingdoms of the Edge, how likely we are to erupt outward into every unconquered kingdom in the effort to make ourselves the center after all.

What Kenzaburo Oe seeks for Japanese literature, I seek also for American literature, for Mormon literature, for science fiction, for human literature. But it is not always done in the most obvious way. When Shusaku Endo explores the issue of the meaning of life in the face of death, he assembles a cast of characters in contemporary Japan, but the currents of magic, science, and religion are never far from the heart of his story; while I do not pretend to Endo’s mastery of storytelling, have I not dealt with the same issues, using the same tools, in this novel? Does Children of the Mind fail as junbungaku solely because of its far-future setting? Is my novel Lost Boys the only one of my works that can aspire to seriousness, and only to the degree that it is an accurate mirror of life in 1983 in Greensboro, North Carolina?

Dare I amplify the words of a Nobel laureate by suggesting that one can as easily create “a model of a contemporary age which encompasses past and future” through the guise of a novel that thoroughly and faithfully creates a society of another time and place, through whose contrast our contemporary age stands clearly revealed? Or must I declare an anti-junbungaku and attack a statement that I agree with and pretend to diverge from a goal which I am also pursuing? Is Oe’s vision of significant literature incomplete? Or am I merely a participant in edge literatures, longing for the center but condemned never to arrive in that peaceful, all-encompassing place?

Perhaps that is why the Stranger and the Other are so important in all my writings (though never at first by plan), even as my stories also affirm the importance of the Member and the Familiar; but is this not, in its own way, a model of our contemporary age, encompassing past and future; am I not, with my own inner contradictions between Inside and Outside, Member and Stranger, a model of the people living in this age? Is there only one setting in which an author can tell true tales?

When I read Shusaku Endo’s Deep River, I am an alien in his world. Things that resonate with Japanese readers, who nod and say, “Yes, that’s how it was, that’s how it is for us,” to me are strange, and I say, “Is this how they experienced it? Is this how it feels to them?” Do I not draw as much value from reading a novel that depicts someone else’s contemporary age? Do I not learn as much from Austen as from Tyler? From Endo as from Russo? Is the world of the Stranger and Other not as vital to me in understanding what it means to be human as the world I actually live in? Is it not then possible for me to create an invented future milieu that has as much power to speak to contemporary readers as the milieus of those writers whose contemporary age is of another era or land?

Perhaps all milieus are equally the product of imagination, whether we live in them or make them up. Perhaps to another Japanese, Deep River contains almost as much strangeness as it does to me, because Endo himself is inevitably different from all other Japanese people. Perhaps every writer who thoroughly creates a fictional world will inevitably create a mirror of his own time and yet also create a world that no one else but him has ever visited; only the trivial details of place names, dates, and famous people distinguish between a madeup universe like the one in Children of the Mind and the “real” universe depicted in Deep River. What Endo achieves and I aspire to are the same: To give the reader an experience of convincing reality, nevertheless piercing the shell of detail and penetrating to the structure of causation and meaning that we always hope for but never actually experience in the real world. Causation and meaning are always imagined, no matter how thoroughly we “create a model of a contemporary age.” But if we imagine well, and do not merely “accept” and “discharge” what we are given by the culture around us, do we not create junbungaku?

I do not believe the tools of science fiction are any less suitable to the task of creating junbungaku than the tools of contemporary serious literature, though of course we who wield the tools may fail to use them to best advantage. But in this I may deceive myself; or my own work may be too weak to prove what is possible within our literature. One thing is certain: The community of readers of science fiction includes as many serious thinkers and explorers of reality as any other literary community I have taken part in. If a great literature demands a great audience, the audience is ready and any failure to achieve such a literature must be laid at the writer’s door.

So I will continue to attempt to create junbungaku, commenting on contemporary culture in allegorical or symbolic disguise as do all science fiction writers, consciously or not. Whether any of my own works actually achieve the status of true seriousness that Oe points to is for others to decide, for regardless of the quality of the writer, there must also be an audience to receive the work before it has any transformative power; what I depend on is a vigorous audience that can discover sweetness and light, beauty and truth, beyond the ability of the artist, on his own, to create them.

ENDER IN EXILE

ORSON SCOTT CARD

ENDER IN EXILE

TO
BAYDON HILTON
JORDAN HILTON
RICKY FENTON

Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio: you continue to earn my trust and admiration as fellow travelers on the twisted path of life.

ENDER IN EXILE

CHAPTER 1

To: jpwiggin@gso.nc.pub, twiggin@uncg.edu

From: hgraff%educadmin@ifcom.gov

Subj: When Andrew Returns Home

Dear John Paul and Theresa Wiggin,

You understand that during the recent attempt by the Warsaw Pact to take over the International Fleet, our sole concern at EducAdmin was the safety of the children. Now we are finally able to begin working out the logistics of sending the children home.

We assure you that Andrew will be provided with continuous surveillance and an active bodyguard throughout his transfer from the I.F. to American government control. We are still negotiating the degree to which the I.F. will continue to provide protection after the transfer.

Every effort is being made by EducAdmin to assure that Andrew will be able to return to the most normal childhood possible. However, I wish your advice about whether he should be retained here in isolation until the conclusion of the inquiries into EducAdmin actions during the late campaign. It is quite likely that testimony will be offered that depicts Andrew and his actions in damaging ways, in order to attack EducAdmin through him (and the other children). Here at IFCom we can keep him from hearing the worst of it; on Earth, no such protection will be possible and it is likelier that he will be called to “testify.”

Hyrum Graff

Theresa Wiggin was sitting up in bed, holding her printout of Graff’s letter. “‘Called to “testify.”’ Which means putting him on exhibit as—what, a hero? More likely a monster, since we already have various senators decrying the exploitation of children.”

“That’ll teach him to save the human race,” said her husband, John Paul.

“This is not a time for flippancy.”

“Theresa, be reasonable,” said John Paul. “I want Ender home as much as you do.”

“No you don’t,” said Theresa fiercely. “You don’t ache with the need for him every day.” Even as she said it she knew she was being unfair to him, and she covered her eyes and shook her head.

To his credit, he understood and didn’t argue with her about what he did and did not feel. “You can never have the years they’ve taken, Theresa. He’s not the boy we knew.”

“Then we’ll get to know the boy he is. Here. In our home.”

“Surrounded by guards.”

“That’s the part I refuse to accept. Who would want to hurt him?”

John Paul set down the book he was no longer pretending to read. “Theresa, you’re the smartest person I know.”

“He’s a child!”

“He won a war against incredibly superior forces.”

“He fired off one weapon. Which he did not design or deploy.”

“He got that weapon into firing range.”

“The formics are gone! He’s a hero, he’s not in danger.”

“All right, Theresa, he’s a hero. How is he going to go to middle school? What eighth-grade teacher is ready for him? What school dance is he going to be ready for?”

“It will take time. But here, with his family—”

“Yes, we’re such a warm, welcoming group of people, a love nest into which he’ll fit so easily.”

“We do love each other!”

“Theresa, Colonel Graff is only trying to warn us that Ender isn’t just our son.”

“He’s nobody else’s son.”

“You know who wants to kill our son.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Every government that thinks of American military power as an obstacle to their plans.”

“But Ender isn’t going to be in the military, he’s going to be—”

“This week he won’t be in the American military. Maybe. He won a war at the age of twelve, Theresa. What makes you think he won’t be drafted by our benevolent and democratic government the moment he gets back to Earth? Or put into protective custody? Maybe they’ll let us go with him and maybe they won’t.”

Theresa let the tears flow down her cheeks. “So you’re saying that when he left here we lost him forever.”

“I’m saying that when your child goes off to war, you will never get him back. Not as he was, not the same boy. Changed, if he comes back at all. So let me ask you. Do you want him to go where he’s in the greatest danger, or to stay where he’s relatively safe?”

“You think Graff is trying to get us to tell him to keep Ender with him out there in space.”

“I think Graff cares what happens to Ender, and he’s letting us know—without actually saying it, because every letter he sends can be used against him in court—that Ender is in terrible danger. Not ten minutes after Ender’s victory, the Russians made their brutal play for control of the I.F. Their soldiers killed thousands of fleet officers before the I.F. was able to force their surrender. What would they have done if they had won? Brought Ender home and put on a big parade for him?”

Theresa knew all of this. She had known it, viscerally at least, from the moment she read Graff’s letter. No, she had known it even before, had known it with a sick dread as soon as she heard that the Formic War was over. He would not be coming home.

She felt John Paul’s hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. His hand returned, stroking her arm as she lay there, facing away from him, crying because she knew she had already lost the argument, crying because she wasn’t even on her own side in their quarrel.

“We knew when he was born that he didn’t belong to us.”

“He does belong to us.”

“If he comes home, his life belongs to whatever government has the power to protect him and use him—or kill him. He’s the single most important asset surviving from the war. The great weapon. That’s all he’ll be—that and such a celebrity he can’t possibly have a normal childhood anyway. And would we be much help, Theresa? Do we understand what his life has been for the past seven years? What kind of parents can we be to the boy—the man—that he’s become?”

“We would be wonderful,” she said.

“And we know this because we’re such perfect parents for the children we have at home with us.”

Theresa rolled onto her back. “Oh, dear. Poor Peter. It must be killing him that Ender might come home.”

“Take the wind right out of his sails.”

“Oh, I’m not sure of that,” said Theresa. “I bet Peter is already figuring out how to exploit Ender’s return.”

“Until he finds out that Ender is much too clever to be exploited.”

“What preparation does Ender have for politics? He’s been in the military all this time.”

John Paul chuckled.

“All right, yes, of course the military is just as political as government.”

“But you’re right,” said John Paul. “Ender’s had protection there, people who intended to exploit him, yes, but he hasn’t had to do any bureaucratic fighting for himself. He’s probably a babe in the woods when it comes to maneuvering like that.”

“So Peter really could use him?”

“That’s not what worries me. What worries me is what Peter will do when he finds out that he can’t use him.”

Theresa sat back up and faced her husband. “You can’t think Peter would raise a hand against Ender!”

“Peter doesn’t raise his own hand to do anything difficult or dangerous. You know how he’s been using Valentine.”

“Only because she lets him use her.”

“Exactly my point,” said John Paul.

“Ender is not in danger from his own family.”

“Theresa, we have to decide: What’s best for Ender? What’s best for Peter and Valentine? What’s best for the future of the world?”

“Sitting here on our bed, in the middle of the night, the two of us are deciding the fate of the world?”

“When we conceived little Andrew, my dear, we decided the fate of the world.”

“And had a good time doing it,” she added.

“Is it good for Ender to come home? Will it make him happy?”

“Do you really think he’s forgotten us?” she asked. “Do you think Ender doesn’t care whether he comes home?”

“Coming home lasts a day or two. Then there’s living here. The danger from foreign powers, the unnaturalness of his life at school, the constant infringements on his privacy, and let’s not forget Peter’s unquenchable ambition and envy. So I ask again, will Ender’s life here be happier than it would be if…”

“If he stays out in space? What kind of life will that be for him?”

“The I.F. has made its commitment—total neutrality in regard to anything happening on Earth. If they have Ender, then the whole world—every government—will know they’d better not try to go up against the Fleet.”

“So by not coming home, Ender continues to save the world on an ongoing basis,” said Theresa. “What a useful life he’ll have.”

“The point is that nobody else can use him.”

Theresa put on her sweetest voice. “So you think we should write back to Graff and tell him that we don’t want Ender to come home?”

“We can’t do anything of the kind,” said John Paul. “We’ll write back that we’re eager to see our son and we don’t think any bodyguard will be necessary.”

It took her a moment to realize why he seemed to be reversing everything he’d said. “Any letters we send Graff,” she said, “will be just as public as the letter he sent us. And just as empty. And we do nothing and let things take their course.”

“No, my dear,” said John Paul. “It happens that living in our own house, under our own roof, are two of the most influential formers of public opinion.”

“But John Paul, officially we don’t know that our children are sneaking around in the nets, manipulating events through Peter’s network of correspondents and Valentine’s brilliantly perverse talent for demagoguery.”

“And they don’t know that we have any brains,” said John Paul. “They seem to think they were left at our house by fairies instead of having our genetic material throughout their little bodies. They treat us as convenient samples of ignorant public opinion. So…let’s give them some public opinions that will steer them to do what’s best for their brother.”

“What’s best,” echoed Theresa. “We don’t know what’s best.”

“No,” said John Paul. “We only know what seems best. But one thing’s certain—we know a lot more about it than any of our children do.”

Valentine came home from school with anger festering inside her. Stupid teachers—it made her crazy sometimes to ask a question and have the teacher patiently explain things to her as if the question were a sign of Valentine’s failure to understand the subject, instead of the teacher’s. But Valentine sat there and took it, as the equation showed up in the holodisplay on everybody’s desk and the teacher covered it point by point.

Then Valentine drew a little circle in the air around the element of the problem that the teacher had not addressed properly—the reason why the answer was not right. Valentine’s circle did not show up on all the desks, of course; only the teacher’s computer had that capability.

So the teacher then got to draw his own circle around that number and say, “What you’re not noticing here, Valentine, is that even with this explanation, if you ignore this element you still can’t get the right answer.”

It was such an obvious ego-protective cover-up. But of course it was obvious only to Valentine. To the other students, who were barely grasping the material anyway (especially since it was being explained to them by an unobservant incompetent), it was Val who had overlooked the circled parenthetical, even though it was precisely because of that element that she had asked her question in the first place.

And the teacher gave her that simpering smile that clearly said, You aren’t going to defeat me and humiliate me in front of this class.

But Valentine was not trying to humiliate him. She did not care about him. She simply cared that the material be taught well enough that if, God forbid, some member of the class became a civil engineer, his bridges wouldn’t fall down and kill people.

That was the difference between her and the idiots of the world. They were all trying to look smart and keep their social standing. Whereas Valentine didn’t care about social standing, she cared about getting it right. Getting the truth—when the truth was gettable.

She had said nothing to the teacher and nothing to any of the students and she knew she wouldn’t get any sympathy at home, either. Peter would mock her for caring about school enough to let that clown of a teacher get under her skin. Father would look at the problem, point out the correct answer, and go back to his work without ever noticing that Val wasn’t asking for help, she was asking for commiseration.

And Mother? She would be all for charging down to the school and doing something about it, raking the teacher over the coals. Mother wouldn’t even hear Val explaining that she didn’t want to shame the teacher, she just wanted somebody to say, “Isn’t it ironic, that in this special advanced school for really bright kids, they have a teacher who doesn’t know his own subject!” To which Val could reply, “It sure is!” and then she’d feel better. Like somebody was on her side. Somebody got it and she wasn’t alone.

My needs are simple and few, thought Valentine. Food. Clothing. A comfortable place to sleep. And no idiots.

But of course a world with no idiots would be lonely. If she herself were even allowed there. It’s not as if she never made mistakes.

Like the mistake of ever letting Peter rope her into being Demosthenes. He still thought he needed to tell her what to write every day after school—as if, after all these years, she had not completely internalized the character. She could write Demosthenes’ essays in her sleep.

And if she needed help, all she had to do was listen to Father pontificate on world affairs—since he seemed to echo all of Demosthenes’ warmongering jingoistic demagogic opinions despite claiming never to read the columns.

If he knew his sweet naive little daughter was writing those essays, he’d poop petunias.

She fumed into the house, headed straight for her computer, scanned the news, and started writing the essay she knew Peter would assign her—a diatribe on how the I.F. should not have ended the hostilities with the Warsaw Pact without first demanding that Russia surrender all her nukes, because shouldn’t there be some cost to waging a nakedly aggressive war? All the usual spewings from her Demosthenes anti-avatar.

Or am I, as Demosthenes, Peter’s real avatar? Have I been turned into a virtual person?

Click. An email. Anything would be better than what she was writing.

It was from Mother. She was forwarding an email from Colonel Graff. About Ender having a bodyguard when he came home.

“I thought you’d want to see this,” Mother had written. “Isn’t it just THRILLING that Andrew’s homecoming is SO CLOSE?”

Stop shouting, Mother. Why do you use caps for emphasis like that? It’s so—junior high school. It’s what she told Peter more than once. Mother is such a cheerleader.

Mother’s epistle went on in the same vein. It’ll take NO time at ALL to get Ender’s room back into shape for him and now there doesn’t seem to be any reason to put off cleaning the room a SECOND longer unless what do you think, would Peter want to SHARE his room with his little brother so they could BOND and get CLOSE again? And what do you think Ender will want for his VERY FIRST meal home?

Food, Mother. Whatever it is will definitely be “SPECIAL enough to make him feel LOVED and MISSED.”

Anyway. Mother was so naive to take Graff’s letter at face value. Val went back and read it again. Surveillance. Bodyguard. Graff was sending her a warning, not trying to get her all excited about Ender’s homecoming. Ender was going to be in danger. Couldn’t Mother see that?

Graff asked if they should keep Ender in space till the inquiries were over. But that would take months. How could Mother have gotten the idea that Ender was coming home so soon it was time to clear out the junk that had gotten stacked in his room? Graff was asking her to request that he not be sent home just yet. And his reason was that Ender was in danger.

Instantly the whole range of dangers that Ender faced loomed before her. The Russians would assume that Ender was a weapon that America would use against them. The Chinese would think the same—that America, armed with this Ender-weapon, might become aggressive about intruding into China’s sphere of influence again. Both nations would breathe easier if Ender were dead. Though of course they’d have to make it look like the assassination had been carried out by some kind of terrorist movement. Which meant that they wouldn’t just snipe Ender out of existence, they’d probably blow up his school.

No, no, no, Val told herself. Just because that’s the kind of thing Demosthenes would say doesn’t mean it’s what you have to think!

But the image of somebody blowing Ender up or shooting him or whatever method they used—all the methods kept flashing through her mind. Wouldn’t it be ironic—yet typically human—for the person who saved the human race to be assassinated? It was like the murder of Abraham Lincoln or Mohandas Gandhi. Some people just didn’t know who their saviors were. And the fact that Ender was still a kid wouldn’t even slow them down.

He can’t come home, she thought. Mother will never see it, I could never say it to her, but…even if they weren’t going to assassinate him, what would his life be like here? Ender was never one to seek fame or status, and yet everything he did would end up on the vids with people commenting on how he did his hair (Vote! Like it or hate it?) and what classes he was taking in school (What will the hero be when he grows up? Vote on the career you think The Wiggin should prepare for!).

What a nightmare. It wouldn’t be coming home. They could never bring Ender home anyway. The home he left didn’t exist. The kid who was taken out of that home didn’t exist either. When Ender was here—not even a whole year ago—when Val went to the lake and spent those hours with him, Ender seemed so old. Playful sometimes, yes, but he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. Now the burden had been taken off—but the aftermath would cling to him, would tie him down, tear down his life.

The years of childhood were gone. Period. Ender didn’t get to be a little boy growing up into an adolescent in his father’s and mother’s house. He was already an adolescent now—in years and hormones—and an adult in the responsibilities he’d borne.

If school feels empty to me, how will it feel to Ender?

Even as she finished writing her essay on Russia’s nukes and the cost of defeat, she was mentally structuring another essay. The one explaining why Ender Wiggin should not be brought back to Earth because he’d be the target of every crank and spy and paparazzo and assassin and a normal life would be impossible.

She didn’t write it, though. Because she knew there was a huge problem: Peter would hate it.

Because Peter already had his plans. His online persona, Locke, had already started laying the groundwork for Ender’s homecoming. It was clear to Valentine that when Ender returned, Peter intended to come out of the closet as the real author of the Locke essays—and therefore the person who came up with the terms of the truce that was still holding between the Warsaw Pact and the I.F. Peter meant to piggyback on Ender’s fame. Ender saved the human race from the formics, and his big brother Peter saved the world from civil war in the aftermath of Ender’s victory. Double heroes!

Ender would hate the notoriety. Peter was so hungry for it that he intended to steal as much of Ender’s as he could get.

Oh, he’d never admit that, thought Valentine. Peter will have all kinds of reasons why it’s for Ender’s own good. Probably the very reasons I’ve thought of.

And since that’s the case, am I doing just what Peter does? Have I come up with all these reasons for Ender not to come home, solely because in my heart I don’t want him here?

At that thought, such a wave of emotion swept over her that she found herself weeping at her homework table. She wanted him home. And even though she understood that he couldn’t really come home—Colonel Graff was right—she still yearned for the little brother who was stolen from her. All these years with the brother I hate, and now, for the sake of the brother I love, I’ll work to keep him from…

From me? No, I don’t have to keep him from me. I hate school, I hate my life here, I hate hate hate being under Peter’s thumb. Why should I stay? Why shouldn’t I go out into space with Ender? At least for a while. I’m the one he’s closest to. I’m the only one he’s seen in the past seven years. If he can’t come home, one bit of home—me—can come to him!

It was all a matter of persuading Peter that it wasn’t in his best interest to have Ender come back to Earth—without letting Peter know that she was trying to manipulate him.

It just made her tired, because Peter wasn’t easy to manipulate. He saw through everything. So she had to be quite forthright and honest about what she was doing—but do it with such subtle overtones of humility and earnestness and dispassion and whatever that Peter could get past his own condescension toward everything she said and decide that he had thought that way all along and…

And is my real motive that I want to get off planet myself? Is this about Ender or about me getting free?

Both. It can be both. And I’ll tell Ender the truth about that—I won’t be giving up anything to be with him. I’d rather be with him in space and never see Earth again than stay here, with or without him. Without him: an aching void. With him: the pain of watching him lead a miserable, frustrated life.

Val began to write a letter to Colonel Graff. Mother had been careless enough to include Graff’s address. That was almost a security breach. Mother was so naive sometimes. If she were an I.F. officer, she would have been cashiered long ago.

At dinner that night, Mother couldn’t stop talking about Ender’s homecoming. Peter listened with only half his attention, because of course Mother couldn’t see past her personal sentimentality about her “lost little boy coming back to the nest” whereas Peter understood that Ender’s return would be horribly complicated. So much to prepare for—and not just the stupid bedroom. Ender could have Peter’s own bed, for all he cared—what mattered was that for a brief window of time, Ender would be the center of the world’s attention, and that was when Locke would emerge from the cloak of anonymity and put an end to the speculation about the identity of the “great benefactor of humanity who, because of his modesty in remaining anonymous, cannot receive the Nobel prize that he so richly deserves for having led us to the end of the last war of mankind.”

That from a rather gushy fan of Locke’s—who also happened to be the head of the opposition party in Great Britain. Naive to imagine even for a moment that the brief attempt by the New Warsaw Pact to take over the I.F. was the “last war.” There’s only one way to have a “last war,” and that’s to have the whole of Earth under a single, effective, powerful, but popular leader.

And the way to introduce that leader would be to find him on camera, standing beside the great Ender Wiggin with his arm flung across the hero’s shoulders because—and who should be surprised by this?—the “Boy of War” and the “Man of Peace” are brothers!

And now Father was blathering about something. Only he had addressed something to Peter directly and so Peter had to play the dutiful son and listen as if he cared.

“I really think you need to commit to the career you want to pursue before your brother gets home, Peter.”

“And why is that?” asked Peter.

“Oh, don’t pretend to be so naive. Don’t you realize that Ender Wiggin’s brother can get into any college he wants?”

Father pronounced the words as if they were the most brilliant ever spoken aloud by someone who had not yet been deified by the Roman senate or sainted by the Pope or whatever. It would never occur to Father that Peter’s perfect grades and his perfect score on all the college-entry tests would already get him into any school he wanted. He didn’t have to piggyback on his brother’s fame. But no, to Father everything good in Peter’s life would always be seen as flowing from Ender. Ender Ender Ender Ender what a stupid name.

If Father’s thinking this way, no doubt everybody else will, too. At least everybody below a certain minimum intelligence.

All Peter had been seeing was the publicity bonus that Ender’s homecoming would offer. But Father had reminded him of something else—that everything he did would be discounted in people’s minds precisely because he was Ender the Great’s older brother. People would see them standing side by side, yes—but they’d wonder why Ender’s brother had not been taken into Battle School. It would make Peter look weak and inferior and vulnerable.

There he’d stand, noticeably taller, the brother who stayed home and didn’t do anything. “Oh, but I wrote all the Locke essays and shut down the conflict with Russia before it could turn into a world war!” Well, if you’re so smart, why weren’t you helping your little brother save the human race from complete destruction?

Public relations opportunity, yes. But also a nightmare.

How could he use the opportunity Ender’s great victory offered, yet not have it look like he was nothing but a hanger-on, sucking at his brother’s fame like a remora? How ghastly if his announcement sounded like some sad kind of me-too-ism. Oh, you think my brother’s cool? Well, I’ll have you know that I saved the world too. In my own sad, needy little way.

“Are you all right, Peter?” asked Valentine.

“Oh, is something wrong?” asked Mother. “Let me look at you, dear.”

“I’m not taking my shirt off or letting you use a rectal thermometer on me, Mother, because Val is hallucinating and I look just fine.”

“I’ll have you know that if and when I start hallucinating,” said Val, “I can think of something better than seeing your face looking pukish.”

“What a great commercial idea,” said Peter, almost by reflex now. “Choose Your Own Hallucination! Oh, wait, they have that one—they call it ‘illegal drugs.’”

“Don’t sneer at us needy ones,” said Val. “Those who are addicted to ego don’t need drugs.”

“Children,” said Mother. “Is this what Ender will find when he comes home?”

“Yes,” said Val and Peter simultaneously.

Father spoke up. “I’d like to think he might find you a bit more mature.”

But by now Peter and Val were laughing uproariously. They couldn’t stop, so Father sent them from the table.

Peter glanced through Val’s essay on Russian nukes. “This is so boring.”

“I don’t think so,” said Valentine. “They have the nukes and that keeps other countries from slapping them down when they need it—which is often.”

“What’s this thing you’ve got against Russia?”

“It’s Demosthenes who has something against Russia,” said Val with fake nonchalance.

“Good,” said Peter. “So Demosthenes will not be worried about Russian nuclear weapons, he’ll be worried about Russia getting its hands on the most valuable weapon of them all.”

“The Molecular Disruption Device?” asked Val. “The I.F. will never bring it within firing range of Earth.”

“Not the M.D. Device, you poor sap. I’m referring to our brother. Our civilization-destroying junior sib.”

“Don’t you dare talk about him with scorn!”

Peter’s expression turned into a mocking simper. But behind his visage there was anger and hurt. She still had the power to get to him, just by making it clear how much more she loved Ender.

“Demosthenes is going to write an essay pointing out that America must get Andrew Wiggin back to Earth immediately. No more delays. The world is too dangerous a place for America not to have the immediate services of the greatest military leader the world has ever known.”

Immediately a fresh wave of hatred for Peter swept over Valentine. Partly because she realized his approach would work far better than the essay she had already written. She hadn’t internalized Demosthenes as well as she thought. Demosthenes would absolutely call for Ender’s immediate return and enlistment in the American military.

And that would be as destabilizing, in its own way, as a call for forward deployment of nukes. Demosthenes’ essays were watched very carefully by the rivals and enemies of the United States. If he called for Ender to come home at once, they would all start maneuvering to keep Ender in space; and some, at least, would openly accuse America of having aggressive intentions.

It would then be Locke’s place, in a few days or weeks, to come up with a compromise, a statesmanlike solution: Leave the kid in space.

Valentine knew exactly why Peter had changed his mind. It was that stupid remark of Father’s at dinner—his reminder that Peter would be in Ender’s shadow, no matter what he did.

Well, even political sheep sometimes said something that had a good result. Now Val wouldn’t even have to persuade Peter of the need to keep Ender away from Earth. It would be all his idea instead of hers.

Theresa once again sat on the bed, crying. Strewn about her were printouts of the Demosthenes and Locke essays that she knew would keep Ender from returning home.

“I can’t help it,” she said to her husband. “I know it’s the right thing—just as Graff wanted us to understand it. But I thought I’d see him again. I really did.”

John Paul sat beside her on the bed and put his arms around her. “It’s the hardest thing we ever did.”

“Not giving him up in the first place?”

“That was hard,” said John Paul, “but we didn’t have a choice. They were going to take him anyway. This time, though. You know that if we went on the nets and put up vids of us pleading for our son to come home—we’d have a pretty good chance.”

“And our little boy is going to wonder why we don’t do it.”

“No he’s not.”

“Oh, you think he’s so smart he’ll figure out what we’re doing? Why we’re doing nothing?”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because he doesn’t know us,” said Theresa. “He doesn’t know what we think or feel. As far as he can tell, we’ve forgotten all about him.”

“One thing I feel good about, in this whole mess,” said John Paul. “We’re still good at manipulating our genius children.”

“Oh, that,” said Theresa dismissively. “It’s easy to manipulate your children when they’re absolutely sure you’re stupid.”

“What makes me saddest,” said John Paul, “is that Locke is getting credit for caring about Ender more than anybody. So when his identity does come out, it’ll look as though he loyally stepped in to protect his brother.”

“He’s our boy, that Peter,” said Theresa. “Oh, what a piece of work he is.”

“I have a philosophical question. I wonder if what we call ‘goodness’ is actually a maladaptive trait. As long as most people have it, and the rules of society promote it as a virtue, then the natural rulers have a clear field of action. It’s because of Ender’s goodness that it’s Peter we’ll have at home on Earth.”

“Oh, Peter’s good,” said Theresa bitterly.

“Yes, I forgot,” said John Paul. “It’s for the good of the human race that he’ll become ruler of the world. An altruistic sacrifice.”

“When I read his simpering essays I want to claw his eyes out.”

“He’s our son, too,” said John Paul. “As much a product of our genes as Ender or Val. And we did goad him into this.”

Theresa knew he was right. But it didn’t help. “He didn’t have to enjoy himself so much, did he?”

CHAPTER 2

To: hgraff%educadmin@ifcom.gov

From: demosthenes@LastBestHopeOfEarth.pol

Subj: You know the truth

You know who decides what to write. No doubt you can even guess why. I’m not going to try to defend my essay, or how it’s being used by others.

You once used the sister of Andrew Wiggin to persuade him to go back into space and win that little war you were fighting. She did her job, didn’t she? Such a good girl, fulfills all her assignments.

Well I have an assignment for her. You once sent her brother to her, for comfort and company. He’ll need her again, more than ever, only he can’t come to her. No house by the lake this time. But there’s no reason she can’t go out into space to be with him. Enlist her in the I.F., pay her as a consultant, whatever it takes. But she and her brother need each other. More than either of them needs Life On Earth.

Don’t second-guess her on this. Remember that she’s smarter than you are, and she loves her younger brother more than you do, and besides, you’re a decent man. You know this is right and good. You always try to bring about what’s right and good, don’t you?

Do us both a favor. Take this letter and shred it and stick it where the sun don’t shine.

Your devoted and humble servant—everybody’s devoted and humble servant—the humble and devoted servant of truth and noble jingoism—Demosthenes.

How does a thirteen-year-old admiral spend his days?

Not commanding a ship—that was made plain to Ender from the day he received his commission. “You have a rank commensurate with your achievements,” said Admiral Chamrajnagar, “but you will have duties commensurate with your training.”

What was his training? To play at virtual war on the simulator. Now there was no one left to fight, so he was trained for…nothing.

Oh, one other thing: to lead children into combat, to squeeze the last ounce of effort and concentration and talent and intelligence from them. But the children had no purpose here, and one by one, they were going home.

They each came to Ender to say good-bye. “You’ll be home soon,” said Hot Soup. “They’ve got to prepare a hero’s welcome.” He was heading to Tactical School, to complete the bits of work remaining before he could earn his high school diploma. “So I can get into college right away.”

“Fifteen-year-olds always do great in college,” said Ender.

“I have to concentrate on my studies,” said Han Tzu. “Finish college, find out what I’m supposed to do with my life, and then find someone to marry and start a family.”

“Get on with the cycle of life?” said Ender.

“A man without a wife and babies is a menace to civilization,” said Han Tzu. “One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.”

“I love it when you recite Chinese wisdom.”

“I’m Chinese, so I get to make it up.” Han Tzu grinned at him. “Ender, come see me. China’s a beautiful country. More variety inside China than in the rest of the world.”

“I will if I can,” said Ender. He didn’t have the heart to point out that China was full of human beings, and that the mix of good and bad, strong and weak, courageous and fearful was bound to be about the same as in any other country or culture or civilization…or village, or house, or heart.

“Oh, you’ll be able to!” said Han Tzu. “You led the human race to victory, and everyone knows it. You can do whatever you want!”

Except go home, said Ender silently. Out loud, he answered, “You don’t know my parents.”

He had meant it to be in the same jocular tone that Han Tzu was using, but nothing came out right these days. Maybe there was a moroseness in him that colored all his speech without his knowing it. Or maybe it was Han Tzu who couldn’t hear a joke coming from Ender’s mouth; maybe he and the other kids all had too many memories of how it was near the end, when they worried that Ender might be losing his mind.

But Ender knew that he wasn’t losing it. He was finding it. The deep mind, the utter soul, the heartlessly compassionate man—able to love others so deeply he can understand them, yet remain so detached that he can use that knowledge to destroy them.

“Parents,” said Han Tzu joylessly. “Mine’s in prison, you know. Or maybe he’s out now. He set me up to cheat on my test, to make sure I got in here.”

“You didn’t need to cheat,” said Ender. “You’re the real thing.”

“But my father needed to bestow it on me. It was no good if I earned it myself. It’s how he made himself feel necessary. I understand that now. My plan is to be a better father than him. I am the Good Man-Parent!”

Ender laughed and then embraced him and they said good-bye. But the conversation stuck with him. He realized that Han Tzu would take his training and turn himself into the perfect father. And much of what he had learned in Battle School and here in Command School would probably serve him well. Patience, absolute self-control, learning the capabilities of those under you so you can make up for their deficits through training.

What was I trained for?

I am Tribal Man, thought Ender. The chief. They can trust me utterly to do exactly what’s right for the tribe. But that trust means that I am the one who decides who lives and dies. Judge, executioner, general, god. That’s what they trained me for. They did it well; I performed as trained. Now I scan the help wanted ads on the nets and can’t find a single job on offer for which those are the qualifications. No tribes applying for chieftains, no villages in search of a king, no religions in search of a warrior-prophet.

Officially, Ender was never supposed to have been informed of the court martial proceedings against ex-colonel Hyrum Graff. Officially, Ender was too young and too personally involved and the juvenile psychologists declared, after several tedious psychological evaluations, that Ender was too fragile to be exposed to the consequences of his own actions.

Oh, right, now you’re worried.

But that’s what the trial was going to be about, wasn’t it? Whether Graff and other officials—but mostly Graff—acted properly in the use they made of the children who were put in their care. It was all being taken very seriously, and from the way adult officers fell silent or looked away when Ender came into a room, Ender was reasonably sure that there had been some terrible consequence of something he had done.

He came to Mazer just before the trial began and laid out his hypotheses about what was really going on. “I think Colonel Graff is being put on trial because they’re holding him responsible for things I did. But I doubt that it’s because I blew up the formics’ home world and destroyed an entire sentient species—they approve of that.”

Mazer had nodded wisely but said nothing—his normal mode of response, left over from his days as Ender’s trainer.

“So it’s something else I did,” said Ender. “I can think of only two things I’ve done that they’d put a man on trial for letting me do them. One was a fight I was in at Battle School. A bigger kid cornered me in a bathroom. He’d been bragging that he was going to beat me till I wasn’t so smart anymore, and he brought his gang with him. I shamed him into fighting me alone, and then I put him down in a single move.”

“Really,” said Mazer.

“Bonzo Madrid. Bonito de Madrid. I think he’s dead.”

“Think?”

“They took me out of Battle School the next day. They never spoke of him. I assumed that meant I had really hurt him. I think he’s dead. That’s the kind of thing they’d hold a court martial for, isn’t it? They have to account to Bonzo’s parents for why their son is dead.”

“Interesting line of thought,” said Mazer. Mazer said that whether his guesses were right or wrong, so Ender didn’t try to interpret it. “Is that all?” asked Mazer.

“There are governments and politicians that would like to discredit me. There’s a move to keep me from coming back to Earth. I read the nets, I know what they’re saying, that I’ll just be a political football, a target for assassins, or an asset that my country will use to conquer the world or some such nonsense. So I think there are those who intend to use Graff’s court martial as a way to publish things about me that would ordinarily be kept under seal. Things that will make me look like some kind of monster.”

“You do know that it sounds suspiciously like paranoia, to think that Graff’s trial is about you.”

“Which makes it all the more appropriate that I’m in this loony bin,” said Ender.

“You understand that I can’t tell you anything,” said Mazer.

“You don’t have to,” said Ender. “I’m also thinking that there was another boy. Years ago. When I was just little. He was hardly that much bigger than me. But he had a gang with him. I talked him out of using them—made it personal, one-on-one. Just like Bonzo. I wasn’t a good fighter then. I didn’t know how. All I could do was go crazy on him. Hurt him so bad he’d never dare to come after me again. Hurt him so bad that his gang would leave me alone, too. I had to be crazy in order to scare them with how crazy I was. So I think that incident is going to be part of the trial, too.”

“Your self-absorption is really quite sweet—you really are convinced you’re the center of the universe.”

“Center of the court martial,” said Ender. “It’s about me, or people wouldn’t be so anxious to keep me from knowing about it. The absence of information is information.”

“You kids are so smart,” said Mazer, with just enough sarcasm to make Ender smile.

“Stilson’s dead, too, isn’t he,” said Ender. It wasn’t really a question.

“Ender, not everyone you fight with dies.” But there was just a titch of hesitation after he said it. And so Ender knew. Everyone he had fought with—really fought—was dead. Bonzo. Stilson. And all the formics, every hive queen, every bugger, every larva, every egg, however they reproduced, it was over.

“You know,” said Ender quietly, “I think about them all the time. How they’ll never have any more children. That’s what being alive is, isn’t it? The ability to replicate. Even people without children, their bodies are still making new cells all the time. Replicating. Only that’s over for Bonzo and Stilson. They never lived long enough to reproduce. Their line is cut off. I was nature, red in tooth and claw, for them. I determined their unfitness.”

Ender knew even as he said it that this was unfair. Mazer was under orders not to discuss these matters with him and even if he guessed right, not to confirm them. But ending the conversation would confirm it, and even denying the truth had confirmed it. Now Ender was practically forcing him to speak, to reassure him, to answer his perceived need. “You don’t have to respond,” said Ender. “I’m not really as depressed as I sound. I don’t blame myself, you know.”

Mazer’s eyes flickered.

“No, I’m not insane,” said Ender. “I regret their deaths. I know that I’m responsible for killing Stilson and Bonzo and all the formics in the universe. But I’m not to blame. I didn’t seek out Stilson or Bonzo. They came to me, with a threat of real damage. A credible threat. Tell them that in the court martial. Or run the recording you’re doubtless making of this conversation. My intention was not to kill them, but my intention was definitely to stop them from damaging me. And the only way to do that was to act brutally. I’m sorry that they died from their injuries. I’d undo that if I could. But I didn’t have the skill to hurt them enough to prevent future attacks, and yet not kill them. Or whatever it was that I did to them. If they’re mentally damaged or crippled, I’ll do what I can for them, unless their families would rather I stay away. I don’t want to cause any more harm.

“But here’s the thing, Mazer Rackham: I knew what I was doing. It’s ridiculous for Hyrum Graff to be on trial for this. He had no idea of the way I thought, when it came to Stilson. He couldn’t have known what I’d do. Only I knew. And I meant to hurt him—I meant to hurt him bad. Not Graff’s fault. The fault was Stilson’s. If he had left me alone—and I gave him every chance to walk away. I begged him to leave me alone. If he’d done that, he’d be alive. He chose. Just because he thought I was weaker than him, just because he thought I couldn’t protect myself, doesn’t mean it stopped being his fault. He chose to attack me precisely because he thought there would be no consequences. Only there were consequences.”

Mazer cleared his throat a little. And then spoke. “This has gone far enough.”

“With Bonzo, however, Graff was taking a terrible risk. What if Bonzo and his friends hurt me? What if I died? Or was brain-damaged? Or was simply made fearful and timid? He would lose the weapon he was forging. Bean would have won the war even if I was out of the picture, but Graff couldn’t know that. It was a terrible gamble. Because Graff also knew that if I got out of that confrontation with Bonzo alive—victorious—then I would believe in myself. My ability to win under any circumstances. The game didn’t give me that—it was just a game. Bonzo showed me that in real life I could win. As long as I understood my enemy. You understand what that means, Mazer.”

“Even if anything you’re saying were true…”

“Take this vid and introduce it into evidence. Or if, by some remote chance, nobody’s recording our conversation, then testify on his behalf. Let them know—the court martial—let them know that Graff acted properly. I was angry at him for doing it that way, and I suppose I still am. But if I were in his place, I would have done the same. It was part of winning the war. People die in war. You send your soldiers into combat and you know some of them won’t come back. But Graff didn’t send Bonzo. Bonzo was a volunteer for the duty he assigned himself—attacking me and allowing us all to learn that no, I would not allow myself to lose, ever. Bonzo volunteered. Just like the buggers volunteered by coming here and trying to wipe out human life. If they’d left us alone, we wouldn’t have hurt them. The court martial has to understand. I am what Battle School was designed to create, what the whole world wanted it to create. Graff cannot be blamed for shaping and sharpening the weapon. He did not wield it. No one did. Bonzo found a knife and cut himself on it. That’s how they have to look at it.”

“Are you done?” Mazer had asked.

“Why, are you running out of recording room?”

Mazer got up and left.

When he came back, he said nothing about their discussion. But Ender was now free to come and go anywhere. They no longer tried to hide things from him. He was able to read the transcript of Graff’s arraignment.

He had been right on every point.

Ender also understood that Graff would not be convicted of anything serious—he would not go to prison. The court martial existed only to damage Ender and make it impossible for America to use him as a military leader. Ender was a hero, yes, but he was now officially a really scary kid. The court martial would cement that image in the public mind. People might have rallied around the savior of the human race. But a monstrous kid who killed other children? Even if it was self-defense, it was just too terrible. Ender’s political future on Earth was nonexistent.

Ender tracked how the commentator Demosthenes responded as things began to come out in the trial. For months—ever since it became clear that Ender was not being sent home immediately—the famous American chauvinist had been agitating on the nets to “bring the hero home.” Even now, as Ender’s private killings were being used against Graff at the trial, Demosthenes still declared, more than once, that Ender was a “weapon that belongs to the American people.”

This practically guaranteed that no one from any other nation would consent to that weapon getting into American hands.

Ender thought at first that Demosthenes must be a complete idiot, playing his hand completely wrong. Then he realized that Demosthenes might be doing it on purpose, energizing the opposition, because the last thing Demosthenes wanted was a rival for American political leadership.

Was the man that subtle? Ender pored over his essays—what else did he have to do?—and saw a pattern of self-defeat. Demosthenes was eloquent, but he always pushed a little too hard. Enough to energize the opposition, inside and outside America. Discrediting his own side of every argument.

Deliberately?

Probably not. Ender knew the history of leaders—especially of the original Demosthenes. Eloquence didn’t imply intelligence or deep analysis. True believers in a cause often behaved in self-defeating ways because they expected other people to see the rightness of their cause if they just stated it clearly enough. As a result, they tipped their hand in every game and couldn’t understand why everyone ganged up against them.

Ender had watched the arguments unfold on the nets, watched the teams form, saw how the “moderates” led by Locke kept benefiting from Demosthenes’ provocations.

And now, as Demosthenes continued to agitate in support of Ender, he was actually the one doing Ender the most damage. To everyone who feared Demosthenes’ movement—which was the whole world outside America—Ender would not be a hero, he’d be a monster. Bring him home, to lead America on a nuevo-imperialista rampage? Let him become an American Alexander, Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, conquering the world or forcing the world to unite in brutal war against him?

Fortunately, Ender did not want to be a conqueror. So he wouldn’t be hurt by missing out on the chance to try it.

Still, he’d love to have a chance to explain things to Demosthenes.

Not that the man would ever consent to be alone in a room with the killer hero.

Mazer never discussed the actual court martial with Ender, but they could talk about Graff.

“Hyrum Graff is the consummate bureaucrat,” Mazer told him. “He’s always thinking ten steps ahead of everyone else. It doesn’t really matter what office he holds. He can use anybody—below him or above him or complete strangers who’ve never met him—to accomplish whatever he thinks is needful for the human race.”

“I’m glad he chooses to use this power of his for good.”

“I don’t know that he does,” said Mazer. “He uses it for what he believes is good. But I don’t know that he’s particularly good at knowing what ‘good’ is.”

“In philosophy class I think we finally decided that ‘good’ is an infinitely recursive term—it can’t be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it’s better than bad, though why it’s better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.”

“The things the modern fleet teaches to its admirals.”

“You’re an admiral too, and look where it got you.”

“Tutor to a bratty boy who saves the human race but doesn’t do his chores.”

“Sometimes I wish I were bratty,” said Ender. “I dream about it—about defying authority. But even when I absolutely decide to, what I can’t get rid of is responsibility. People counting on me—that’s what controls me.”

“So you have no ambition except duty?” asked Mazer.

“And I have no duties now,” said Ender. “So I envy Colonel…Mister Graff. All those plans. All that purpose. I wonder what he plans for me.”

“Are you sure he does?” asked Mazer. “Plan anything for you, I mean?”

“Maybe not,” said Ender. “He worked awfully hard to shape this tool. But now that it will never be needed again, maybe he can set me down and let me rust and never think of me.”

“Maybe,” said Mazer. “That’s the thing we have to keep in mind. Graff is not…nice.”

“Unless he needs to be.”

“Unless he needs to seem to be,” said Mazer. “He’s not above lying his face off to frame things in such a way that you’ll want to do what he wants you to do.”

“Which is how he got you here, to be my trainer during the war?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mazer, with a sigh.

“Going home now?” asked Ender. “I know you have family.”

“Great-grandchildren,” said Mazer. “And great-great-grandchildren. My wife is dead and my only surviving child is gaga with senility, my grandchildren tell me. They say it lightly, because they’ve accepted that their father or uncle has lived a full life and he’s getting really old. But how can I accept it? I don’t know any of these people.”

“Hero’s welcome won’t be enough to make up for losing fifty years, is that it?” asked Ender.

“Hero’s welcome,” muttered Mazer. “You know what the hero’s welcome is? They’re still deciding whether to charge me along with Graff. I think they probably will.”

“So if they charge you along with Graff,” said Ender, “then you’ll be acquitted along with him.”

“Acquitted?” said Mazer ruefully. “We won’t be jailed or anything. But we’ll be reprimanded. A note of censure placed in our files. And Graff will probably be cashiered. The people who brought this court martial can’t be made to look foolish for doing it. They have to turn out to have been correct.”

Ender sighed. “So for their pride, you both get slapped. And Graff maybe loses his career.”

Mazer laughed. “Not so bad, really. My record was full of notes of reprimand before I beat the buggers in the Second Formic War. My career has been forged out of reprimands and censures. And Graff? The military was never his career. It was just a way to get access to the influence and power he needed in order to accomplish his plans. Now he doesn’t need the military anymore, so he’s willing to be drummed out of it.”

Ender nodded, chuckled. “I bet you’re right. Graff is probably planning to exploit it somehow. The people who benefit from his being kicked out, he’ll take advantage of how guilty they feel in order to get what he really wants. A consolation prize that turns out to be his real objective.”

“Well, they can’t very well give him medals for the exact same thing that he was court-martialed for,” said Mazer.

“They’ll give him his colonization project,” said Ender.

“Oh, I don’t know if guilt goes that far,” said Mazer. “It would cost billions of dollars to equip and refit the fleet into colony ships, and there’s no guarantee that anyone from Earth will volunteer to go away forever. Let alone crews for the ships.”

“They have to do something with this huge fleet and all its personnel. The ships have to go somewhere. And there are those surviving I.F. soldiers on all the conquered worlds. I think Graff’s going to get his colonies—we won’t send ships to bring them home, we’ll send new colonists to join them.”

“I see you’ve mastered all of Graff’s arguments.”

“So have you,” said Ender. “And I bet you’ll go with them.”

“Me? I’m too old to be a colonist.”

“You’d pilot a ship,” said Ender. “A colony ship. You’d go away again. Because you’ve already done it once. Why not go again? Lightspeed travel, taking the ship to one of the old formic planets.”

“Maybe.”

“After you’ve lost everybody, what’s left to lose?” asked Ender. “And you believe in what Graff is doing. It’s his real plan all along, isn’t it? To spread the human race out of the solar system so we aren’t held as hostages to the fate of a single planet. To spread ourselves out among star systems as far as we can go, so that we’re unkillable as a species. It’s Graff’s great cause. And you also think that’s worth doing.”

“I’ve never spoken a word on the subject.”

“Whenever it’s discussed, you don’t make that little lemon-sucking face when Graff’s arguments are presented.”

“Oh, now you think you can read my face. I’m Maori, I don’t show anything.”

“You’re half-Maori, and I’ve studied you for months.”

“You can’t read my mind. Even if you’ve deluded yourself into thinking you can read my face.”

“The colonization project is the only thing left out here in space that’s worth doing.”

“I haven’t been asked to pilot anything,” said Mazer. “I’m old for a pilot, you know.”

“Not a pilot, a commander of a ship.”

“I’m lucky they let me aim by myself when I pee,” said Mazer. “They don’t trust me. That’s why I’m going on trial.”

“When the trial’s over,” said Ender, “they’ll have no more use for you than they have for me. They’ve got to send you somewhere far away so that the I.F. will be safe for the bureaucrats again.”

Mazer looked away and waited, but there was an air about him that told Ender that Mazer was about to say something important.

“Ender, what about you?” Mazer finally asked. “Would you go?”

“To a colony?” Ender laughed. “I’m thirteen years old. On a colony, what would I be good for? Farming? You know what my skills are. Useless in a colony.”

Mazer barked a laugh. “Oh, you’ll send me, but you won’t go yourself.”

“I’m not sending anybody,” said Ender. “Least of all myself.”

“You’ve got to do something with your life,” said Mazer.

And there it was: The tacit recognition that Ender wasn’t going home. That he was never going to lead a normal life on Earth.

One by one the other kids got their orders, each saying good-bye before they left. It was increasingly awkward with each one, because Ender was more and more a stranger to them. He didn’t hang out with them. If he happened to join in a conversation, he didn’t stay long and never really engaged.

It wasn’t a deliberate choice, he just wasn’t interested in doing the things they did or talking about what they discussed. They were full of their studies, their return to Earth. What they’d do. How they’d find a way to get together again after they’d been home for a while. How much money they’d get as severance pay from the military. What they might choose as a career. How their families might have changed.

None of that applied to Ender. He couldn’t pretend that it did, or that he had a future. Least of all could he talk about what really preyed on his mind. They wouldn’t understand.

He didn’t understand it himself. He had been able to let go of everything else, all the things he’d concentrated on so hard for so long. Military tactics? Strategy? Not even interesting to him now. Ways that he might have avoided antagonizing Bonzo or Stilson in the first place? He had strong feelings about that, but no rational ideas, so he didn’t waste time trying to think it through. He let go of it, just the way he let go of his deep knowledge of everyone in his jeesh, his little army of brilliant kids whom he led through the training that turned out to be the war.

Once, knowing and understanding those kids had been part of his work, had been essential to victory. During that time he had even come to think of them as his friends. But he was never one of them; their relationship was too unequal. He had loved them so he could know them, and he had known them so he could use them. Now he had no use for them—not his choice, there simply wasn’t a purpose to be served by keeping the group together. They didn’t, as a group, exist. They were just a bunch of kids who had been on a long, difficult camping trip together, that’s how Ender saw them now. They had pulled together to make it back to civilization, but now they’d all go home to their families. They weren’t connected now. Except in memory.

So Ender had let go of them all. Even the ones who were still here. He saw how it hurt them—the ones who had wanted to be closer than mere pals—when he didn’t let things change, didn’t let them into his thoughts. He couldn’t explain to them that he wasn’t keeping them out, that there was simply no way they’d understand what it was that occupied him whenever he wasn’t forced to think about something else:

The hive queens.

It made no sense, what the formics had done. They weren’t stupid. Yet they had made the strategic mistake of grouping all their queens—not “their” queens, they were the queens, the queens were the formics—they had all gathered on their home planet, where Ender’s use of the M.D. Device could—and did—destroy them utterly, all at once.

Mazer had explained that the hive queens must have gathered on their home planet years before they could have known that the human fleet had the M.D. Device. They knew—from the way Mazer had defeated their main expedition to Earth’s star system—that their greatest weakness was that if you found the hive queen and killed her, you had killed the whole army. So they withdrew from all their forward positions, put the hive queens together on their home world, and then protected that world with everything they had.

Yes, yes, Ender understood that.

But Ender had used the M.D. Device early on in the invasion of the formic worlds, to destroy a formation of ships. The hive queens had instantly understood the capabilities of the weapon and never allowed their ships to get close enough together for the M.D. Device to be able to set up a self-sustaining reaction.

So: Once they knew that the weapon existed, and that humans were willing to use it, why did they stay on that single planet? They must have known that the human fleet was coming. As Ender won battle after battle, they must have known that the possibility of their defeat existed. It would have been easy for them to get onto starships and disperse from their home planet. Before that last battle began, they could all have been out of range of the M.D. Device.

Then we would have had to hunt them down, ship by ship, queen by queen. Their planets would still be inhabited by the formics, and so they could have fought us in bloody confrontations on every world, meanwhile building new ships, launching new fleets against us.

But they had stayed. And died.

Was it fear? Maybe. But Ender didn’t think so. The hive queens had bred themselves for war. All the speculations of the scientists who had studied the anatomy and molecular structure of the formic corpses left over from the Second Formic War led to that conclusion: The formics were created, first and foremost, to fight and kill. That implied that they had evolved in a world where such fighting was necessary.

The best guess—at least the one that made the most sense to Ender—was that they weren’t fighting some predatory species on their home world. Like humans, they would surely have wiped out any really threatening predator early on. No, they had evolved to fight each other. Queens fighting queens, spawning vast armies of formics and developing tools and weapons for them, each of them vying to be the dominant—or sole surviving—queen.

Yet somehow they had gotten over it. They had stopped fighting each other.

Was it before they had developed spaceflight and colonized other worlds? Or was it one particular queen who developed near-lightspeed ships and created colonies and then used the power that she had developed to crush the others?

It wouldn’t have mattered. Her own daughters would surely have rebelled against her—it would go on and on, each new generation trying to destroy the one before. That was how hives on Earth worked, anyway—the rival queen must be driven off or killed. Only the non-reproducing workers could be allowed to stay, because they weren’t rivals, they were servants.

It was like the immune system of an organism. Each hive queen had to make sure that any food their workers grew was used only to nurture her workers, her children, her mates, and herself. So any formic—queen or worker—that tried to infiltrate her territory and use her resources had to be driven off or killed.

Yet they had stopped fighting with each other and now cooperated.

If they could do that with each other, the implacable enemies that had driven each other’s evolution long enough to become the brilliant sentient beings they were, then why couldn’t they have done it with us? With the humans? Why couldn’t they have tried to communicate with us? Made some sort of settlement with us, just as they had done with each other? Divided the galaxy between us? Live and let live?

In any of these battles, Ender knew that if he had seen a sign of an effort to communicate, he would have known instantly that it wasn’t a game—there would have been no reason for the teachers to simulate any attempt to parley. They didn’t regard that as Ender’s business—they wouldn’t train him for it. If some effort at communication had really happened, surely the adults would have stopped Ender at once, pretended that the “exercise” was over, and tried to deal with it on their own.

But the hive queens did not attempt to communicate. Nor did they use the obvious strategy of dispersal to save themselves. They had sat there, waiting for Ender to come. And then Ender had won, the only way he could: with devastating force.

It was how Ender always fought. To make sure that there was no further fighting. To use this victory to ensure that there was no more danger.

Even if I had known the war was real, I would have tried to do exactly what I did.

So in his mind he now asked the hive queens, over and over, though he knew they were dead and could not answer: Why?

Why did you decide to let me kill you?

His rational mind introduced all the other possibilities—including the chance that perhaps they were really quite stupid. Or perhaps they had so little experience at running a society of equals that they were unable to reach a rational decision together. Or, or, or, or, over and over he ran through possible explanations.

Ender’s study now, when he wasn’t pursuing the schoolwork that someone—Graff, still? Or Graff’s rivals?—kept assigning him, was to read over the reports from the soldiers that he had once unknowingly commanded. On every formic colony world, humans now walked. And from every exploratory team the reports were the same: All the formics dead and rotting, with vast farms and factories now available for the taking. The soldiers-turned-explorers were always alert to the possibility of ambush, but as the months passed and there were no attacks, their reports became full of the things they were learning from the xenobiologists that had been sent with them: Not only can we breathe the air on every formic world, we can eat most of their food.

And so every formic planet became a human colony, the soldiers settling down to live among the relics of their enemies. There were not enough women among them, but they began to work out social patterns that would maximize reproduction and keep from having too many males without a hope of mating. Within a generation or two, if babies came in the usual proportions, half male and half female, the normal human pattern of monogamy could be restored.

But Ender took only peripheral interest in what the humans were doing on the new worlds. What he studied were the formic artifacts. The patterns of formic settlement. The warrens that had once been the hive queens’ breeding grounds, full of larvae that were so hard-toothed they could gnaw through rock, creating more and more tunnels. They had to farm on the surface, but they went underground to breed, to raise their young, and the young themselves were every bit as lethal and powerful as the adults. Chewing through rock—the explorers found the larval bodies, rotting quickly but still there to be photographed, dissected, studied.

“So this is how you spend your days,” said Petra. “Looking at pictures of formic tunnels. Is this a return-to-the-womb thing?”

Ender smiled and set aside the pictures he had been studying. “I thought you’d already gone home to Armenia.”

“Not till I see how this stupid court martial turns out,” she said. “Not until the Armenian government is ready to receive me in high style. Which means they have to decide whether they want me.”

“Of course they want you.”

“They don’t know what they want. They’re politicians. Is it good for them to have me back? Is keeping me up here worse for them than having me come home? It’s so very, very hard when you have no convictions except your lust to remain in power. Aren’t we glad we’re not in politics?”

Ender sighed. “É. I will never hold office again. Commander of Dragon Army was too much for me, and that was just a kids’ game.”

“That’s what I tried to assure them. I don’t want anybody’s job. I’m not going to endorse anybody for office. I want to live with my family and see if they remember who I am. And vice versa.”

“They’ll love you,” said Ender.

“And you know this because…?”

“Because I love you.”

She looked at him in consternation. “How can I possibly answer a comment like that?”

“Oh. What was I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know. Am I supposed to write scripts for you now?”

“OK,” said Ender. “Should it have been banter? ‘They’ll love you because somebody has to, and it sure isn’t anybody up here.’ Or maybe the ethnic slur: ‘They’ll love you because hey, they’re Armenian and you’re a female.’”

“What does that mean?”

“I got that from an Azeri I talked to during that whole flap about Sinterklaas Day back in Battle School. Apparently the idea is that Armenians know that the only people who think Armenian women are…I don’t have to explain ethnic insults, Petra. They’re infinitely transferable.”

“When are they letting you go home?” asked Petra.

Instead of sidestepping the question or giving it a lazy answer, Ender answered truthfully for once. “I’m thinking maybe it won’t happen.”

“What do you mean? You think this stupid court martial is going to end up convicting you?”

“I’m the one on trial, aren’t I?”

“Definitely not.”

“Only because I’m a child and therefore not responsible. But it’s all about what an evil little monster I am.”

“It is not.”

“I’ve seen the highlights on the nets, Petra. What the world is seeing is that the savior of the world has a little problem—he kills children.”

“You defended yourself from bullies. Everybody understands that.”

“Except the people who post comments about how I’m a worse war criminal than Hitler or Pol Pot. A mass murderer. What makes you think I want to go home and deal with all that?”

Petra wasn’t playing now. She sat down next to him and took his hands. “Ender, you have a family.”

“Had.”

“Oh, don’t say that! You have a family. Families still love their children even if they’ve been away for eight years.”

“I’ve only been away for seven. Almost. Yes, I know they love me. Some of them at least. They love who I was. A cute little six-year-old. I must have been so huggable. Between killing other children, that is.”

“So is that what this obsession with formic porn is?”

“Porn?”

“The way you study it. Classic addiction. Got to have more and more of it. Explicit photos of rotting larva bodies. Autopsy shots. Slides of their molecular structure. Ender, they’re gone, and you didn’t kill them. Or if you did, then we did. But we didn’t. We played a game! We were training for war, that’s all it was.”

“And if it had really been just a game?” asked Ender. “And then they assigned us to the fleet after we graduated, and we actually piloted those ships or commanded those squadrons? Wouldn’t we have done it for real?”

“Yes,” said Petra. “But we didn’t. It didn’t happen.”

“It happened. They’re gone.”

“Well, studying the structure of their bodies and the biochemistry of their cells is not going to bring them back.”

“I’m not trying to bring them back,” said Ender. “What a nightmare that would be.”

“No, you’re trying to persuade yourself that you deserve the merdicious things they’re saying about you in the court martial, because if that’s true, then you don’t deserve to go back to Earth.”

Ender shook his head. “I want to go home, Petra, even if I can’t stay. And I’m not conflicted about the war. I’m glad we fought and I’m glad we won and I’m glad it’s over.”

“But you keep your distance from everybody. We understood, or sympathized, or pretended we did. But you’ve kept us all at arm’s length. You make this show of dropping everything whenever one of us comes around to chat, but it’s an act of hostility.”

What an outrageous thing to say. “It’s common courtesy!”

“You never even say, ‘Just a sec,’ you just drop everything. It’s so…obvious. The message is: ‘I’m really busy but I still think you’re my responsibility so I’ll drop whatever I’m doing because you need my time.’”

“Wow,” said Ender. “You sure understand a lot of things about me. You’re so smart, Petra. A girl like you—they could really make something out of you in Battle School.”

“Now that’s a real answer.”

“Not as real as what I said before.”

“That you love me? You’re not my therapist, Ender. Or my priest. Don’t coddle me, don’t tell me what you think I need to hear.”

“You’re right,” said Ender. “I shouldn’t drop everything when one of my friends drops by.” He picked his papers back up again.

“Put those down.”

“Oh, now it’s OK because you asked me so rudely.”

“Ender,” Petra said, “we all came back from the war. You didn’t. You’re still in it. Still fighting…something. We talk about you all the time. Wondering why you won’t turn to us. Hoping there’s somebody you talk to.”

“I talk to anybody and everybody. I’m quite the chatterbox.”

“There’s a stone wall around you and those words you just said are some of the bricks.”

“Bricks in a stone wall?”

“So you are listening!” she said triumphantly. “Ender, I’m not trying to violate your privacy. Keep it all in. Whatever it is.”

“I’m not keeping anything in,” said Ender. “I don’t have any secrets. My whole life is on the nets, it belongs to the human race now, and I’m really not that worried about it. It’s like I don’t even live in my body. Just in my mind. Just trying to solve this question that won’t leave me alone.”

“What question?”

“The question I keep asking the hive queens, and they never answer.”

“What question?”

“I keep asking them, ‘Why did you die?’”

Petra searched his face for…what, a sign that he was joking? “Ender, they died because we—”

“Why were they still on that planet? Why weren’t they in ships, speeding away? They chose to stay, knowing we had that weapon, knowing what it did and how it worked, they stayed for the battle, they waited for us to come.”

“They fought us as hard as they could. They didn’t want to die, Ender. They didn’t commit suicide by human soldier.”

“They knew we had beaten them time after time. They had to think it was at least a possibility that it would happen again. And they stayed.”

“So they stayed.”

“It’s not like they had to prove their loyalty or courage to the footsoldiers. The workers and soldiers were like their own body parts. That would be like saying, ‘I have to do this because I want my hands to know how brave I am.’”

“I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought. Obsessive, borderline crazy thought. But whatever keeps you happy. You are happy, you know. People all over Eros talk about it—how cheerful that Wiggin boy always is. You’ve got to cut back on the whistling, though. It’s driving people crazy.”

“Petra, I’ve done my life’s work. I don’t think they’re going to let me go back to Earth, not even to visit. I hate that, I’m angry about it, but I also understand it. And in a way it’s fine with me. I’ve had all the responsibility I want. I’m done. I’m retired. No more duty to anybody. So now I get to think about what actually bothers me. The problem I have to solve.”

He slid the pictures forward on the library table. “Who are these people?” he asked.

Petra looked at the pictures of the dead larvae and formic workers and said, “They aren’t people, Ender. They’re formics. And they’re gone.”

“For years I’ve bent every thought to understanding them, Petra. To knowing them better than I know any human being in my life. To loving them. So I could use that knowledge to defeat them and destroy them. Now they’re destroyed, but that doesn’t mean that I can switch off my attention to them.”

Petra’s face lit up. “I get it. I finally get it!”

“Get what?”

“Why you’re so weird, Ender Wiggin, sir. It’s not weird at all.”

“If you think I’m not weird, Petra, it proves you don’t understand me.”

“The rest of us, we fought a war and we won it and we’re going home. But you, Ender, you were married to the formics. When the war ended you were widowed.”

Ender sighed and rolled his chair back from the table.

“I’m not joking,” said Petra. “It’s like when my great-grandpa died. Great-grandma had always taken care of him, it was pathetic the way he bossed her around, and she just did whatever he wanted, and my mother would say to me, ‘Don’t you ever marry a man who treats you like that,’ but when he died, you’d think Great-grandma would have been liberated. Free at last! But she wasn’t. She was lost. She kept looking for him. She kept talking about things she was working on for him. Can’t do this, can’t do that, Babo wouldn’t like it, until my grandpa—her son—said, ‘He’s gone.’”

“I know the formics are gone, Petra.”

“And so did Great-grandma. That’s what she said. ‘I know. I just can’t figure out why I’m not gone too.’”

Ender slapped his forehead. “Thank you, doctor, you finally revealed my innermost motivations and now I’m able to get on with my life.”

Petra ignored his sarcasm. “They died without giving you answers. That’s why you hardly notice what’s going on around you. Why you can’t act like a regular friend to anybody. Why you don’t even seem to care that there are people down there on Earth who are trying to keep you from ever coming home. You win the victory and they want to exile you for life and you don’t care because all you can think about is your lost formics. They’re your dead wife and you can’t let go.”

“It wasn’t much of a marriage,” said Ender.

“You’re still in love.”

“Petra, cross-species romance just isn’t for me.”

“You said it yourself. You had to love them to defeat them. You don’t have to agree with me now. It will come to you later. You’ll wake up in a cold sweat and you’ll shout, ‘Eureka! Petra was right!’ Then you can start fighting for the right to return to the planet you saved. You can start caring about something again.”

“I care about you, Petra,” said Ender. What he didn’t say was: I already care about understanding the hive queens, but you don’t count that because you don’t get it.

She shook her head. “No getting through the wall,” she said. “But I thought it was worth one last try. I’m right, though. You’ll see. You can’t let these hive queens deform the rest of your life. You have to let them be dead and move on.”

Ender smiled. “I hope you find happiness at home, Petra. And love. And I hope you have the babies that you want and a good life full of meaning and accomplishment. You are so ambitious—and I think you’ll have it all, true love and domesticity and great achievements.”

Petra stood up. “What makes you think I want babies?” she said.

“I know you,” said Ender.

“You think you know me.”

“The way you think you know me?”

“I’m not a lovesick girl,” said Petra, “and if I were, it wouldn’t be over you.”

“Ah, so it bothers you when somebody presumes to know your deepest inner motivation.”

“It bothers me that you’re such an oomo.”

“Well, you’ve cheered me up marvelous well, Miss Arkanian. We oomos are grateful when the fine folk from the big house come to visit us.”

Petra’s voice was angry and defiant when she fired her parting shot. “Well, I actually love you and care about you, Ender Wiggin.” Then she turned and walked away.

“And I love and care about you, only you wouldn’t believe me when I said it!”

At the door she turned back to face him. “Ender Wiggin, I wasn’t being sarcastic or patronizing when I said that.”

“Neither was I!”

But she was gone.

“Maybe I’ve been trying to study the wrong alien species,” he said softly.

He looked at the display above his desk. It was still in motion, though muted, showing bits from Mazer’s testimony. He looked so cold, so aloof, as if he had contempt for the whole business. When they asked about Ender’s violence and whether that made it hard to train him, Mazer turned to face the judges and said, “I’m sorry, I misunderstood, isn’t this a court martial? Aren’t we all soldiers here, trained to commit acts of violence?”

The judge gaveled him down and reprimanded him, but the point was made. Violence was what the military existed for—controlled violence, directed against appropriate targets. Without actually having to say a word about Ender, Mazer had made it clear that violence wasn’t a drawback, it was the point.

It made Ender feel better. He could switch off the newslink and get back to work.

He stood up to reach across the table and retrieve the photos that Petra had moved. The face of a dead formic farmer from one of the faroff planets stared up at him, the torso open and the organs arranged neatly around the corpse.

I can’t believe you gave up, Ender said silently to the picture. I can’t believe that a whole species lost its will to live. Why did you let me kill you?

“I will not rest until I know you,” he whispered.

But they were gone. Which meant that he could never, never rest.

CHAPTER 3

To: mazerrackham%nonexistent@unguessable.com/imaginary.heroes

From: hgraff%educadmin@ifcom.gov

{self-shred protocol}

Subj: How about a little voyage?

Dear Mazer,

I know as well as anyone that you almost refused to come home from your last voyage, and I’m certainly not going to let them send you anywhere now. But you took too big a risk testifying for me (or for Ender; or for truth and justice; I don’t presume to guess your motives) and the heat is on. The best way, I think, for you to become less visible and therefore less likely to be further interfered with is to let it be known that you will be the commander of a certain colony ship. The one that’s going to carry Ender away to safety.

Once you’re fully ignored because you’re supposedly going on a forty-year voyage, it will be easy enough to reassign you at the last minute to another ship that isn’t leaving till later. No publicity that time. You’ll just happen not to go.

As for Ender, we’ll let him in on the lie from the start. He doesn’t need or deserve any more surprises. But he also doesn’t need you or me to protect him. I think he’s proven that many times over.

—Hyrum

PS: It’s just too cute for you to use your real name as your secret identity on Unguessable.com. Who knew you had a sense of irony?

Mother and Father were both out of the house. That was a bad thing, because it meant Peter could get in full carpet-chewing mode if he felt like it, and things were definitely heading that way.

“I can’t believe I got suckered into this,” said Peter.

“Suckered into what?”

“Having Locke and Demosthenes push for Ender not to come home.”

“You haven’t been paying attention,” said Valentine. “Demosthenes is pushing for Ender to come back and restore America to its former greatness. And Locke is the conciliatory moderate, trying to find a middle way, as he always does, the miserable appeaser.”

“Oh shut up,” said Peter. “It’s too late for you to start playing dumb. But I had no way of knowing they were going to turn that stupid court martial into a smear campaign against the Wiggin name!”

“Oh, I see,” said Valentine. “It’s not Ender, it’s the fact that you can’t take advantage of being Locke without revealing who you are, and who you are is Ender’s brother. Now that won’t be such a nice boost for you.”

“I can’t accomplish anything unless I get into a position of influence, and now it’s going to be a lot harder because Ender killed people.”

“In self-defense.”

“When he was a baby.”

“I distinctly remember,” said Valentine, “that you once promised to kill him.”

“I didn’t mean it.”

Valentine had her doubts. She was the only one who didn’t trust Peter’s sudden bout of niceness several Christmases ago, when apparently he was anointed by Saint Nick—or Uriah Heap—with the unguent of altruism. “My point is that Ender didn’t kill everybody who threatened him.”

And there it was—a flash of the old rage. She watched, amused, as Peter fought it down, got it under control.

“It’s too late to change our position on Ender’s return.” He said it like an accusation, as if this had all been her idea.

Well, in a way, it had. But not the actual implementation—that was all Peter’s script.

“But before we let it be discovered who Locke really is, we have to rehabilitate Ender’s reputation. That’s not going to be easy. I just can’t figure out which of us should do it. On the one hand, Demosthenes would be right in character—but nobody would trust his motives. On the other hand, if Locke does it openly, then everybody will think I had an ulterior motive when it comes out who I really am.”

Valentine didn’t even smirk, though she knew—had known for years—that Colonel Graff and probably half the I.F. command knew who Locke and Demosthenes really were. They had kept the secret so that it wouldn’t compromise Ender. But at some point, somebody was going to let it slip—and it wasn’t going to be on Peter’s own timing.

“No, I think what we have to do,” said Peter, “is bring Ender home after all. But not to the United States, or at least not under the control of the U.S. government. I think Locke needs to speak with compassion about the young hero who can’t help how he was exploited.” Peter put on his Locke voice—a conciliatory whine that if he ever used it in public, Locke would be out of business in a trice. “Let him come home, as a citizen of the world he saved. Let the Hegemon’s Council protect him. If no one threatens him, the boy poses no danger.” Peter looked at her triumphantly and went back to his own voice. “See? We bring him home, and then when my identity comes out, I’m a loyal brother, yes, but I also acted for the good of the whole world, and not for the advantage of the United States.”

“You’re forgetting a couple of things,” said Valentine.

Peter glared at her. He hated it when she accused him of making a mistake, but he had to listen to her because she was often right. Even though he usually pretended that he had already thought of her objection.

“First, you’re assuming that Ender wants to come home.”

“Of course he wants to come home.”

“You don’t know that. We don’t know him. Second, you’re assuming that if he does come home, he’ll be such a cuddly kid that everybody will decide he isn’t really a child-killing monster.”

“We’ve both watched the vids of the court martial,” said Peter. “Those men love Ender Wiggin. You could see it in everything they said and did. All that mattered to them was protecting him. Which is exactly how everybody used to act when Ender lived here.”

“He never actually lived here,” said Valentine. “We moved after he left, remember?”

Another glare. “Ender makes people want to die for him.”

“Or kill him,” she said with a smile.

“Ender makes adults love him.”

“So we’re back to the first problem.”

“He wants to come home,” said Peter. “He’s human. Humans want to go home.”

“But where is Ender’s home?” asked Valentine. “He’s spent more than half his life in Battle School. What does he even remember about living with us? An older brother who was constantly bullying him, threatening to kill him—”

“I’ll apologize,” said Peter. “I really am sorry I acted like that.”

“But you can’t apologize if he doesn’t come home. Besides, Peter, he’s a smart kid. Smarter than us—there’s a reason we weren’t taken into Battle School and he was. So he’ll figure out exactly how you’re using him. Hegemon’s Council—that is such itshay. He won’t stay under your thumb.”

“He’s been trained for war. Not for politics,” said Peter.

His hint of a smile was so smug Valentine wanted to smash a baseball bat into his face a little. “It doesn’t matter,” said Valentine. “You can’t bring him home no matter what Locke writes.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you didn’t create the forces that dread him and fear his return, you just exploited them. They aren’t going to change their minds, not even for Locke. And also, Demosthenes won’t let you.”

Peter looked at her with amused contempt. “Oh, going freelance, eh?”

“I think I can scare people into keeping Ender in space better than you can make them pity him enough to bring him home.”

“I thought you loved him best. I thought you wanted him home.”

“I wanted him home for the past seven years, Peter,” said Valentine, “and you were glad he was gone. But now—to bring him home so that he can be under the protection of the Hegemon’s Council—which means under your control, since you’ve got the thing packed with your toadies—”

“Locke’s toadies,” Peter corrected her.

“I’m not helping you bring Ender home so he can be a tool to advance your career.”

“So you’d make your beloved little brother stay in permanent exile in space, just to spite your nasty older brother?” asked Peter. “Wow, I’m glad I’m not the one you love.”

“You nailed it, Peter,” said Valentine. “I’ve spent all these years under your thumb. I know exactly how it feels. Ender would hate it. I know, because I hate it.”

“You’ve loved the whole thing. Being Demosthenes—you know what power feels like.”

“I know what it feels like to have power flow through me and into your hands,” said Valentine.

“Is that what this is about? You’re suddenly power hungry?”

“Peter, you’re such an idiot about the people you supposedly know best. I’m not telling you I want your power. I’m telling you that I’m getting out from under your thumb.”

“Fine, I’ll just write the Demosthenes essays myself.”

“No you won’t, because people would know something was wrong. You can’t do Demosthenes.”

“Anything you can do…”

“I’ve changed all the passwords. I’ve hidden all of Demosthenes’ memberships and money and you can’t get to any of it.”

Peter gazed at her with pity. “I’ll find it all if I want to.”

“It wouldn’t do you any good. Demosthenes is retiring from politics, Peter. He’s going to plead ill health and offer a ringing endorsement…of Locke!”

Peter looked horrorstruck. “You can’t! It would destroy Locke to have Demosthenes’ endorsement!”

“You see? I do have some weapons you fear.”

“Why would you do this? All these years, and suddenly now you’ve decided to pack up your dolls and dishes and leave the tea party?”

“I never played with dolls, Peter. Apparently you did.”

“Stop this,” said Peter sternly. “Really. It’s not funny. Let’s get Ender home. I won’t try to control him the way you’re saying.”

“You mean the way you control me.”

“Come on, Val,” said Peter. “Just a couple more years and I can unmask myself as Locke—and as Ender’s brother. Sure, salvaging his reputation will help me, but it’ll help Ender, too.”

“I think you should do it. Salvage away, Peter. But I don’t think Ender should come home. Instead, I’ll go to him. Mom and Dad will, too, I bet.”

“They’re not going to pay for you to have a jaunt into space—not all the way to Eros. That would take months anyway. Right now it’s practically on the other side of the sun.”

“Not a jaunt,” said Valentine. “I’m leaving Earth. I’m joining Ender in exile.”

For a moment Peter believed her. It was gratifying to see genuine alarm on his face. Then he relaxed. “Mom and Dad won’t let you,” he said.

“Fifteen-year-old females don’t have to have their parents’ consent to volunteer to be colonists. We’re the ideal age for reproduction, and are assumed to be dumb enough to volunteer.”

“What do the colonies have to do with anything? Ender’s not going to be a colonist.”

“What else will they do with him? It’s the only task remaining for the I.F., and he’s their responsibility. That’s why I’m making arrangements to get assigned to the same colony as him.”

“Where did you get these imasen ideas?” If she didn’t understand Battle School slang, too bad. “Colonies, voluntary exile, it’s just crazy. The future is here on Earth, not out at the far reaches of the galaxy.”

“The formics’ worlds were all in the same arm of the galaxy as us, and not all that far away, as galaxies go,” said Valentine primly, to goad him. “And Peter, just because your future is all tied up with trying to become the ruler of the world doesn’t mean that I want to spend my whole future as your sidekick. You’ve had my youth, you’ve used me up, but I will spend my declining years without you, my love.”

“It’s sickening when you talk as if we were married.”

“I’m talking as if we were in an old movie,” said Valentine.

“I don’t watch movies,” said Peter, “so I wouldn’t know.”

“There’s so much you ‘wouldn’t know,’” said Valentine. For a moment she was tempted to tell him all about Ender’s visit to Earth, when Graff tried to use Valentine to persuade a burnt-out Ender to get back to work. And to tell Peter that Graff knew all about their secret identities on the nets. That would take the smirk off his face.

But what would that accomplish? It was better for everyone to leave Peter in blissful ignorance.

While they were talking, Peter had been doing some desultory pointing and typing on his desk. Now he was seeing something in his holo that made him as angry as she had ever seen him. “What?” she asked, assuming it was some dreadful world news.

“You shut down my back doors!”

It took her a moment to understand what he meant. Then she realized—he had apparently thought she wouldn’t notice that he had secret access points to all of Demosthenes’ vital sites and identities. What an idiot. When he made a big deal about how he had created all these wonderful identities and accounts for her, of course she assumed that he had created back doors to all of them so he could always come in and change what she did. Why would he imagine she’d leave things that way? She found them all within a few weeks; anything he could do with Demosthenes on the nets, she could undo. So when she changed all the passwords and access codes, of course she closed the back doors, too. What did he think?

“Peter,” she said, “they wouldn’t be locked if I let you have a key, now, would they?”

Peter rose to his feet, his face turning red, his fists clenched. “You ungrateful little bitch.”

“What are you going to do, Peter? Hit me? I’m ready. I think I can take you down.”

Peter sat back down. “Go,” he said. “Go into space. Shut down Demosthenes. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody.”

“That’s why you’re such a loser,” said Valentine. “You’ll never rule the world until you figure out that you can’t do it without everybody’s cooperation. You can’t fool them, you can’t force them. They have to want to follow you. Like Alexander’s soldiers wanted to follow him and fight for him. And the moment they stopped wanting to, his power evaporated. You need everybody but you’re too narcissistic to know it.”

“I need the willing cooperation of key people here on Earth,” said Peter, “but you won’t be one of them, will you? So go, tell Mom and Dad what you’re doing. Break their hearts. What do you care? You’re going off to see your precious Ender.”

“You still hate him,” said Valentine.

“I never hated him,” said Peter. “But at this moment, I certainly do hate you. Not a lot, but enough to make me want to piss on your bed.”

It was a standing joke between them. She couldn’t help it. It made her laugh. “Oh, Peter, you’re such a boy.”

Mother and Father took her decision surprisingly well. But they refused to come with her. “Val,” Father said, “I think you’re right—Ender won’t be coming home. It broke our hearts to realize it. And it’s wonderful of you to want to join him, even if neither of you ends up going with a colony. Even if it’s just a few months in space. Even a few years. It’s a good thing for him to be with you again.”

“It would be better to have the two of you out there, too.”

Father shook his head. Mother pressed a finger to each eye—her gesture that said, I’m not going to cry.

“We can’t go,” said Father. “Our work is here.”

“They could spare you for a year or two.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” said Father. “You’re young. What’s a couple of years to you? But we’re older. Not old, but older than you. Time means something different to us. We love Ender, but we can’t spend months or years just going out to visit him. We don’t have that much time left.”

“That’s exactly the point,” said Valentine. “You don’t have much time—and still less time to get a chance to see Ender again.”

“Val,” said Mother, her voice quavering. “Nothing we do now will give us back the years we’ve lost.”

She was right, and Valentine knew it. But she didn’t see the relevance. “So you’re going to treat him as if he’s dead?”

“Val,” said Father. “We know he’s not dead. But we also know he doesn’t want us. We’ve written to him—since the war ended. Graff—the one who’s on trial—he wrote back. Ender doesn’t want to write letters to us. He reads them, but he told Graff that he had nothing to say.”

“Graff’s a liar,” said Valentine. “He probably hasn’t shown Ender anything.”

“That’s possible,” said Father. “But Ender doesn’t need us. He’s thirteen. He’s becoming a man. He’s done brilliantly since he left us, but he also went through terrible things, and we weren’t there. I’m not sure he’ll ever forgive us for letting him go.”

“You had no choice,” said Valentine. “They would have taken him to Battle School whether you liked it or not.”

“I’m sure he knows that in his head,” said Mother. “But in his heart?”

“So I’m going without you,” she said. It had never crossed her mind that they wouldn’t even want to go.

“You’re going to leave us behind,” said Father. “It’s what children do. They live at home until they leave. Then they’re gone. Even if they visit, even if they move back, it’s never the same. You think it will be, but it won’t. It happened with Ender, and it’ll happen with you.”

“The good thing,” said Mother, who was crying a little now, “is that you won’t be with Peter anymore.”

Valentine couldn’t believe her mother was saying such a thing.

“You’ve spent too much time with him,” said Mother. “He’s a bad influence on you. He makes you unhappy. He sucks you into his life so you can’t have one of your own.”

“That’ll be our job now,” said Father.

“Good luck,” was all Valentine could say. Was it possible that her parents really did understand Peter? But if they did, why had they let him have his way for all these years?

“You see, Val,” said Father, “if we went to Ender now, we’d want to be his parents, but we don’t have any authority over him. Nor anything to offer him. He doesn’t need parents anymore.”

“A sister, now,” said Mother. “A sister, he can use.” She took Valentine’s hand. She was asking for something.

So Valentine gave her the only thing she could think of that she might want. A promise. “I’ll stick with him,” said Valentine, “as long as he needs me.”

“We would expect nothing less of you, dear,” said Mother. She squeezed Valentine’s hand and let go. Apparently that was what she had wanted.

“It’s a kind and loving thing,” said Father. “It’s always been your nature. And Ender was always your darling baby brother.”

Valentine winced at the old phrase from childhood. Darling baby brother. Ick. “I’ll make sure to call him that.”

“Do,” said Mother. “Ender likes to be reminded of good things.”

Did Mother really imagine that anything she knew about Ender at age six would still apply to him now, at age thirteen?

As if she had read Valentine’s mind, Mother answered her. “People don’t change, Val. Not their fundamental character. Whatever you’re going to be as an adult is already visible to someone who really knows you from your birth onward.”

Valentine laughed. “So…why did you let Peter live?”

They laughed, but uncomfortably. “Val,” said Father, “we don’t expect you to understand this, but some of the things that make Peter…difficult…are the very things that might also make him great someday.”

“What about me?” asked Valentine. “As long as you’re telling fortunes.”

“Oh, Val,” said Father. “All you have to do is live your life, and everyone around you will be happier.”

“No greatness, then.”

“Val,” said Mother, “goodness trumps greatness any day.”

“Not in the history books,” said Valentine.

“Then the wrong people are writing history, aren’t they?” said Father.

CHAPTER 4

To: qmorgan%rearadmiral@ifcom.gov/fleetcom

From: chamrajnagar%polemarch@ifcom.gov/centcom

{self-shred protocol}

Subj: In or out?

My dear Quince, I’m quite aware of the difference between combat command and flying a colony ship for a few dozen lightyears. If you feel your usefulness in space is over, then by all means, retire with full benefits. But if you stay in, and remain in near space, I can’t promise you promotion within the I.F.

We suddenly find ourselves afflicted with peace, you see. Always a disaster for those whose careers have not reached their natural apex.

The colony ship I have offered you is not, contrary to your too-often-stated opinion (try discretion now and then, Quince, and see if it might not work better), a way to send you to oblivion. Retirement is oblivion, my friend. A forty- or fifty-year voyage means that you will outlive all of us who remain behind. All your friends will be dead. But you’ll be alive to make new friends. And you’ll be in command of a ship. A nice, big, fast one.

This is what the whole fleet faces. We have heroes out there who fought this war that The Boy is credited with winning. Have we forgotten them? ALL our most significant missions will involve decades of flight. Yet we must send our best officers to command them. So at any given moment, most of our best officers will be strangers to everyone at CentCom because they’ve been in flight for half a lifetime.

Eventually, ALL the central staff will be star voyagers. They will look down their noses at anyone who has NOT taken decades-long flights between stars. They will have cut themselves loose from Earth’s timeline. They will know each other by their logs, transmitted by ansible.

What I’m offering you is the only possible source of career-making voyages: colony ships.

And not only a colony ship, but one whose governor is a thirteen-year-old boy. Are you seriously going to tell me that you don’t understand that you are not his “nanny,” you are being entrusted with the highly responsible position of making sure that The Boy stays as far from Earth as possible, while also making sure that he is a complete success in his new assignment so that later generations cannot judge that he was not treated well.

Naturally, I did not send you this letter, and you did not read it. Nothing in this is to be construed as a secret order. It is merely my personal observation about the opportunity that you have been offered by a polemarch who believes in your potential to be one of the great admirals of the I.F.

Are you in? Or out? I need to draw up the papers one way or the other within the week.

Your friend, Cham

Ender knew that making him the nominal governor of the colony was a joke. When he got there, the colony would already be a going concern, with its own elected leaders. He would be a thirteen-year-old—well, by then a fifteen-year-old—whose only claim to authority was that forty years before he commanded the grandparents of the colonists, or at least their parents, in a war that was ancient history by then.

They would have bonded together into a closed community, and it would be outrageous for the I.F. to send them any governor at all, let alone a teenager.

But they’d soon find out that if nobody wanted him to govern, Ender would go along quite happily. All he cared about was getting to a formic planet to see what they had left behind.

The bodies that had so recently been dissected would have long since rotted away; but there’s no way the colonists could have settled or even explored more than a tiny fraction of the formic civilization’s buildings and artifacts. Governing the colony would be an annoyance—all Ender wanted was to see if there was some way to understand the enemy he had loved and vanquished.

Still, he had to go through the motions of preparing to be governor. For instance, training sessions with legal experts who had drafted the constitution that was being imposed on all the colonies. And even though Ender didn’t actually care, he could see that an honest effort had been made to reflect what had been reported by all the soldiers-turned-colonists so far. He should have expected that. Anything Graff did, or caused to be done, was done well.

And then there were the even-less-relevant lessons on the workings of starships. What did Ender care? He was never going to be regular fleet. He had no interest in captaining any vessel of any size.

On the third day of his walk-through of the ship that would carry him and his colonists, Ender was so tired of phony nautical terminology transferred to starships that he found himself making sarcastic remarks. Fortunately, he didn’t actually say them, he only thought them. Do we swab the decks, matey? Will the bosun pipe us aboard? How many degrees will she tack into the wind, sir?

“You know,” said the captain who had Ender duty today, “the real barrier to interstellar flight wasn’t just getting up to lightspeed. It was overcoming the collision problem.”

“You mean with all of space to work in…” Then, from the captain’s smirk, Ender realized he had fallen into a little trap. “Ah. You mean collisions with space debris.”

“All those old vids showing spaceships dodging through asteroid clusters—they weren’t actually far off. Because when you hit a molecule of hydrogen when you’re near lightspeed, it releases a huge amount of energy. Like hitting a huge rock at a much slower speed. Tears you up. Any shielding scheme our ancestors came up with involved so much additional mass, or cost so much energy and therefore fuel, that it simply wasn’t practical. You had so much mass that you couldn’t carry enough fuel to get anywhere.”

“So how did we finally solve it?” asked Ender.

“Well of course we didn’t,” said the captain.

Again, Ender could see that this was an old prank to play on novices, and so he gave the man the pleasure of showing off his superior knowledge. “Then how are we getting from star to star?” asked Ender. Instead of saying, Ah, so it’s formic technology.

“The formics did it for us,” said the captain with delight. “When they got here, yes, they devastated parts of China and damn near whupped us in the first two wars. But they also taught us. The very fact that they got here told us that it could be done. And then they thoughtfully left behind dozens of working starships for us to study.”

The captain had by now led Ender to the very front of the ship, through several doors that required the highest security clearance to enter. “Not everybody gets to see this, but I was told that you were to see everything.”

It was crystalline in substance and ovoid in shape, except that it came to a sharp point at the back. “Please don’t tell me it’s an egg,” said Ender.

The captain chuckled. “Don’t tell anybody, but the engines of this ship, and all that fuel—they’re just for maneuvering near planets and moons and such. And getting the ship going. Once we get up to one percent of lightspeed, we switch on this baby, and from then on, it’s just a matter of controlling the intensity and direction.”

“Of what?”

“Of the drive field,” said the captain. “It was such an elegant solution, but we hadn’t even discovered the area of science that would have gotten us to this.”

“And what area is that?”

“Strong force field dynamics,” said the captain. “When people speak of it, they almost always say that the strong force field breaks apart molecules, but that’s not the real story. What it really does is change the direction of the strong force. Molecules simply can’t hold together when the nuclei of all the constituent atoms start to prefer a particular direction of movement at lightspeed.”

Ender knew he was pouring on technical terms, but he was tired of the game. “What you’re saying is that the field generated by this device takes all the molecules and objects it runs into in the direction of movement and uses the nuclear strong force to make them move in a uniform direction at lightspeed.”

The captain grinned. “Touché. But you’re an admiral, sir, and so I was giving you the show I give all the admirals.” He winked. “Most of them don’t have a clue what I’m saying, and they’re too stuffed to admit it and ask me to translate.”

“What happens to the energy from the breaking of the molecules into their constituent atoms?” asked Ender.

“That, sir, is what powers the ship. No, I’ll be more specific. That’s what actually moves the ship. It’s so beautiful. We move forward under rockets, and then we switch off the engines—can’t be generating molecules of our own!—and turn on the egg—yeah, we call it the egg. The field goes up—it’s shaped exactly like the crystal ball here—and the leading edges start colliding with molecules and tearing them up. The atoms are channeled along the field and they all emerge at the trailing point. Giving us an incredible amount of thrust. I’ve talked to physicists who still don’t get it. They say there isn’t enough energy stored in the molecular bonds to produce the thrust—they’ve come up with all kinds of theories about where the extra energy is coming from.”

“And we got this from the formics.”

“There was one terrible accident the first time we turned on one of these. Of course they weren’t using them in-system. But we had one of our cruisers simply disappear because it was docked right up against a formic ship when the egg got turned on. Poof. Every molecule in the cruiser—including the unluckiest crew in history—got incorporated into the field, then got spit out the back, and made the formic ship itself jump like a bullet halfway across the solar system.”

“Didn’t that kill the people on the formic ship, too? To jump that fast?”

“No. Because the formic anti-grav—technically, anti-inertial—was on. Powered by the egg reaction, too, of course. It’s like all the molecules in space were put there to be cheap fuel for our ships and everything on them. Anyway, the anti-gravs compensated for the jump and the only problem was communicating with IFCom to tell them what happened. Without the cruiser, no communications except short-range radio.”

The captain went on to tell about the clever way the men on the formic ship attracted the attention of rescuers, but Ender’s concentration was on something else—something so disturbing that it made him lightheaded and a little nauseated from the shock of it.

The egg, the strong force field generator, obviously was the source of the molecular disruption device. What the captain had just described was the reaction that was in the M.D. Device, the “Little Doctor,” which Ender had used to destroy the formic home planet and kill all the hive queens.

Ender thought it was a technology that humans had come up with on their own. But it was clearly based on formic technology. You just take away the controls that shape the field, and you’ve got a field that chews up everything in its path and spits it out as raw atoms. A field that sustains itself on the energy it generates by playing with the strong nuclear force. A planet-eater.

The formics had to recognize it when Ender used it the first time. It wasn’t mysterious to them—they’d recognize it immediately as a raw, uncontrolled weaponization of the principle that powered every formic starship.

Between the time of that battle and the final one, the formics surely had the time to do the same thing—to weaponize the strong force field generator and use it against the humans before they came in range.

They absolutely knew what the weapon was. They could have made their own whenever they wanted. But they didn’t do it. They just sat there waiting for Ender.

They gave us the stardrive we used to get to them, and the weapon we used to kill them. They gave us everything.

We humans are supposed to be so clever. So inventive. Yet this was completely beyond our reach. We make desks with clever holodisplays that we can play really fun games on. Plus send each other letters over vast distances. But compared to them, we didn’t even know how to kill properly. While they knew how—but chose not to use the technology that way.

“Well, this part of the tour usually bores people,” said the captain.

“No, I wasn’t bored. Truly. I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Stuff that’s too classified to talk about using any method but telepathy,” said Ender. Which was true—the existence of the M.D. Device was only on a need-to-know basis, and the secret had been well kept. Even the men who deployed and used the weapons didn’t understand what they were and what they could do. The soldiers who had seen the Little Doctor consume a planet were dead, lost in the same vast chain reaction. The soldiers who had seen it used in one of the early battles just thought of it as an incredibly big bomb. Only the top brass understood it—and Ender, because Mazer Rackham had insisted that he had to be told what the weapons he carried actually were and how they worked. As Mazer told him later, “I told Graff, You don’t give a man a bag of tools and not tell him what they are and what they do and how they might go wrong.”

Graff again. Graff who decided Mazer was right and allowed them to tell Ender what it was and how it worked.

My slaughter of the formics—it’s all here in the egg.

“You’ve gone off again,” said the captain.

“Thinking about what a miracle starflight is. Whatever else we might think of the buggers, they did give us our road to the stars.”

“I know,” said the captain. “I’ve thought of that before. If they had just bypassed our system instead of coming in and trying to wipe Earth clean, we’d never have known they existed. And at our level of technology, we probably wouldn’t have gotten out into the stars until so much later that we’d have found every nearby planet completely occupied by formics.”

“Captain, this was a most excellent and productive tour.”

“I know. How else would you have learned how to find the head on every deck?”

Ender laughed at the joke. Partly because it was true. He’d need to find a bathroom several times a day through the whole voyage.

“I assume you’re staying awake for the flight,” said the captain.

“Wouldn’t want to miss any of the scenery.”

“Oh, there’s no scenery, because at lightspeed you—oh, a joke. Sorry, sir.”

“Got to work on my sense of humor, when my jokes make other people apologize to me.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but you don’t talk like a kid.”

“Do I talk like an admiral?” asked Ender.

“Since you are an admiral, however you talk is like an admiral, sir,” said the captain.

“Very cleverly sidestepped, sir. Tell me, are you coming on the voyage with me?”

“I have a family on Earth, sir, and my wife doesn’t want to join a colony on another world. No pioneer spirit, I’m afraid.”

“You have a life. A good reason for staying home.”

“But you’re going,” said the captain.

“Have to see the formic homeland,” said Ender. “Or the next best thing, considering that their home planet doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Which I’m damned happy about, sir,” said the captain. “If you hadn’t whupped them for good and all, sir, we’d be looking over our shoulder through the next ten thousand years of human history.”

There was a stab of insight there. Ender caught it and then it immediately slipped away. Something about the way the hive queens thought. Their purpose in letting Ender kill them.

Well, if it’s true, then I’ll think of it again.

Ender hoped that optimistic thought was right.

When all of Ender’s tours and training sessions were finished, he finally got an interview with the Minister of Colonization.

“Please don’t call me Colonel,” said Graff.

“I can’t call you MinCol.”

“Officially, a Hegemony minister is addressed as ‘Your Excellency.’”

“With a straight face?”

“Sometimes,” said Graff. “But we’re colleagues, Ender. I call you by your first name. You can call me by mine.”

“Never in my life,” said Ender. “You’re Colonel Graff to me, and that will never change.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Graff. “I’ll be dead before you get to your destination.”

“Hardly seems fair. Come with us.”

“I have to be here to get my own work done.”

“My work is done.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Graff. “The work we had for you is done. But you don’t even know yet what your own work is going to be.”

“I know it won’t be governing a colony, sir.”

“And yet you accepted the job.”

Ender shook his head. “I accepted the title. When I get to the colony, then we’ll see just how much of a governor I’ll be. The Constitution you came up with is good, but the real constitution is always the same: The leader only has as much power as his followers give him.”

“And yet you’re going to make the voyage awake instead of in stasis.”

“It’s only a couple of years,” said Ender. “And it’ll make me fifteen when we arrive. I’m hoping I’ll get taller.”

“I hope you’re bringing a lot of books to read.”

“They stocked a few thousand titles for me in the ship’s library,” said Ender. “But what matters to me is that you use the ansible to give us all the information about the formics that comes out while we’re in flight.”

“Of course,” said Graff. “That will be sent to all the ships.”

Ender smiled slightly.

“All right, yes, of course I’ll send them directly to you as well. What, are you suspecting that the ship’s captain will try to control your access to information?”

“If you were in his place, wouldn’t you do the same?”

“Ender, I would never let myself get in the position of trying to control you against your will.”

“You just spent the last six years doing that.”

“And got court-martialed for it, you’ll notice.”

“And your punishment was to get the job you’ve wanted all along. Let me see. Minister of Colonization doesn’t go to Earth to be under the thumb of the Hegemon. He stays in space, nicely ensconced with the International Fleet. So even if they change hegemons, it won’t involve you. And if they fire you—”

“They won’t,” said Graff.

“You’re so sure of that.”

“It’s not a prediction, it’s an intention.”

“You, sir, are a piece of work,” said Ender.

“Oh, speaking of pieces of work,” said Graff, “did you hear that Demosthenes has retired?”

“The guy on the nets?” asked Ender.

“I don’t mean the Greek author of the Philippics.”

“I don’t actually care,” said Ender. “It’s just the nets.”

“The nets, and this rabble-rouser’s screeds in particular, are where the battle was played out and you lost,” said Graff.

“Who says I lost?” asked Ender.

“Touché,” said Graff. “My point is that the person behind the online identity is actually younger than most people imagined. So the retirement isn’t about age, it’s about leaving home. Leaving Earth.”

“Demosthenes is becoming a colonist?”

“Isn’t that an odd choice,” said Graff, sounding as if it weren’t odd to him at all.

“Please don’t tell me he’s coming on my ship.”

“Technically, it’s Admiral Quincy Morgan’s ship. You don’t take over till you set foot on the ground in your colony. That’s the law.”

“Dodging the question as usual.”

“Yes, you’ll have Demosthenes on your ship. But of course no one will be using that name.”

“You’ve been avoiding the use of the masculine pronoun—of any pronoun,” said Ender. “So Demosthenes is a woman.”

“And she’s eager to see you.”

Ender sagged in his chair. “Oh, sir, please.”

“Not your normal hero-worshiper, Ender. And since she’s also going to be awake through your whole voyage, I think you’ll want to be prepared by seeing her in advance.”

“When is she coming?”

“She’s here.”

“On Eros?”

“In my cozy little antechamber,” said Graff.

“You’re going to make me meet her now? Colonel Graff, I don’t like anything she wrote. Or the result.”

“Give her credit. She was warning the world about the Warsaw Pact’s attempt to take over the fleet long before anybody else took the threat seriously.”

“She was also crowing about how America could conquer the world once it had me.”

“You can ask her about that.”

“I have no such intention.”

“Let me tell you one pure and simple truth. In everything she wrote about you, Ender, her only concern was to protect you from the terrible things people would have done to exploit you or destroy you if you ever set foot on Earth.”

“I could have dealt with it.”

“We’ll never know, will we?”

“If I know you, sir, what you just told me is that you were behind this. Keeping me off Earth.”

“Not really,” said Graff. “I went along with it, yes.”

Ender wanted to cry. From sheer moral exhaustion. “Because you know better than me what’s in my best interest.”

“In this case, Ender, I think you could have dealt with any challenge that came to you. Except one. Your brother, Peter, is determined to rule the world. You would have been either his tool or his enemy. Which would you have chosen?”

“Peter?” asked Ender. “Do you think he really has a chance of it?”

“He’s done incredibly well so far—for a teenager.”

“Isn’t he twenty by now? No, I guess he’d still be seventeen. Or eighteen.”

“I don’t keep track of your family’s birthdays,” said Graff.

“If he’s doing such a great job,” said Ender, “why haven’t I heard of him?”

“Oh, you have.”

That meant Peter was using a pseudonym. Ender quickly thought through all the online personalities that might be considered close to some kind of world domination and when he got it, he sighed. “Peter is Locke.”

“So, clever boy, who is Demosthenes?”

Ender rose to his feet and to his own chagrin he was crying, just like that. He didn’t even know he was crying till his cheeks were wet and he couldn’t see for the blur. “Valentine,” he whispered.

“I’m going to leave my office now and let the two of you talk,” said Graff.

When he left, the door stayed open. And then she came in.

CHAPTER 5

To: imo%testadmin@colmin.gov

From: hgraff%mincol@heg.gov

Subj: What are we screening for?

Dear Imo,

I’ve been giving our conversation a great deal of thought, and I think you may be right. I had the foolish idea that we should test for desirable and useful traits so that we could assemble ideally balanced teams to the colonies. But we’re not getting such a flood of volunteers that we can afford to be really choosy. And as history shows us, when colonization is voluntary, people will self-select better than any testing system.

It’s like those foolish attempts to control immigration to America based on the traits that were deemed desirable, when in fact the only trait that defines Americans historically is “descended from somebody willing to give up everything to live there.” And we won’t go into the way Australian colonists were selected!

Willingness is the single most important test, as you said. But that means all the other tests are…what?

Not useless, as you suggested. On the contrary, I think the test results are a valuable resource. Even if the colonists are all insane, shouldn’t the governor have a good dossier on each individual’s particular species of madness?

I know, you’re not letting through anyone who needs to maintain functional sanity with drugs. Or known addicts and alcoholics and sociopaths, or people with genetic diseases, etc. We always agreed on that, to avoid overburdening the colonies. They’ll develop their own genetic and brain-based quirks in a few generations anyway, but for now, let them have a little breathing room.

But the family you queried about, the ones with a plan for marrying off a daughter to the governor—surely you will agree with me that in the long history of motives for joining a faraway colony, marriage was one of the noblest and most socially productive.

—Hyrum

“Do you know what I did today, Alessandra?”

“No, Mother.” Fourteen-year-old Alessandra set her book bag on the floor by the front door and walked past her mother to the sink, where she poured herself a glass of water.

“Guess!”

“Got the electricity turned back on?”

“The elves would not speak to me,” said Mother. It had once been funny, this game that electricity came from elves. But it wasn’t funny now, in the sweltering Adriatic summer, with no refrigeration for the food, no air-conditioning, and no vids to distract her from the heat.

“Then I don’t know what you did, Mother.”

“I changed our lives,” said Mother. “I created a future for us.”

Alessandra froze in place and uttered a silent prayer. She had long since given up hope that any of her prayers would be answered, but she figured each unanswered prayer would add to the list of grievances she would take up with God, should the occasion arise.

“What future is that, Mother?”

Mother could hardly contain herself. “We are going to be colonists.”

Alessandra sighed with relief. She had heard all about the Dispersal Project in school. Now that the formics had been destroyed, the idea was for humans to colonize all their former worlds, so that humanity’s fate would not be tied to that of a single planet. But the requirements for colonists were strict. There was no chance that an unstable, irresponsible—no, pardon me, I meant “feckless and fey”—person like Mother would be accepted.

“Well, Mother, that’s wonderful.”

“You don’t sound excited.”

“It takes a long time for an application to be approved. Why would they take us? What do we know how to do?”

“You’re such a pessimist, Alessandra. You’ll have no future if you must frown at every new thing.” Mother danced around her, holding a fluttering piece of paper in front of her. “I put in our application months ago, darling Alessandra. Today I got word that we have been accepted!”

“You kept a secret for all this time?”

“I can keep secrets,” said Mother. “I have all kinds of secrets. But this is no secret, this piece of paper says that we will journey to a new world, and on that new world you will not be part of a persecuted surplus, you will be needed, all your talents and charms will be noticed and admired.”

All her talents and charms. At the coleggio, no one seemed to notice them. She was merely another gawky girl, all arms and legs, who sat in the back and did her work and made no waves. Only Mother thought of Alessandra as some extraordinary, magical creature.

“Mother, may I read that paper?” asked Alessandra.

“Why, do you doubt me?” Mother danced away with the letter.

Alessandra was too hot and tired to play. She did not chase after her. “Of course I doubt you.”

“You are no fun today, Alessandra.”

“Even if it’s true, it’s a horrible idea. You should have asked me. Do you know what colonists’ lives will be like? Sweating in the fields as farmers.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Mother. “They have machines for that.”

“And they’re not sure we can eat any of the native vegetation. When the formics first attacked Earth, they simply destroyed all the vegetation in the part of China where they landed. They had no intention of eating anything that grew here naturally. We don’t know if our plants can grow on their planets. All the colonists might die.”

“The survivors of the fleet that defeated the formics will already have those problems resolved by the time we get there.”

“Mother,” said Alessandra patiently. “I don’t want to go.”

“That’s because you have been convinced by the dead souls at the school that you are an ordinary child. But you are not. You are magical. You must get away from this world of dust and misery and go to a land that is green and filled with ancient powers. We will live in the caves of the dead ogres and go out to harvest the fields that once were theirs! And in the cool evening, with sweet green breezes fluttering your skirts, you will dance with young men who gasp at your beauty and grace!”

“And where will we find young men like that?”

“You’ll see,” said Mother. Then she sang it: “You shall see! You shall see! A fine young man with prospects will give his heart to you.”

Finally the paper fluttered close enough for Alessandra to snatch it out of Mother’s hands. She read it, with Mother bending down to hover just behind the paper, smiling her fairy smile. It was real. Dorabella Toscano (29) and daughter Alessandra Toscano (14), accepted into Colony I.

“Obviously there’s no sort of psychological screening after all,” said Alessandra.

“You try to hurt me but I will not be hurt. Mother knows what is best for you. You shall not make the mistakes that I have made.”

“No, but I’ll pay for them,” said Alessandra.

“Think, my darling, beautiful, brilliant, graceful, kind, generous, and poutful girl, think of this: What do you have to look forward to here in Monopoli, Italia, living in a flat in the unfashionable end of Via Luigi Indelli?”

“There is no fashionable end of Luigi Indelli.”

“You make my point for me.”

“Mother, I don’t dream of marrying a prince and riding off into the sunset.”

“That’s a good thing, my darling, because there are no princes—only men and animals who pretend to be men. I married one of the latter but he at least provided you with the genes for those amazing cheekbones, that dazzling smile. Your father had very good teeth.”

“If only he had been a more attentive bicyclist.”

“It was not his fault, dear.”

“The streetcars run on tracks, Mother. You don’t get hit if you stay out from between the tracks.”

“Your father was not a genius but fortunately I am, and therefore you have the blood of the fairies in you.”

“Who knew that fairies sweat so much?” Alessandra pulled one of Mother’s dripping locks of hair away from her face. “Oh, Mother, we won’t do well in a colony. Please don’t do this.”

“The voyage takes forty years—I went next door and looked it up on the net.”

“Did you ask them this time?”

“Of course I did, they lock their windows now. They were thrilled to hear we were going to be colonists.”

“I have no doubt they were.”

“But because of magic, to us it will be only two years.”

“Because of the relativistic effects of near-lightspeed travel.”

“Such a genius, my daughter is. And even those two years we can sleep through, so we won’t even age.”

“Much.”

“It will be as if our bodies slept a week, and we wake up forty years away.”

“And everyone we know on Earth will be forty years older than we are.”

“And mostly dead,” sang Mother. “Including my hideous hag of a mother, who disowned me when I married the man I loved, and who therefore will never get her hands on my darling daughter.” The melody to this refrain was always cheery-sounding. Alessandra had never met her grandmother. Now, though, it occurred to her that maybe a grandmother could get her out of joining a colony.

“I’m not going, Mother.”

“You are a minor child and you will go where I go, tra-la.”

“You are a madwoman and I will sue for emancipation rather than go, tra-lee.”

“You will think about it first because I am going whether you go or not and if you think your life with me is hard you should see what it’s like without me.”

“Yes, I should,” said Alessandra. “Let me meet my grandmother.”

Mother’s glare was immediate, but Alessandra plowed ahead. “Let me live with her. You go with the colony.”

“But there’s no reason for me to go with the colony, my darling. I’m doing this for you. So without you, I will not go.”

“Then we’re not going. Tell them.”

“We are going, and we are thrilled about it.”

Might as well get off the merry-go-round; Mother didn’t mind endlessly repeating circular arguments, but Alessandra got bored with it. “What lies did you have to tell, to get accepted?”

“I told no lies,” said Mother, pretending to be shocked at the accusation. “I only proved my identity. They do all the research, so if they have false information it’s their own fault. Do you know why they want us?”

“Do you?” asked Alessandra. “Did they actually tell you?”

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, or even a fairy,” said Mother “They want us because we are both of childbearing age.”

Alessandra groaned in disgust, but Mother was preening in front of an imaginary full-length mirror.

“I am still young,” said Mother, “and you are just flowering into womanhood. They have men from the fleet there, young men who have never married. They will be waiting eagerly for us to arrive. So I will mate with a very eager old man of sixty and bear him babies and then he will die. I’m used to that. But you—you will be a prize for a young man to marry. You will be a treasure.”

“My uterus will, you mean,” said Alessandra. “You’re right, that’s exactly what they’re thinking. I bet they took practically any healthy female who applied.”

“We fairies are always healthy.”

It was true enough—Alessandra had no memory of ever being sick, except for food poisoning that time when Mother insisted they would eat supper from a street vendor’s cart at the end of a very hot day.

“So they’re sending a herd of women, like cows.”

“You’re only a cow if you choose to be,” said Mother. “The only question I have to decide now is whether we want to sleep through the voyage and wake up just before landing, or stay awake for the two years, receiving training and acquiring skills so we’re ready to be productive in the first wave of colonists.”

Alessandra was impressed. “You actually read the documentation?”

“This is the most important decision of our lives, my darling Alessa. I am being extraordinarily careful.”

“If only you had read the bills from the power company.”

“They were not interesting. They only spoke of our poverty. Now I see that God was preparing us for a world without air-conditioning and vids and nets. A world of nature. We were born for nature, we elvish folk. You will come to the dance and with your fairy grace you will charm the son of the king, and the king’s son will dance with you until he is so in love his heart will break for you. Then it will be for you to decide if he’s the one for you.”

“I doubt there’ll be a king.”

“But there’ll be a governor. And other high officials. And young men with prospects. I will help you choose.”

“You will certainly not help me choose.”

“It’s as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one.”

“As if you’d know.”

“I know better than you, having done it badly once. The rush of hot blood into the heart is the darkest magic, and it must be tamed. You must not let it happen until you have chosen a man worthy of your love. I will help you choose.”

No point in arguing. Alessandra had long since learned that fighting with Mother accomplished nothing, whereas ignoring her worked very well.

Except for this. A colony. It was definitely time to look up Grandmother. She lived in Polignano a Mare, the next city of any size up the Adriatic coast, that’s all that she knew of her. And Mother’s mother would not be named Toscano. Alessandra would have to do some serious research.

A week later, Mother was still going back and forth about whether they should sleep through the voyage or not, while Alessandra was discovering that there’s a lot of information that they won’t let children get at. Snooping in the house, she found her own birth certificate, but that wasn’t helpful, it only listed her own parents. She needed Mother’s certificate, and that was not findable in the apartment.

The government people barely acknowledged she existed and when they heard her errand sent her away. It was only when she finally thought of the Catholic Church that she made any headway. They hadn’t actually attended Mass since Alessandra was little, but at the parish, the priest on duty helped her search back to find her own baptism. They had a record of baby Alessandra Toscano’s godparents as well as her parents, and Alessandra figured that either the godparents were her grandparents, or they would know who her grandparents were.

At school she searched the net and found that Leopoldo and Isabella Santangelo lived in Polignano a Mare, which was a good sign, since that was the town where Grandmother lived.

Instead of going home, she used her student pass and hopped the train to Polignano and then spent forty-five minutes walking around the town searching for the address. To her disgust, it ended up being on a stub of a street just off Via Antonio Ardito, a trashy-looking apartment building backing on the train tracks. There was no buzzer. Alessandra trudged up to the fourth floor and knocked.

“You want to knock something, knock your own head!” shouted a woman from inside.

“Are you Isabella Santangelo?”

“I’m the Holy Virgin and I’m busy answering prayers. Go away!”

Alessandra’s first thought was: So Mother lied about being a child of the fairies. She’s really Jesus’ younger sister.

But she decided that flippancy wasn’t a good approach today. She was already going to be in trouble for leaving Monopoli without permission, and she needed to find out from the Holy Virgin here whether or not she was her grandmother.

“I’m so sorry to trouble you, but I’m the daughter of Dorabella Toscano and I—”

The woman must have been standing right at the door, waiting, because it flew open before Alessandra could finish her sentence.

“Dorabella Toscano is a dead woman! How can a dead woman have daughters!”

“My mother isn’t dead,” said Alessandra, stunned. “You were signed as my godmother on the parish register.”

“That was the worst mistake of my life. She marries this pig boy, this bike messenger, when she’s barely fifteen, and why? Because her belly’s getting fat with you, that’s why! She thinks a wedding makes it all clean and pure! And then her idiot husband gets himself killed. I told her, this proves there is a God! Now go to hell!”

The door slammed in Alessandra’s face.

She had come so far. Her grandmother couldn’t really mean to send her away like this. They hadn’t even had time to do more than glance at each other.

“But I’m your granddaughter,” said Alessandra.

“How can I have a granddaughter when I have no daughter? You tell your mother that before she sends her little quasi-bastard begging at my door, she’d better come to me herself with some serious apologizing.”

“She’s going away to a colony,” said Alessandra.

The door was yanked open again. “She’s even more insane than ever,” said Grandmother. “Come in. Sit down. Tell me what stupid thing she’s done.”

The apartment was absolutely neat. Everything in it was unbelievably cheap, the lowest possible quality, but there was a lot of it—ceramics, tiny framed art pieces—and everything had been dusted and polished. The sofa and chairs were so piled with quilts and throws and twee little embroidered pillows that there was nowhere to sit. Grandmother Isabella moved nothing, and finally Alessandra sat on top of one of the pillow piles.

Feeling suddenly quite disloyal and childish herself, telling on Mother like a schoolyard tattletale, Alessandra now tried to softpedal the outrage. “She has her reasons, I know it, and I think she truly believes she’s doing it for me—”

“What what what is she doing for you that you don’t want her to do! I don’t have all day!”

The woman who embroidered all of these pillows has all day every day. But Alessandra kept her sassy remark to herself. “She has signed us up for a colony ship, and they accepted us.”

“A colony ship? There aren’t any colonies. All those places are countries of their own now. Not that Italy ever did have any real colonies, not since the Roman Empire. Lost their balls after that, the men did. Italian men have been worthless ever since. Your grandfather, God keep him buried, was worthless enough, never stood up for himself, let everybody push him around, but at least he worked hard and provided for me until my ungrateful daughter spat in my face and married that bike boy. Not like that worthless father of yours, never made a dime.”

“Well, not since he died, anyway,” said Alessandra, feeling more than a little outraged.

“I’m talking about when he was alive! He only worked the fewest hours he could get by with. I think he was on drugs. You were probably a cocaine baby.”

“I don’t think so.”

“How would you know anything?” said Grandmother. “You couldn’t even talk then!”

Alessandra sat and waited.

“Well? Tell me.”

“I did but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“What was it you said?”

“A colony ship. A starship to one of the formic planets, to farm and explore.”

“Won’t the formics complain?”

“There aren’t any more formics, Grandmother. They were all killed.”

“A nasty piece of business but it needed doing. If that Ender Wiggin boy is available, I’ve got a list of other people that need some good serious destruction. What do you want, anyway?”

“I don’t want to go into space. With Mother. But I’m still a minor. If you would sign as my guardian, I could get emancipated and stay home. It’s in the law.”

“As your guardian?”

“Yes. To supervise me and provide for me. I’d live here.”

“Get out.”

“What?”

“Stand up and get out. You think this is a hotel? Where exactly do you think you’d sleep? On the floor, where I’d trip on you in the night and break my hip? There’s no room for you here. I should have known you’d be making demands. Out!”

There was no room for argument. In moments Alessandra found herself charging down the stairs, furious and humiliated. This woman was even crazier than Mother.

I have nowhere to go, thought Alessandra. Surely the law doesn’t allow my mother to force me to go into space, does it? I’m not a baby, I’m not a child, I’m fourteen, I can read and write and make rational choices.

When the train got back to Monopoli, Alessandra did not go directly home. She had to think up a good lie about where she’d been, so she might as well come up with one that covered a longer time. Maybe the Dispersal Project office was still open.

But it wasn’t. She couldn’t even get a brochure. And what was the point? Anything interesting would be on the net. She could have stayed after school and found out all she wanted to know. Instead she went to visit her grandmother.

That’s proving what good decisions I make.

Mother was sitting at the table, a cup of chocolate in front of her. She looked up and watched Alessandra shut the door and set down her book bag, but she said nothing.

“Mother, I’m sorry, I—”

“Before you lie,” said Mother softly, “the witch called me and screamed at me for sending you. I hung up on her, which is what I usually end up doing, and then I unplugged the phone from the wall.”

“I’m sorry,” said Alessandra.

“You didn’t think I had a reason for keeping her out of your life?”

For some reason, that pulled the trigger on something inside Alessandra and instead of trying to retreat, she erupted. “It doesn’t matter whether you had a reason,” she said. “You could have ten million reasons, but you didn’t tell any of them to me! You expected me to obey you blindly. But you don’t obey your mother blindly.”

“Your mother isn’t a monster,” said Mother.

“There are many kinds of monsters,” said Alessandra. “You’re the kind that flits around like a butterfly but never lands near me long enough to even know who I am.”

“Everything I do is for you!”

“Nothing is for me. Everything is for the child you imagine you had, the one that doesn’t exist, the perfect, happy child that was bound to result from your being the exact opposite of your mother in every way. Well, I’m not that child. And in your mother’s house, the electricity is on!”

“Then go live there!”

“She won’t let me!”

“You would hate it. Never able to touch anything. Always having to do things her way.”

“Like going off on a colony ship?”

“I signed up for the colony ship for you.”

“Which is like buying me a supersized bra. Why don’t you look at who I am before you decide what I need?”

“I’ll tell you what you are. You’re a girl who’s too young and inexperienced to know what a woman needs. I’m ten kilometers ahead of you on that road, I know what’s coming, I’m trying to get you what you’ll need to make that road easy and smooth, and you know what? In spite of you, I’ve done it. You’ve fought me every step of the way, but I’ve done a great job with you. You don’t even know how good a job I’ve done because you don’t know what you could have been.”

“What could I have been, Mother? You?”

“You were never going to be me,” said Mother.

“What are you saying? That I would have been her?”

“We’ll never know what you would have been, will we? Because you already are what I made you.”

“Wrong. I look like whatever I have to look like in order to stay alive in your home. Down inside, what I really am is a complete stranger to you. A stranger that you intend to drag off into space without even asking me if I wanted to go. They used to have a word for people you treated like that. They called them slaves.”

Alessandra wanted more than ever before in her life to run to her bedroom and slam the door. But she didn’t have a bedroom. She slept on the sofa in the same room with the kitchen and the kitchen table.

“I understand,” said Mother. “I’ll go into my bedroom and you can slam the door on me.”

The fact that Mother really did know what she was thinking was the most infuriating thing of all. But Alessandra did not scream and did not scratch at her mother and did not fall on the floor and throw a tantrum and did not even dive onto the sofa and bury her face in the pillow. Instead she sat down at the table directly across from her mother and said, “What’s for dinner?”

“So. Just like that, the discussion is over?”

“Discuss while we cook. I’m hungry.”

“There’s nothing to eat, because I haven’t turned in our final acceptance because I haven’t decided yet whether we should sleep or stay awake through the voyage, and so we haven’t got the signing bonus, and so there’s no money to buy food.”

“So what are we going to do about dinner?”

Mother just looked away from her.

“I know,” said Alessandra excitedly. “Let’s go over to Grandma’s!”

Mother turned back and glared at her.

“Mother,” said Alessandra, “how can we run out of money when we’re living on the dole? Other people on the dole manage to buy enough food and pay their electric bills.”

“What do you think?” said Mother. “Look around you. What have I spent all the government’s money on? Where’s all the extravagance? Look in my closet, count the outfits I own.”

Alessandra thought for a moment. “I never thought about that. Do you owe money to the mafia? Did Father, before he died?”

“No,” said Mother contemptuously. “You now have all the information you need to understand completely, and yet you still haven’t figured it out, smart and grown up as you are.”

Alessandra couldn’t imagine what Mother was talking about. Alessandra didn’t have any new information. She also didn’t have anything to eat.

She got up and started opening cupboards. She found a box of dry radiatori and a jar of black pepper. She took a pan to the sink and put in some water and set it on the stove and turned on the gas.

“There’s no sauce for the pasta,” said Mother.

“There’s pepper. There’s oil.”

“You can’t eat radiatori with just pepper and oil. It’s like putting fistfuls of wet flour in your mouth.”

“That’s not my problem,” said Alessandra. “At this point, it’s pasta or shoe leather, so you’d better start guarding your closet.”

Mother tried to turn things light again. “Of course, just like a daughter, you’d eat my shoes.”

“Just be glad if I stop before I get to your leg.”

Mother pretended she was still joking when she airily said, “Children eat their parents alive, that’s what they do.”

“Then why is that hideous creature still living in that flat in Polignano a Mare?”

“I broke my teeth on her skin!” It was Mother’s last attempt at humor.

“You tell me what terrible things daughters do, but you’re a daughter, too. Did you do them?”

“I married the first man who showed me any hint of what kindness and pleasure could be. I married stupidly.”

“I have half the genes of the man you married,” said Alessandra. “Is that why I’m too stupid to decide what planet I want to live on?”

“It’s obvious that you want to live on any planet where I am not.”

“You’re the one who came up with the colony idea, not me! But now I think you’ve named your own reason. Yes! You want to colonize another planet because your mother isn’t there!”

Mother slumped in her seat. “Yes, that is part of it. I won’t pretend that I wasn’t thinking of that as one of the best things about going.”

“So you admit you weren’t doing it all for me.”

“I do not admit such a lie. It’s all for you.”

“Getting away from your mother, that is for you,” said Alessandra.

“It is for you.”

“How can it be for me? Until today I didn’t even know what my grandmother looked like. I had never seen her face. I didn’t even know her name.”

“And do you know how much that cost me?” asked Mother.

“What do you mean?”

Mother looked away. “The water is boiling.”

“No, that’s my temper you’re hearing. Tell me what you meant. What did it cost you to keep me from knowing my own grandmother?”

Mother got up and went into her bedroom and closed the door.

“You forgot to slam it, Mother! Who’s the parent here, anyway? Who’s the one who shows a sense of responsibility? Who’s fixing dinner?”

The water took three more minutes before it got to a boil. Alessandra threw in two fistfuls of radiatori and then got her books and started studying at the table. She ended up overcooking the pasta and it was so cheaply made that it clumped up and the oil didn’t bind with it. It just pooled on the plate, and the pepper barely helped make it possible to swallow the mess. She kept her eyes on her book and her paper as she ate, and swallowed mechanically until finally the bite in her mouth made her gag and she got up and spat it into the sink and then drank down a glass of water and almost threw the whole mess back up again. As it was, she retched twice at the sink before she was able to get her gorge under control. “Mmmmm, delicious,” she murmured. Then she turned back to the table.

Mother was sitting there, picking out a single piece of pasta with her fingers. She put it in her mouth. “What a good mother I am,” she said softly.

“I’m doing homework now, Mother. We’ve already used up our quarreling time.”

“Be honest, darling. We almost never quarrel.”

“That’s true. You flit around ignoring whatever I say, being full of happiness. But believe me, my end of the argument is running through my head all the time.”

“I’m going to tell you something because you’re right, you’re old enough to understand things.”

Alessandra sat down. “All right, tell me.” She looked her mother in the eye.

Mother looked away.

“So you’re not going to tell me. I’ll do my homework.”

“I’m going to tell you,” said Mother. “I’m just not going to look at you while I do.”

“And I won’t look at you either.” She went back to her homework.

“About ten days into the month, my mother calls me. I answer the phone because if I don’t she gets on the train and comes over, and then I have a hard time getting her out of the house before you get home from school. So I answer the phone and she tells me I don’t love her, I’m an ungrateful daughter, because here she is all alone in her house, and she’s out of money, she can’t have anything lovely in her life. Move in with me, she says, bring your beautiful daughter, we can live in my apartment and share our money and then there’ll be enough. No, Mama, I say to her. I will not move in with you. And she weeps and screams and says I am a hateful daughter who is tearing all joy and beauty out of her life because I leave her alone and I leave her penniless and so I promise her, I’ll send you a little something. She says, don’t send it, that wastes postage, I’ll come get it and I say, No, I won’t be here, it costs more to ride the train than to mail it, so I’m mailing it. And somehow I get her off the phone before you get home. Then I sit for a while not cutting my wrists, and then I put some amount of money into an envelope and I take it to the post office and I mail it, and then she takes the money and buys some hideous piece of garbage and puts it on her wall or on a little shelf until her house is so full of things I’ve paid for out of money that should go to my daughter’s upbringing, and I pay for all of that, I run out of money every month even though I get the same money on the dole that she gets, because it’s worth it. Being hungry is worth it. Having you be angry with me is worth it, because you do not have to know that woman, you do not have to have her in your life. So yes, Alessandra, I do it all for you. And if I can get us off this planet, I won’t have to send her any more money, and she won’t phone me anymore, because by the time we reach that other world she will be dead. I only wish you had trusted me enough that we could have arrived there without your ever having to see her evil face or hear her evil voice.”

Mother got up from the table and returned to her room.

Alessandra finished her homework and put it into her backpack and then went and sat on the sofa and stared at the nonfunctioning television. She remembered coming home every day from school, for all these years, and there was Mother, every time, flitting through the house, full of silly talk about fairies and magic and all the beautiful things she did during the day and all the while, the thing she did during the day was fight the monster to keep it from getting into the house, getting its clutches on little Alessandra.

It explained the hunger. It explained the electricity. It explained everything.

It didn’t mean Mother wasn’t crazy. But now the craziness made a kind of sense. And the colony meant that finally Mother would be free. It wasn’t Alessandra who was ready for emancipation.

She got up and went to the door and tapped on it. “I say we sleep during the voyage.”

A long wait. Then, from the other side of the door, “That’s what I think, too.” After a moment, Mother added, “There’ll be a young man for you in that colony. A fine young man with prospects.”

“I believe there will,” said Alessandra. “And I know he’ll adore my happy, crazy mother. And my wonderful mother will love him too.”

And then silence.

It was unbearably hot inside the flat. Even with the windows open, the air wasn’t stirring so there was no relief for it. Alessandra lay on the sofa in her underwear, wishing the upholstery weren’t so soft and clinging. She lay on the floor, thinking that maybe the air was a tiny bit cooler there because hot air rises. Only the hot air in the flat below must be rising and heating the floor so it didn’t help, and the floor was too hard.

Or maybe it wasn’t, because the next morning she woke up on the floor and there was a breath of a breeze coming in off the Adriatic and Mother was frying something in the kitchen.

“Where did you get eggs?” asked Alessandra after she came back from the toilet.

“I begged,” said Mother.

“One of the neighbors?”

“A couple of the neighbors’ chickens,” said Mother.

“No one saw you?”

“No one stopped me, whether they saw me or not.”

Alessandra laughed and hugged her. She went to school and this time was not too proud to eat the charity lunch, because she thought: My mother paid for this food for me.

That night there was food on the table, and not just food, but fish and sauce and fresh vegetables. So Mother must have turned in the final papers and received the signing bonus. They were going.

Mother was scrupulous. She took Alessandra with her when she went to both of the neighbors’ houses where chickens were kept, and thanked them for not calling the police on her, and paid them for the eggs she had taken. They tried to refuse, but she insisted that she could not leave town with such a debt unpaid, that their kindness was still counted for them in heaven, and there was kissing and crying and Mother walked, not in her pretend fairy way, but light of step, a woman who has had a burden taken from her shoulders.

Two weeks later, Alessandra was on the net at school and she learned something that made her gasp out loud, right there in the library, so that several people rushed toward her and she had to flick to another view and then they were all sure she had been looking at pornography but she didn’t care, she couldn’t wait to get home and tell Mother the news.

“Do you know who the governor of our colony is going to be?”

Mother did not know. “Does it matter? He’ll be an old fat man. Or a bold adventurer.”

“What if it’s not a man at all? What if it’s a boy, a mere boy of thirteen or fourteen, a boy so brilliantly smart and good that he saved the human race?”

“What are you saying?”

“They’ve announced the crew of our colony ship. The pilot of the ship will be Mazer Rackham, and the governor of the colony will be Ender Wiggin.”

Now it was Mother’s turn to gasp. “A boy? They make a boy the governor?”

“He commanded the fleet in the war, he can certainly govern a colony,” said Alessandra.

“A boy. A little boy.”

“Not so little. My age.”

Mother turned to her. “What, you’re so big?”

“I’m big enough, you know. As you said—of childbearing age!”

Mother’s face turned reflective. “And the same age as Ender Wiggin.”

Alessandra felt her face turning red. “Mother! Don’t think what I know you’re thinking!”

“And why not think it? He’ll have to marry somebody on that distant lonely world. Why not you?” Then Mother’s face also turned red and she fluttered her hands against her cheeks. “Oh, oh, Alessandra, I was so afraid to tell you, and now I’m glad, and you’ll be glad!”

“Tell me what?”

“You know how we decided to sleep through the voyage? Well, I got to the office to turn in the paper, but I saw that I had accidentally checked the other box, to stay awake and study and be in the first wave of colonists. And I thought, What if they don’t let me change the paper? And I decided, I’ll make them change it! But when I sat there with the woman I became afraid and I didn’t even mention it, I just turned it in like a coward. But now I see I wasn’t a coward, it was God guiding my hand, it truly was. Because now you’ll be awake through the whole voyage. How many fourteen-year-olds will there be on the ship, awake? You and Ender, that’s what I think. The two of you.”

“He’s not going to fall in love with a stupid girl like me.”

“You get very good grades and besides, a smart boy isn’t looking for a girl who is even smarter, he’s looking for a girl who will love him. He’s a soldier who will never come home from the war. You will become his friend. A good friend. It will be years before it’s time for him and you to marry. But when that time comes he’ll know you.”

“Maybe you’ll marry Mazer Rackham.”

“If he’s lucky,” said Mother. “But I’ll be content with whatever old man asks me, as long as I can see you happy.”

“I will not marry Ender Wiggin, Mother. Don’t hope for what isn’t possible.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what to hope for. But I will be content for you merely to become his friend.”

“I’ll be content merely to see him and not wet my pants. He’s the most famous human being in the world, the greatest hero in all of history.”

“Not wetting your pants, that’s a good first step. Wet pants don’t make a good impression.”

The school year ended. They received instructions and tickets. They would take the train to Napoli and then fly to Kenya, where the colonists from Europe and Africa were gathering to take the shuttle into space. Their last few days were spent in doing all the things they loved to do in Monopoli—going to the wharf, to the little parks where she had played as a child, to the library, saying good-bye to everything that had been pleasant about their lives in the city. To Father’s grave, to lay their last flowers there. “I wish you could have come with us,” whispered Mother, but Alessandra wondered—if he had not died, would they have needed to go into space to find happiness?

They got home late on their last night in Monopoli, and when they reached the flat, there was Grandmother on the front stoop of the building. She rose to her feet the moment she saw them and began screaming, even before they were near enough to hear what she was saying.

“Let’s not go back,” said Alessandra. “There’s nothing there that we need.”

“We need clothing for the journey to Kenya,” said Mother. “And besides, I’m not afraid of her.”

So they trudged on up the street, as neighbors looked out to see what was going on. Grandmother’s voice became clearer and clearer. “Ungrateful daughter! You plan to steal away my beloved granddaughter and take her into space! I’ll never see her again, and you didn’t even tell me so I could say good-bye! What kind of monster does that! You never cared for me! You leave me alone in my old age—what kind of duty is that? You in this neighborhood, what do you think of a daughter like that? What a monster has been living among you, a monster of ingratitude!” And on and on.

But Alessandra felt no shame. Tomorrow these would not be her neighbors. She did not have to care. Besides, any of them with sense would realize: No wonder Dorabella Toscano is taking her daughter away from this vile witch. Space is barely far enough to get away from this hag.

Grandmother got directly in front of Mother and screamed into her face. Mother did not speak, merely sidestepped around her and went to the door of the building. But she did not open the door. She turned around and held out her hand to stop Grandmother from speaking.

Grandmother did not stop.

But Mother simply continued to hold up her hand. Finally Grandmother wound up her rant by saying, “So now she wants to speak to me! She didn’t want to speak to me for all these weeks that she’s been planning to go into space, only when I come here with my broken heart and my bruised face will she bother to speak to me, only now! So speak already! What are you waiting for! Speak! I’m listening! Who’s stopping you?”

Finally Alessandra stepped between them and screamed into Grandmother’s face, “Nobody can speak till you shut up!”

Grandmother slapped Alessandra’s face. It was a hard slap, and it knocked Alessandra a step to the side.

Then Mother held out an envelope to Grandmother. “Here is all the money that’s left from our signing bonus. Everything I have in all the world except the clothes we take to Kenya. I give it to you. And now I’m done with you. You’ve taken the last thing you will ever get from me. Except this.”

She slapped Grandmother hard across the face.

Grandmother staggered, and was about to start screaming when Mother, lighthearted fairy-born Dorabella Toscano, put her face into Grandmother’s and screamed, “Nobody ever, ever, ever hits my little girl!” Then she jammed the envelope with the check in it into Grandmother’s blouse, took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and gave her a shove down the street.

Alessandra threw her arms around her mother and sobbed. “Mama, I never understood till now, I never knew.”

Mother held her tight and looked over her shoulder at the neighbors who were watching, awestruck. “Yes,” she said, “I am a terrible daughter. But I am a very, very good mother!”

Several of the neighbors applauded and laughed, though others clucked their tongues and turned away. Alessandra did not care.

“Let me look at you,” said Mother.

Alessandra stepped back. Mother inspected her face. “A bruise, I think, but not too bad. It will heal quickly. I think there won’t be a trace of it left by the time you meet that fine young man with prospects.”

CHAPTER 6

To: GovNom%Colony1@colmin.gov

From: GovAct%Colony1@colmin.gov

Subj: Naming the colony

I agree that calling this place Colony I is going to get tiresome. I agree that naming it now instead of REnaming it when you and your colony ship get here in fifty years will be much better.

But your suggestion of “Prospero” would not play well here right now. We’re burying former fighter pilots at the rate of one every other day while our xenobiologist struggles to find drugs or treatments that will control or eliminate the airborne worms that we inhale and that burrow through our veins until they’re so perforated we bleed out internally.

Sel (the XB) assures me that the drug he just gave us will slow them down and buy us time. So there’s a chance there’ll actually be a colony here when you arrive. If you have questions about the dustworm itself, you’ll have to ask him at SMenach%Colony1@colmin.gov\xbdiv.

My address is my job title but my name is Vitaly Kolmogorov and my permanent title is Admiral. Do you have a name? Whom am I writing to?

To: GovAct%Colony1@colmin.gov

From: GovNom%Colony1@colmin.gov

Subj: Re: Naming the colony

Dear Admiral Kolmogorov,

I have read with great relief the recent report that the dustworm has been completely controlled by the drug cocktail your xb Sel Menach developed. The worm is being named for him, but the actual name will be held up while committees argue endlessly about whether Latin should be used for naming xenospecies. Some are arguing for a different language for each colony world; others for standardization across all the colonies; others for linguistic differentiation between species native to each planet and the species from the formic home world that were transplanted to all the colony worlds. Thus the Earthbound keep themselves busy while you do the real work of trying to establish a bridgehead in an alien ecosphere.

I am part of the problem, with my fussing about the colony’s name. Please forgive my wasting your time on this; yet it must be done, and you have already prevented me from a faux pas that would have hurt the relations between your colonists and the Ministry and its minions (including me). You were right that Prospero doesn’t work, but for some reason I am quite drawn to using a name from The Tempest by William Shakespeare. Perhaps Tempest itself, or Miranda, or Ariel. I suspect Caliban would not be a good choice. Gonzalo? Sycorax?

As to my name, there is debate about whether to inform your colonists of who I am. I am strictly forbidden to tell even you, the “acting” governor. Meanwhile, my name is being bandied about on the nets, with no great secret made of the fact that I am appointed governor of Colony I. The information will simply not be transmitted to you by ansible. So easy to deceive you or leave you ignorant—something that I will keep in mind when I receive information from ColMin as governor 40 years from now. Unless I can get them to change this foolish practice before I depart.

I believe that the powers-that-be think that having a child of thirteen appointed as governor of your colony might hurt morale among your colonists, though it will be forty years before I arrive. At the same time, others think that having the victorious commander as governor will help morale. While they decide, I trust both your powers of deduction and your discretion.

To: GovNom%Colony1@colmin.gov

From: GovAct%Colony1@colmin.gov

Subj: Re: Naming the colony

Dear Governor-Nominate Wiggin,

I am impressed with the alacrity with which ColMin acted on your petition for ansible bandwidth to be made available for unrestricted access to the nets by colonists, at the discretion of the governors.

My first thought was to inform everyone in the colony about the identity of their governor-in-transit. The name of Ender Wiggin is revered here. After our own victory, we studied your battles and debated about just which superlative was most appropriate when applied to your degree of military brilliance. But I have also seen the reports of the court martial of Col. Graff and Admiral Rackham. Your reputation was savaged and I don’t want to provide an incentive for the colonists, when they finally have the leisure for connecting to the home of humanity, to brood about whether you are a savior or a sociopath. Not that any of the soldiers and pilots among us has the slightest doubt that you are the former; but there will be children born here during the fifty years of your voyage who did not fight under your command.

I confess to having had to reread The Tempest upon receiving your list of names. Sycorax indeed! And yet, obscure as the name is in the play, it is astonishingly appropriate for our situation. The mother of Caliban, the witch who made the unmapped island rich with magic—Sycorax would then be the appropriate name for the hive queen who once ruled this world but now is gone, leaving behind so many artifacts…and traps.

Our xb—a remarkable young man, who refuses to hear of our gratitude for his having saved our lives—says that the formic bodies were riddled with damage from the dustworms. Apparently the individual formics were regarded as so expendable that there was no attempt to control or prevent the disease. The waste of life! Fortunately, Sel has found that the dustworm life cycle has a phase that requires feeding on a certain species of plant. He is working on a means of wiping out that entire plant species. Ecocide, he calls it—a monstrous biological crime. He broods with guilt. Yet the alternative is to keep injecting ourselves forever, or to genetically alter all the children born to us in this world so our blood is poisonous to the dustworms.

In short, Sel IS Prospero. The hive queen was Sycorax. The formics, Caliban. So far, no Ariels, though every female of reproductive age is venerated here. We’re about to have a lottery for mating purposes. I have taken myself out of the running, lest I be accused of making sure I got one of them. No one likes this unromantic, unfree plan—but we voted on the method of allocating scarce reproductive resources and Sel persuaded a majority that this was the way to go. We have no time for wooing here, or for hurt feelings, or rejection.

I talk to you because I can’t talk to anyone here, not even Sel. He has burdens enough without my spilling any of mine onto his back.

By the way, the captain of your ship keeps writing to me as if he thought he could give me orders about the governance of Colony I, without reference to you. I thought you should be aware of this so you can take appropriate steps to avoid having to deal with a would-be regent when you arrive. He strikes me as being the kind of officer I call a “man of peace”—a bureaucrat who thrives in the military only when there is no war, because his true enemy is any officer who has a position or assignment he wants. You are the thing he hates worst: a man of war. Look behind you; that’s where the man of peace always tries to stay, dirk in hand.

—Vitaly Denisovitch

To: GovAct%Colony1@colmin.gov

From: GovNom%Colony1@colmin.gov

Subj: Re: I have the name

Dear Vitaly Denisovitch,

I have it: Shakespeare. As the name for both the planet and the first settlement. Then later settlements can be named for characters in The Tempest and other plays.

Meanwhile, we can refer to a certain admiral as Thane of Cawdor, to remind ourselves of the inevitable result of overweening ambition.

Are you content with Shakespeare as the name? It seems appropriate to me that a new world be named for that great writer of human souls. But if you think it is too English, too tied to a particular culture, I will start over on another track entirely.

I am grateful for your confidence. I hope it will continue during the voyage, even though time dilation will make it take weeks to send and receive each message. Of course that means I will not be in stasis—arriving at age fifteen will be better than at age thirteen.

And, so you know, the voyage will not take fifty years, but closer to forty—refinements have been made in the eggs that power the ships and in the inertial protection of the ships, so we can accelerate and decelerate faster in-system and spend more time at relativistic speeds. We may have gotten all our technology from the formics, but that doesn’t mean we can’t improve on it.

—Ender

To: GovNom%Colony1@colmin.gov

From: GovAct%Colony1@colmin.gov

Subj: Re: Naming the colony

Dear Ender,

Shakespeare belongs to everyone, but now especially to our colony. I sounded out a few colonists and those who cared at all thought it was a good name.

We will do our best to stay alive until you come with more to augment our numbers. But I remember from my own voyage leading up to the war: Your two years will feel longer than our forty. We will be doing something. You will feel frustrated and bored. Those who opted for stasis were happier. Yet your argument for arriving at age fifteen instead of thirteen is a wise one. I understand better than you do the sacrifice you will be making.

I will send you reports every few months—every few days to you—so that you have some idea of who the colonists are and how the village works, socially, agriculturally, and technologically, as well as our achievements and the problems we will have overcome. I will do my best to help you get to know the leading people. But I will not tell them that I am doing this, because they would feel spied upon. When you arrive, try not to let them know how much I have told you. It will make you appear to be insightful. This is a good reputation to have.

I would do the same for Admiral Morgan, since there is a chance that he will actually be in control—the soldiers on your ship will answer to him, not you, and the nearest law enforcement is forty years distant if he should choose to illegally deploy them on our planet’s surface. Our colonists will be unarmed and untrained in military action so he would face no resistance.

However, Admiral Morgan persists in sending me orders without once inquiring about conditions here, beyond what he may or may not have read in my official reports. He is also becoming quite testy about my failure to respond in a satisfactory way (though I have responded fully to all his legitimate inquiries and requests). I suspect that if he is in control when he arrives, removing me from office will be his first priority. Fortunately, demographics suggest that I will be dead before he gets here so that issue will be moot.

Thirteen you may be, but at least you understand that you cannot lead strangers, you can only coerce or bribe them.

—Vitaly

Sel Menach’s back and neck ached from his hours staring at alien molds through a microscope. If I keep this up, I’ll be bent over like an old hag before I’m thirty-five.

But it would be the same out in the fields, hoeing, trying to keep the vines from growing up the maize and blocking out the sun. His back would bend there, too, and his skin turn brown. You could hardly tell one race from another in this savage sunlight. It was like a vision of the future: Personnel chosen from all the races of earth to be surgeons and geologists and xenobiologists and climatologists—and also combat pilots, so they could kill the enemy who once owned this world—and now that the war was over, they’d interbreed so thoroughly that in three generations, maybe two, there would be no concept of race or national origin here.

And yet each colony world would get its own look, its own accent of I.F. Common, which was merely English with a few spelling changes. As colonists began to go from world to world, new divisions would arise. Meanwhile, Earth itself would keep all the old races and nationalities and many of the languages, so that the distinction between colonist and Earthborn would become more and more clear and important.

Not my problem, thought Sel. I can see the future, anyone can; but there’ll be no future here on the planet now called Shakespeare unless I can find a way to kill this mold that infests the grain crops from Earth. How could there be a mold that is already specific to grasses, when the grasses of Earth, including the grains, have no genetic analogue on this world?

Afraima came in with more samples from the test garden in the greenhouse. It was so ironic—all the high-tech agricultural equipment that had been carried along with the fighters in the belly of the transport starship, and yet when it failed there would be no parts, no replacements for fifty years. Maybe forty, if the new stardrive actually brought the colony ship sooner. By the time it gets here, we might be living in the woods, digging for roots and utterly without any working technology.

Or I might succeed in adjusting and adapting our crops so that they thrive in this place, and we have huge food surpluses, enough to buy us leisure time for the development of a technological infrastructure.

We arrive at an extremely high level of technology—but with nothing under it to hold it up. If we crash, we crash all the way down.

“Look at this,” said Afraima.

Dutifully, Sel stood up from his microscope and walked over to hers. “Yes, what am I looking at here?”

“What do you see?” she asked.

“Don’t play games with me.”

“I’m asking for independent verification. I can’t tell you anything.”

So this was something that mattered. He looked closely. “This is a section of maize leaf. From the sterile section, so it’s completely clean.”

“But it’s not,” she said. “It’s from D-4.”

Sel was so relieved he almost wept; yet at the same moment, he was angry. Anger won, in the moment. “No it’s not,” he said sharply. “You’ve mixed up the samples.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “So I went back and got a new selection from D-4. And then again. You’re looking at my triple check.”

“And D-4 is easy to make out of local materials. Afraima, we did it!”

“I haven’t even checked to see if it works on the amaranth.”

“That would be too lucky.”

“Or blessed. Did you ever think God might want us to succeed here?”

“He could have killed this mold before we got here,” said Sel.

“That’s right, sound impatient with his gift and piss God off.”

It was banter, but there was truth behind it. Afraima was a serious Jew—she had renamed herself in Hebrew to a word meaning “fertile” when they held the vote on mating, in hopes that it would somehow induce God to let her have a Jewish husband. Instead, the governor simply assigned her to work for the only orthodox Jew among the colonists. Governor Kolmogorov had respect for religion. So did Sel.

He just wasn’t sure that God knew this place. What if the Bible was exactly right about the creation of that particular sun, moon, and earth—only that was the whole of God’s creation, and worlds like this one were the creation of alien gods with six limbs, or trilateral symmetry or something, like some of the life forms here—the ones that seemed to Sel to be the native species.

Soon they were back in the lab, with the amaranth samples that had been treated the same way. “So that’s it—good enough for starters, anyway.”

“But it takes so long to make it,” said Afraima.

“Not our problem. The chems can figure out how to make it faster and in larger quantities, now that we know which one works. It doesn’t seem to have damaged either plant, does it?”

“You are a genius, Dr. Menach.”

“No Ph.D.”

“I define the word ‘doctor’ as ‘person who knows enough to make species-saving discoveries.’”

“I’ll put it on my resume.”

“No,” she said.

“No?”

Her hand touched his arm. “I’m just coming into my fertile period, doctor. I want your seed in this field.”

He tried to make a joke of it. “Next thing you’ll be quoting from the Song of Solomon.”

“I’m not proposing romance, Dr. Menach. We have to work together, after all. And I’m married to Evenezer. He won’t have to know the baby isn’t his.”

This sounded like she had really thought things through. Now he was genuinely embarrassed. And chagrined. “We have to work together, Afraima.”

“I want the best possible genes for my baby.”

“All right,” he said. “You stay here and head up the adaptation studies. I’ll go work in the fields.”

“What do you mean? There are plenty of people who can do that.”

“It’s either fire you or fire me. We’re not working together anymore after this.”

“But no one had to know!”

“Thou shalt not commit adultery,” said Sel. “You’re supposed to be the believer.”

“But the daughters of Midian—”

“Slept with their own father because it was more important to have babies than to practice exogamy.” Sel sighed. “It’s also important to respect the rules of monogamy absolutely, so we don’t see the colony torn up with conflict over women.”

“All right, forget I said anything,” said Afraima.

“I can’t forget it,” said Sel.

“Then why don’t you—”

“I lost the lottery, Afraima. It’s now illegal for me to have offspring. Especially by poaching another man’s mate. But I also can’t take the libido suppressants because I need to be sharp and energetic in order to conduct my study of the life forms on this world. I can’t have you in here, now that you’ve offered yourself to me.”

“It was just an idea,” she said. “You need me to work with you.”

“I need someone,” said Sel. “Doesn’t have to be you.”

“But people will wonder why you fired me. Evenezer will guess that there was something between us.”

“That’s your problem.”

“What if I tell them that you got me pregnant?”

“You’re definitely fired. Right now. Irrevocably.”

“I was kidding!”

“Get your brain back inside your head. There’ll be a paternity test. DNA. Meanwhile, your husband will be made a figure of ridicule, and every other man will look at his wife, wondering if she’s offering herself to someone else to put a cuckoo in the nest. So you’re out. For the sake of everyone.”

“If you make it that obvious, then it’ll do the same damage to people’s trust in marriage as if we’d actually done it!”

Sel sat down on the greenhouse floor and buried his face in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” said Afraima. “I only half meant it.”

“You mean that if I had said yes, you’d have told me you were just kidding and left me humiliated for having agreed to adultery?”

“No,” she said. “I’d do it. Sel, you’re the smartest, everyone knows it. And you shouldn’t be cut off without having children. It’s not right. We need your genes in the pool.”

“That’s the genetic argument,” said Sel. “Then there’s the social argument. Monogamy has been proven, over and over, to be the optimum social arrangement. It’s not about genes, it’s about children—they have to grow up into the society we want them to maintain. We voted on this.”

“And I vote to carry one baby of yours. Just one.”

“Please leave,” said Sel.

“I’m the logical one, since I’m Jewish and so are you.”

“Please go. Close the door behind you. I have work to do.”

“You can’t turn me away,” she said. “It would hurt the colony.”

“So would killing you,” said Sel, “but you’re making that more and more tempting the longer you stay here to torture me.”

“It’s only torture because you want me.”

“My body is human and male,” said Sel, “and so of course I want to engage in mating behavior regardless of consequences. My logical functions are being suppressed already so it’s a good thing I made the decision irrevocably. Don’t make me turn my decision into a painful reality by cutting the little suckers off.”

“So that’s it? You castrate yourself, one way or the other. Well, I’m a human female, and I hunger for the mate that will give me the best offspring.”

“Then look for somebody big and strong and healthy if you want to commit adultery, and don’t let me catch you because I’ll turn you in.”

“Brain. I want your brain.”

“Well, the kid would probably have your brain and my face. Now go and get the reports on the D-4 treatment and take it over to chem.”

“I’m not fired?”

“No,” said Sel. “I’m resigning. I’m going out into the fields and leaving you here.”

“I’m just the backup XB. I can’t do the work.”

“You should have thought of that before you made it impossible for us to work together.”

“Who ever heard of a man who didn’t want a little roll in the hay on the side?”

“This colony is my life now, Afraima. Yours too. You don’t shit in your own soup. Can I put it any plainer than that?”

She began to cry.

“What have I done that God would punish me like this?” said Sel. “What comes next? Interpreting dreams for Pharaoh’s baker and butler?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You have to stay on as the XB, you really are a genius at it. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Now I’ve ruined everything.”

“Yes, you have indeed,” said Sel. “But you’re right about all my solutions, too. They’d be almost as damaging as your original idea. So here’s what we’ll do.”

She waited, the tears still coming out of her eyes.

“Nothing,” he said. “You will never mention this again. Never. You won’t touch me. You’ll dress with perfect modesty around me. Your communication with me will be work only. Scientific language, as formal as possible. People will think you and I detest each other. Because I can’t afford to drug down my libido and still try to do this work. Get it?”

“Yes.”

“Forty years till the colony ship arrives with a new XB and I can quit this lousy job.”

“I didn’t mean to make you miserable. I thought you’d be happy.”

“My hormones were thrilled. They thought it was the best idea they’d ever heard.”

“Well, then I feel better,” she said.

“You feel better because I’m going to be going through hell for the next forty years?”

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “As soon as I’m having babies, I’ll get fat and unattractive and way too busy to come here to help. Child production is everything, right? And soon the next generation will provide you with an apprentice to train. The most it will bother you is a few months. Maybe a year.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Dr. Menach, I’m truly sorry. We’re scientists, I start to think of human reproduction just like the animals. I didn’t mean to be disloyal to Evenezer, I didn’t mean to make you miserable. I just felt a wave of desire. I just knew that if I was going to have a baby, it should be yours, it should be the baby most worth having. But I’m still a rational person. A scientist. I will do exactly as you said—all business. As if we disliked each other and neither could ever desire the other. Let me stay until I need to quit this work to have babies.”

“All right. Get up, take the formula to chem, and leave me alone to work on the next problem.”

“And what is that? After the dustworm and the corn and amaranth mold, what are we working on?”

“The next problem I’m working on,” said Sel, “is burying myself in whatever tedious task I can find that does not involve you in any way. Will you please go away now?”

She went.

Sel wrote his report and sent it to the governor’s machine so it could be queued up for ansible transmission. If it turned out that the mold was something that cropped up on other worlds, his solution might work there, too. Besides, that’s what science was—the sharing of information, the pooling of knowledge.

That’s my gene pool, Afraima, he thought. The meme pool, the collective knowledge of science. What I discover here, what I learn, the problems I solve—those will be my children. They will be part of every generation that lives on this planet.

When the report was done, Afraima was still not back. Good, thought Sel. Let her spend all day with chem.

Sel walked through the village and out into the communal fields. Fernão McPhee was foreman on duty. “Give me a job,” Sel said to him.

“I thought you were working on the mold problem.”

“I think it’s solved. It’s up to chem now to figure out how to deliver it to the plants.”

“I’ve already got all the crews working on all the jobs. Your time is too valuable to waste on manual labor.”

“Everybody does manual labor. The governor does manual laborer.”

“The crews are full. You don’t know the jobs, you know your job, which is much more important. Go do your job, don’t bother me!”

He said it jokingly, but he meant it. And what could Sel answer? I need you to give me a hot, sweaty job so I can work off the steam from my beautiful assistant having offered me her body to put babies into!

“You’re no help to me at all,” said Sel to Fernão.

“Then we’re even.”

So Sel went on a long walk. Out beyond the fields, into the woods, gathering samples. When you don’t have an emergency to deal with, you do science. You collect, classify, analyze, observe. Always work to do.

No fantasizing about her, about what might have happened. Sexual fantasies are scripts for future behavior. What good will it do to say no today, and yes six months from now, after rehearsing the adultery over and over in my mind?

It would be so much easier if I weren’t determined to do what’s best for everybody. Whoever said virtue was its own reward was full of crap.

CHAPTER 7

To: jpwiggin@gso.nc.pub, twiggin@uncg.edu

From: vwiggin%Colony1@colmin.gov/citizen

Subj: Ender is fine

By “fine” I mean of course that his body and mind seem to be functioning normally. He was happy to see me. We talked easily. He seems at peace about everything. No hostility toward anyone. He spoke of both of you with real affection. We shared lots of childhood memories.

But as soon as that conversation ended, I saw him almost visibly crawl inside a shell. He is obsessed with the formics. I think he’s burdened with guilt over having destroyed them. He knows that this is not appropriate—that he did not know what he was doing, they were trying to destroy us so it was self-defense anyway—but the ways of conscience are mysterious. We evolved consciences so that we would internalize community values and police ourselves. But what happens when you have a hyperactive conscience and make up rules that nobody else knows about, just so you can punish yourself for breaking them?

Nominally, he is governor, but I have been warned by two different people that Admiral Quincy Morgan has no intention of letting Ender govern anything. If Peter were in such a position, he would already be conspiring to have Morgan removed before the voyage began. But Ender just chuckles and says, “Imagine that.” When I pressed him, he said, “He can’t have a contest if I won’t play.” And when I pressed him harder, he got irritable and said, “I was born for one war. I won it and I’m done.”

So now I’m torn. Do I try to maneuver for him? Or do what he asks and ignore the whole situation? He thinks I should spend my time on the voyage either in stasis, so we’d be the same age when we arrived, both fifteen—or, if I’m awake, then I should write a history of Battle School. Graff has promised to give me all the documents about Battle School—though I can get those from the public records, since they all came out in the court martial.

Here’s my philosophical question: What is love? Does my love for Ender mean that I do what I think is good for him, even if he asks me not to? Or does love mean I do what he asks, even though I think he would find being a figurehead governor a hellish experience?

It’s like piano lessons, dear parents. So many adults complain about the hideous experience of being forced to practice and practice. And yet there are others who say to their parents, “Why didn’t you MAKE me practice so today I’d be able to play well?”

Love, Valentine

To: vwiggin%Colony1@colmin.gov/citizen

From: Twiggin@uncg.edu

Subj: re: Ender is fine

Dear Valentine,

Your father says that you will be irritated if I say how shocking it is to discover that one of my children does not know everything, and admits it, and even asks her parents for advice. For the past five years, you and Peter have been as closed off as twins with a private language. Now, only a few weeks out from under Peter’s influence, you have discovered parents again. I find this gratifying. I hereby declare you to be my favorite child.

We continue to be devastated—a slow, corrosive kind of devastation—that Ender chooses not to write to us. You say nothing of anger toward us. We do not understand. Doesn’t he realize we were forbidden to write to him? Why doesn’t he read our letters now? Or does he read them and then choose not to poke the reply box and say even as little as “Got your letters”?

As to your questions, the answers are easy. You are not his mother or father. We are the ones with the right to meddle and do what’s good for him whether he likes it or not. You are his sister. Think of yourself as companion, friend, confidante. Your responsibility is to receive what he gives, and to give him what he asks only if you think it’s good. You do not have either the right or the responsibility to give him what he specifically asks you not to give. That would be no gift; that is neither friend nor sister.

Parents are a special case. He has built a wall exactly in the place where Battle School first built it. It keeps us out. He thinks he does not need us. He is mistaken. I suspect we are exactly what he is hungry for. It is a mother who can provide the ineffable comfort to a wounded soul. It is a father who can say, “Ego te absolvo” and “well done, thou good and faithful servant” and be believed by the inmost soul.

If you were better educated and hadn’t lived in an atheistic establishment, you would understand those references. When you look them up, please remember that I did not have to.

Love,
Your sarcastic, overly analytical,
deeply wounded yet quite satisfied,
Mother

To: jpwiggin@gso.nc.pub, twiggin@uncg.edu

From: vwiggin%Colony1@colmin.gov/citizen

Subj: Ender is fine

I know all about Father’s confessionals and your King James Version and I did not have to look anything up either. Do you think your and Father’s religions were a secret from your children? Even Ender knew, and he left home when he was six.

I am taking your advice because it is wise and because I have no better ideas. And I’m going to follow Ender’s and Graff’s advice, too, and write a history of Battle School. My goal is a simple one: to get it published as quickly as possible so it can be part of the task of erasing the vile slanders of the court martial, rehabilitating the reputations of the children who won this war and the adults who trained and aimed them. Not that I don’t still hate them for taking Ender from us. But I find it quite possible to hate someone and still see their side of the argument between us. This is perhaps the only worthwhile gift Peter ever gave me.

Peter has not written to me, nor I to him. If he asks, tell him that I think about him often, I notice that I don’t see him anymore, and if that counts as “missing him,” then he is missed.

Meanwhile, I had a chance to meet Petra Arkanian in transit and I have spoken—well, literally WRITTEN—to “Bean,” Dink Meeker, Han Tzu, and have letters out to several others. The better I understand from them what Ender went through (since Ender’s not telling), the better I will know what I should be doing but am not because, as you point out, I am not his mother and he has asked me not to do it. Meanwhile, I am pretending that it’s only about writing the book.

I am an astonishingly fast writer. Are you sure we have no genes of Winston Churchill in us? Some dalliance of his, for instance, with a Pole-in-exile during World War II? I feel him to be a kindred spirit of mine, except for the political ambitions, the constant blood alcohol level, and walking around the house naked. He did those things, by the way, not me.

Love,
Your equally sarcastic, just-analytical-enough,
not-yet-wounded-nor-satisfied daughter,
Valentine

Graff had disappeared from Eros soon after the court martial, but now he was back. It seems that as Minister of Colonization, he could not miss the opportunity for publicity that the departure of the first colony ship would offer.

“Publicity is good for the Dispersal Project,” said Graff when Mazer laughed at him.

“And you don’t love the camera?”

“Look at me,” said Graff. “I’ve lost twenty-five kilos. I’m a mere shadow of myself.”

“All through the war, you gain weight, bit by bit. You balloon during the court martial. And now you lose weight. Was it Earth gravity?”

“I didn’t go to Earth,” said Graff. “I was busy turning Battle School into the assembly point for the colonists. No one understood why I insisted that all the beds be adult-sized. Now they talk about my foresight.”

“Why are you lying to me? You weren’t in charge when Battle School was built.”

Graff shook his head. “Mazer, I wasn’t in charge of anything when I talked you into coming home, was I?”

“You were in charge of the get-Rackham-home-to-help-train-Ender-Wiggin project.”

“But no one knew there was such a project.”

“Except you.”

“So I was also in charge of the make-sure-Battle-School-is-fitted-out for-the-Human-Genome-Dispersal-Project project.”

“And that’s why you’re losing weight,” said Mazer. “Because you finally got the funding and authority to carry out the real project that you’ve had in mind all along.”

“Winning the war was the most important thing. I had my mind on my job of training children! Who knew we’d win it in circumstances that gave us all these uninhabited already-terraformed completely habitable planets? I expected Ender to win, or Bean if Ender failed, but I thought we’d then be battling the buggers world to world, and racing to found new colonies in the opposite direction, so we wouldn’t be vulnerable to their counterattack.”

“So you’re here to have your picture taken with the colonists.”

“I’m here to have my smiling picture taken with you and Ender and the colonists.”

“Ah,” said Mazer. “The court martial crowd.”

“The cruelest thing about that court martial was the way they savaged Ender’s reputation. Fortunately, most people remember the victory, not the evidence from the court martial. Now we place another image in their minds.”

“So you actually care about Ender.”

Graff looked hurt. “I have always loved that boy. It would take a moral idiot not to. I know deep goodness when I see it. I hate having his name tied to the murder of children.”

“He did kill them.”

“He didn’t know that he did.”

“Those weren’t like winning the war while thinking it was a game, Hyrum,” said Mazer. “He knew he was in a real fight for his life, and he knew that he had to win decisively. He had to know that the death of his opponent was always a possibility.”

“So you’re saying he’s as guilty as our enemies said he was?”

“I’m saying that he killed them and he knew what he was doing. Not the exact outcome, but that he was taking actions that could cause real and permanent damage to those boys.”

“They were going to kill him!”

“Bonzo was,” said Mazer. “Stilson was a petty bully.”

“But Ender was so untrained he had no idea of the damage he was doing, or that his shoes had steel toes. Weren’t we clever to keep him safe by insisting he wear shoes like that.”

“Hyrum, I think Ender’s actions were perfectly justified. He didn’t choose to fight those boys, so the only choice he had was how thoroughly to win.”

“Or lose.”

“Ender never has the choice to lose, Hyrum. It’s not in him, even when he thinks it is.”

“All I know is that he promised to try to work a picture with me and you into his schedule.”

Mazer nodded. “And you think that meant that he’d do it.”

“He doesn’t have a schedule. I thought he was being ironic. Except for hanging with Valentine, what does he have to do?”

Mazer laughed. “What he’s been doing for more than a year—studying the formics so obsessively that we all worried about his mental health. Only I have to say that with the colonists’ arrival, he’s been preparing to be governor in more than just name.”

“Admiral Morgan will be disappointed.”

“Admiral Morgan expects to get his way,” said Mazer, “because he doesn’t realize Ender is serious about governing the colony. What Ender was doing was memorizing the dossiers of all the colonists—their test results, family relationships with other colonists and with family members who were left home, their towns and countries of origin and what those places look like and what’s been going on there in the past year, during the time they were signing up.”

“And Admiral Morgan doesn’t get the point?”

“Admiral Morgan is a leader,” said Mazer. “He gives orders and they’re passed down the chain. Knowing the grunts is the job of the petty officers.”

Graff laughed. “And people wonder why we used children to command the final campaign.”

“Every officer learns how to function within the system that promoted him,” said Mazer. “The system is still sick—it always has been and always will be. But Ender learned how real leadering is done.”

“Or was born knowing it.”

“So he’s greeting every colonist by name and making a point of conversing with them all for at least a half hour.”

“Can’t he do that on the ship after they take off?”

“He’s meeting the ones who are going into stasis. The ones who are staying awake he’ll meet after launch. So when he says he’ll try to fit you into his schedule, he was not being ironic. Most of the colonists are sleepers and he barely has time for a real conversation with all of them.”

Graff sighed. “Isn’t he even sleeping?”

“I think he figures he’ll have time to sleep after launch—when Admiral Morgan is commanding his vessel and Ender will have no official duties that he doesn’t assign to himself. At least that’s how Valentine and I decode his behavior.”

“He doesn’t talk to her?”

“Of course he does. He just doesn’t admit to having any plans or any reasons for the things he does.”

“Why would he keep secrets from her?”

“I’m not sure they’re secrets,” said Mazer. “I think he might not know that he has plans of any kind. I think he’s greeting the colonists because that’s what they need and expect. It’s a duty because it means a lot to them, so he does it.”

“Nonsense,” said Graff. “Ender always has plans within plans.”

“I believe you’re thinking of you.”

“Ender is better at this than I am.”

“I doubt it,” said Mazer. “Peacetime bureaucratic maneuvering? Nobody does it better than you.”

“I wish I were going with them.”

“Then go,” said Mazer, laughing. “But you wish nothing of the kind.”

“Why not?” said Graff. “I can run ColMin by ansible. I can see first-hand what our colonists have accomplished during the years they’ve been waiting for relief. And the advantages of relativistic travel will keep me alive to see the end of my great project.”

“Advantages?”

“To you, a horrible sacrifice. But you’ll notice that I did not marry, Mazer. I had no secret reproductive dysfunction. My libido and my desire for a family are as strong as any man’s. But I decided years ago to marry Mother Eve posthumously and adopt all her children as my own. They were all living in the same crowded house, where one bad fire would kill the whole bunch of them. My job was to move them out into widely dispersed houses so they’d go on living forever. Collectively, that is. So no matter where I go, no matter whom I’m with, I am surrounded by my adopted children.”

“You really are playing God.”

“I most certainly am not playing.”

“You old actor—you think there were auditions and you got the part.”

“Maybe I’m an understudy. When he forgets a bit of business, I fill in.”

“So what are you going to do about getting a picture with Ender?”

“Simple enough. I’m the man who decides when the ship will go. There will be a technical malfunction at the last minute. Ender, having done his duty, will be encouraged to take a nap. When he wakes up, we’ll take some pictures, and then the technical problems will be miraculously resolved and the ship will sail.”

“Without you on board,” said Mazer.

“I have to be here to keep fighting for the project,” said Graff. “If I weren’t here to stymie my enemies at every step, the project would be killed within months. There are so many powerful people in this world who refuse to see any vision they didn’t think of.”

Valentine enjoyed watching the way Graff and Rackham treated Ender. Graff was one of the most powerful men in the world; Rackham was still regarded as a legendary hero. Yet both of them quietly deferred to Ender. They never ordered him to do anything. It was always, “Will it be all right for you to stand here for the picture?” “Would 0800 be a good time for you?” “Whatever you’re wearing will be fine, Admiral Wiggin.”

Of course Valentine knew that calling him “Admiral Wiggin” was for the benefit of the admirals and generals and political brass who were watching, most of them seething because they weren’t in the picture. But as she watched, she saw many instances of Ender expressing an opinion—or just seeming to be hesitant about something. Graff usually deferred to Ender. And when he didn’t, Rackham smilingly made Ender’s point for him, and insisted on it.

They were taking care of him.

It was genuine love and respect. They might have created him like a tool in a forge, they might have hammered him and ground him into the shape they wanted, and then plunged him into the heart of the enemy. But now they truly loved this weapon they had made, they cared about him.

They thought he was damaged. Dented from all he had been through. They thought his passivity was a reaction to trauma, to finding out what he had really done—the deaths of the children, of the formics, of the thousands of human soldiers who had perished during that last campaign when Ender thought he was playing a game.

They just don’t know him the way I do, thought Valentine.

Oh, she knew the danger of such a thought. She was constantly on the alert, lest she entrap herself in a web of her own conceit. She had not assumed she knew Ender. She had approached him like a stranger, watching everything to see what he did, what he said, and what he seemed to mean by all he did and said.

Gradually, though, she learned to recognize the child behind the young man. She had seen him obeying his parents—immediately, without question, though he surely could have argued or pleaded his way out of onerous tasks. Ender accepted responsibility and accepted also the idea that he would not always get to decide which responsibilities were his, or when they needed to be carried out. So he obeyed his parents with few hesitations.

But it was more than that. Ender really was damaged, they were right. Because his obedience was more than that of the happy child springing up at his parents’ request. It had strong overtones of the kind of obedience Ender had given to Peter—compliance in order to avoid conflict.

Somewhere between the two attitudes: eagerness versus resignation mixed with dread.

Ender was eager for the voyage, for the work he would do. But he understood that being governor was the price he was paying for his ticket. So he was acting the part, performing all his duties, including the pictures, including the formal good-byes, the speeches from the very commanders who had allowed his name to be so badly tarnished during the court martial of Graff and Rackham.

Ender stood there smiling—a real smile, as if he liked the man—while Admiral Chamrajnagar bestowed on him the highest medal the International Fleet could offer. Valentine watched the whole thing sourly. Why wasn’t that medal given during the court martial, when it would have been an open repudiation of the terrible things being said about Ender? Why had the court martial been opened to the public, when Chamrajnagar had the complete power to suppress it all? Why was there even a court martial? No law required it. Chamrajnagar had never, for a moment, been Ender’s friend—though Ender gave him the victory that he could not otherwise have achieved.

Unlike Graff and Rackham, Chamrajnagar showed no sign of real respect for Ender. Oh, he called him Admiral, too, with only a couple of instances of “my boy”—both immediately corrected by Rackham, to Chamrajnagar’s visible annoyance. Of course, Chamrajnagar could do nothing about Rackham, either—except make sure he was in all the pictures, too, since having two heroes associated with the great Polemarch would be an even more memorable picture.

What was plain to Valentine was that Chamrajnagar was very happy, and the happiness clearly came from the prospect of having Ender get on that starship and go away. Things could not go quickly enough for Chamrajnagar.

Yet they all waited for the pictures to be printed out in physical form so that Ender, Rackham, and Chamrajnagar could all sign copies of that most excellent souvenir.

Rackham and Ender were each given signed copies with a great flourish, as if Chamrajnagar imagined he was honoring them.

Then, at last, Chamrajnagar was gone—“to the observation station, to watch the great vessel sail forth on its mission of creation instead of destruction.” In other words, to have his picture taken with the ship in the background. Valentine doubted any of the press would be allowed to take pictures of the event that did not include Chamrajnagar’s smiling face.

So it was actually a great concession that the picture of Graff, Rackham, and Ender had been allowed to exist at all. Perhaps Chamrajnagar did not even know it had been taken. It was the official fleet photographer, but perhaps he was disloyal enough to take a picture he knew that his boss would hate.

Valentine knew Graff well enough to know that appearances of the Polemarch’s pictures would be rare compared to the picture of Graff, Rackham, and Ender, which would be pasted on every possible surface on Earth: electronic, virtual, and physical. It would serve Graff’s purpose to have everyone on Earth reminded that the I.F. existed for only two purposes now—to support the colonization program, and to punish from space any power on Earth that dared to use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons.

Chamrajnagar had not yet reconciled himself to the idea that most of the continued funding for the I.F. and its bases and stations came through Graff’s hands as Minister of Colonization—MinCol. At the same time, Graff was perfectly aware that it was fear of what a disgruntled I.F. might do—like seizing worldwide power from the politicians, which the Warsaw Pact had tried to do—that kept the funding coming to his project.

What Chamrajnagar would never understand was why he was somehow the adjunct in all of this, why his lobbying came to nothing—except for allowing Ender’s diminishment in the court martial.

Which led Valentine once again to her suspicion that Graff, too, could have prevented the court martial if he had wanted to, that perhaps it was a price he paid in order to gain some other advantage. Even if all it did for Graff was “prove” that not everything was going his way, that would be a great source of complacency for Graff’s rivals and opponents, and Valentine well knew that complacency was the best possible attitude for one’s rivals and opponents to have.

Graff loved and respected Ender, but he was not above allowing something very unfortunate to happen to him if it served the larger purpose. Hadn’t Graff proved it over and over?

Well, my dear MinCol, by the time we get to Shakespeare Colony, you will almost certainly be either dead or very, very old. I wonder if you’ll still be running everything then?

Poor Peter. Aspiring to rule the world, while Graff had already done it. The difference was that Peter needed to be known to rule the world; all the outward forms of government needed to be seen to lead to Peter’s throne. Whereas Graff only needed to use his control of whatever he wanted to control in order to accomplish his single, lofty purpose.

But aren’t they the same person, apart from that? Manipulators, letting anyone else pay whatever cost was required to accomplish the end in view. It was a good end, in Graff’s case. Valentine agreed with it, believed in it, happily cooperated with it. But wasn’t Peter’s goal also a good one? The end of war, because the world was united under a single good government. If he brought it off, wouldn’t it be as much a blessing to the human race as anything Graff accomplished?

She had to give both Peter and Graff credit for this: They weren’t monsters. They didn’t require that all costs be paid by others, none by themselves. They would also make whatever personal sacrifices were required. They really did serve a cause bigger than themselves.

But couldn’t that also have been said of Hitler? Unlike Stalin and Mao, who wallowed in luxury while others did all the work and made all the sacrifices, Hitler lived sparingly and truly believed himself to be living for a cause greater than himself. That’s precisely what made him such a monster. So Valentine was not quite sure that Peter’s and Graff’s self-sacrifices were quite enough to absolve them of monsterhood.

Well, they would both be someone else’s problem now. Let Rackham watch out for Graff and kill him if he gets out of hand, which he probably won’t. And let Father and Mother do their pathetic best to keep Peter from becoming the devil. Do they even realize that Peter’s whole good-son attitude was an act? That Peter had obviously made the conscious decision several years back to pretend to be just like the boy Ender had been? All an act, dear parents—do you see it? Sometimes I think you do, but other times you are so oblivious.

You will be lost in the past by the time I get where I’m going, all of you. My present will be Ender and whatever he’s doing. He is my whole flock, and I must shepherd him without ever letting him see the crook I use to guide him and protect him.

What am I thinking? Who’s the megalomaniac here? I think I will know better than Ender what is good for him, where he should go, what he should do, and what he should be protected from?

Yet that is exactly what I think, because it’s true.

Ender was so sleepy he could hardly stand, yet he stood, through all the pictures, making the smile as warm and real as he could. These are the pictures Mother and Father will see. The pictures for Peter’s children, if he has any, to remember that once they had an Uncle Ender who did something very famous before he was in his teens and then went away. This is how he looked when he left. See? He’s very happy. See, Mom and Dad? You didn’t hurt me when you let them take me. Nothing has hurt me. I’m fine. Look at my smile. Don’t see how tired I am, or how glad I am to go, when they let me go.

Then at last the pictures were done. Ender shook hands with Mazer Rackham and wanted to say, I wish you were coming. But he could not say he wished that, because he knew that Mazer did not want to go, and so it would be a selfish wish. So he said only this: “Thank you for all you taught me, and for standing by me.” He did not add “standing by me at the trial” because the words might be picked up by some stray microphone.

Then he shook hands with Hyrum Graff and said, “I hope this new job works out for you.” It was a joke, and Graff got it, or at least enough to smile a little. Maybe the thinness of Graff’s smile was because he had heard Ender thank Mazer and wondered why Ender had no thanks for him. But Graff had not been his teacher, only his master, and it was not the same. Nor had Graff stood by him, as far as Ender could tell. Hadn’t Graff’s whole program of teaching been to get Ender to believe to the depth of his soul that there would never be anyone standing by him?

“Thanks for the nap,” he said to Graff.

Graff chuckled out loud. “May you always have as many as you need.”

Then Ender paused, looking at nothing, at the empty room, and thought, Good-bye, Mom. Good-bye, Dad. Good-bye, Peter. Good-bye, all the men and women and children of Earth. I’ve done all I could for you, and had all I could receive from you, and now someone else is responsible for you all.

Ender walked up the ramp to the shuttle, Valentine directly behind him.

The shuttle took them off Eros for the last time. Good-bye, Eros, and all the soldiers on it, the ones who fought for me and the other children, the ones who manipulated us and lied to us for the good of humanity, the ones who conspired to defame me and keep me from returning to Earth, all of you, good and bad, kind and selfish, good-bye to you, I am no longer one of you, neither your pawn nor your savior. I resign my commission.

Ender said nothing to Valentine beyond the trivial comments of travel. It was only about a half hour of jockeying until the shuttle was docked against the surface of the transport ship. It had been meant to carry soldiers and their weapons into war. Now it was carrying a vast amount of equipment and supplies for the agricultural and manufacturing needs of Shakespeare Colony, and more people to join them, to improve their gene pool, to help buy them enough productivity that there’d be leisure for science and creativity and luxury, a life closer to what the societies of Earth offered.

But all of that had been loaded, and all the people. Ender was last. Ender and Valentine.

At the bottom of the ladderway that would take them up into the ship, Ender stopped and faced Valentine. “You can still go back now,” he said. “You can see that I’ll be fine. The people of the colony that I’ve met so far are very nice and I won’t be lonely.”

“Are you afraid to go up the ladder first?” asked Valentine. “Is that why you’ve stopped to make a speech?”

So Ender went up the ladder and Valentine followed, making her the last of the colonists to cut the thread connecting them to Earth.

Below them, the hatch of the shuttle closed, and then the hatch of the ship. They stood in the airlock until a door opened and there was Admiral Quincy Morgan, smiling, his hand already extended. How long did he strike that pose before the door opened, Ender wondered. Was he there, perhaps, for hours, posed like a mannequin?

“Welcome, Governor Wiggin,” said Morgan.

“Admiral Morgan,” said Ender, “I’m not governor of anything until I set foot on the planet. On this voyage, on your ship, I’m a student of the xenobiology and adapted agriculture of Shakespeare Colony. I hope, though, that when you’re not too busy, I’ll have a chance to talk to you and learn from you about the military life.”

“You’re the one who’s seen combat,” said Morgan.

“I played a game,” said Ender. “I saw nothing of war. But there are colonists on Shakespeare who made this voyage many years ago, and never had a hope of returning home to Earth. I want to get some idea of what their training was, their life.”

“You’ll have to read books for that,” said Morgan, still smiling. “This is my first interstellar voyage, too. In fact, as far as I know, no one has ever made two of them. Even Mazer Rackham only made a single voyage, which ended at its starting place.”

“Why, I believe you’re right, Admiral Morgan,” said Ender. “It makes us all pioneers together, here in your ship.” There—had he said “your ship” often enough to reassure Morgan that he knew the order of authority here?

Morgan’s smile was unchanged. “I’ll be happy to talk to you any time. It’s an honor to have you on my ship, sir.”

“Please don’t ‘sir’ me, sir,” said Ender. “We both know that I’m an admiral in name only, and I don’t want the colonists to hear anyone call me by a title other than Mr. Wiggin, and preferably not that. Let me be Ender. Or Andrew, if you want to be formal. Would that be all right, or would it interfere with shipboard discipline?”

“I believe,” said Admiral Morgan, “that it won’t interfere with discipline, and so it shall be entirely as you prefer. Now Ensign Akbar will show you and your sister to your stateroom. Since so few passengers are making the voyage awake, most families have quarters of similar size. I say this because of your memo requesting that you not have an exorbitantly oversized space on the ship.”

“Is your family aboard, sir?” asked Ender.

“I wooed my superiors and they gave birth to my career,” said Morgan. “The International Fleet has been my only bride. Like you, I travel as a bachelor.”

Ender grinned at him. “I think your bachelorhood and mine are both going to be much in question before long.”

“Our mission is reproduction of the species beyond the bounds of Earth,” said Morgan. “But the voyage will go more smoothly if we guard our bachelorhood zealously while in transit.”

“Mine has the safety of ignorant youth,” said Ender, “and yours the distance of authority. Thank you for the great honor of greeting us here. I’ve underslept a little the past few days, and I hope I’ll be forgiven for indulging myself in about eighteen hours of rest. I fear I’ll miss the beginning of acceleration.”

“Everyone will, Mr. Wiggin,” said Morgan. “The inertia suppression on this ship is superb. In fact, we are already accelerating at the rate of two gravities, and yet the only apparent gravity is imparted by the centrifugal force of the spin of the ship.”

“Which is odd,” said Valentine, “since centrifugal force is also inertial, and you’d think it would also be suppressed.”

“The suppression is highly directionalized, and affects only the forward movement of the ship,” said Morgan. “I apologize for ignoring you so nearly completely, Ms. Wiggin. I’m afraid your brother’s fame and rank have distracted me and I forgot courtesy.”

“None is owed to me,” said Valentine with a light laugh. “I’m just along for the ride.”

With that they separated and Ensign Akbar led them to their stateroom. It was not a huge space, but it was well equipped, and it took the ensign several minutes to show them where their clothing, supplies, and desks had been stowed, and how to use the ship’s internal communications system. He insisted on setting down both their beds and then raising them up again and locking them out of the way, so Ender and Valentine had seen a complete demonstration. Then he showed them how to lower and raise the privacy screen that turned the stateroom into two sleeping areas.

“Thank you,” said Ender. “Now I think I’ll take the bed down again so I can sleep.”

Ensign Akbar was full of apologies and took both the beds down again, ignoring their protests that the point of his demonstration was so they could do it themselves. When he was finally done, he paused at the door. “Sir,” he said, “I know I shouldn’t ask. But. May I shake your hand, sir?”

Ender thrust out his hand and smiled warmly. “Thank you for helping us, Ensign Akbar.”

“It’s an honor to have you aboard this ship, sir.” Then Akbar saluted. Ender returned the salute and the ensign left and the door closed behind him.

Ender went to his bed and sat down on it. Valentine sat on hers, directly across from him. Ender looked at her and started to laugh. She joined in his laughter.

They laughed until Ender was forced to lie down and rub the tears out of his eyes.

“May I ask,” said Valentine, “if we’re both laughing at the same thing?”

“Why? What were you laughing at?”

“Everything,” said Valentine. “The whole picture-taking thing before we left, and Morgan greeting us so warmly, as if he weren’t preparing to stab you in the back, and Ensign Akbar’s hero worship despite your insistence that you were just ‘Mr. Wiggin’—which is, of course, an affectation too. I was laughing at the whole of it.”

“I see that all of that is funny, if you look at it that way. I was too busy to be amused with it. I was just trying to stay awake and say all the right things.”

“So what were you laughing at?”

“It was pure delight. Delight and relief. I’m not in charge of anything now. For the duration of the voyage, it’s Morgan’s ship, and I’m a free man for the first time in my life.”

“Man?” asked Valentine. “You’re still shorter than me.”

“But Val,” said Ender, “I have to shave every week now, or the whiskers show.”

They laughed again, just a little. Then Valentine spoke the command to bring down the barrier between their beds. Ender stripped down to his underwear, crawled under a single sheet—nothing more was needed in this climate-controlled environment—and in moments he was asleep.

CHAPTER 8

To: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy

From: MinCol@ColMin.gov

Fwd: Report on Planet Making

Dear Ender,

I was conflicted about whether to send you this. On the one hand, it is fascinating, even heartening; on the other hand, I know you have suffered greatly because of the destruction of the formic home world and reminders might be painful. I risk the pain—your pain, so it was not much risk to me, was it?—because if there is anyone who should be receiving these reports, it is you.

—Hyrum

Forwarded Message:

To: MinCol@ColMin.gov

From: LPo%formcent@IFCom.gov/bda

Subj: Report on Planet Making

Dear Hyrum,

I’m not sure you’re in the need-to-know loop, since it will be a long time before the subject planet will be ready for colonization, but since there is also no further enemy presence there, I thought you’d want to know something of the aftermath—our official “damage assessment” reports. (You’ll note that in my new assignment, I do NOT get to follow normal military abbreviations and call my area “DamAss” or “AssDam.” We have to use mere initials, BDA. As the kids say, kuso.)

SecureLinka7977@rTTu7&!a***********bdA.gov

I’ve set it so your full name is a nonce password for the next week.

In case you don’t have time to read the whole report at the above site, here’s the gist: The former formic home world, destroyed last year by molecular disruption, is re-forming. Our follow-up ship, instead of trying to salvage a losing battle, is finding that its mission is astronomical: to watch the formation of a planet out of, quite literally, elemental dust.

Since the md field broke everything into its constituent atoms, it is coalescing with remarkable quickness. Our observer ship has recently been in a position to see the dust cloud with the star directly behind it, and during the passage sufficient spectrometry and mass measurements were taken to assure us that the vast majority of the atoms have re-formed into the common, expected molecules, and that the gravity of the cloud was sufficient to hold most of the material in place. There has been some loss from escape velocity and further loss to solar gravity, solar wind, etc., but our best estimate is that the new planet will be at no less than 80 percent of the original mass, and perhaps more. At that size, there will still be atmosphere, potentially breathable. There will also be molten core and mantle, ocean, and the probability of tectonic movement of thicker areas of crust—i.e., continents.

In short, while no artifacts of the former civilization can possibly be found, the planet itself will be back in a nice wad, in stellar orbit, within the next thousand years, and perhaps cool enough to explore in ten thousand years. Colonizable in a hundred thousand, if we seed it with oxygenating bacteria and other life as soon as the oceans are fully formed.

We humans can be destructive, but the universe’s thirst for creation goes on unslaked.

—Li

Public spaces were few on the “Good Ship Lollipop” (as Valentine called it), also known as “IFcoltrans1” (which was painted on its side and broadcast continuously from its beacon), or “Mrs. Morgan” (as the ship’s officers and crew called it behind their captain’s back).

There was the mess hall, where no one could linger long, since one dining shift or another started every hour. The library was for serious research by ship’s personnel; passengers had full access to the contents of the library on their own desks in their staterooms and so were not particularly welcome in the library itself.

The officers’ and crew’s lounges were open to passengers by invitation only, and such invitations were rare. The theater was good for viewing holos and vids, or for gathering all the passengers for a meeting or announcement, but private conversations tended to be shushed, with some hostility.

For conviviality, this left the observation deck, whose walls offered a view only when the stardrive was off and the ship was maneuvering close to a planet; and the few open spaces in the cargo hold—which would increase in number and size as they used up supplies during the voyage.

It was to the observation deck, then, that Ender betook himself every day after breakfast. Valentine was surprised at his apparent sociability. On Eros, he had been private, reluctant to converse, obsessed with his studies. Now he greeted everyone who entered the observation deck and chatted amiably with anyone who wanted his time.

“Why do you let them interrupt you?” asked Valentine one night, after they returned to their stateroom.

“They don’t interrupt me,” said Ender. “My purpose is to converse with them; I do my other work when no one wants me.”

“So you’re being their governor.”

“I am not,” said Ender. “I’m not governor of anything at the moment. This is Admiral Morgan’s ship, and I have no authority here.”

It was Ender’s standard answer when anyone wanted him to solve a problem—to judge a dispute, to question a rule, to ask for a change or a privilege. “I’m afraid that my authority doesn’t begin until I set foot on the surface of the planet Shakespeare,” he’d say. “But I’m sure that you’ll get satisfaction from whatever officer Admiral Morgan has delegated to deal with us passengers.”

“But you’re an admiral, too,” several people mentioned. A few even knew that Ender had a higher rank, among admirals, than Morgan. “You outrank him.”

“He’s captain of the ship,” said Ender, always smiling. “There is no higher authority than that.”

Valentine wasn’t going to settle for such answers, not when they were alone. “Mierda, mi hermano,” said Valentine. “If you don’t have any official duties and you’re not being governor, then why are you spending so much time being—affable?”

“Presumably,” said Ender, “we will arrive at our destination someday. When that happens, I need to know every person who will stay with the colony. I need to know them well. I need to know how they fit together in their families, among the friendships they form on the ship. I need to know who speaks Common well and who has trouble communicating outside their native language. I must know who is belligerent, who is needy of attention, who is creative and resourceful, what education they have, how they think about unfamiliar ideas. For the passengers who are in cold storage, I had only a half hour meeting with each group. For those who are making the voyage awake, like us, I have much more time. Time enough, maybe, to find out why they chose not to sleep through the trip. Afraid of stasis? Hoping for some advantage when we get there? As you can see, Valentine, I’m working constantly out there. It makes me tired.”

“I’ve been thinking of teaching English,” said Valentine. “Offering a class.”

“Not English,” said Ender. “Common. It’s spelled better—no ughs and ighs—and there’s some special vocabulary and there’s no subjunctive, no ‘whom,’ and the word ‘of’ is spelled as the single letter ‘v.’ To name just a few of the differences.”

“So I’ll teach them Common,” said Valentine. “What do you think?”

“I think it’ll be harder than you think, but it would really help the people who took the class—if the ones who need it take it.”

“So I’ll see what language-teaching software there is in the library.”

“First, though, I hope you’ll check with Admiral Morgan.”

“Why?”

“It’s his ship. Offering a course can be done only with his permission.”

“Why would he care?”

“I don’t know that he does care. I just know that on his ship, we have to find out if he cares before we start something as formal and regular as a class.”

As it turned out, the passenger liaison officer, a colonel named Jarrko Kitunen, was already planning to organize Common classes and he accepted Valentine as an instructor the moment she volunteered. He also flirted with her shamelessly in his Finnish accent, and she found that she rather enjoyed his company. With Ender always busy talking with somebody or reading whatever he’d just received by ansible or downloaded from the library, it was good to have a pleasant way to pass the time. She could only stand to work on her history of Battle School for a few hours at a time, so it was a relief to have human company.

She had come on this voyage for Ender, but until he was willing to take her fully into his confidence, she had no obligation to mope around wishing for more of Ender’s soul than he was willing to share. And if it turned out that Ender never wished to take her into his life, to restore their old bond, then she would need to make a life for herself, wouldn’t she?

Not that Jarrko would be that life. For one thing, he was at least ten years older than she was. For another, he was crew, which meant that when the ship was loaded up with whatever artifacts and trade goods and supplies Shakespeare was able to supply them with, it would be turning around and heading back to Earth, or at least to Eros. She would not be on it. So any relationship with Jarrko was going to end. He might be fine with that, but Valentine was not.

As Father always said, “Monogamy is what works best for any society in the long run. That’s why half of us are born male and half female—so we come out even.”

So Valentine wasn’t always with Ender; she was busy, she had things to do, she had a life of her own. Which was more than Peter had ever given her, so she rather enjoyed it.

It happened, though, that Valentine was with Ender in the observation deck, working on the book, when an Italian woman and her teenage daughter walked up to Ender and stood there, saying nothing, waiting to be noticed. Valentine knew them because they were both in her Common class.

Ender noticed them at once and smiled at them. “Dorabella and Alessandra Toscano,” he said. “What a pleasure to meet you at last.”

“We were not ready,” said Dorabella in her halting Italian accent. “On till your sister could taught us English good enough.” Then she giggled. “I mean ‘Common.’”

“I wish I spoke Italian,” said Ender. “It’s a beautiful language.”

“The language of love,” said Dorabella. “Not is French, nasty language of kissy lips and spitting.”

“French is beautiful, too,” said Ender, laughing at the way she had imitated the French accent and attitude.

“To French and deaf peoples,” said Dorabella.

“Mother,” said Alessandra. She had very little Italian accent, but rather spoke like an educated Brit. “There are French speakers among the colonists, and he can’t offend any of them.”

“Why will they be any offended? They make the kissy mouth to talk, we pretend we not to notice it?”

Valentine laughed aloud. Dorabella really was quite funny, full of attitude. Sassy, that was the word. Even though she was old enough to be Ender’s mother—considering her daughter was Ender’s age—she could be seen as flirting with Ender. Maybe she was one of those women who flirted with everybody because they knew of no other way to relate to them.

“Now we are ready,” said Dorabella. “Your sister teaching us good, so we ready for our half hour with you.”

Ender blinked. “Oh, did you think—I took a half hour with all the colonists who were going to travel in stasis because that’s all the time I had before they became unavailable. But the colonists on the ship—we have a year or two, plenty of time. No need to schedule a half hour. I’m here all the time.”

“But you are very important man, saving of the whole world.”

Ender shook his head. “That was my old job. Now I’m a kid with a job that’s too big for me. So sit down, let’s talk. You’re learning English very well—Valentine has mentioned you, actually, and how hard you work—and your daughter has no accent at all, she’s fluent.”

“Very intelligent girl my Alessandra,” said Dorabella. “And pretty, too, yes? You think so? Nice figure for fourteen.”

“Mother!” Alessandra shrank down into a chair. “Am I a used car? Am I a street vendor’s sandwich?”

“Street vendors,” sighed Dorabella. “I miss them yet.”

“Already,” Valentine corrected her.

“I am already miss them,” said Dorabella, proudly correcting herself. “So small Shakespeare planet will be. No city! What you said, Alessandra? Tell him.”

Alessandra looked flustered, but her mother pressed her. “I just said that there are more characters in Shakespeare’s plays than there will be colonists on the planet named after him.”

Ender laughed. “What a thought! You’re right, we probably couldn’t put on all of his plays without having to use several colonists for more than one part. Not that I have any particular plan to put on a Shakespearean play. Though maybe we should. What do you think? Would anyone want to be ready to put on a play for the colonists who are already there?”

“We don’t know whether they like the new name,” said Valentine. She also thought: Does Ender have any idea how much work it is to put on a play?

“They know the name,” Ender assured her.

“But do they like it?” asked Valentine.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Alessandra. “Not enough women ruoli, parti—how do you say it?” She turned to Valentine helplessly.

“‘Role,’” said Valentine. “Or ‘part.’”

“Oh.” Alessandra giggled. It was not an annoying giggle, it was a rather charming one. It didn’t make her sound stupid. “The same words! Of course.”

“She’s right,” said Valentine. “The colonists are about half and half, and Shakespeare’s plays are what, five percent female parts?”

“Oh well,” said Ender. “It was a thought.”

“I wish we could put on a play,” said Alessandra. “But maybe we can read them together?”

“In theater,” said Dorabella. “The place for holografi. We all read. Me, I listen, my English is not good enough.”

“It’s a good idea,” said Ender. “Why don’t you organize it, Signora Toscano?”

“Please call me of Dorabella.”

“There’s no ‘of’ in that sentence,” said Alessandra. “There isn’t in Italian, either.”

“English has so much ‘of,’ everywhere ‘of,’ except where I put it!” As Dorabella laughed, she touched Ender’s arm. Probably Dorabella didn’t see how he suppressed his instinct to flinch—Ender didn’t like being touched by strangers, he never had. But Valentine saw it. He was still Ender.

“I’ve never seen a play,” said Ender. “I’ve read them, I’ve seen holos and vids of them, but I’ve never actually been in a room where people actually said the lines aloud. I could never put it together, but I’d love to be there and listen as it happens.”

“Then you must!” said Dorabella. “You are governor, you make it happen!”

“I can’t,” said Ender. “Truly. You do it, please.”

“No, I cannot,” said Dorabella. “My English is too bad. Il teatro is for young persons. I will watch and listen. You and Alessandra do it. You are students, you are children. Romeo and Juliet!”

Could she possibly be any more obvious? thought Valentine.

“Mother thinks that if you and I are together a lot,” said Alessandra, “we’ll fall in love and get married.”

Valentine almost laughed aloud. So the daughter wasn’t a co-conspirator, she was a draftee.

Dorabella feigned shock. “I have no plan like such!”

“Oh, Mother, you’ve been planning it from the start. Even back in the town we came from—”

“Monopoli,” said Ender.

“She was calling you a ‘young man with prospects.’ A likely candidate for my husband. My personal opinion is that I’m very young, and so are you.”

Ender was busy mollifying the mother. “Dorabella, please, I’m not offended and of course I know you weren’t planning anything. Alessandra is teasing me. Teasing us both.”

“I’m not, but you can say whatever it takes to make Mother happy,” said Alessandra. “Our lives together are one long play. She makes me…not the star of my own autobiography. But Mother always sees the happy ending, right from the start.”

Valentine wasn’t sure what to make of the relationship between these two. The words were biting, almost hostile. Yet as she said them, Alessandra gave her mother a hug and seemed to mean it. As if the words were part of a long ritual between them, but they no longer were meant to sting.

Whatever was going on, between Ender and Alessandra, Dorabella seemed mollified. “I like the happy ending.”

“We should put on a Greek play,” said Alessandra. “Medea. The one where the mother kills her own children.”

Valentine was shocked at this—what a cruel thing to say in front of her mother. But no, from Dorabella’s reaction Alessandra wasn’t referring to her. For Dorabella laughed and nodded and said, “Yes, yes, Medea, spiteful mama!”

“Only we’ll rename her,” said Alessandra. “Isabella!”

“Isabella!” cried Dorabella at almost the same moment. The two of them laughed so hard they almost cried, and Ender joined with them.

Then, to Valentine’s surprise, while the other two were still hiccuping through the end of their laughter, Ender turned to her and explained. “Isabella is Dorabella’s mother. They had a painful parting.”

Alessandra stopped laughing and looked at Ender searchingly—but if Dorabella was surprised that Ender knew so much of their past, she didn’t show it. “We come on this colony to be free of my perfect mother. Santa Isabella, we will not pray to you!”

Then Dorabella leapt to her feet and began to do some kind of dance, a waltz perhaps, holding an imaginary full skirt in one hand, and with the other hand tracing arcane patterns in the air as she danced. “Always I have a magic land where I can be happy, and I take my daughter there with me, always happy.” Then she stopped and faced Ender. “Shakespeare Colony is our magic land now. You are king of the…folletti?” She looked to her daughter.

“Elfs,” said Alessandra.

“Elves,” said Valentine.

“Gli elfi!” cried Dorabella in delight. “Again same word! Elfo, elve!”

“Elf,” said Valentine and Alessandra together.

“King of the elves,” said Ender. “I wonder what email address I’ll get for that one. ElfKing@Faerie.gov.” He turned to Valentine. “Or is that the title Peter aspires to?”

Valentine smiled. “He’s still torn between Hegemon and God,” she said.

Dorabella didn’t understand the reference to Peter. She returned to her dancing, and this time she sang a wordless but haunting tune with it. And Alessandra shook her head but still joined in the song, harmonizing with it. So she had heard it before and knew it and had sung with her mother. Their voices blended sweetly.

Valentine watched Dorabella’s dance, fascinated. At first it had seemed like a childish, rather mad thing to do. Now, though, she could see that Dorabella knew she was being silly, but still meant it from the heart. It gave the movement, and her facial expression, a sort of irony that made it easy to forgive the silliness and affectation of it, while the sincerity turned it into something quite winning.

The woman isn’t old, thought Valentine. She’s still young and quite good looking. Beautiful, even, especially now, especially in this strange fairyish dance.

The song ended. Dorabella kept dancing in the silence.

“Mother, you can stop flying now,” said Alessandra gently.

“But I can’t,” said Dorabella, and now she was openly teasing. “In this starship we fly for fifty years!”

“Forty years,” said Ender.

“Two years,” said Alessandra.

Apparently Ender liked the idea of doing a play, because he brought them all back to the topic. “Not Romeo and Juliet,” he said. “We need a comedy, not a tragedy.”

“The Merry Wives of Windsor,” said Valentine. “Lots of women’s parts.”

“The Taming of the Shrew!” cried Alessandra, and Dorabella almost collapsed with laughter. Another reference, apparently, to Isabella. And when they stopped laughing, they insisted that Shrew was the perfect play. “I will read the part of the madwoman,” said Dorabella. Valentine noticed that Alessandra seemed to be biting back some kind of comment.

So it was that the plan was conceived for a play reading in the theater three days later—days by ship’s time, though the whole concept of time seemed rather absurd to Valentine, on this voyage where forty years would pass in less than two. What would her birthday be now? Would she count her age by ship’s time or the elapsed calendar when she arrived? And what did Earth’s calendar mean on Shakespeare?

Naturally, Dorabella and Alessandra came to Ender often during the days of preparation, asking him endless questions. Even though he made it clear that all the decisions were up to them, that he was not in charge of the event, he was never impatient with them. He seemed to enjoy their company—though Valentine suspected that it was not for the reason Dorabella had hoped. Ender wasn’t falling in love with Alessandra—if he was infatuated with anyone, it was likely to be the mother. No, what Ender was falling in love with was the family-ness of them. They were close in a way that Ender and Valentine had once been close. And they were including Ender in that closeness.

Why couldn’t I have done that for him? Valentine was quite jealous, but only because of her own failure, not because she wished to deprive him of the pleasure he was getting from the Toscanos.

It was inevitable, of course, that they enlisted Ender himself to read the part of Lucentio, the handsome young suitor of Bianca—played, of course, by Alessandra. Dorabella herself read Kate the Shrew, while Valentine was relegated to the part of the Widow. Valentine didn’t even pretend not to want to read the part—this was the most interesting thing going on in the ship, and why not be at the heart of it? She was Ender’s sister; let people hear her voice, especially in the ribald, exaggerated part of the Widow.

It was entertaining for Valentine to see how the men and boys who were cast in the many other parts focused on Dorabella. The woman had an incredible laugh, rich and throaty and contagious. To earn a laugh from her in this comedy was a fine thing, and the men all vied to please her. It made Valentine wonder if getting Ender and Alessandra together was really Dorabella’s agenda? Perhaps it’s what she thought she was doing, but in fact Dorabella held the center of the stage herself, and seemed to love having all eyes on her. She flirted with them all, fell in love with them all, and yet always seemed to be in a world of her own, too.

Has Kate the Shrew ever been played like this before?

Does every woman have what this Dorabella has? Valentine searched in her heart to find that kind of ebullience. I know how to have fun, Valentine insisted to herself. I know how to be playful.

But she knew there was always irony in her wit, a kind of snottiness in her banter. Alessandra’s timidity covered everything she did—she was bold in what she said, but it was as if her own words surprised and embarrassed her after the fact. Dorabella, however, was neither ironic nor frightened. Here was a woman who had faced all her dragons and slain them; now she was ready for the accolades of the admiring throng. She cried out Kate’s dialogue from the heart, her rage, her passion, her petulance, her frustration, and finally her love. The final monologue, in which she submits to her husband’s will, was so beautiful it made Valentine cry a little, and she thought: I wonder what it would be like to love and trust a man so much that I’d be willing to abase myself as Kate did. Is there something in women that makes us long to be humbled? Or is it something in human beings, that when we are overmastered, we rejoice in our subjection? That would explain a lot of history.

Since everyone who was interested in the play was already in it, and attending the rehearsals, it wasn’t as if the actual performance was going to surprise anyone. Valentine almost asked the whole group, at the last rehearsal, “Why bother to put it on? We just did it, and it was wonderful.”

But there was still a kind of excitement throughout the ship about the coming performance, and Valentine realized that rehearsal was not performance, no matter how well it went. And there would be others there after all, who had not been at the last rehearsal: Dorabella was going around inviting members of the crew, many of whom promised to come. And passengers who weren’t in the play seemed excited about coming, and some were openly rueful about having declined to take part. “Next time,” they said.

When they got to the theater at the appointed time, they found Jarrko standing at the door, a stiff, formal expression on his face. No, the theater would not be opened; by order of the admiral, the play reading had been canceled.

“Ah, Governor Wiggin,” said Jarrko.

A bad sign, if the title was back, thought Valentine.

“Admiral Morgan would like to see you at once, if you please, sir.”

Ender nodded and smiled. “Of course,” he said.

So Ender had expected this? Or was he really that perfectly poised, so it seemed that nothing surprised him?

Valentine started to go with him, but Jarrko touched her shoulder. “Please, Val,” he whispered. “Alone.”

Ender grinned at her and took off with real bounce in his step, as if he was truly excited to be going to see the admiral.

“What’s this about?” Valentine asked Jarrko quietly.

“I can’t say,” he said. “Truly. Just have my orders. No play, theater closed for the night, would the governor please come see the admiral immediately.”

So Valentine stayed with Jarrko, helping soothe the players and other colonists, whose reactions ranged from disappointment to outrage to revolutionary fervor. Some of them even started reciting lines there in the corridor, until Valentine asked them not to. “Poor Colonel Kitunen will be in trouble if you keep this up, and he’s too nice to stop you himself.”

The result was that everyone was quite angry with Admiral Morgan for his arbitrary cancellation of a completely harmless event. And Valentine herself couldn’t help but wonder: What was the man thinking? Hadn’t he ever heard of morale? Maybe he’d heard of it, but was against it.

Something was going on here, and Valentine began to wonder if somehow Ender was behind it. Could it be that in his own way, Ender was just as sneaky and snaky as Peter?

No. Not possible. Especially because Valentine could always see through Peter. Ender wasn’t devious at all. He always said what he meant and meant what he said.

What is the boy doing?

CHAPTER 9

To: demosthenes@LastBestHopeOfEarth.pol

From: PeterWiggin@hegemony.gov/hegemon

Re: While you were out

I had one of my staff run a set of calculations about how long it has been for you since you began your relativistic voyage into the future. At best he could give me only a range of possible subjective durations—a few weeks, anyway. For me, a couple of years. So I am fairly safe in saying that I miss you a great deal more than you miss me. At present you probably still think that you will never miss me at all. The world is full of people who are convinced of the same thing. They vaguely remember that I was elected to the office of Hegemon. They just can’t remember what that office does. They think my name is Locke when they think of me at all.

Yet I am at war. My force is tiny, commanded by—of all people—Ender’s old friend Bean. The other children from Ender’s jeesh—Battle School slang for “army,” but it’s caught on here and that’s what they’re called—were all kidnapped by the Russians, inspired by a conniving little bastard named Achilles, who was kicked out of Battle School. It appears that Achilles chose his main enemy better than Bonito de Madrid did—it was Bean who confronted him in a dark air vent, or so the story goes, and instead of killing him, turned him over to the authorities. Have you ever heard that tale? Did Ender know about it when it happened? Achilles is Hitler with stealth, Stalin with brains, Mao with energy, Pol Pot with subtlety—name your monster, and Achilles has all the inconvenient virtues to make him very hard to stop and even harder to kill. Bean swears he will do it, but he had the chance before and blew it, so I’m skeptical.

I wish you were here.

More than that, I actually wish Ender were here. I’m waging war with the help of an army of a few hundred men—very loyal, brilliantly trained, but only two hundred of them! Bean is not the most reliable of commanders. He always wins, but he doesn’t always do what he’s told or go where I want him to. He picks and chooses among his assignments. To his credit, he doesn’t argue with me in front of his (supposedly “my”) men.

The trouble is that these Battle School kids are all so cynical. They don’t believe in anything. Certainly they don’t believe in ME. Just because Achilles keeps trying to assassinate Bean and has all the Battle School kids terrified, they think they don’t owe Ender Wiggin’s big brother their lifelong personal service. (That was a joke. They owe me nothing.)

Wars here and there around the world, shifting alliances—it’s what I predicted would happen after the Battle School kids came home. They’re such excellent weapons—potentially devastating, but no fallout, no mushroom clouds. Somehow, though, I always saw myself riding the crest of the wave. Now I find myself sucked down to the bottom of the wave so I can barely tell which way is up and I’m constantly running out of air. I get to the top, gasp, and then a new wave crashes me back down.

A few privileges inhere to this office, for the time being, anyway. Minister of Colonization Graff tells me I have unlimited access to the ansible—I can talk to you whenever I want. Congratulate me for not abusing it. I know you’re writing a history of Battle School, and I thought you could use some information about the careers of the more prominent Battle School grads, for an epilogue, perhaps. Ender’s jeesh fought the formics and won; but all the others are now involved, one way or another, as captives or servants or leaders or figureheads or victims, in the military planning and action of every nation lucky enough to have a single graduate and strong enough to hold on to him.

So steel yourself for reams of information. Graff tells me that it will take weeks to send it all from his office (in the old Battle School station now), but that at your end it will seem to arrive all at once. I hope it doesn’t annoy your ship’s captain too much—I understand it’s a nobody, not Mazer Rackham after all—but what I’m sending goes with hegemony priority, which means he won’t be able to read any of this and any messages HE’S expecting will have to wait. Give him my apologies. Or not, as you see fit.

I have never been so alone in my life. I wish for you every day. Fortunately, Father and Mother have turned out to be surprisingly useful. No, I should have said “helpful.” But I’ll leave the “useful” there so you can say, “He hasn’t changed.” They also miss you, and among the information you’re getting are letters from both Father and Mother. Also letters from them to Ender. I hope the boy gets over the snit he’s in and writes back to them. Missing you has given me some idea of how they feel about Ender (and now you): If he wrote to them it would mean the world. And what would it cost him?

No, I’m not going to write to him myself. I have no stock in that company. Mom and Dad are miserable, having only me as visible proof that they reproduced. Brighten their lives, both of you. What ELSE do you have to do? I picture you gliding along at lightspeed, with servants bringing you juleps and the fawning colonists begging Ender to tell them once again about how the formic home world went boom.

Writing this sometimes feels as if I’m talking to you like old times. But at this moment it’s a painful reminder that it’s nothing like talking to you at all.

As the official monster of the family, I hope you will compare me to a real monster like Achilles and give me some points for not being as awful as it is possible to be. I also have to tell you that I’ve learned that when no one else can be trusted—and I mean no one—there is family. And somehow I managed to be complicit in driving away two of the four people I could trust. Clumsy of me, n’est-ce pas?

I love you, Valentine. I wish I had treated you better from childhood on up. Ender too. Now, happy reading. The world is such a mess, you’re glad you aren’t here. But I promise you this: I will do all I can to put things back in order and bring peace. Without, I hope, waging too much war along the way.

With all my heart, your bratty brother,
Peter

Admiral Morgan kept Ender waiting outside his office for two full hours. It was exactly what Ender expected, however, so he closed his eyes and used the time to take a long, refreshing nap. He awoke to hear someone shouting from the other side of a door: “Well, wake him up and send him in, I’m ready!”

Ender sat up immediately, instantly aware of his surroundings. Even though he had never knowingly been in combat, he had acquired the military habit of remaining alert even when asleep. By the time the ensign whose duty was to waken him arrived, Ender was already standing up and smiling. “I understand it’s time for my meeting with Admiral Morgan.”

“Yes sir, if you please sir.” The poor kid (well, six or seven years older than Ender, but still young to have an admiral yelling at him all day) was all over himself with eagerness to please Ender. So Ender made it a point to be visibly pleased. “He’s in a temper,” the ensign whispered.

“Let’s see if I can cheer him up a little,” said Ender.

“Not bloody likely,” whispered the ensign. Then he had the door open. “Admiral Andrew Wiggin, sir.” Ender stepped in as he was announced; the ensign beat a hasty retreat and shut the door behind him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” demanded Admiral Morgan, his face livid. Since Ender had been napping for two hours, that meant either that Morgan had maintained his lividity throughout the interim, or he was able to switch it on at will, for effect. Ender was betting on the latter.

“I’m meeting with the captain of the ship, at his request.”

“Sir,” said Admiral Morgan.

“Oh, you don’t need to call me sir,” said Ender. “Andrew will do. I don’t like to insist on the privileges of rank.” Ender sat down in a comfortable chair beside Morgan’s desk, instead of the stiff chair directly in front of it.

“On my ship you have no rank,” said Morgan.

“I have no authority,” said Ender. “But my rank travels with me.”

“You are fomenting rebellion on my ship, coopting vital resources, subverting a mission whose primary purpose is to deliver you to the colony that you purport to be ready to govern.”

“Rebellion? We’re reading Taming of the Shrew, not Richard II.”

“I’m still talking, boy! You may think you’re heroism personified because you and your little chums played a videogame that turned out to be real, but I won’t put up with this kind of subversion on my own ship! Whatever you did that made you famous and got you that ridiculous rank is over. You’re in the real world now, and you’re just a snot-nosed boy with delusions of grandeur.”

Ender sat in silence, regarding him calmly.

“Now you can answer.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Ender.

Whereupon Morgan let fly with such a string of obscenities and vulgarities that it sounded like he had collected the favorite sayings of the entire fleet. If he had been red-faced before, he was purple now. And through it all, Ender struggled to figure out what it was about a play reading that had the man so insanely angry.

When Morgan paused for breath, leaning—no, slumping—on the desk, Ender rose to his feet. “I think you had better prepare the charges for my court martial, Admiral Morgan.”

“Court martial! I’m not going to court-martial you, boy! I don’t have to! I can have you put in stasis for the duration of the voyage on the authority of my signature alone!”

“Not a person of admiralty rank, I’m afraid,” said Ender. “And it seems that formal charges in a court martial are the only way I’m going to get a coherent statement from you about what I have supposedly done to offend your dignity and cause such alarm.”

“Oh, you want a formal statement? How about this: Hijacking all ansible communications for three hours so that we are effectively cut off from the rest of the known universe, how about that? Three hours means more than two days back in real time—for all I know there’s been a revolution, or my orders have changed, or any number of things might be happening and I can’t even send a message to inquire!”

“That’s a problem, certainly,” said Ender. “But why would you think I have anything to do with it?”

“Because it’s got your name all over it,” said Morgan. “The message is addressed to you. And it’s still coming in, coopting our entire ansible bandwidth.”

“Doesn’t it occur to you,” said Ender gently, “that the message is to me, not from me?”

“From Wiggin, to Wiggin, eyes only, so deeply encrypted that none of the shipboard computers can crack it.”

“You tried to crack a secure communication addressed to a ranking officer, without first asking the permission of that officer?”

“It’s a subversive communication, boy, that’s why I tried to crack it!”

“You know it’s subversive because you can’t crack it, and you tried to crack it because you know it’s subversive,” said Ender. He kept his voice soft and cheerful. Not because he knew that it would drive Morgan crazy that Ender remained unflappable—that was just a bonus. He simply assumed that the entire exchange was being recorded to be used as evidence later, and Ender was not going to say a word or reveal an emotion that would not redound to his credit in some later court proceeding. So Morgan could be as abusive as he pleased—Ender was not going to make a single statement that could be excerpted and used to make him look subversive or angry.

“I don’t have to justify my actions to you,” said Morgan. “I brought you here and canceled your supposed play reading so that you could open the transmission in front of me.”

“Eyes only, secure communication—I’m not sure it’s proper for you to insist on watching.”

“Either you open it right now, in front of me, or you go into stasis and you never get off this ship until it returns to Eros for your court martial.”

Someone’s court martial, thought Ender, but probably not mine.

“Let me have a look at it,” said Ender. “Though I can’t promise to open it, since I have no idea what it is or who it’s from.”

“It’s from you,” said Morgan acidly. “You arranged this before you left.”

“I did not do so, Admiral Morgan,” said Ender. “I assume you have a secure access point here in your office?”

“Come around here and open it now,” said Morgan.

“I suggest you rotate the terminal, Admiral Morgan,” said Ender.

“I said come sit here!”

“Respectfully, Admiral Morgan, there will be no vid of me sitting at your desk.”

Morgan stared at him, his face growing redder again. Then he reached down and rotated the holodisplay on his desk so it faced Ender.

Ender leaned forward and poked a couple of menu choices in the holodisplay as Admiral Morgan came around behind him to watch. “Move slowly so I can see what you’re doing.”

“I’m doing nothing,” said Ender.

“Then you’re going into stasis, boy. You were never fit to be governor of anything. Just a child who’s been praised way too much and completely spoiled. Nobody on that colony is going to pay any attention to you! The only way you could ever survive as governor would be if I backed you up—and after this, you can be sure I’ll do no such thing. You’re finished in this game of let’s pretend.”

“As you wish, Admiral,” said Ender. “But I’m doing nothing with this message because there’s nothing I can do. It isn’t addressed to me and I have no way of opening a secure comm that isn’t mine.”

“Do you think I’m a fool? Your name is all over it!”

“On the outside,” said Ender, “it specifies Admiral Wiggin, which is me, because it was sent from IFCom through a secure military channel and the intended recipient has no standing in the fleet. But as soon as you open it—and this is a level of opening that your techs did immediately, I’m sure—you’ll see that the Wiggin to whom the secure portion of the message is addressed is not A. Wiggin or E. Wiggin, which would be me, but V. Wiggin, which is my sister, Valentine.”

“Your sister?”

“Didn’t your techs tell you that? And while the actual authority for the message is the Minister of Colonization himself, again, the real sender is P. Wiggin, and his title is given as Hegemon. I find that interesting. The only P. Wiggin I’m personally acquainted with is my older brother, Peter, and this would seem to imply that my brother is now Hegemon. Did you know that? I certainly didn’t. He wasn’t when I left.”

A long silence came from Admiral Morgan behind him. Ender finally turned and looked at him—again, doing his best to keep any hint of triumph from showing in his face. “I think my brother, the Hegemon, is writing a private communication to my sister, with whom he had a long collaborative relationship. Perhaps he seeks her counsel. But it has nothing to do with me. You know that I haven’t seen my brother or communicated with him in any way since I first entered Battle School at the age of six. And I only entered into communication with my sister for a few weeks before our ship was launched. I’m sorry that it tied up your communications, but as I said, I don’t know anything about it, and it has nothing to do with me.”

Morgan walked back and sat down behind his desk. “I am astonished,” said Morgan.

Ender waited.

“I am embarrassed,” said Morgan. “It seemed to me that my ship’s communications were under attack, and that the agent of this attack was Admiral Wiggin. In that light, your repeated meetings with a subset of the colonists, to which you have been inviting members of my crew, looked suspiciously like mutiny. So I treated it as mutiny. Now I find that my fundamental premise was incorrect.”

“Mutiny is a serious business,” said Ender. “Of course you were alarmed.”

“It happens that your brother is Hegemon. Word came to me a week ago. Two weeks ago. A year ago Earth time, anyway.”

“It’s perfectly all right that you didn’t tell me,” said Ender. “I’m sure you thought I would have found out by other means.”

“It did not cross my mind that this communication might be from him, and not to you.”

“It’s easy to overlook Valentine. She keeps to the background. It’s just the way she is.”

Morgan looked at Ender gratefully. “So you understand.”

I understand you’re a paranoid, power-hungry idiot, said Ender silently. “Of course I do,” said Ender.

“Do you mind if I send for your sister?”

Suddenly it was “do you mind”—but Ender had no interest in making Morgan squirm. “Please do. I’m as curious about this message as you are.”

Morgan sent an ensign to bring her, and then sat down and tried to make small talk while they waited. He told two ostensibly amusing stories from his own training days—he was never Battle School material, he came up “the hard way, through the ranks.” It was clear that he resented Battle School and the implied inferiority of anyone who wasn’t invited to attend.

Is that all this is? Ender wondered. The traditional rivalry between graduates of a service academy and those who didn’t have such a head start?

Valentine came in to find Ender laughing at Morgan’s story. “Val,” said Ender, still chuckling. “We need you to help us with something.” In a few moments he explained about the message that had preempted hours of ansible time, shutting everything else out. “It caused a lot of consternation, and naturally, Admiral Morgan has been concerned. It’ll put our minds at ease if you can open the message right here and give us some idea of what it’s about.”

“I’ll need to watch you open it,” said Morgan.

“No you won’t,” said Valentine.

They looked at each other for a long moment.

“What Valentine meant to say,” said Ender, “is that she doesn’t want you to see her actual security procedures—on a message from the Hegemon, you can understand her caution. But I’m sure that she’ll let us know the contents of the message in some readily verifiable way.” Ender looked at Valentine and gave her a mockingly cute smile and shrug. “For me, Val?”

He knew she would recognize this as a mockery of their relationship, put on entirely for Morgan’s benefit; of course she played along. “For you, Mr. Potato Head. Where’s the access?”

In moments, Valentine was sitting at the end of the desk, poking her way through the holodisplay. “Oh, this is only semi-secure,” she said. “Just a fingerprint. Anybody could have gotten into it just by cutting off my finger. I’ll have to tell Peter to use full security—retina, DNA, heartbeat—so that they have to keep me alive in order to get in. He just doesn’t value me highly enough.”

She sat there reading for a little while, then sighed. “I can’t believe what an idiot Peter is. And Graff, for that matter. There’s nothing in here that couldn’t have been sent unsecured, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t have been sent piecemeal instead of in a single uninterruptible top-priority flow. It’s just a bunch of articles and summaries and so on about events on Earth for the past couple of years. It seems that there are wars and rumors of wars.” She glanced at Ender.

He got the King James Version reference—he had memorized long passages of it as part of his strategy for dealing with a minor crisis in Battle School several years back. “Well, transmitting it certainly took time, and times, and half a time,” he said.

“I’ll need to—I’d like to see some evidence that this is what you say,” said Morgan. “You have to understand that anything that seemed to threaten the security of my ship and my mission must be verified.”

“Well, that’s the awkward thing,” said Valentine. “I’m perfectly happy to let you see the entire infodump—in fact, I suggest that it be put into the library so everyone can have access to it. It’s bound to be fascinating to people to have an idea of the things that have been happening on Earth. I can’t wait to read it myself.”

“But?” asked Ender.

“It’s the cover letter itself.” She looked genuinely embarrassed. “My brother makes slighting references to you. I hope you understand that neither Ender nor I discussed you with Peter in any way—anything he says is his own assumption. I can assure you that Ender and I hold you in the highest respect.”

With that, she rotated the holodisplay and Ender and Valentine sat silently to watch Morgan read.

At the end, he sighed, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, his forehead on his fingertips. “Well, I am embarrassed indeed.”

“Not at all,” said Ender. “A perfectly understandable mistake. I’d rather fly with a captain who takes every potential threat to his ship seriously than one who thinks that losing communications for three hours is no big deal.”

Morgan took the olive branch. “I’m glad you see it that way, Admiral Wiggin.”

“Ender,” Ender corrected him.

Valentine stood up, smiling. “So if you don’t mind, I’ll leave the whole thing unencrypted here on your desk, as long as you assure me that every speck of it will be downloaded into the library—except my brother’s personal letter.” She turned to Ender. “He says he loves me and misses me and he wants me to tell you to write to our parents. They aren’t getting any younger, and they’re very hurt not to have heard from you.”

“Yes,” said Ender. “I should have done that as soon as the ship left. But I didn’t want to take up ansible time on personal matters.” He smiled ruefully at Morgan. “And then we end up doing this, all because Peter and Graff have an inflated sense of their own importance.”

“I’ll tell my egocentric brother to send future messages a different way,” said Valentine. “I assume you won’t mind my sending such a message by ansible.”

They were heading for the door, Morgan shepherding them, full of smiles and “I’m glad you’re so understanding,” when Ender stopped.

“Oh, Admiral Morgan,” said Ender.

“Please call me Quincy.”

“Oh, I could never do that,” said Ender. “Our respective ranks allow it, but if anybody heard me address you that way, there’d be no way to erase the visual image of a teenager speaking to the captain of the ship in a way that could only seem disrespectful. I’m sure we agree on that. Nothing can undermine the authority of the captain.”

“Very wisely said,” Morgan replied. “You’re taking better care of my position than I am myself. But you wanted to say something?”

“Yes. The play reading. It really is just that—we’re reading Taming of the Shrew. I’m playing Lucentio. Val has a small part, too. Everyone was looking forward to it. And now it’s been canceled without a word of explanation.”

Morgan looked puzzled. “If it’s just a play reading, then go ahead and do it.”

“Of course we will,” said Ender, “now that we have your permission. But you see, some of the participants invited crew members to attend. And the cancellation might leave some bad feelings. Hard on morale, don’t you think? I wanted to suggest a sort of gesture from you, to show that it really was a misunderstanding. To patch up any bad feelings.”

“What sort of gesture?” asked Morgan.

“Just—when we reschedule it, why don’t you come and watch? Let them see you laughing at the comedy.”

“He could play a part,” said Valentine. “I’m sure the man playing Christopher Sly—”

“My sister is joking,” said Ender. “This is a comedy, and every part in it is beneath the dignity of the captain of the ship. I’m only suggesting that you attend. Perhaps just for the first half. You can always plead urgent business at the break halfway through. Everyone will understand. Meanwhile, though, they’ll all see that you really do care about them and what they do during this voyage. It will go a long way toward making them feel good about your leadership, during the voyage and after we arrive.”

“After we arrive?” asked Valentine.

Ender looked at her in wide-eyed innocence. “As Admiral Morgan pointed out to me during our conversation, none of the colonists will be likely to follow the leadership of a teenage boy. They’ll need to be assured that Admiral Morgan’s authority is behind whatever I do, officially, as governor. So I think that makes it all the more important that they see the admiral and get to know him, so they’ll trust him to provide strong leadership.”

Ender was afraid Valentine was going to lose control right there and either laugh or scream at him. But she did neither. “I see,” she said.

“That’s actually a good idea,” said Admiral Morgan. “Shall we go start it up?”

“Oh, no,” said Valentine. “Everybody’s too upset. Nobody will be at their best. Why not let us go smooth things over, explain that it was all a mistake and completely my fault. And then we can announce that you’re going to attend, that you’re glad the reading can go on after all, and we get a chance to perform for you. Everyone will be excited and happy. And if you can let off-duty crew come too, so much the better.”

“I don’t want anything that lessens ship’s discipline,” said Morgan.

Valentine’s answer was immediate. “If you’re right there with them, laughing at the play and enjoying it, then I can’t see that it will cause any weakening of the crew. It might even help morale. We actually do a pretty good job with the play.”

“It would mean a lot to all of us,” said Ender.

“Of course,” said Morgan. “You do that, and I’ll be there tomorrow at 1900. That was the starting time today, wasn’t it?”

Ender and Valentine made their good-byes. The officers they passed looked amazed and relieved to see them smiling and chatting comfortably as they left.

Not till they were back in the stateroom did they let down the façade, and then only long enough for Valentine to say, “He’s planning for you to be a figurehead while he rules behind the throne?”

“There’s no throne,” said Ender. “It solves a lot of problems for me, don’t you think? It was going to be tough for a fifteen-year-old kid to lead a bunch of colonists who’ve already been living and farming on Shakespeare for forty years by the time I get there. But a man like Admiral Morgan is used to giving orders and being obeyed. They’ll fall right in line under his authority.”

Valentine stared at him like he was insane. Then Ender gave that little twitch of his lower lip that had always been the giveaway that he was being ironic. He hoped she would leap to the correct conclusion—that Admiral Morgan certainly had the means of listening in on all their conversations and was bound to be using it right now, so nothing they said could be regarded as private.

“All right,” said Valentine. “If you’re happy with it, I’m happy with it.” Whereupon she did that momentary bug-eyed thing she did to let him know she was lying.

“I’m done with responsibility, Val,” said Ender. “I had quite enough in Battle School and on Eros. I intend to spend the voyage making friends and reading everything I can get my hands on.”

“And at the end, you can write an essay called ‘How I Spent My Summer Vacation.’”

“It’s always summer when your heart is full of joy,” said Ender.

“You are so full of crap,” said Valentine.

CHAPTER 10

To: PeterWiggin@hegemony.gov/hegemon

From: vwiggin%Colony1@colmin.gov/citizen

Subj: you arrogant bastard

Do you have any idea how much trouble you caused, sending that package with such high priority that it shut down all other ansible communications with our ship? Certain persons thought it was some kind of attack on the ansible link and Ender was almost put into stasis for the duration—and that would have meant there AND back again.

Once we sorted it all out, though, the package itself was very informative. Apparently you were cursed by some pseudo-Confucian to live in interesting times. Please send follow-ups. But make them low enough priority, please, that regular ship’s communications can continue. And don’t let Graff address it to Ender. It comes to me as a colonist, not to the governor-designate.

Seems to me that you’re doing all right. Though that all might have changed between your sending and my reply. Ain’t space travel grand?

Has Ender written to the parents yet? I can’t ask him (well, I HAVE asked him, but I can’t get answers) and I can’t ask THEM or they’ll know I’ve been trying to get him to write, which would hurt them all the more if he hasn’t written and discount the emotional value of his letters if he has.

Stay smart. They can’t take that away from you.

Your former puppet,
Demosthenes

Alessandra was happy when word came that the play reading was back on again. Mother had been devastated, though she showed it only to Alessandra in the privacy of their stateroom. She made a great show of not weeping, which was good, but she stalked around the tiny space, opening and closing things and slamming things and stomping her feet at every opportunity, and now and then emitting some fierce but gnomic statement like:

“Why are we always in the backwash of somebody else’s boat?”

Then, in the midst of a game of backgammon: “In the wars of men, women always lose!”

And through the bathroom door: “There is no pleasure so simple that somebody won’t take it away just to hurt you!”

In vain did Alessandra try to mollify her. “Mother, this wasn’t aimed at you, it was clearly aimed at Ender.”

Such responses always triggered a long emotional diatribe in which no amount of logic could cause Mother to change her mind—though moments later, she might have completely adopted Alessandra’s point of view after all, acting as if that’s how she had felt all along.

Yet if Alessandra didn’t answer her mother’s epigrammatic observations, the storming about got worse and worse—Mother needed a response the way other people needed air. To ignore her was to smother her. So Alessandra answered, took part in the meaningless but intense conversation, and then ignored her mother’s inability to admit that she had changed her mind even though she had.

It never seemed to occur to her mother that Alessandra herself was disappointed, that playing Bianca to Ender’s Lucentio had made her feel…what? Not love—she was definitely not in love. Ender was nice enough, but he was exactly as nice to Alessandra as to everyone else, so it was plain she was nothing special to him, and she was not interested in bestowing her affection on someone who had not first bestowed his on her. No, what Alessandra felt was glory. It was reflected, of course, from her mother’s quite stunning performance of Kate and from Ender’s fame as savior of the human race—and his notoriety as a child-killing monster, which Alessandra did not believe but which certainly added to the fascination.

All disappointment was forgotten the moment the message came through to everyone’s desk: The reading was back on for the following night, and the admiral himself would attend.

Alessandra immediately thought: The admiral? There are two admirals on this voyage, and one of them was part of the program from the start. Was this a calculated slight, that the message sounded as if only one officer held that lofty rank? The very fact that Ender had been summoned so peremptorily to see Admiral Morgan was another sign—did Ender really warrant so little respect? It made her a little angry on his behalf.

Then she told herself: I have no bond with Ender Wiggin that should make me protective of his privileges. I’ve been infected with Mother’s disease, of acting as if her plans and dreams were already real. Ender is not in love with me, any more than I am with him. There will be girls on Shakespeare when we get there; by the time he’s old enough to marry, what will I be to him?

What have I done, coming on this voyage to a place where there won’t be enough people my age to fill a city bus?

Not for the first time, Alessandra envied her mother’s ability to make herself cheerful by sheer force of will.

They dressed in their finest for the reading—not that there had been room for much in the way of clothes during the voyage. But they had spent some of their signing bonus buying clothing, before the rest got turned over to Grandmother. Most of the clothing had to meet the description on the list from the Ministry of Colonization—warm clothes for a chilly but not-too-cold winter, light-but-tough clothing for summer work, and at least one long-lasting frock for special occasions. Tonight’s reading was such an occasion—and here was where Mother had made sure that a bit of money was spent on gewgaws and accessories. They were over the top, really, and obviously costume jewelry. Then there were Mother’s bedazzling scarves, which looked almost ironically extravagant on her, but would look pathetic and needy on Alessandra. Mother was dressed to kill; Alessandra could only strive not to disappear completely in Mother’s penumbra.

They arrived just at the moment when the event was supposed to begin. Alessandra immediately rushed to her stool at the front, but Mother made a slow progress, greeting everyone, touching everyone, bestowing her smiles on everyone. Except one.

Admiral Morgan was seated in the second row, with a few officers around him, insulating him from any contact with the public—it was so obvious he considered himself a breed apart and wanted no contact with mere colonists. That was the privilege of rank, and Alessandra did not begrudge it. She rather wished she had the power to create a cordon around herself to keep unwanted persons from intruding into her privacy.

To Alessandra’s horror, once Mother got down front, she continued her grand progress by passing along the front row of seats, greeting people there—and in the second row as well. She was going to try to force Admiral Morgan to speak to her!

But no, Mother’s plan was even worse. She made a point of introducing herself to—and flirting with—the officers on either side of the admiral. But she did not so much as pause in front of Morgan himself; it was as if he didn’t exist. A snub! Of the most powerful man in their little world!

Alessandra could hardly bear to look at Morgan’s face, yet could not bring herself to look away, either. At first, he had watched Mother’s approach with resignation—he was going to have to speak to this woman. But when Mother passed right over him, his barely contained sneer gave way to consternation and then to seething anger. Mother had indeed made an enemy. What was she thinking? How could this help anything?

But it was time to begin. The leading actors were seated on stools; the rest were on the front row, prepared to stand and face the audience when their parts came. Mother finally made her way to the stool in the center of the stage. Before sitting, she looked out over the audience beneficently and said, “Thank you so much for coming to our little performance. The play is set in Italy, where my daughter and I were born. But it is written in English, which comes to us only as a second language. My daughter is fluent, but I am not. So if I mispronounce, remember that Katharina was Italian, and in English she too would have my same accent.”

It was all said with Mother’s trademark glow, her light-and-happy air. What had become so annoying to Alessandra that there were times she wanted to scream in rage when she heard it now seemed absolutely charming, and her little speech was answered by the rest of the colonists and crew with chuckles and some applause. And the actor playing Petruchio—who had an obvious crush on Mother, despite his having brought along a wife and four children—even said, “Brava! Brava!”

The play thus began with all eyes on Mother, even though she didn’t enter until the second act. Through sidelong glances, Alessandra could see that Mother was in a perfect trance of self-absorption during the scenes in which the men did all the exposition and made their bargain with Petruchio. As the other actors repeatedly mentioned beautiful Bianca and monstrous Katharina, Alessandra could see how Mother’s pose was working—as her reputation grew, the audience would keep glancing at her and would find perfect stillness.

But that would not be right for Bianca, thought Alessandra. She remembered something Ender had said during their last rehearsal. “Bianca is perfectly aware of the effect she has on men.” So where Katharina should be as still as Mother made her, Bianca’s job was to be bright, happy, desirable. So Alessandra smiled and glanced away as the men spoke of beautiful Bianca, as if she were blushing and shy. It did not matter that Alessandra was not beautiful—as Mother always taught her, the plainest of women became movie stars because of how they presented themselves, unashamed of their worst features. What Alessandra could never do in real life—greet the world with an open smile—she could do as Bianca.

Then it dawned on her for the first time. Mother is not able to change her mood by simply deciding to be happy. No, she’s an actress. She has always been an actress. She merely acts happy for the audience. I have been her audience all my life. And even when I didn’t applaud her show, she put it on for me all the same; and now I see why. Because Mother knew that when she was in her fairy-dancing mode, it was impossible to look at or think about anything else but her.

Now, though, the fairy queen was gone, and in her place just the queen: Mother, regal and still, letting the peons and courtiers talk, for she knew that when she wanted to, she could blow them all off the stage with a breath.

And so it was. It came time for act II, scene i, when Katharina is supposedly dragging Bianca about, her hands tied. Alessandra made herself melting and sweet, pleading with her mother to let her go, swearing that she loved no one, while Mother railed at her, so on fire with inner rage that it really frightened Alessandra, for a moment at least. Even in rehearsal Mother had not been so vehement. Alessandra doubted that Mother had been holding back before—Mother was not skilled at holding back. No, the special fire came because of the audience.

But not the whole audience, it became apparent as the scenes progressed. All of Katharina’s lines about the unfairness of her father and the stupidity of men were invariably shot directly at Admiral Morgan! It wasn’t just Alessandra’s imagination. Everybody could see it, and the audience at first tittered, then laughed outright as barb after barb was directed, not just at the characters in the play, but also at the man sitting in the middle of the second row.

Only Morgan himself seemed oblivious; apparently, with Mother’s eyes directly upon him, he merely thought that the performance, not the meaning of the words, was aimed at him.

The play went well. Oh, the Lucentio scenes were as boring as ever—not Ender’s fault, really, Lucentio was simply not one of the funny roles. It was a fate that Bianca shared, so Alessandra and Ender were designed only to be a “sweet couple” while the focus of attention—of laughter and of romance—was entirely on Katharina and Petruchio. Which meant, despite the best efforts of a pretty good Petruchio, that all eyes were on Mother. He would be shouting, but it was her face, her reactions that got the laughs. Her hunger, her sleepiness, her despair, and finally her playful acquiescence when Katharina finally understands and begins to play along with Petruchio’s mad game, all were fully communicated by Mother’s face, her posture, her tone when she spoke.

Mother is brilliant, Alessandra realized. Absolutely brilliant. And she knows it. No wonder she suggested a play reading!

And then another thought: If Mother could do this, why wasn’t she an actress? Why didn’t she become a star of stage or screen and let us live in wealth?

The answer, she realized, was simple: It was Alessandra’s birth when Mother was only fifteen.

Mother conceived me when she was exactly the age I am now, Alessandra realized. She fell in love and gave herself to a man—a boy—and produced a child. It was unbelievable to Alessandra, since she herself had never felt any kind of passion for any of the boys at school.

Father must have been remarkable.

Or Mother must have been desperate to get away from Grandmother. Which was far more likely to be the truth. Instead of waiting a few more years and becoming a great actress, Mother married and set up house-keeping and had this baby—not in that order—and because she had me, she was never able to use this talent to make her way in the world.

We could have been rich!

And now what? Off to a colony, a place of farmers and weavers and builders and scientists, with no time for art. There’ll be no leisure in the colony, the way there is on the ship during the voyage. When will Mother ever have a chance to show what she can do?

The play neared the end. Valentine played the widow with surprising wit and verve—she absolutely understood the part, and not for the first time Alessandra wished she could be a genius and a beauty like Valentine. Yet something else overshadowed that wish—for the first time in Alessandra’s life, she actually envied her mother, and wished she could be more like her. Unthinkable, yet true.

Mother stepped away from her stool and delivered her soliloquy straight to the front—straight to Admiral Morgan—speaking of the duty a woman owes to a man. Just as all her barbs had been aimed at Morgan, now this speech—this sweet, submissive, graceful, heartfelt, love-filled homily—was spoken straight into Morgan’s eyes.

And Morgan was riveted. His mouth was slightly open, his eyes never wavered from full attention on Mother. And when she knelt and said “my hand is ready, may it do him ease,” there were tears in Morgan’s eyes. Tears!

Petruchio roared his line: “Why there’s a wench! Come on and kiss me, Kate!”

Mother rose gracefully to her feet, not attempting to pantomime a kiss, but rather showing the face that a woman shows to her lover when she is about to kiss him—and her eyes, yet again, were directly on Morgan’s.

Now Alessandra understood Mother’s game. She was making Morgan fall in love with her!

And it worked. When the last lines were spoken and the audience stood and cheered for them all as the readers bowed and curtseyed, Morgan literally stepped onto the first row of seats so that as the applause continued, he walked onto the stage and shook Mother’s hand. Shook it? No, seized it and simply would not let it go, while talking to her about how wonderful she was.

Mother’s aloofness, her snub of him at the beginning, was all part of the plan. She was the shrew, punishing him for his presumption in canceling their reading; but by the end, she was tamed; she belonged to him completely.

All that evening, as Morgan invited everyone to the officers’ mess—where previously he had absolutely forbidden the colonists to go—he hovered around Mother. It was so obvious he was smitten that several of the officers mentioned it, obliquely, to Alessandra. “Your mother seems to have melted the great stone heart,” said one. And she overheard two officers speaking to each other, when one of them said, “Am I mistaken, or are his pants already coming off?”

If they thought that would happen, they didn’t know Mother. Alessandra had lived through years of Mother’s advice about men. Don’t let them this, don’t let them that—tease, hint, promise, but they get nothing at all until they have made their vows. Mother had done it the other way in her youth, and paid for it the past fifteen years. Now she would surely follow her own sadder-but-wiser advice and seduce this man with words and smiles only. She wanted him besotted, not satisfied.

Oh, Mother, what a game you’re playing.

Do you really…is it possible…are you really attracted to him? He’s a good-looking man, in military trim. And around you he is not cold at all, not aloof; or if he is, he includes you in his lofty place.

One telling moment: As he was talking to someone else—one of the few officers who had brought a wife along—Morgan’s hand came to rest on Mother’s shoulder, a light embrace. But Mother instantly reached up, removed the hand, but then turned at the same moment to speak to Morgan with a warm smile, making a little joke of some kind, because everyone laughed. The message was mixed, yet clear: Touch me not, thou mortal, but yes, I will bestow this smile on you.

You are mine, but I am not yet yours.

This is what Mother meant for me to do with Ender Wiggin, my supposed “young man with prospects.” But I could no more come to own a man that way than I could fly. I will always be the supplicant, never the seducer; always grateful, never gracious.

Ender came up to her. “Your mother was brilliant tonight,” he said.

Of course that’s what he said. That’s whateveryone was saying.

“But I know something they don’t know,” he said.

“What’s that?” asked Alessandra.

“I know that the only reason my performance was good at all was because of you. All of us who played the suitors of Bianca, all that comedy, everything rested on the audience believing that we would yearn for you. And you were so lovely, no one doubted it for a moment.”

He smiled at her and then walked away to rejoin his sister.

Leaving Alessandra gasping.

CHAPTER 11

To: vwiggin%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy ==PosIDreq

From: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy

Subj: How clean is your desk?

My desk is completely tamper-proof—though the ship’s computer tries to install snoops many times a day. Also, I’m assuming every room, corridor, toilet, and cupboard on this ship is wired at least for sound. On a voyage like this, with no outsider force to buttress the captain’s authority, the danger of mutiny is ever present, and it is not paranoia for Morgan to monitor all conversations of people he thinks pose a danger to the ship’s internal security.

It is unfortunate but predictable that he would regard me as such a danger. I have authority that does not depend in any way on him or his good wishes. His threat to have me put in stasis and returned to Eros—eighty years from now—is one that he can, in fact, carry out, and even though he might be censured it would not be regarded as a criminal act. There is a strong presumption that the captain of a ship is always to be believed when he makes a charge of mutiny or conspiracy. It is dangerous for me even to encrypt this message. However, there is no other safe way for us to talk. (You’ll notice that unlike Peter, I required proof that you be alive, not just your finger inserted into holospace.)

I am doing things that are certainly driving Quincy crazy. I get almost daily (monthly) messages from Acting Governor Kolmogorov, keeping me abreast of events in Shakespeare Colony as they transpire. Morgan has no idea what we say to each other; he simply has to pass along the encrypted notes when they come through the ansible.

I also get all the scientific papers and reports filed by the chem and bio teams. XB Sel Menach is the Linnaeus and Darwin of this planet. He is facing the ONLY non-formic-homeworld biota yet discovered (besides Earth’s, of course), and he has done a brilliant job of making the genetic adaptations that create human-edible varieties of native plants and animals, and varieties of Earth species that can thrive on this world. Without him, we would probably be coming to a ragged and destitute colony; instead, they generate surpluses of food and will be able to resupply this ship for immediate departure (inshallah).

All of this scientific information is available to Admiral Morgan, if he’s interested. He seems not to be. I am the only person who is accessing the Shakespeare Colony XB papers on this ship, since our XBs are in stasis and won’t wake up until we drop from relativistic speeds.

You can see why I chose not to go into stasis—I had visions of Admiral Morgan not bothering to rouse me until he was firmly in control of the colony, say six months after arrival. It wouldn’t have been within his rights, but it would certainly have been in his power. And who is to contradict him, with his forty marines whose sole duty is to make sure his will is uncontested, and a crew whose survival and freedom are tied to his pleasure?

Now, though, anything I do is a potential provocation—that’s what he made very clear with his actions and threats. I don’t think that was his purpose—I think he really believed he was facing some kind of attack. But he was too hasty to leap to the conclusion that I was responsible for it, and he was paranoid enough to try to resolve it as if it were an attack on his authority, rather than on the ship itself. We are on notice, and not a word can pass between us that mocks him, denigrates him, or questions his decisions.

Nor can we trust anyone else. While Governor Kolmogorov is completely in my confidence (and vice versa), no one else on the planet can be trusted to agree that having a fifteen-year-old boy as their governor is a good idea. Therefore I can take no preemptive actions using my future authority as governor. So my only alternative is to appear as if I really look up to Quincy in a fatherly way, and intend to be guided by him in every way. When you see me sucking up shamelessly, it is the moral equivalent of war. I am passing an army under his nose, masquerading as a bunch of simple farmers. That you and I are the entire army is not a problem for me—as long as you’re willing to pretend to be all innocence. You and Peter were doing that for years, weren’t you?

This letter is not going to be followed by many others—only in a real emergency. I don’t want him wondering what we’re saying to each other. He has the right to seize our desks and force us to disclose all contents. Therefore, you will eradicate this message, as will I. Of course, I AM taking the precaution of copying it, fully secure, to Graff. In case there is someday a court martial determining whether Morgan was right to put me in stasis and take me back to Eros, I want this to be available as evidence of my state of mind after our little incident over Peter’s message.

There is always the chance, however, that Morgan’s plan is even more dire—that he plans to send the ship back rather than taking it, while he remains on Shakespeare as governor-for-life. By the time anyone from Eros can be sent to put down his rebellion, he will have finished out his lifespan or be so old as to be not worth prosecuting.

However, I do not believe that is in his character. He is a creature of bureaucracy—he wants supremacy, not autonomy. Also, my judgment of him so far is that he can only do perfidious acts that he can morally justify in his own mind. Thus he must work himself into a frenzy over my supposed sabotage of ansible communications in order to justify what would have amounted to a coup d’etat against me as governor.

This only refers to what he consciously plans, not what he unconsciously desires. That is, he will think that he is responding to events as they unfold, but in fact he will be interpreting events to justify actions that he wants to take—even though he does not know he wants to take them. Thus when we arrive on Shakespeare, there is always the chance that he will find there’s an “emergency” that requires him to stay longer than the ship can stay, “forcing” him to send it back and remain behind.

The need to understand Quincy is why I am remaining so close to the Toscanos. The mother is clearly betting on Quincy rather than me as the future power, though in her mind she is no doubt merely hedging her bets, to make sure that no matter who governs, either she or her daughter will be married to the powerful figure.

But the mother has no intention of letting her daughter out from under her thumb, as she would be if we married and I actually become governor in fact as well as name. So, deliberately or not, the mother will be my enemy in this; however, at present she is my best guide to Quincy’s state of mind, since she is with him as often as possible. I must get to know this man. Our future depends on knowing what he is going to do before he does it.

Meanwhile, you have no idea what a relief it is to me that there is someone who shares this with me. In all my years in Battle School, the closest I came to having a confidant was Bean. Yet I could only burden him up to a certain point; this letter is my first exercise in genuine candor since I talked to you on the lake in North Carolina so long ago.

Oh, wait. It was only three years. Less? Time is so confusing. Thank you for being with me, Valentine. I only hope that I can keep it from being a meaningless exercise that takes us back to Eros in stasis, with eighty years of human history gone and absolutely nothing accomplished except my being defeated by a bureaucrat.

Ender

What Virlomi hadn’t counted on was the way it would affect her, returning to Battle School after all that she had been through, all that she had done.

She turned herself over to her enemies when she could see there was nothing left to the war but slaughter. She knew with a sinking desperation in her heart that it was all her fault. She had been warned, by friends and would-be friends: This is too much. It was enough to drive the Chinese out of India and liberate your homeland. Don’t seek to punish them.

She had been the same kind of fool that Napoleon and Hitler and Xerxes and Hannibal had been: She thought that because she had never been defeated, she could not be. She had bested enemies with far greater strength than hers; she thought she always would.

Worst of all, she told herself, I believed my own legend. I had deliberately cultivated the notion of myself as goddess, but at first I remembered that I was pretending.

In the end, it was the Free People of Earth—the FPE, Peter Wiggin’s Hegemony under a new name—that defeated her. It was Suriyawong, a Thai from Battle School who had once loved her, who arranged her surrender. At first she refused—but she could see that the only difference between surrendering now and waiting until all her men had died was her pride. And her pride was not worth the life of a single soldier.

“Satyagraha,” Suriyawong said to her. “Bear what must be born.”

Satyagraha was her final cry to her people. I command you to live and bear this.

So she saved the life of her armies and surrendered her own body to Suriyawong. And, through him, to Peter Wiggin.

Wiggin, who had shown mercy to her in his victory. That was more than his little brother, the legendary Ender, had shown to the formics. Had they, too, seen in him the hand of death, repudiating them? Had they any gods, to pray to or resign themselves to or curse as they saw their destruction? Perhaps they had it easier, to be obliterated from the universe.

Virlomi remained alive. They could not kill her—she was still worshiped throughout India; if they executed her or imprisoned her, India would be a continuous revolution, impossible to govern. If she simply disappeared, she would become a legend of the goddess who left and would someday return.

So she made the vids they asked her to make. She begged her people to vote to freely join the Free People of Earth, to accept the rule of the Hegemon, to demobilize and dismantle their army, and in return, to have the freedom to govern themselves.

Han Tzu did the same for China, and Alai, once her husband until she betrayed him, did so for the Muslim world. More or less, it worked.

All of them accepted exile. But Virlomi knew that only she deserved it.

Their exile consisted of being made governors of colonies. Ah, if only I had been appointed when Ender Wiggin was, and had never returned to Earth to shed so much blood! Yet it was only because she had so spectacularly won India’s freedom from an overwhelming Chinese army, had united an ununitable country, that she was deemed capable of governing. Only because of the monstrous things I did, she thought, am I being entrusted with the foundation of a new world.

In her captivity on Earth—months spent in Thai and then Brazilian custody, watched over but never mistreated—she had begun to chafe and wish she could leave the planet and begin her new life.

What she hadn’t counted on was that the new staging area was the space station that once was Battle School.

It was like waking up from a vivid dream and finding herself in the place of her childhood. The corridors were unchanged; the color-coded lights along the walls still did their service, guiding colonists to their dormitories. The barracks had been changed, of course—the colonists were not going to put up with the crowding and regimentation that the Battle School students had endured. Nor was there any nonsense about a game in zero gee. If the battleroom was being used for anything, they didn’t tell her.

But the mess halls were there, both the officers’ and soldiers’—though she ate now in the one that she had never entered as a student, the teachers’ dining room. Her own colonists were not allowed there; it was her place of refuge from them. In their place, she was surrounded by Graff’s people of the Ministry of Colonization. They were discreet, leaving her alone, which she was grateful for; they were aloof, keeping away from her, which she resented. Opposite responses, opposite assumptions about their motives; she knew they were being kind but it still hurt as if she were a leper, kept apart. If she wanted friendship, she could probably have it; they were probably waiting for her to let them know whether she would welcome their conversation. She longed for human company. But she never crossed the short space between her table and anyone else’s. She ate alone. Because she did not believe she merited any human society.

What galled her was the worshipful way the colonists treated her. When she had been a student in Battle School, she was merely ordinary. Being a girl made her different, and she had to struggle to hold her own—but she was no Ender Wiggin, no legend. She wasn’t much of a leader. That would come later, when she was back in India, with people she understood, blood of her blood.

The problem was that these colonists were overwhelmingly Indian. They had volunteered for the colonization program precisely because Virlomi would be the governor of the colony—several of them told her that they had competed in a lottery for the chance to come. When she went among them, to talk to them, get to know them, she found it nearly futile. They were in such awe of her they became tongue-tied, or when they managed to speak, their words were so formal, their language so lofty, that there was no chance of real communication.

They all acted as if they thought they were talking to a goddess.

I did my work too well during the war, she told herself. To Indians, defeat was not a sign of the disfavor of the gods. What mattered was how she bore it. And she could not help it—she kept her dignity, and to them she seemed godlike because of it.

Maybe this will make it easier to govern them. Or maybe it will make the day of their disillusionment a terrible thing to behold.

A group of colonists from Hyderabad came to her with a petition. “The planet has been named Ganges, for the holy river,” they said, “and that is right. But can we not also remember the many of us from the south? We speak Telugu, not Hindi or Urdu. Can we not have a part of this new colony that belongs to us?”

Virlomi answered them in fluent Telugu—she had learned it because she could not have fully united India if she spoke only Hindi and English—and told them that she would do what the colonists allowed her to do.

It was the first test of her leadership. She went among the people and asked them, dormitory by dormitory, whether they would accept naming the village they would build in the new world “Andhra,” after the province whose capital was Hyderabad.

Everyone agreed with her proposal instantly. The world would be named Ganges, but the first village would be Andhra.

“Our language must be Common,” she said. “This breaks my heart, to submerge the beautiful languages of India, but we must all be able to speak to each other with one voice, one language. Your children must learn Common in their homes, as the first language. You may also teach them Hindi or Telugu or any other language, but Common first.”

“The language of the Raj,” said one old man. Immediately the other colonists shouted at him to be respectful to Virlomi.

But Virlomi only laughed. “Yes,” she said. “The language of the Raj. Conquered once by the British, and again by the Hegemony. But it is the language we all have in common. We of India because the British ruled us for so long, and then we did so much business with America; the non-Indians because it is a requirement to speak Common or you cannot come on this voyage.”

The old man laughed with her. “So you remember,” he said. “We have a longer history with this so-called ‘Common’ than anyone but the English and the Americans themselves.”

“We have always been able to learn the languages of our conquerors and then make them our own. Our literature becomes their literature, and theirs becomes ours. We speak it our own way, and think our own thoughts behind their words. We are who we are. Nothing changes.”

This was how she spoke to the Indian colonists. But there were others, about a fifth of the colonists, who were not from India. Some had chosen her because she was famous, and her struggle for freedom had captured their imagination. She was the creator of the Great Wall of India, after all, and so they thought of her as a celebrity and sought after her for that reason.

But there were others who were assigned to Ganges Colony by the luck of the draw. It was Graff’s decision, to allow no more than four-fifths of the colonists to come from India. His memo had been concise: “There may come a day when colonies can be founded by one group alone. But the law of these first colonies is that all humans are equal citizens. We are taking a risk letting you have so many Indians. Only the political realities in India made me bend from the normal policy of no more than one-fifth from any one nation. As it is, we have now demands from Kenyans and Darfurians and Kurds and Quechua speakers and Mayans and other groups that feel the need for a homeland that is exclusively their own. Since we’re giving one to Virlomi’s Indians, why not to them? Do they need to fight a bloody war in order to…etc., etc. That is why I have to be able to point to the twenty percent who are not Indian, and why I need to know that you will in fact make them equal citizens.”

Yes, yes, Colonel Graff, you will have it all your way. Even after we arrive on Ganges and you are lightyears away and can no longer influence what we do, I will keep my word to you and encourage intermarriage and equal treatment and will insist on English—pardon me, Common—as the language of all.

But despite my best efforts, the twenty percent will be swallowed up. In six generations, five generations, three perhaps, visitors will come to Ganges and find blond and redheaded Indians, freckled white skins and ebony black skins, African faces and Chinese faces and yet they will all say, “I am Indian,” and treat you with scorn if you insist that they are not.

Indian culture is too strong for anyone to control. I ruled India by bowing to Indian ways, by fulfilling Indian dreams. Now I will lead Ganges Colony—the village of Andhra—by teaching the Indians to pretend to be tolerant of the others, even as they befriend them and bring them inside our ways. They will soon realize that on this strange new world, we Indians will be the natives, and the others the interlopers, until they “go native” and become part of us. It can’t be helped. This is human nature combined with Indian stubbornness and patience.

Still, Virlomi made it a point of reaching out to the non-Indians here in Battle School—here on the Way Station.

They accepted her well enough. Now her fluency in Battle School Common and its slang stood her in good stead. After the war, Battle School slang had caught on with children all over the world, and she was fluent in it. It intrigued the children and young people, and amused the adults. It made her more approachable to them, not so much of a celebrity.

In the barracks—no, the dormitory—that used to be for newly arrived students—launchies, as they were called—there was one woman with a babe in arms who remained steadfastly aloof. Virlomi was content with that—she didn’t have to be everyone’s favorite person—but soon it became clear, as she visited that barracks more and more, that Nichelle Firth was not just shy or aloof, she was actively hostile.

Virlomi became fascinated by her and tried to find out more about her. But the biography in her file was so sparse that it made Virlomi suspect it was bogus; there were several like that, belonging to people who were joining the colony specifically to leave all their past, even their identity, behind them.

There was no talking to the woman directly, however. Her face became a pleasant blank and she answered succinctly or not at all; when she chose not to answer, she smiled with a set jaw, so that despite the toothy grin Virlomi was aware of the anger behind it. She did not push the matter further.

But she did watch for Nichelle’s reactions to things Virlomi and others said when Nichelle was within earshot, but not part of the group. What seemed to set her off, what made her huffy in her body language, was any mention of the Hegemony or Peter Wiggin or the wars on Earth or the Free People of Earth or the Ministry of Colonization. Also the names of Ender Wiggin, Graff, Suriyawong, and, above all, Julian Delphiki—“Bean”—seemed to make her hold tightly to her baby and start to whisper some sort of incantation to the child.

Virlomi introduced some of these names herself, as a test. Nichelle Firth was certainly not someone who had taken part in the war in any way—her picture got no response from Peter’s staff when she sent an inquiry. Yet she seemed to take the events of recent history quite personally.

Only toward the end of the preparation period did it occur to her to try one other name. She worked it into a conversation with a pair of Belgians, but made sure they were near enough to Nichelle that she could hear them. “Achilles Flandres,” she said, referring to him as the most famous Belgian in recent history. Of course they were offended and denied that he was really Belgian, but while she was smoothing things over with them, she was also watching Nichelle.

Her reaction was strong, yes, and at first glance seemed to be the same as always—hold the baby close, nuzzle it, speak to it.

But then Virlomi realized: She was not stiff. She was not huffy. Instead she was tender with the child. She was gentle and seemed happy. She was smiling.

And she was whispering the name “Achilles Flandres” over and over.

This was so disturbing that Virlomi wanted to go over to her and scream at her: How dare you venerate the name of that monster!

But she was too keenly aware of her own monstrous deeds. There were differences between her and Achilles, yes, but there were similarities, too, and it was not wise of her to condemn him too vehemently. So the woman felt some affinity for him. What of that?

Virlomi left the barracks then and searched again. No record of Achilles ever being in a place where he might have met this definitely American woman. Virlomi could not imagine her speaking French, not even badly. She didn’t seem educated enough—like most Americans, she would have only the one language, spoken raggedly but loudly. The baby could not possibly be Achilles’.

But she had to check. The woman’s behavior pointed so clearly toward that possibility.

She did not allow Firth mother-and-child to go into stasis and be stowed on the ship until she got back the results of a comparison between the baby’s genetic print and the records of Achilles Flandres’s genes.

No match. He could not possibly be the father.

All right then, thought Virlomi. The woman is strange. She’ll be a problem. But not one that can’t be handled with time. Far away from Earth, whatever it was that made her such a devotee of the monster will fade. She will accept the pressure of the friendship of others.

Or she won’t, and then her offense will be self-punishing, as she earns ostracism from those whose friendship she refused. Either way, Virlomi would deal with it. How much trouble can one woman be, out of thousands of colonists? It’s not as if Nichelle Firth was any kind of leader. No one would follow her. She would amount to nothing.

Virlomi gave orders clearing the Firths for stasis. But because of the delay, they were still there when Graff came in person to speak to those who were going to be awake during the voyage. It was only about a hundred colonists—most of them preferred the sleeping option—and Graff’s job was to make clear to them that it was the ship’s captain who ruled absolutely, and to impress on them the captain’s almost unlimited powers of punishment. “You will do whatever you are asked to do by a crew member, and you will do it instantly.”

“Or what?” asked someone.

Graff did not take umbrage—the voice sounded more frightened than challenging. “The captain’s power extends to life and death. Depending on the seriousness of the infraction. And he is the sole judge of how serious your offense is. There are no appeals. Am I clear?”

Everyone understood. A few of them even took the last-minute option to travel in stasis—not because they intended to mutiny, but because they didn’t like the idea of being cooped up for years with someone who had that kind of power over them.

When the meeting ended, there was a tremendous amount of noise and bustle, as some headed for the table where last-minute stasis could be arranged, and others headed for their dormitories, and a few gathered around Graff—the celebrity hounds, of course, since he was almost as famous, in his own way, as Virlomi, and he hadn’t been available till now.

Virlomi was making her way to the stasis sign-up table when she heard a loud noise—many gasps and exclamations at once—from the people around Graff. She looked over but couldn’t see what was going on. Graff was just standing there, smiling at somebody, and seemed perfectly normal. Only the glances—glares, really—of a few of the bystanders drew her eye to the woman huffing her way out of the room, clearly coming from Graff’s little crowd.

It was Nichelle Firth, of course, holding her dear little infant Randall.

Well, whatever she had done, apparently it didn’t bother Graff, though it bothered other people.

Still, it was a worry that Nichelle had sought out an opportunity to confront Graff. Her hostility led to action; bad news.

Why hasn’t she been openly hostile to me? I’m just as famous as…

Famous, but why? Because the Hegemony defeated me and took me into captivity. And the enemies arrayed against me? Suriyawong. Peter Wiggin. The whole civilized world along with them. Pretty much the same list that opposed and hated Achilles Flandres.

No wonder she volunteered for my colony, and not one of the others. She thinks that I’m a kindred soul, having been beaten by the same foes. She doesn’t understand—or at least she didn’t when she signed up for my colony—that I agree with those who defeated me, that I was wrong and needed to be stopped. I am not Achilles. I am not like Achilles.

If the goddess wanted to punish Virlomi for having impersonated her to gain power and unite India, there would be no surer way than this: to have everyone think she was like Achilles—and like her for it.

Fortunately, Nichelle Firth was only one person, and nobody liked her because she liked nobody. Whatever her opinions were, they would not affect Virlomi.

I keep reassuring myself of that, thought Virlomi. Does that mean that in the deepest recesses of my mind, this woman’s strange opinions are already affecting me?

Of course it does.

Satyagraha. This, too, I will bear.

CHAPTER 12

To: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy

From: MinCol@ColMin.gov

Subj: Strange encounter

Dear Ender,

Yes, I’m still alive. I’ve been going into stasis for ten months out of each year so that I can see this project through. This is only possible because I have a staff that I literally trust with my life. Actuarial tables suggest that I will still be alive when you reach Shakespeare.

I’m writing to you now, however, because you were close to Bean. I have attached documentation concerning his genetic illness. We know now that Bean’s real name was Julian Delphiki; he was kidnapped as a frozen embryo and was the sole survivor of an illegal genetic experiment. The alteration in his genes made him extraordinarily intelligent. Alas, it also affected his growth pattern. Very small in childhood—the Bean you knew. No growth spurt at puberty. Just a steady onward progress until death from giantism. Bean, not wishing to be hospitalized and pathetic at the end of his life, has embarked on a lightspeed voyage of exploration. He will live as long as he lives, but to all intents and purposes, he is gone from Earth and from the human race.

I don’t know if anyone has told you, but Bean and Petra married. Despite Bean’s fear that any children he might have would inherit his condition, they fertilized nine eggs—because they were hoaxed, alas, by a doctor who claimed he could repair the genetic malady in the children. Petra gave birth to one, but the other eight embryos were kidnapped—echoing what happened to Bean himself as an embryo—and implanted in surrogates who did not know the source of their babies. After a search both deep and wide, we found seven of the lost babies. The last was never found. Till now.

I say this because of a strange encounter earlier today. I’m at Ellis Island—our nickname for what used to be Battle School. All the colonists pass through here to be sorted out and sent on to wherever their ship is being sorted out—Eros is too far away in its orbit right now to be convenient, so we’re refitting and launching the ships from closer in.

I was giving an orientation lecture, full of my usual wit and wisdom, to a group that was going to Ganges Colony. Afterward, a woman came up to me—American, by her accent—carrying a baby. She said nothing. She just spat on my shoe and walked on.

Naturally, this piqued my interest—I’m a sucker for a flirtatious woman. I looked her up. Which is to say, I had one of my friends on Earth do a thorough background check on her. It turns out that her colony name is a phony—not that unusual, and we don’t care, you can be whoever you want to be, as long as you’re not a child molester or serial killer. In her previous life, she was married to a grocery store assistant manager who was completely sterile. So the boy she has with her is not her ex-husband’s—again, not that unusual. What’s unusual is that it also isn’t hers.

I am about to confess something that I’m somewhat ashamed of. I promised Bean and Petra that no record of their children’s genetic prints would remain anywhere. But I kept a copy of the record we used in the search for the children, on the chance that someday I might run into the last missing child.

Somehow, this woman, Randi Johnson (nee Alba), now known as Nichelle Firth, was implanted with Bean’s and Petra’s missing child. This child is afflicted with Bean’s genetic giantism. He will be brilliant, but he will die in his twenties (or earlier) of growth that simply does not stop.

And he is being raised by a woman who, for some reason, thinks it is important to spit on me. I am not personally offended by this, but I am interested, because this action makes me suspect that, unlike the other surrogates, she may have some knowledge of whose child she bore. Or, more likely, she might have been told false stories. In any event, I cannot quiz her on this because by the time I secured this information, she was gone.

She is going to Ganges Colony, which, like yours, is headed by a young Battle School graduate. Virlomi was not as young as you when she left—she had had enough years on Earth post–Battle School to become the savior of India under Chinese occupation, and then the instigator of an ill-fated (and ill-planned) invasion of China. She became quite the self-destructive fanatic by the end of her rise to power, believing her own propaganda. She is back to sanity now, and instead of trying to decide whether to honor her for the liberation of her own people or condemn her for the invasion of the nation of their oppressors, she has been made the head of a colony that, for the first time, takes into account the culture of origin on Earth. Most of the colonists are Indians of the Hindu persuasion—but not all.

Bean’s son will be brilliant—like his father, plus his mother. And Randi may be feeding him with stories that will bend his character in awkward ways.

Why am I telling you all this? Because Ganges Colony is our first effort at colonizing a world that was NOT originally a formic possession. They are traveling at a slightly smaller fraction of lightspeed, so they will not arrive until the XBs have a chance to do their work and have the planet ready for colonization.

If you are happy governing Shakespeare and wish to spend the rest of your life there, then this information will not be of any particular interest to you. But if, after a few years, you decide that government is not your metier, I would ask you to travel by courier to Ganges. Of course, the colony will not even be established by the time you have spent five (or even ten) years on Shakespeare. And the voyage to Ganges will be of such a distance that you can leave Shakespeare and reach Ganges within fourteen (or nineteen) years of its founding. At that point, the boy (named Randall Firth) will be adult size—no, larger—and may be so shockingly brilliant that Virlomi has no chance of keeping him from being a danger to the peace and safety of the colony. Or he may already be the dictator. Or the freely elected governor that saved them from Virlomi’s madness. Or he might already be dead. Or a complete nonentity. Who knows?

Again: The choice is yours. I have no claim upon you; Bean and Petra have no claim upon you. But if it should be interesting to you, more interesting than remaining on Shakespeare, this would be a place where you could go and perhaps help a young governor, Virlomi, who is brilliant but also prone to the occasional very poor decision.

Alas, it’s all a pig in a poke. By the time you would have to leave Shakespeare with time enough to be effective on Ganges, the Ganges colonists won’t even have debarked from their ship! We might be sending you to a colony with no problems at all and therefore nothing for you to do.

Thus you see how I plan for things that can’t be planned for. But sometimes I’m oh so glad that I did. But if you decide you want no part of my plans from now on, I will understand better than anyone!

Your friend,
Hyrum Graff

PS: On the chance that your captain has not informed you, five years after you left, the I.F. agreed with my urgent request and launched a series of couriers, one departing every five years, to each of the colonies. These ships are not the huge behemoths that carry colonists, but they have room for some serious cargo and we are hoping they become the instrument of trade among the colonies. Our endeavor will be to have a ship call on each colony world every five years—but then they will travel colony to colony and return to Earth only after making a full circuit. The crews will have the option of completing the whole voyage, or training their replacements on any colony world and remaining behind while someone else completes their mission. Thus no one will be trapped on any one world for their whole life, and no one will be trapped in the same spaceship for the rest of their life. As you can guess, we did not lack for volunteers.

Vitaly Kolmogorov lay in bed, waiting to die and getting rather impatient about it.

“Don’t hurry things,” said Sel Menach. “It sets a bad example.”

“I’m not hurrying anything. I’m just feeling impatient. I have a right to feel what I feel, I think!”

“And a right to think what you think, I feel,” said Sel.

“Oh, now he develops a sense of humor.”

“You’re the one who decided this was your deathbed, not me,” said Sel. “Black humor seems appropriate, though.”

“Sel, I asked you to visit me for a reason.”

“To depress me.”

“When I’m dead, the colony will need a governor.”

“There’s a governor coming from Earth, isn’t there?”

“Technically, from Eros.”

“Ah, Vitaly, we all come from Eros.”

“Very funny, and very classical. I wonder how much longer there’ll be anybody capable of being amused by puns based on Earth-system asteroids and Greek gods.”

“Anyway, Vitaly, please don’t tell me you’re appointing me governor.”

“Nothing of the kind,” said Vitaly. “I’m giving you an errand.”

“And no one but an aging xenobiologist will do.”

“Exactly,” said Vitaly. “There is a message—encrypted, and no, I won’t give you the key—a message waiting in the ansible queue. I ask only this: When I’m well and thoroughly dead, but before they’ve chosen a new governor, please send the message.”

“To whom?”

“The message already knows where it’s going.”

“Very clever message. Why doesn’t it figure out when you’re dead, and go by itself?”

“Promise?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And promise me something else.”

“I’m getting old. Don’t count on my remembering too many promises all at once.”

“When they elect you governor, do it.”

“They will not.”

“If they don’t, then fine,” said Vitaly. “But when they do elect you, as everyone but you fully expects they will, do it.”

“No.”

“And here’s why you must,” said Vitaly. “You are best qualified for the job because you don’t want it.”

“Nobody in their right mind wants it.”

“Too many men crave it, not because they want to do it, but because they fancy the honor of it. The prestige. The rank.” Vitaly laughed, and the laugh turned into an ugly coughing jag till he was able to get a drink of water and calm the spasms in his chest. “I won’t miss that sort of thing when I’m dead.”

“Rank?”

“I was speaking of my cough. That constant tickling deep in my chest. Wheezing. Flatulence. Blurred vision no matter how good my glasses are and no matter how much light I have. All the nasty decay of old age.”

“What about your bad breath?”

“That is designed to make you glad I’m dead. Sel, I’m serious about this. If someone else is elected governor, it will be someone who wants the job and won’t be happy to give it up when the new governor comes.”

“That’s what they get for deciding, clear off in Eros, that along with supplies, equipment, and expertise, they’ll also send us a dictator.”

“I was a dictator at first,” said Vitaly.

“When we were starting and survival looked impossible, yes, you kept things calm till we could find a way to handle the things this planet came up with to kill us off. But those days are over.”

“No they’re not,” said Vitaly. “Let me lay it out plainly. The ship that is coming to us contains two admirals. One is our future governor. And one is the captain of the ship. Guess which one believes he should be our governor.”

“The captain of the ship, of course, or you wouldn’t have said it that way.”

“A bureaucrat. A climber. I didn’t know him before we set out on our own voyage, but I know the type.”

“So the ship is bringing us everything we need, plus a power struggle.”

“I don’t want war here. I don’t want bloodshed. I don’t want the newcomers to have to conquer an upstart acting governor here on Shakespeare. I want our colony to be ready to welcome the new colonists and all they bring with them—and to unify behind the governor that was appointed for us back on Eros. They knew what they were doing when they appointed him.”

“You know who it is,” said Sel. “You know, and you haven’t told a soul.”

“Of course I know,” said Vitaly. “I’ve been corresponding with him for the past thirty-five years. Ever since the colony ship launched.”

“And didn’t breathe a word. Who is it? Anyone I’d have heard of?”

“How do I know what you’ve heard and haven’t heard?” said Vitaly. “I’m a dying man, don’t bother me.”

“So you still aren’t telling.”

“When he comes out of lightspeed, he’ll make contact with you. Then you can deal with telling the colonists about him—whatever he tells you, you can tell them.”

“But you don’t trust me to keep the secret.”

“Sel, you don’t keep secrets. You say whatever’s on your mind. Deception isn’t in you. That’s why you’ll be such a splendid governor, and why I’m not telling you a single thing that you can’t tell everybody as soon as you know it.”

“I can’t lie? Well, then, I won’t bother promising you to accept the governorship, because I won’t do it. I won’t have to. They’ll choose somebody else. Nobody likes me but you, Vitaly. I’m a grumpy old man who bosses people around and makes clumsy assistants cry. Whatever I did for this colony is long in the past.”

“Oh shut up,” said Vitaly. “You’ll do what you do and I’ll do what I do. Which in my case is die.”

“I’m going to do that too, you know. Probably before you.”

“Then you’ll have to get a move on.”

“This new governor—has he any idea of what it will take for these new people to live here? The injections? The regular diet of modified pig, so they can get the proteins that starve the worms? I hope they haven’t sent us any vegetarians. It really stinks that these new people will outnumber us from the moment they get off the ship.”

“We need them,” said Vitaly.

“I know. The gene pool needs them, the farms and factories need them.”

“Factories?”

“We’re tinkering with one of the old formic solar power generators. We think we can get it to run a loom.”

“The industrial revolution! Only thirty-six years after we got this planet! And you say you haven’t done anything for the people lately.”

“I’m not doing it,” said Sel. “I just talked Lee Tee into giving it a look.”

“Oh, well, if that’s all.”

“Say it.”

“Say what? I said what I was going to say.”

“Say that persuading somebody to try something is exactly the way you’ve governed for the past three-and-a-half decades.”

“I don’t have to say what you already know.”

“Don’t die,” said Sel.

“I’m so touched,” said Vitaly. “But don’t you see? I want to. I’m done. Used up. I went off to war and we fought it and won it and then Ender Wiggin won the battle of the home world and all the buggers down here died. Suddenly I’m not a soldier anymore. And I was a soldier, Sel. Not a bureaucrat. Definitely not a governor. But I was admiral, I was in command, it was my duty, and I did it.”

“I’m not as dutiful as you.”

“I’m not talking about you now, dammit, you’ll do whatever you want. I’m talking about me. I’m telling you what to say at my damn funeral!”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t want to be governor. I fully expected to die in the war, but the truth is, I no more thought about the future than you did. We were coming to this place, we were trained to be ready to survive on this formic colony world, but I thought that would all be your job, you and the other techs, while I commanded the fighting, the struggle against the hordes of formics coming over the hill, burrowing up underneath us—you have no idea the nightmares I had about the occupation, the clearing, the holding. I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough bullets in the world. I thought we’d die.”

“Then Ender Wiggin disappointed you.”

“Yes. Selfish little brat. I’m a soldier, and he took my war out from under me.”

“And you loved him for it.”

“I did my duty, Sel. I did my duty.”

“So have I,” said Sel. “But I won’t do yours.”

“You will when I’m gone.”

“You won’t be alive to see.”

“I have hopes of an afterlife,” said Vitaly. “I’m not a scientist, I’m allowed to say so.”

“Most scientists believe in God,” said Sel. “Certainly most of us here.”

“But you don’t believe I’ll be alive to see what you’re doing.”

“I’d like to think that God has better things for you to do. Besides, the heaven around here is a formic heaven. I hope God will let whatever part of you lives on go back to the heaven where all the humans are.”

“Or the hell,” said Vitaly.

“I forgot what pessimists you Russians are.”

“It’s not pessimism. I just want to be where all my friends are. Where my father is, the old bastard.”

“You didn’t like him? But you want to be with him?”

“I want to beat up the old drunkard! Then we’ll go fishing.”

“So it won’t be heaven for the fish.”

“It’ll be hell for everybody. But with good moments.”

“Just like our lives right now,” said Sel.

Vitaly laughed. “Soldiers shouldn’t do theology.”

“Xenobiologists shouldn’t do government.”

“Thank you for making my deathbed so full of uncertainty.”

“Anything to keep you entertained. And now, if you don’t mind, I have to feed the pigs.”

Sel left and Vitaly lay there, wondering if he should get out of bed and just send the message himself.

No, his decision was right. He didn’t want to have any sort of conversation with Ender. Let him get the letter when it’s too late to answer it, that was the plan and it was a good one. He’s a smart kid, a good boy. He’ll do what he needs to do. I don’t want him asking my advice because he doesn’t need it and he might follow it.

CHAPTER 13

To: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy

From: GovAct%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov

Re: You will get this when I’m dead

Dear Ender,

I put it bluntly in the subject line. No beating around the bush. I’m writing this as I feel the seeds of death in me. I will arrange for it to be sent after they have done with me.

I expect my successor to be Sel Menach. He doesn’t want the job, but he is widely liked and universally trusted, which is vital. He will not try to cling to his office when you arrive. But if it is not him, you’ll be on your own and I wish you luck.

You know how hard it will be for my little community. For thirty-six years, we’ve been living and giving in marriage. The new generation has already restored the gender balance; there are grandchildren nearly of marrying age. Then your ship will come and suddenly we will be five times the population, and only one in five will be of our original group. It will be hard. It will change everything. But I believe that I know you now, and if I’m right, then my people have nothing to fear. You will help the new colonists adapt to our ways, wherever our ways make sense for this place. You will help my people adapt to the new colonists, wherever they must because the ways of Earth make sense.

In a way, Ender, we are the same age, or at least in the same stage of life. We long since left our families behind. As far as the world is concerned, we stepped into an open grave and disappeared. This has been the afterlife for me, the career after my career ended, the life after my life ended. And it has been a good one. It has been heaven. Busy, frightening, triumphant, and finally peaceful. May it be the same for you, my friend. However long it is, may you be glad of each day of it.

I have never forgotten that I owe our victory, and therefore this second life, to you and the other children who led us in the war. I thank you again from this grave of mine.

With love and respect,
Vitaly Denisovitch Kolmogorov

“I don’t like what you’re doing to Alessandra,” said Valentine.

Ender looked up from what he was reading. “And what would that be?”

“You know perfectly well that you’ve made her fall in love with you.”

“Have I?”

“Don’t pretend to be oblivious to it! She looks at you like a hungry puppy.”

“I’ve never owned a dog. They didn’t allow team mascots in Battle School, and there weren’t any strays.”

“And you deliberately made her do it.”

“If I can make a woman fall in love with me at will, I should have bottled it and sold it and gotten rich on Earth.”

“You didn’t make a woman fall in love with you, you made an emotionally dependent, shy, sheltered girl fall in love with you, and that’s pathetically easy. All it took was being extraordinarily nice to her.”

“You’re right. If I hadn’t been so selfish, I would have slapped her.”

“Ender, it’s me you’re talking to. Do you think I haven’t been watching? You seek out opportunities to praise her. To ask her advice on the most meaningless things. To thank her all the time for nothing at all. And you smile at her. Has anyone ever mentioned that when you smile, it would melt steel?”

“Inconvenient, in a spaceship. I’ll smile less.”

“You switch it on like…like the stardrive! That smile—with your whole face, as if you were taking your soul out and putting it into her hands.”

“Val,” said Ender. “This is kind of an important letter. What is your point?”

“What are you planning to do with her, now that you own her?”

“I don’t own anybody,” said Ender. “I haven’t laid a hand on her—literally. Not shaking hands, not a pat on the shoulder, nothing. No physical contact. I also haven’t flirted with her. No sexual innuendoes. No inside jokes. And I haven’t gone off alone with her, either. Month after month, as her mother conspires to leave us alone, I’ve simply not done it. Even if it took walking out of a room quite rudely. What part of that is making her fall in love with me, exactly?”

“Ender, I don’t like it when you lie to me.”

“Valentine, if you want an honest answer, write me an honest letter.”

She sighed and sat down on her bed. “I can’t wait for this voyage to end.”

“A bit more than two months to go. Almost over. And you did finish your book.”

“Yes, and it’s very good,” said Valentine. “Especially when you consider I barely met any of them and you were almost no help to me.”

“I answered every question you asked.”

“Except to evaluate the people, to evaluate the school, to—”

“My opinions aren’t history. It wasn’t supposed to be ‘Ender Wiggin’s School Days as told to his sister, Valentine.’”

“I didn’t come on this voyage to quarrel with you.”

Ender looked at her with such overdone astonishment that she threw a pillow at him.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I’ve never been as mean to you as I was to Peter all the time.”

“Then all’s right with the world.”

“But I’m angry at you, Ender. You shouldn’t toy with a girl’s feelings. Unless you really plan to marry her—”

“I do not,” said Ender.

“Then you shouldn’t lead her on.”

“I have not,” said Ender.

“And I say you have.”

“No, Valentine,” said Ender. “What I have done is exactly what is needed for her to have the thing she wants most.”

“Which is you.”

“Which is definitely not me.” Ender sat beside her on her bed, leaned close to her. “You will help me most by scrutinizing someone else.”

“I scrutinize everybody,” said Val. “I judge everybody. But you’re my brother. I get to boss you around.”

“And you’re my sister. I have to tickle you until you pee or cry. Or both.” Which he proceeded to attempt, though he didn’t really go quite that far. Or at least, she only peed a little. And then punched him hard in the arm and made him say, “Ow,” in a really snotty, sarcastic way, so she knew he was pretending it didn’t hurt, but it really did. Which he deserved. He really was being rotten to Alessandra, and he didn’t even care, and worse yet, he thought he could deny it. Just pitiful.

All that afternoon, Ender thought about what Valentine said. He knew what he was planning, and it really was for Alessandra’s good, but he had miscalculated if the girl was actually falling in love with him. It was supposed to be friendship, trust, gratitude maybe. Brother-and-sister. Only Alessandra wasn’t Valentine. She couldn’t keep up. She didn’t leap to conclusions as quickly as Val—or at least not to the same conclusions. She couldn’t really hold up her end.

Where am I going to find anyone I can marry? Ender wondered. Nowhere and never, if I compare them all to Valentine.

All right, yes, I knew I was causing Alessandra to have feelings. I like it when she looks at me like that. Petra never looked at me that way. Nobody did. It feels good. The hormones wake up and get excited. It’s fun. I’m fifteen. I haven’t said anything to mislead her about my intentions, and I haven’t done anything, not ever, to signal any kind of physical attraction. So shoot me for liking that she likes me and doing the things that make her feel that way. What’s the rule here? Either totally ignore her and grind her face in her nothingness, or marry her on the spot? Are those the only choices?

But gnawing at the back of his mind was this question: Am I Peter? Am I using other people for whatever plan I have? Does it make a difference that my intention is to have a result that will give her a chance at happiness? I’m not asking her, I’m not giving her a choice, I’m manipulating her. Shaping her world so she makes certain choices and takes certain actions that make other people do what I want them to do and…

And what? What’s the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say, “Tut-tut, what a botch that was”? Don’t we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don’t we try to frame it so they’ll choose as we think they should?

If I tell her what I’m up to, she’ll probably go along with me. Do it voluntarily.

But is she a good enough actor to keep her mother from knowing something’s going on? Forcing it out of her? Alessandra was still so much her mother’s creature that Ender didn’t believe she could keep a secret from her mother, not for long. And if she does give away the game, then it will cost Alessandra nothing—she’ll be right where she already is—while I will lose everything. Don’t I have a right to count myself in the balance here, my own happiness, my own future? And on the off chance that I’d be a better governor than Admiral Morgan, don’t I owe it to the colonists to make sure things work out to put me in as governor, rather than him?

It’s still war, even if there are no weapons but smiles and words. I have to take the forces I have, the advantages of the terrain, and try to face a more powerful enemy under circumstances that neutralize his advantages. Alessandra is a person, yes—so is every soldier, every pawn in the great game. I was used to win a war. Now I’ll use someone else. All for the “good of the whole.”

But underneath all his moral reasoning, there was something else. He could feel it. An itch, a hunger, a yearning. It was his inner chimp, as he and Valentine called it. The animal that smelled womanhood on Alessandra. Did I choose this plan, these tools, because they were best? Or because they would put me near a girl who is pretty, who desires my affection?

So maybe Valentine was completely right.

But if she was…what then? I can’t undo all the attention I’ve paid to Alessandra. Do I suddenly turn cold to her, for no reason at all? Is that any less manipulative?

Sometimes can’t I switch off my brain and be the hairless chimp with an eye for an available female?

No.

“How long are you going to play this little game with Ender Wiggin?” asked Dorabella.

“Game?” asked Alessandra.

“He’s obviously interested in you,” said Dorabella. “He always homes in on you, I’ve seen how he smiles at you. He likes you.”

“Like a sister,” sighed Alessandra.

“He’s shy,” said Dorabella.

Alessandra sighed.

“Don’t sigh at me,” said Dorabella.

“Oh, when I’m around you, I’m not allowed to exhale?”

“Don’t make me pinch your nose and stuff cookies in your mouth.”

“Mother, I can’t control what he does.”

“But you can control what you do.”

“Ender isn’t Admiral Morgan.”

“No, he isn’t. He’s a boy. With no experience at all. A boy who can be led and helped and shown.”

“Shown what, Mother? Are you suggesting that I do something physical?”

“Darling sweet fairy daughter of mine,” said Dorabella, “it’s not for you and it’s not for me. It’s for Ender Wiggin’s own good.”

Alessandra rolled her eyes. She was such a teenager.

“Eye-rolling is not an answer, darling sweet fairy daughter.”

“Mother, people who are doing the most awful things always say it’s for the other person’s own good.”

“But in this case, I’m quite right. You see, Admiral Morgan and I have become very close. Very very close.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

Dorabella’s hand flew up, prepared to strike, before she even knew what she was doing. But she caught herself in time. “Oh, look,” she said. “My hand thinks it belongs to your grandmother.”

Alessandra’s voice shook a little. “When you said you were very very close I wondered if you were implying—”

“Quincy Morgan and I have an adult relationship,” said Dorabella. “We understand each other. I bring a brightness to his life that he has never had before, and he brings a manly stability that your father, bless his heart, never had. There is also physical attraction, but we are mature adults, masters of our libido, and no, I haven’t let him lay a hand on me.”

“Then what are we talking about here?” asked Alessandra.

“What I did not know, as a girl your age,” said Dorabella, “was that between cold chastity and doing that which produces babies, there is a wide range of steps and stages that can signal to a young man that his advances are welcome, to a point.”

“I’m quite aware of that, Mother. I saw other girls at school dressing like whores and putting it all on display. I saw the fondling and grabbing and pinching. We’re Italians, I was in an Italian school, and all the boys planned to grow up to be Italian men.”

“Don’t try to distract me by making me angry at your ethnic stereotypes,” said Dorabella. “We have only a few weeks left before we arrive—”

“Two months is not ‘a few weeks.’”

“Eight is a few. When we reach Shakespeare, one thing is certain. Admiral Morgan is not going to turn the colony over to a fifteen-year-old boy. That would be irresponsible. He likes Ender—everyone does—but in Battle School all they did was play games all day. It takes someone with experience in leadership to govern a colony. This has never been said outright, mind you. But I have gleaned this from things that were hinted at or almost said or…overheard.”

“You’ve been eavesdropping.”

“I’ve been present and human ears don’t close. My point is that the very best way it could all turn out is if Ender Wiggin is governor, but taking the advice of Admiral Morgan.”

“On everything.”

“That’s better than Ender being put in stasis and sent home.”

“No! He wouldn’t do that!”

“It has already been threatened, and there have been hints that it might be necessary. Now, look at this picture: Ender and a beautiful colonist girl fall in love. They pledge to marry. Now he’s affianced. It happens that his mother-in-law-to-be—”

“Who happens to be a deranged woman who thinks she’s a fairy and the mother of a fairy.”

“In-law-to-be is married or about to be married to the admiral who is most definitely going to be the power behind the throne, so to speak. Unless Ender gives him trouble, in which case he’ll take the throne, so to speak, quite openly. But Ender will not give him trouble, because he won’t need to. His beautiful young wife will look out for his interests by talking things over with her mother, who will then talk things over with her husband, and everything will work smoothly for everyone.”

“In other words, I would marry him in order to be a spy.”

“There would be a pair of loving and beloved go-betweens who would make sure there was never any conflict between the admirals on this ship.”

“By suppressing Ender and making him dance to Quincy’s tune.”

“Until he becomes old enough and experienced enough himself,” said Dorabella.

“Which would happen exactly never, at least not in Quincy’s eyes,” said Alessandra. “Mother, I’m not stupid and neither is anyone else involved in this. You’re betting that Admiral Morgan will seize power, and so by marrying him, you’ll be the wife of the governor of the colony. But because you can’t be sure that Ender Wiggin won’t prevail, you want me to marry him. That way, no matter who wins this little power struggle, we’ll be able to cash in. Am I correct?”

Alessandra had spoken the phrase “cash in” in English. Dorabella seized on that. “Shakespeare Colony has no cash yet, darling,” said Dorabella. “It’s all barter and allotment so far. You haven’t been studying the lessons on our colony-to-be.”

“Mother,” said Alessandra. “That is your plan, isn’t it?”

“Hardly,” said Dorabella. “I’m a woman in love. So are you. Don’t deny it!”

“I think about him all the time,” said Alessandra. “I dream of him every night. If that’s being in love, they need a pill to cure it.”

“You only feel that way because the boy you love is not aware enough of his own feelings to make things clear to you or even to himself. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along.”

“No, Mother,” said Alessandra. “You’ve been trying to do everything but tell me. What you want me to do, but refuse to say out loud, is seduce him.”

“I do not.”

“Mother!”

“I’ve already said this. There’s a lot of road between pining for him and seducing him. There’s little touches.”

“He doesn’t like being touched.”

“He thinks he doesn’t like being touched because he doesn’t yet understand that he’s in love with you.”

“Wow,” said Alessandra. “And all of this without a degree in psychology.”

“A fairy woman doesn’t need to study psychology, she’s born with it.”

“Mother!”

“You keep saying that. As if you weren’t sure I know my title. Yes, dear, I am indeed your mother.”

“For once in your life, can’t you just say what you mean?”

Dorabella closed her eyes. Saying things plainly had never worked out well for her. Yet Alessandra was right. The girl was so naive she really didn’t know what Dorabella was talking about. She didn’t understand the need, the urgency—and she didn’t understand what she had to do about it.

Candor was probably unavoidable. Might as well get it over with.

“Sit down, darling,” said Dorabella.

“So it’s going to be a more complicated self-deception,” said Alessandra. “One that requires rest.”

“I’m cutting you out of my will if you keep that up.”

“That threat won’t work until you have something to leave me that I want to have.”

“Sit down, bratty bad girl,” said Dorabella, using her playfully stern voice.

Alessandra lay down on her bed. “I’m listening.”

“You can never just do what I ask, can you.”

“I’m listening, and you didn’t ask, you commanded.”

Dorabella took a deep breath and laid it on the line. “If you don’t have Ender Wiggin locked down and tied up in a relationship with you within these next four weeks, he almost certainly will be left behind on this ship, under guard or in stasis, when Admiral Morgan goes down to see how the colony is getting along. But if Ender Wiggin is Admiral Morgan’s son-in-law-to-be, then he will most definitely be presented to the Shakespearians as their new governor. So either you will be affianced to the titular governor and hero of the human race, or you’ll be permanently separated from him and will have to pick one of the local clowns when it comes time for you to marry.”

Alessandra closed her eyes for long enough that Dorabella was thinking about throwing a cup of water on her to wake her back up.

“Thank you,” said Alessandra.

“For what?”

“For telling me what you actually meant,” said Alessandra. “What the plan is. I can see that whatever I do will be for Ender’s own good. But I’m fifteen, Mother, and the only thing I know is the way the worst girls in school behaved. I don’t think that will have any good results with Ender Wiggin. So even though I would like to do what you say, I have no idea how to do it.”

Dorabella went to Alessandra’s bed and knelt beside it and kissed her daughter’s cheek. “My darling girl, all you had to do was ask.”

CHAPTER 14

To: smenach%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov

From: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov/voy

Subj: As we approach

Dear Dr. Menach,

I have admired—and been grateful for—your work as I’ve studied it during the voyage. Vitaly Kolmogorov spoke of you with feelings beyond admiration—awe and deep friendship are also inadequate words—and while I have not known you as he did, I have seen your accomplishments. The fact that I and the thousands of new colonists with me will arrive to find Shakespeare Colony a going concern, instead of coming here as rescuers of a failing colony, is owed to all the colonists, of course, but without your solutions for the diseases and protein incompatibilities, it is quite likely we would have come to find no one here at all.

Vitaly told me that you were reluctant to consider accepting the governorship, but I see that you have done so, and governed effectively for nearly five years. Thank you for bending your principles and accepting a political job. I can assure you that I was nearly as reluctant to take the job myself; in my case, I had nowhere else to go.

I am young and inexperienced as a governor, though like you I have served my time as a soldier. I hope to find you in place when I arrive, so I can learn from you and work with you in helping assimilate four thousand “new colonists” and one thousand “old colonists” so that, within a reasonable period of time, they will simply be…citizens of Shakespeare.

My name is Andrew Wiggin, but I have usually been called by my childhood nickname, Ender. Since you served as a pilot during the battle within the system where now you are a colonist, it is quite possible that you heard my voice; certainly you heard the voice of at least one of my fellow commanders. I grieve for those pilots whom we lost during that action; we may not have known that our mistakes would cost real lives, but that does not remove our responsibility. I realize that for you, more than forty years have passed; for me, that battle was only three years ago, and has never been far from my thoughts. I am about to face the soldiers who actually fought that battle, and who remember those whose lives were lost because of my mistakes.

I look forward to meeting the children and grandchildren who have been born to your compatriots. They, of course, will have no memory of battles that to them are ancient history. They will have no idea who I am, or why they would be insulted by having a fifteen-year-old boy placed over them as governor.

Fortunately, I have with me the very experienced Admiral Quincy Morgan, who has kindly offered to extend his leadership over the colony as well as the ship, for as long as he remains here. Vitaly and I discussed the nature of leadership and command, and we came to think of Quincy Morgan as a man of peace and authority; you will know better than I what that can mean for the colony.

I am sorry for the burdens that our coming will impose on you, and grateful in advance.

Sincerely,
Andrew

To: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov/voy

From: smenach%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov

Subj: Poor scheduling

Dear Ender,

Thank you for your thoughtful letter. I do understand exactly what you meant about Admiral Morgan being a man of peace and authority, and I wish I were equipped to give him the appropriate greeting. But the only soldiers among us are as old as me; our youngsters have had no reason to learn military discipline or skills of any kind. I fear you would find our attempts at maneuvers an embarrassment. Whatever ceremonies are to take place upon your arrival must be planned entirely from your end. Having seen YOUR work, observing it at least as closely as you have observed mine, I have every confidence that you will handle everything with perfect aplomb.

Not since Vitaly died have I had the opportunity to use “aplomb” in a sentence. Perhaps, since you are to be governor (to my great relief), I have simply transferred to you the style of discourse I always used with him.

It is unfortunate that your arrival coincides with an urgent and long-scheduled trip I must take. I am no longer lead xenobiologist, but my duties in that area have not simply disappeared. Now that you are coming, I can at least make that journey into the broad stretch of land to the south of us, which remains almost completely unexplored. We settled in a semitropical climate, so we wouldn’t freeze to death if we could not find adequate fuel and shelter when we first arrived. Now you are bringing Earth vegetation which needs cooler climes to thrive, and I must see if there are appropriate environments for them. I also need to see if there are indigenous fruits, vegetables, and grasses that we might be able to make use of, now that you’re bringing means of transportation that could make it practical for us to grow crops in one climate and consume them in another.

For reasons that should be obvious to you, I also believe that having an old man underfoot will not be as helpful to you as you imagine. When two men who have been called “governor” are together, people will turn to the one they have more experience with. And the new people, having been in stasis, will probably follow the practice of the old. My absence will be your greatest asset. Ix Tolo, the head xenobiologist, can acquaint you with ongoing projects.

I’m sure you will understand that my taking this journey does not reflect any wish on my part not to meet you or help you. If I thought my presence would be better for the colony than my absence, one of my greatest pleasures would be to shake the hand of the commander who led us to victory. Among the old coots of the colony, you’ll find many who are still in awe of you. Please be patient with them if they’re a bit tongue-tied.

Sincerely,
Sel

Sel began quietly to prepare for an expedition southward. It would be on foot—there had been no beasts of burden in the original expedition, and he was not going to deprive the colony of any of its vehicles. And even though many of the new edible hybrids had spread widely, he meant to pass out of their optimum climate, which meant he would have to carry his food with him. Fortunately, he didn’t eat much, and he would bring along six of the new dogs he had genetically altered to be able to metabolize the local proteins. The dogs would hunt, and then he would harvest two of them—and turn the other four loose, two breeding pairs that could live off the land.

New predators turned loose in the wild—Sel knew exactly how dangerous this could be to the local ecology. But they could not eat all the native species and would not interfere with the vegetation. It would be important during later exploration and colonization to find edible and tamable creatures loose in the wild.

We aren’t here to preserve the local ecology like a museum. We’re here to colonize, to suit the world for ourselves.

Which is precisely what the formics had started to do to Earth. Only their approach was much more drastic—burn all, and then plant vegetation from the formics’ native planet.

Yet for some reason they had not done so here. He had found none of the species the formics had planted on Earth during the Scouring of China nearly a century ago. This was one of the formics’ oldest colonies, and its flora and fauna seemed to be too distant, genetically, to have shared common ancestors with the formic varieties. It must have been settled before they developed the formification strategy they had begun to use on Earth.

In all the years till now, Sel had had to devote himself entirely to the genetic research required to keep the colony viable, and then, for the past five years, to governing the colony. Now he could go into unexplored lands and learn what he could.

He could not go any great distance—he supposed a few hundred kilometers would be his limit—for it would do no good to range so far that he could not return and report his findings.

Ix Tolo helped him pack, griping about this and that—his normal behavior. Not taking enough equipment, taking too much, not enough food, too much water, why this, why not that…it was his constant attention to detail that made him effective in his job and Sel bore it with good humor.

And, of course, Ix had a mind of his own.

“You can unpack that other bag,” Sel told him, “because you’re not going with me.”

“Other bag?”

“I’m not an idiot. Half the equipment I decided not to take, you’ve put into another pack, along with more food and an extra bedroll.”

“I never thought you were an idiot. But I’m not so stupid I’d endanger the colony by sending both our lead xenobiologists on the same journey.”

“So who’s the pack for?”

“My son Po.”

“I’ve always been bothered that you named him for an insanely romantic Chinese poet. Why nobody from Mayan history?”

“All the characters in the Popol Vuh have numbers instead of names. He’s a sensible kid. Strong. If he had to, he could carry you back home.”

“I’m not that old and wizened.”

“He could do it,” said Ix. “But only if you’re alive. Otherwise, he’ll watch and record the process of decomposition, and then sample the microbes and worms that manage to feed on your old Earthborn corpse.”

“Glad to see you still think like a scientist and not a sentimental fool.”

“Po is good company.”

“And he’ll allow me to carry enough equipment for the trip to be useful. While you stay here and play with the new stuff from the colony ship.”

“And train the xenobiologists they’ve sent along,” said Ix. “No doubt you’ve told Wiggin that I’ll help him. That will not happen. I’ll have plenty of work to do in my own field without babysitting the new governor.”

Sel ignored his kvetching. He knew Ix would help in whatever way Wiggin needed him to. “And Po’s mother is happy about his going with me?”

“No,” said Ix. “But she knows he’d never speak to her again if she barred him from it. So we have her blessing. More or less.”

“Then first thing in the morning, we’re off.”

“Unless the new governor forbids you.”

“His authority doesn’t begin until he sets foot on this planet. He isn’t even in orbit yet.”

“Haven’t you looked at their manifest? They have four skimmers.”

“If we need one, we’ll radio back for it. Otherwise, don’t tell them where we went.”

“Good thing the formics got rid of all the major predators on this planet.”

“There’s no self-respecting predator would eat an old wad of gristle like me.”

“I was thinking of my son.”

“He won’t want to eat me either, even if we run out of food.”

That night, Sel went to bed early and then, as usual, got up to pee after only a few hours of sleep. He noticed that the ansible was blinking. Message.

Not my problem.

Well, that wasn’t true, was it? If Wiggin’s authority didn’t begin until he set foot on the planet, then Sel was still acting governor. So any messages from Earth, he had to receive.

He sat down and signaled that he was ready to receive.

There were two messages recorded. He played the first one. It consisted of the face of the Minister of Colonization, Graff, and his message was brief.

“I know you’re planning to skip town before Wiggin gets there. Talk to Wiggin before you go. He won’t try to stop you, so relax.”

That was it.

The other message was from Wiggin. He looked his age, but his adult height was coming on him. In the colony, teenagers his size were expected to do a man’s work, and got a man’s vote in the meetings. So maybe his position wouldn’t be as awkward as Sel expected.

“Please contact me by ansible as soon as you get this,” said Ender. “We’re in radio distance, but I don’t want anyone else to be able to intercept the signal.”

Sel toyed with the idea of turning the message over to Ix to answer, but decided against it. The point wasn’t to hide from Wiggin, was it? Only to leave the field clear for him.

So he signaled his intention to make a connection. It took only a few minutes for Wiggin to appear. Now that the colony ship wasn’t traveling at a relativistic speed, there was no time differential, and therefore the ansible transmitted instantly. Not even the time lag of radio.

“Governor Menach,” said Ender Wiggin. He smiled.

“Sir,” Sel replied. He tried to smile back, but…this was Ender Wiggin he was talking to.

“When we got word that you were leaving, my first thought was to beg you to stay.”

Sel ignored him. “I was glad to see on the manifest a full range of beasts of burden as well as milk, wool, egg, and meat beasts. Are they Earth-natural, or have they been genetically altered to digest the local vegetation?”

“Your methods were very promising at the time we left, but did not prove out until we were well under way. So all the animals and plants we brought with us are Earth-natural. They’re all in stasis, and can be maintained in that condition on the surface for some time, even after the ship leaves. So there’ll be time to make the alterations on the next generation.”

“Ix Tolo has ongoing projects of his own, but I believe he’ll be able to train your new xenos in the techniques.”

“Ix Tolo will remain the head xenobiologist, in your absence,” said Wiggin. “I’ve seen his work in recent weeks—years, to you. You’ve trained him to an exacting standard, and the xenos on this ship intend to learn from him. Though they’re hoping you’ll return soon. They want to meet you. You’re something of a hero to them. This is the only world that has non-formiform flora and fauna. The other colonies have been working with the same genetic groups—this is the only world that posed unique challenges, so you had to do, alone, what all the other colonies were able to do cooperatively.”

“Me and Darwin.”

“Darwin had more help than you,” said Wiggin. “I hope you’ll keep your radio dormant instead of off. Because I want to be able to ask for your counsel, if I need it.”

“You won’t. I’m going back to bed now. I have a lot of walking to do tomorrow.”

“I can send a skimmer after you. So you don’t have to carry your supplies. It would increase your range.”

“But then the old settlers will expect me to come back soon. They’ll be waiting for me instead of relying on you.”

“I can’t pretend that we’re not able to track you and find you.”

“But you can tell them that you’re showing me the respect of not trying. At my request.”

“Yes,” said Ender. “I’ll do that.”

There was little more to say. They signed off and Sel went back to bed. He slept easily. And, as usual, woke just when he wanted to—an hour before dawn.

Po was waiting for him.

“I already said good-bye to Mom and Dad,” he said.

“Good,” said Sel.

“Thanks for letting me come.”

“Could I have stopped you?”

“Yes,” said Po. “I won’t disobey you, Uncle Sel.” All the grandchildren generation called him that.

Sel nodded. “Good. Have you eaten?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go. I won’t need to eat till noon.”

You take a step, then another. That’s the journey. But to take a step with your eyes open is not a journey at all, it’s a remaking of your own mind. You see things that you never saw before. Things never seen by the eyes of human beings. And you see with your particular eyes, which were trained to see not just a plant, but this plant, filling this ecological niche, but with this and that difference.

And when your eyes have been trained for forty years to be familiar with the patterns of a new world, then you are Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who first saw the world of animalcules through a microscope; you are Carl Linnaeus, first sorting creatures into families, genera, species; you are Darwin, sorting lines of evolutionary passage from one species to another.

So it was not a rapid journey. Sel had to force himself to move with any kind of haste.

“Don’t let me linger so long over every new thing I see,” he told Po. “It would be too humiliating for my great expedition to take me only ten kilometers south of the colony. I must cross the first range of mountains, at least.”

“And how will I keep you from lingering, when you have me photographing and sampling and storing and recording notes?”

“Refuse to do it. Tell me to get my bony knees up off the ground and start walking.”

“All my life I’m taught to obey my elders and watch and learn. I’m your assistant. Your apprentice.”

“You’re just hoping we don’t travel very far so when I die you don’t have so long to carry the corpse.”

“I thought my father told you—if you actually die, I’m supposed to call for help and observe your decomposition process.”

“That’s right. You only carry me if I’m breathing.”

“Or do you want me to start now? Hoist you onto my shoulders so you can’t discover another whole family of plants every fifty meters?”

“For a respectful, obedient young man, you can be very sarcastic.”

“I was only slightly sarcastic. I can do better if you want.”

“This is good. I’ve been so busy arguing with you, we’ve gone this far without my noticing anything.”

“Except the dogs have found something.”

It turned out to be a small family of the horned reptile that seemed to fill the bunny rabbit niche—a big-toothed leaf-eater that hopped, and would only fight if cornered. The horns did not seem to Sel to be weapons—too blunt—and when he imagined a mating ritual in which these creatures leapt into the air to butt their heads together, he could not see how it could help but scramble their brains, since their skulls were so light.

“Probably for a display of health,” said Sel.

“The antlers?”

“Horns,” said Sel.

“I think they’re shed and then regrown,” said Po. “Don’t these animals look like skin-shedders?”

“No.”

“I’ll look for a shed skin somewhere.”

“You’ll have a long look,” said Sel.

“Why, because they eat the skins?”

“Because they don’t shed.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’m not sure,” said Sel. “But this is not a formic import, it’s a native species, and we haven’t seen any skin shedding from natives.”

So went the conversation as they traveled—but they did cover the ground. They took pictures, yes. And now and then, when it was something really new, they stopped and took samples. But always they walked. Sel might be old and need to lean on his walking stick now and then, but he could still keep up a steady pace. Po was likely to move ahead of him more often than not, but it was Po who groaned when Sel said it was time to move on after a brief rest.

“I don’t know why you have that stick,” said Po.

“To lean on when I rest.”

“But you have to carry it the whole time you’re walking.”

“It’s not that heavy.”

“It looks heavy.”

“It’s from the balsa tree—well, the one I call ‘balsa,’ since the wood is so light.”

Po tried it. Only about a pound, though it was thick and gnarled and widened out at the top like a pitcher. “I’d still get tired of carrying it.”

“Only because you put more weight in your backpack than I did.”

Po didn’t bother arguing the point.

“The first human voyagers to Earth’s moon and the other planets had an easy time of it,” said Po, as they crested a high ridge. “Nothing but empty space between them and their destination. No temptation to stop and explore.”

“Like the first sea voyagers. Going from land to land, ignoring the sea because they had no tools that would let them explore to any depth.”

“We’re the conquistadores,” said Po. “Only we killed them all before we ever set foot on land.”

“Is that a difference or a similarity?” asked Sel. “Smallpox and other diseases raced ahead of the conquistadores.”

“If only we could have talked to them,” said Po. “I read about the conquistadores—we Mayans have good reason to try to understand them. Columbus wrote that the natives he found ‘had no language,’ merely because they didn’t understand any of the languages his interpreters knew.”

“But the formics had no language at all.”

“Or so we think.”

“No communication devices in their ships. Nothing to transmit voice or images. Because there was no need of them. Exchange of memory. Direct transfer of the senses. Whatever their mechanism was, it was better than language, but worse, because they had no way to talk to us.”

“So who were the mutes?” asked Po. “Us, or them?”

“Both of us mutes,” said Sel, “and all of us deaf.”

“What I wouldn’t give to have just one of them alive.”

“But there couldn’t be just one,” said Sel. “They hived. They needed hundreds, perhaps thousands to reach the critical mass to achieve intelligence.”

“Or not,” said Po. “It could also be that only the queen was sentient. Why else would they all have died when the queens died?”

“Unless the queen was the nexus, the center of a neural network, so they all collapsed when she did. But until then, all of them individuals.”

“As I said, I wish we had one alive,” said Po, “so we could know something instead of guessing from a few desiccated corpses.”

Sel silently rejoiced that yet another generation of this colony had produced at least one who thought like a scientist. “We have more of them preserved than any of the other colonies. Here, there are so few scavengers that can eat them, the corpses lasted long enough for us to get to the planet’s surface and freeze some of them. We actually got to study structure.”

“But no queens.”

“The sorrow of my life,” said Sel.

“Really? That’s your greatest regret?”

Sel fell silent.

“Sorry,” said Po.

“It’s all right. I was just considering your question. My greatest regret. What a question. How can I regret leaving everything behind on Earth, when I left it in order to help save it? And coming here allowed me to do things that other scientists could only dream of. I have been able to name more than five thousand species already and come up with a rudimentary classification system for an entire native biota. More than on any of the other formic worlds.”

“Why?”

“Because the formics stripped those worlds and then established only a limited subset of their own flora and fauna. This is the only world where most of the species evolved here. The only place that’s messy. The formics brought fewer than a thousand species to their colonies. And their home world, which might have had vastly more diversity, is gone.”

“So you don’t regret coming here?”

“Of course I do,” said Sel. “And I’m also glad to be here. I regret being an old wreck of a man. I’m glad I’m not dead. It seems to me that all my regrets are balanced by something I’m glad of. On average, then, I have no regrets at all. But I’m also not a bit happy. Perfect balance. On average, I don’t feel anything at all. I think I don’t exist.”

“Father says that if you get absurd results, you’re not a scientist, you’re a philosopher.”

“But my results are not absurd.”

“You do exist. I can see you and hear you.”

“Genetically speaking, Po, I do not exist. I am off the web of life.”

“So you choose to measure by the only standard that allows your life to be meaningless?”

Sel laughed. “You are your mother’s son.”

“Not father’s?”

“Both, of course. But it’s your mother who won’t put up with any bullshit.”

“Speaking of which, I can hardly wait to see a bull.”

Now that the ship was rapidly decelerating as they approached Shakespeare, the crew were far busier than usual. The first order of business would be docking with the transport ship that had brought the war fleet here to this world forty years before. Without supplies for a return journey, the ship was left as a huge satellite in geosynchronous orbit directly over the colony site. Solar power was enough to keep its computers and communications running for these past decades.

The original crew, colonists now, had used their fighters as landing vehicles; their supplies and equipment for the first years of the colony had been designed to fit in or on the fighters. And all of them were equipped with ansibles. But the fighters were land-once vehicles, and had no ability to leave the surface of the planet.

Admiral Morgan’s crew would service and refit the transport. They had brought new communications and weather satellites with them, which they would place in geosync at intervals all the way around the planet. Then the old transport would be given a captain and crew, and would voyage, not back to Eros, but on to another colony.

Despite all this business, Ender had no illusion that Admiral Morgan himself was at all distracted from watching over Ender’s activities. The man was a planner, a plotter, and while a “man of peace” like him might seem to plod along, never doing much, he was always poised to strike.

So as they approached the key moment—the arrival on Shakespeare—Ender had to give Morgan no reason at all for suspecting that Ender was plotting anything. Morgan expected Ender to be a bright, eager boy of fifteen, and those expectations had to be fulfilled; yet Morgan was also wary of Ender’s unassailable claim to the governorship. He had to be confident that Ender was content to let him be the power behind the throne.

That’s why Ender went to Morgan for permission to use the ansible to communicate with the Shakespeare xenobiologists. “You know I’ve been studying the formics’ biological systems, and now I can communicate with them in real time. I have a lot of questions.”

“I don’t want you bothering them,” said Morgan. “There’s too much to do already, working out the landing.”

Ender knew that there was nothing whatsoever for the landside colony to do except stand out of the way. Morgan would land and then decide what supplies to requisition for the return trip. Whether Morgan was on it or not, the ship would return to Earth.

“Sir, the XBs need to know what grazing species we have so they can prepare to adapt them to use the alien proteins. It’s a massive project, and until we have a new generation of adapted animals, there’ll be no meat. You have no idea how eager they are. And I’m fully up to speed, since I worked on the manifest when we left Eros.”

“I’ve already sent them the manifest.”

Actually, Ender had sent the manifest before the ship departed. But why quibble? “The list says things like ‘cows’ and ‘pigs.’ They need way more information than that. I have it; I can send it; and nobody’s using the ansible, sir. This is really important.” Ender almost said “really really really” but decided that would be too over-the-top boyish and Morgan might suspect something.

Morgan sighed. “This is why children should not be given adult assignments. You don’t respect priorities the way adults do. But…as long as you drop whatever you’re doing whenever the crew needs to use the ansible, go ahead. Now, if you don’t mind, I have real work to do.”

Ender knew that Morgan’s “real” work had more to do with preparing to have a shipboard wedding than anything to do with the landing. Dorabella Toscano had him so frantic with lust—no, it was affection, the deep bonds of permanent companionship—that he had agreed that she would arrive on Shakespeare as the admiral’s wife, not just as an ordinary colonist.

And that was fine with Ender. He would not interfere with that in any way.

Ender went to the ansible room to send his messages directly. If he had linked from his desk, the message would certainly have been intercepted and stored, to be puzzled over at leisure. Ender toyed with the idea of switching off the observation system so that nothing he said to Sel Menach could be overheard, but decided against it. Though the security was I.F. standard, which meant that a significant number of kids in Battle School had been able to tweak it or hack it or, like Ender, get inside it and spoof it completely, he still couldn’t risk having Morgan ask to see the vid of Ender in the ansible room and have the report come back that there was no vid for that timeframe.

Apart from that, he had only one short message to send to Graff, asking for a bit of help with his present situation, and then he could have a few moments of blissful privacy before doing the work he had told Morgan he was coming here to do.

He did what he always did when he had a chance to be completely alone. He rested his head on his arms and closed his eyes, hoping for a few moments of sleep to refresh his mind.

He awoke because somebody was gently rubbing his shoulders. “You poor thing,” said Alessandra. “Fell asleep in the middle of your work.”

Ender sat up, as she kept kneading the muscles of his shoulders and back and neck. They really were tight, and what she was doing felt good. If she had asked him, he would have refused—he didn’t want physical contact between them—and if she had come upon him when he was awake and simply started doing it, he would have recoiled because he hated it when anyone thought they had the right to touch him without his consent.

But waking up to it, it felt too good to stop. “I’m not doing much,” he said. “Busywork, mostly. Let the adults do the hard stuff. I’ve put in my time.” By now, he lied to Alessandra by reflex.

“You don’t fool me,” she said. “I’m not as dumb as you think.”

“I don’t think you’re dumb,” said Ender. And he didn’t. She wasn’t Battle School material, but she wasn’t stupid, either.

“I know you don’t like it that Mother and Admiral Morgan are getting married.”

Why would I care about that? “No, it’s fine,” said Ender. “I suppose you take love where you find it, and your mother’s still young. And beautiful.”

“She is, isn’t she,” said Alessandra. “I hope my body turns out like hers. The women in my father’s family were all scrawny. No curves.”

Ender knew at once what she was there for. Talking about “curves” while she massaged him was too obvious to miss. But he wanted to see where this was heading, and why. More specifically, why now.

“Scrawny or curvy, everybody’s attractive under the right circumstances.”

“What are those circumstances for you, Ender? When will anyone be attractive to you?”

He knew what was expected. “You’re attractive, Alessandra. But you’re too young.”

“I’m the same age as you.”

“I’m too young, too,” said Ender. They had had this discussion before—but in the abstract. As they congratulated each other on being such good friends without any kind of sexual interest in each other. Clearly, there had been a change of program.

“I don’t know,” said Alessandra. “Back on Earth, people married later and later. And had sex earlier and earlier. It was wrong to divide them, I know, but who can say which direction was wrong? Maybe the biology of our bodies is wiser than all the reasons for waiting to marry. Maybe our bodies want to raise children when we’re still young enough to keep up with them.”

Ender wondered how much of this had been scripted by her mother. Probably not much. Alessandra really did think about things like this—they’d had enough conversations on socio-political topics that this didn’t seem out of line for her.

The problem was that even though Ender understood perfectly well what was going on, he was enjoying it. He didn’t want it to stop.

But it had to stop. Stop or change. The back-rubbing thing couldn’t go on forever.

And he couldn’t stop it abruptly. He had a role to play. Morgan had to believe that Ender was devoted to Alessandra, so that by marrying Dorabella, he would become Ender’s future father-in-law. One more set of levers to control him by. Ender had planned to do it platonically. The time he spent with Alessandra, the attention he devoted to her, that would do the job.

Until now. Now they were pushing him. Through Alessandra—for Ender did not believe she had thought of this little encounter herself. “Thinking about your mother and Admiral Morgan?” said Ender. “Getting jealous?”

That got her to pull her hands away. “No,” she said. “Not at all. What does rubbing your shoulders have to do with them getting married?”

Now, with her no longer touching him, Ender could swivel the chair around to face her. She was dressed…differently. Nothing obvious, not like the vids he’d seen of supposedly sexy fashions on Earth. She was wearing clothing he’d seen before. But a button less was fastened. Was that the only difference? Perhaps, because she had been touching him until a moment before, he was seeing her through new eyes.

“Alessandra,” he said, “let’s not pretend we don’t know what’s happening here.”

“What do you think is happening?” she said.

“I was asleep, and you did what you’ve never done before.”

“I never felt like that before,” she said. “I saw how heavy a weight you carry. Not just the governorship and all that, I mean…all that came before. The weight of being Ender Wiggin. I know you don’t like to be touched, but that doesn’t mean other people can’t want to touch you.”

Ender reached out and touched her hand, hooked it lightly in his fingers. He knew even as he did it that he shouldn’t. Yet the desire to do it was almost overwhelming, and a part of him said, There’s no danger in this. Touching hands? People do it all the time.

Yes, and they do other things all the time, another part of his mind said.

Shut up, said the part that liked touching Alessandra.

What if this did go according to Alessandra’s script—or her mother’s. Were there worse fates? He was coming to a colony world. Colonies were all about reproduction. He liked this girl. There wasn’t going to be a huge pool of girls to choose from in the colony; there were few his age among the passengers in stasis, so it would be mostly the girls born on Shakespeare that he would have to choose from, and they would be—not from Earth.

While he argued with himself, she held his hand more tightly and moved closer to him. Beside him. Now he could feel her warmth—or imagined he could. Now her body touched his upper arm; now her other hand, the one he was not holding, stroked his hair. Now she brought his hand up to her chest. Pressed the back of his hand, not to her breast—that would be too obvious—but to her chest, where her heart was beating. Or was that his own pulse he felt pounding in his hand?

“On this voyage I’ve come to know you,” she whispered. “Not the famous boy who saved the world, but this teenager, this young man of about my own age, so careful, so thoughtful of other people, so patient with them. With me, with my mother. You think I haven’t seen that? Never wanting to hurt anyone, never wanting to offend, but never letting anyone come close, either, except your sister. Is that your future, Ender? You and your sister, in a circle that lets no one else inside?”

Yes, thought Ender. That’s what I decided. When Valentine showed up, I thought: Yes, I can let her in. I can trust this one person.

I can’t trust you, Alessandra, thought Ender. You’re here in service of someone else’s plans. Maybe you mean what you’re saying, maybe you’re sincere. But you’re also being used. You are a weapon aimed at my heart. Someone dressed you today. Someone told you what to do, and how to do it. Or if you really know all this yourself, then you’re too much for me. I’m too caught up in this. I want too much for it to go forward as you seem to be offering.

I will not let this go on, thought Ender.

But even with that decision, he couldn’t just leap to his feet and say, Get thee hence, temptress, like Joseph did with Potiphar’s wife. He would have to make her want to stop, so that it would never seem to Admiral Morgan that he refused her. Morgan would certainly watch the playback of this. On the eve of his own marriage, Morgan could not see Ender absolutely refuse Alessandra.

“Alessandra,” said Ender, speaking just as softly as she was. “Do you really want to live your mother’s life?”

For the first time, Alessandra hesitated, uncertain.

Ender took his hand back, leaned on the chair’s armrests, rose to his feet. He reached for her, gathered her into an embrace, and decided that for this to work, he would need to kiss her.

So he did. He was not good at it. To his relief, neither was she. It was awkward, they missed each other a little and had to re-center, and neither of them knew what they were actually supposed to do. Oddly enough, this kiss broke the mood and when they were done with it, they both laughed. “There,” said Ender. “We’ve done it. Our first kiss. My first kiss, of anyone, ever.”

“Mine too,” she said. “The first one I’ve even wanted.”

“We could go farther,” said Ender. “We’re both equipped for it—we make a complete matching set, I’m sure.”

She laughed again. That’s right, thought Ender. Laughing is the right mood, not the other.

“I meant what I said, about your mother,” said Ender. “She did this, right at your age. Conceived you when she was fourteen, you were born when she was fifteen. The age you are now. And she married the boy, yes?”

“And it was wonderful,” said Alessandra. “Mother told me, so many times, how happy she was with him. How good it was. How much they both loved me.”

Of course your mother said that, thought Ender. She’s a good person, she wouldn’t want to tell you what a nightmare it was, being fifteen and having so much responsibility.

But maybe it was good, said another part of his mind. The part that was keenly aware that their bodies were still pressed together, that his fingers were pressing gently against the back of her shirt, moving slightly, caressing the skin and body under the cloth.

“Your mother was under the domination of someone stronger than her,” said Ender. “Your grandmother. She wanted to get free.”

That did it. Alessandra pulled away from him. “What are you saying? What do you know about my grandmother?”

“Only what your mother told me herself,” said Ender. “In front of you.”

He could see on her face that she remembered, and the flash of anger subsided. But she did not come back into his embrace. Nor did he invite her to. He thought more clearly when she was standing a half-meter away. A meter would be even better.

“My mother isn’t anything like my grandmother,” said Alessandra.

“Of course not,” said Ender. “But the two of you have lived together your whole life. Very close all the time.”

“I’m not trying to get away from her,” said Alessandra. “I wouldn’t use you like that.” But her face showed something else. A recognition, perhaps, that she had been using him—that her whole visit to him was prompted by her mother.

“I was just thinking,” said Ender, “that even the cheerful fairyland she likes to pretend she lives in—”

“When did you—” she began, and then stopped herself, because of course Dorabella had done her queen-of-the-fairies bit several times, to the delight of the other colonists.

“I was thinking,” said Ender, “that after such a long while, you might not want to spend the rest of your life in her fairyland. Maybe your world is better for you than her imaginary places. That’s all I was thinking. She’s made a lovely cocoon for you, but maybe you still want to break out of it and fly.”

Alessandra stood there, her hand to her mouth. Then tears came to her eyes. “Per tutte sante,” she said. “I was…doing what she wanted. I thought it was my own idea, but it was hers, it was…I wanted you to like me, I really did, that wasn’t made up, but the idea of coming here…I wasn’t getting away from her, I was obeying her.”

“You were?” Ender said, trying to act as if he hadn’t already guessed.

“She told me just what to do, how far to…” Alessandra started unbuttoning her blouse, tears flowing. She was wearing nothing under it. “What you were going to see, what you could touch, but no more…”

Ender stepped to her, embraced her again, to stop her from unbuttoning any more. Because even in this emotional moment, there was a part of him that only cared about the blouse and what would be revealed, not about the girl who was doing it.

“You do care about me,” she said.

“Of course I do,” said Ender.

“More than she does,” she said. Her tears were dampening his shirt.

“Probably not,” said Ender.

“I wonder if she cares for me at all,” said Alessandra into his chest. “I wonder if I’ve ever been anything more than her puppet, just the way she was Grandmother’s. Maybe if Mother had stayed home and hadn’t married and hadn’t had me, Grandmother would have been full of fairyland and beauty—because she was getting her way.”

Perfect, thought Ender. Despite my own impulses, my biological distractibility, this has gone exactly right. Admiral Morgan would see that even though the sex angle didn’t play according to script, Ender and Alessandra were still close, still bonding—whatever he wanted to read into it. The game was still on. Even if the romance was definitely on hold.

“The door to this room can’t lock,” said Ender.

“I know,” she said.

“Someone might come in at any time.” He thought it was best not to point out that surveillance cameras were in every room, including most particularly this one, and someone could be watching them right now.

She took the hint, pulled away from him, rebuttoned her blouse. This time all the way up to where she usually buttoned it. “You saw through me,” she said.

“No,” said Ender. “I saw you. Maybe your mother doesn’t.”

“I know she doesn’t,” said Alessandra. “I know it. I’m just—it’s just—Admiral Morgan, that’s what it is, she said she was bringing me here to find a young man with prospects, but she found an old man with even better prospects, that’s what it is, and I just fit into her plans, that’s all, I—”

“Don’t do this,” said Ender. “Your mother loves you, this wasn’t cynical, she thought she was helping you get what you wanted.”

“Maybe,” said Alessandra. Then she laughed bitterly. “Or is this just your version of fairyland? Everybody wants me to be happy, so they construct a fake reality around me. Yes, I want to be happy, but not with a lie!”

“I’m not lying to you,” said Ender.

She looked at him fiercely. “Did you desire me? At all?”

Ender closed his eyes and nodded.

“Look at me and say it.”

“I wanted you,” said Ender.

“And now?”

“There are lots of things I want that aren’t right for me to have.”

“You sound as if your mother taught you to say that.”

“If I’d been raised by my mother, maybe she would have,” said Ender. “But as it is, I learned that when I decided to go to Battle School, when I decided to live by the rules of that place. There are rules to everything, even if nobody made them up, even if nobody calls it a game. And if you want things to work out well, it’s best to know the rules and only break them if you’re playing a different game and following those rules.”

“Do you think that made sense of some kind?”

“To me it did,” said Ender. “I want you. You wanted me. That’s a nice thing to know. I had my first kiss.”

“It wasn’t bad, was it? I wasn’t awful?”

“Let’s put it this way,” said Ender. “I haven’t ruled out doing it again. Sometime in the future.”

She giggled. The crying had stopped.

“I really do have work to do,” said Ender. “And believe me, you woke me right up. Not sleepy at all. Very helpful.”

She laughed. “I get it. Time for me to go.”

“I think so,” he said. “But I’ll see you later. As we always do.”

“Yes,” said Alessandra. “I’ll try not to act too giggly and strange.”

“Act like yourself,” said Ender. “You can’t be happy if you’re pretending all the time.”

“Mother is.”

“Which? Pretending? Or happy?”

“Pretending to be happy.”

“So maybe you can grow up to be happy without having to pretend.”

“Maybe,” she said. And then she was gone.

Ender closed the door and sat down. He wanted to scream in frustration at thwarted desire, in rage at a mother who would send her daughter on such an errand, at Admiral Morgan for making all this necessary, at himself for being such a liar. “You can’t be happy if you’re pretending all the time.” Well, his life certainly didn’t contradict that statement. He was pretending all the time, and he certainly was not happy.

CHAPTER 15

To: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov/voy

From: vwiggin%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov/voy

Subj: relax about it, kid

E:

Nothing about your behavior with A should either surprise or embarrass you. If desire did not dim the brain, nobody would ever get married, drunk, or fat.

-V

By the time Sel and Po had been a fortnight gone, with almost two hundred kilometers behind them, they had talked about every conceivable subject at least twice, and finally walked along in companionable silence most of the time, except when the exigencies of their journey forced them to speak.

One-sentence warnings: “Don’t grab that vine, it’s not secure.”

Scientific speculations: “I wonder if that bright-colored froglike thing is venomous?”

“I doubt it, considering that it’s a rock.”

“Oh. It was so vivid I thought—”

“A good guess. And you’re not a geologist, so how could you be expected to recognize a rock?”

Mostly there was nothing but their breathing, their footfalls, and the sounds and smells and sights of a new world revealing itself to the first of the human species to pass through this portion of it.

At two hundred clicks, though, it was time to stop. They had rationed carefully, but their food was half gone. They pitched a more permanent camp by a clear water source, chose a safe spot and dug a latrine, and pitched the tent with the stakes deeper and the ground more padded under the floor of it. They would be here for a week.

A week, because that’s about how long they expected to be able to live on the meat of the two dogs they slaughtered that afternoon.

Sel was sorry that only two of the dogs were smart enough to extrapolate from the skins and carcasses that their human masters were no longer reliable companions. Those two left—they had to drive the other pair away with stones.

By now, like everyone else in the colony, both Sel and Po knew how to preserve meat by smoking it; they cooked only a little of the meat fresh, but kept the fire going to smoke the rest as it hung from the bending limbs of a fernlike tree…or treelike fern.

They marked out a rough circle on the satellite map they carried with them and each morning they set out in a different direction to see what they might find. Now they collected samples in earnest, and took photographs that they bounced to the orbiting transport ship for storage on the big computer there. The pictures they sent up, the test results, those were secure—they would not be lost, no matter what happened to Sel and Po.

The physical samples, though, were by far the most valuable items. Once they brought them back, they could be studied at great length using far more sophisticated equipment—the new equipment the xenos on the new colony ship would bring.

At night, Sel lay awake for long hours, thinking of what he and Po had seen, classifying it in his mind, trying to make sense of the biology of this world.

But when he woke up, he could not remember having had any great insights the night before, and certainly had none by morning light. No great breakthroughs; just a continuation of the work he had already done.

I should have gone north, into the jungles.

But jungles are far more dangerous to explore. I’m an old man. Jungles could kill me. This temperate plateau, colder than the colony because it’s a little closer to the poles and higher in elevation, is also safer—at least in summer—for an old man who needs open country to hike through and nothing unusually dangerous to snag or snap at him.

On the fifth day, they crossed a path.

There was no mistaking it. It was not a road, certainly not, but that was no surprise, the formics had built few roads. What they made were paths, and those inadvertent, the natural result of thousands of feet treading the same route.

Those feet had trodden here, though it was forty years before. Trodden so long and often that after all these years, and overgrown as it was, the naked eye could trace the path of it through the pebbly soil of a narrow alluvial valley.

There was no question now of pursuing any more flora and fauna. The formics had found something of value here, and archaeology took precedence, at least for a few hours, over xenobiology.

The path wound upward into the hills, but not terribly far before it led to a number of cave entrances.

“These aren’t caves,” said Po.

“Oh?”

“They’re tunnels. These are too new, and the land hasn’t shaped itself around them the way that it does with real caves. These were dug as doorways. All the same height, do you see?”

“That damnably inconvenient height that makes it such a pain for humans to go inside.”

“It’s not our purpose here, sir,” said Po. “We’ve found the spot. Let’s call for others to explore the tunnels. We’re here for the living, not the dead.”

“I have to know what they were doing here. Certainly not farming—there’s no trace of their crops gone wild here. No orchards. No middens, either—this wasn’t a great settlement. And yet there was so much traffic, along that single path.”

“Mining?” asked Po.

“Can you think of any other purpose? There’s something in those tunnels that the formics thought was worth the trouble of digging out. In large quantities. For a long time.”

“Not such large quantities,” said Po.

“No?” said Sel.

“It’s like steel-making back on Earth. Even though the purpose was smelting iron to make steel, and they mined coal only to fire their smelters and foundries, they didn’t carry the coal to the iron, they carried the iron to the coal—because it took far more coal than iron to make steel.”

“You must have gotten very good marks in geography.”

“My parents and I were born here, but I’m human. Earth is still my home.”

“So you’re saying that whatever they took out of these tunnels, it wasn’t in such large quantities that it was worth building a city here.”

“They put their cities where the food was, or the fuel. Whatever they got here, they took little enough of it that it was more economical to carry it to their cities, instead of building a city here to process it.”

“You may grow up to amount to something, Po.”

“I’m already grown up, sir,” said Po. “And I already amount to something. Just not enough to get any girl to marry me.”

“And knowing the principles of Earth’s economic history will attract a mate?”

“As surely as that bunny-toad’s antlers, sir.”

“Horns,” said Sel.

“So we’re going in?”

Sel mounted one of the little oil lamps into the flared top of his walking stick.

“And here I thought that opening at the top of your stick was decoration,” said Po.

“It was decorative,” said Sel. “It was also the way the tree grew out of the ground.”

Sel rolled up his blankets and put half the remaining food into his pack, along with their testing equipment.

“Are you planning to spend the night down there?”

“What if we find something wonderful, and then have to climb back out of the tunnels before we get a chance to explore?”

Dutifully, Po packed up. “I don’t think we’ll need the tent in there.”

“I doubt there’ll be much rain,” Sel agreed.

“Then again, caves can be drippy.”

“We’ll pick a dry spot.”

“What can live in there? It’s not a natural cave. I don’t think we’ll find fish.”

“There are birds and other creatures that like the dark. Or that find it safer and warmer indoors. And maybe a species of some chordate or insect or worm or fungus we haven’t seen yet.”

At the entrance, Po sighed. “If only the tunnels were higher.”

“It’s not my fault you grew so tall.” Sel lit the lamp, fueled by the oils of a fruit Sel had found in the wild. He called it “olive” after the oily fruit on Earth, though in no other attribute were they alike. Certainly not flavor or nutrition.

The colonists grew it in orchards now, and pressed and filtered it in three harvests a year. Except for the oil the fruit was good for nothing except fertilizer. It was good to have clean-burning fuel for light, instead of wiring every building with electricity, especially in the outlying settlements. It was one of Sel’s favorite discoveries—particularly since there was no sign the formics had ever discovered its usefulness. Of course, the formics were at home in the dark. Sel could imagine them scuttling along in these tunnels, content with smell and hearing to guide them.

Humans had evolved from creatures that took refuge in trees, not caves, thought Sel, and though humans had used caves many times in the past, they were always suspicious of them. Deep dark places were at once attractive and terrifying. There was no chance the formics would have allowed any large predators to remain at large on this planet, particularly in caves, since the formics themselves were tunnel makers and cave dwellers.

If only the formic home world had not been obliterated in the war. What we could have learned, tracing an alien evolution that led to intelligence!

Then again, if Ender Wiggin had not blown the whole thing up, we would have lost the war. Then we wouldn’t have even this world to study. Evolution here did not lead to intelligence—or if it did, the formics already wiped it out, along with any traces the original sentient natives might have left behind.

Sel bent over and squat-walked into the tunnel. But it was hard to keep going that way—his back was too old. He couldn’t even lean on his stick, because it was too tall for the space, and he had to drag it along, keeping it as close to vertical as possible so the oil didn’t spill out of the canister at the top.

After a while he simply could not continue in that position. Sel sat down and so did Po.

“This is not working,” said Sel.

“My back hurts,” said Po.

“A little dynamite would be useful.”

“As if you’d ever use it,” said Po.

“I didn’t say it would be morally defensible,” said Sel. “Just convenient.” Sel handed his stick, with the lamp atop it, to Po. “You’re young. You’ll recover from this. I’ve got to try a new position.”

Sel tried to crawl but instantly gave up on that—it hurt his knees too much to rest them directly on the rocky floor. He finally settled for sitting, leaning his arms forward, putting weight on them, and then scrabbling his legs and hips after him. It was slow going.

Po also tried crawling and soon gave up on it. But because he was holding the stick with the light, he was forced to return to walking bent over, knees in a squat.

“I’m going to end up a cripple,” said Po.

“At least I won’t have to hear your mother and father complain about what I did to you, since I don’t expect to get out of here alive.”

And then, suddenly, the light went dim. For a moment Sel thought it had gone out, but no—Po had stood up and lifted the stick to a vertical position, so that the tunnel where Sel was creeping along was now in shadow.

It didn’t matter. Sel could see the chamber ahead. It was a natural cavern, with stalactites and stalagmites forming columns that supported the ceiling.

But they weren’t the straight-up-and-down columns that normally formed when lime-laden water dripped straight down, leaving sediment behind. These columns twisted crazily. Writhed, really.

“Not natural deposits,” said Po.

“No. These were made. But the twisting doesn’t seem designed, either.”

“Fractal randomness?” asked Po.

“I don’t think so,” said Sel. “Random, yes, but genuinely so, not fractal. Not mathematical.”

“Like dog turds,” said Po.

Sel stood looking at the columns. They did indeed have the kind of curling pattern that a long dog turd got as it was laid down from above. Solid yet flexible. Extrusions from above, only still connected to the ceiling.

Sel looked up, then took the stick from Po and raised it.

The chamber seemed to go on forever, supported by the writhing stone pillars. Arches like an ancient temple, but half melted.

“It’s composite rock,” said Po.

Sel looked down at the boy and saw him with a self-lighting microscope, examining the rock of a column.

“Seems like the same mineral composition as the floor,” said Po. “But grainy. As if it had been ground up and then glued back together.”

“But not glued,” said Sel. “Bonded? Cement?”

“I think it’s been glued,” said Po. “I think it’s organic.”

Po took the stick back and held the flame of the lamp under an elbow of one of the twistiest columns. The substance did not catch fire, but it did begin to sweat and drip.

“Stop,” said Sel. “Let’s not bring the thing down on us!”

Now that they could walk upright, they moved forward into the cavern. It was Po who thought of marking their path by cutting off bits of his blanket and dropping them. He looked back from time to time to make sure they were following a straight line. Sel looked back, too, and saw how impossible it would be to find the entrance they had come through, if the path were not marked.

“So tell me how this was made,” said Sel. “No toolmarks on the ceiling or floor. These columns, made from ground-up stone with added glue. A kind of paste, yet strong enough to support the roof of a chamber this size. Yet no grinding equipment left behind, no buckets to carry the glue.”

“Giant rock-eating worms,” said Po.

“That’s what I was thinking, too,” said Sel.

Po laughed. “I was joking.”

“I wasn’t,” said Sel.

“How could worms eat rock?”

“Very sharp teeth that regrow quickly. Grinding their way through. The fine gravel bonds with some kind of gluey mucus and they extrude these columns, then bind them to the ceiling.”

“But how could such a creature evolve?” said Po. “There’s no nutrition in the rock. And it would take enormous energy to do all this. Not to mention whatever their teeth were made of.”

“Maybe they didn’t evolve,” said Sel. “Look—what’s that?”

There was something shiny ahead. Reflecting the lamplight.

As they got closer, they saw reflections from spots on the columns, too. Even the ceiling.

But nothing else was as bright as the thing lying on the floor.

“A glue bucket?” asked Po.

“No,” said Sel. “It’s a giant bug. Beetle. Ant. Something like—look at this, Po.”

They were close enough now to see that it was six-legged, though the middle pair of limbs seemed more designed for clinging than walking or grasping. The front ones were for grasping and tearing. The hind ones, for digging and running.

“What do you think? Bipedal?” asked Sel.

“Six or four, and bipedal at need.” Po nudged it with his foot. No response. The thing was definitely dead. He bent over and flexed and rotated the hind limbs. Then the front ones. “Climb, crawl, walk, run, all equally well, I think.”

“Not a likely evolutionary path,” said Sel. “Anatomy tends to commit one way or the other.”

“Like you said. Not evolved, bred.”

“For what?”

“For mining,” said Po. He rolled the thing over onto its belly. It was very heavy; it took several tries. But now they could see much better what it was that caught the light. The thing’s back was a solid sheet of gold. As smooth as a beetle’s carapace, but so thick with gold that the thing must weigh ten kilos at least.

Twenty-five, maybe thirty centimeters long, thick and stubby. And its entire exoskeleton thinly gilt, with the back heavily armored in gold.

“Do you think these things were mining for gold?” asked Po.

“Not with that mouth,” said Sel. “Not with those hands.”

“But the gold got inside it somehow. To be deposited in the shell.”

“I think you’re right,” said Sel. “But this is the adult. The harvest. I think the formics carried these things out of the mine and took them off to be purified. Burn off the organics and leave the pure metal behind.”

“So they ingested the gold as larvae…”

“Went into a cocoon…”

“And when they emerged, their bodies were encased in gold.”

“And there they are,” said Sel, holding up the light again. Only now he went closer to the columns, where they could now see that the glints of reflection were from the bodies of half-formed creatures, their backs embedded in the pillars, their foreheads and bellies shiny with a layer of thin gold.

“The columns are the cocoons,” said Po.

“Organic mining,” said Sel. “The formics bred these things specifically to extract gold.”

“But what for? It’s not like the formics used money. Gold is just a soft metal to them.”

“A useful one. What’s to say they didn’t have bugs just like these, only bred to extract iron, platinum, aluminum, copper, whatever they wanted?”

“So they didn’t need tools to mine.”

“No, Po—these are the tools. And the refineries.” Sel knelt down. “Let’s see if we can get any kind of DNA sample from these.”

“Dead all this time?”

“There’s no way these are native to this planet. The formics brought them here. So they’re native to the formic home world. Or bred from something native there.”

“Not necessarily,” said Po, “or other colonies would have found them long before now.”

“It took us forty years, didn’t it?”

“What if this is a hybrid?” asked Po. “So it exists only on this world?”

By now, Sel was sampling DNA and finding it far easier than he thought. “Po, there’s no way this has been dead for forty years.”

Then it twitched reflexively under his hand.

“Or twenty minutes,” said Sel. “It still has reflexes. It isn’t dead.”

“Then it’s dying,” said Po. “It has no strength.”

“Starving to death, I bet,” said Sel. “Maybe it just finished its metamorphosis and was trying to get to the tunnel entrance and stopped here to die.”

Po took the samples from him and stowed them in Sel’s pack.

“So these gold bugs are still alive, forty years after the formics stopped bringing them food? How long is the metamorphosis?”

“Not forty years,” said Sel. He stood up, then bent over again to look at the gold bug. “I think these cocooned-up bugs embedded in the columns are young. Fresh.” He stood up and started striding deeper into the cavern.

There were more gold bugs now, many of them lying on the ground—but unlike the first one they found, many of these were destroyed, hollowed out. Nothing but the thick golden shells of their backs, with legs discarded as if they had been…

“Spat out,” said Sel. “These were eaten.”

“By what?”

“Larvae,” said Sel. “Cannibalizing the adults because otherwise there’s nothing to eat here. Each generation getting smaller—look how large this one is? Each one smaller because they only eat the bodies of the adults.”

“And they’re working their way back toward the door,” said Po. “To get outside where the nutrients are.”

“When the formics stopped coming…”

“Their shells are too heavy to make much progress,” said Po. “So they get as far as they can, then the larvae feed on the corpse of the adult, then they crawl toward the light of the entrance as far as they can, cocoon up, and the next generation emerges, smaller than the last one.”

Now they were among much larger shells. “These things are supposed to be more than a meter in length,” said Sel. “The closer to the entrance, the smaller.”

Po stopped, pointed at the lamp. “They’re heading toward the light?”

“Maybe we’ll be able to see one.”

“Rock-devouring larvae that grind up solid rock and poop out bonded stone columns.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to see it up close.”

“But you do.”

“Well. Yes.”

Now they were both looking around them, squinting to try to see movement somewhere in the cavern.

“What if there’s something it likes much better than light?” asked Po.

“Soft-bodied food?” asked Sel. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. The formics brought them food. Now maybe we have, too.”

At that moment, Po suddenly rose straight up into the air.

Sel held up the stick. Directly above him, a huge sluglike larva clung to the ceiling. Its mouth end was tightly fastened on Po’s back.

“Unstrap and drop down here!” called Sel.

“All our samples!”

“We can always get more samples! I don’t want to have to extract bits of you from one of these pillars!”

Po got the straps open and dropped to the floor.

The pack disappeared into the larva’s maw. They could hear hard metal squeaking and scraping as the larva’s teeth tried to grind up the metal instruments. They didn’t wait to watch. They started toward the entrance. Once they passed the first gold bug’s body, they looked for the bits of blanket to mark the path.

“Take my pack,” said Sel, shrugging it off as he walked. “It’s got the radio and the DNA samples in it—get out the entrance and radio for help.”

“I’m not leaving you,” said Po. But he was obeying.

“You’re the only one who can get out the entrance faster than that thing can crawl.”

“We haven’t seen how fast it can go.”

“Yes we have,” said Sel. He walked backward for a moment, holding up the lamp.

The larva was about thirty meters behind them and coming on faster than they had been walking.

“Is it following the light or our body heat?” asked Po as they turned again and began to jog.

“Or the carbon dioxide of our breath? Or the vibrations of our footfalls? Or our heartbeats?” Sel held out the stick toward him. “Take it and run.”

“What are you going to do?” said Po, not taking the stick.

“If it’s following the light, you can stay ahead of it by running.”

“And if it’s not?”

“Then you can get out and call for help.”

“While it has you for lunch.”

“I’m tough and gristly.”

“The thing eats stone.”

“Take the light,” said Sel, “and get out of here.”

Po hesitated a moment longer, then took it. Sel was relieved that the boy would keep his promise of obedience.

Either that, or Po was convinced the larva would follow the light.

It was the right guess—as Sel slowed down and watched the larva approach, he could see that it was not heading directly toward him, but rather listed off to the side, heading for Po. And as Po ran, the larva began speeding up.

It went right past Sel. It was more than a half-meter thick. It moved like a snake, with a back-and-forth movement, writhing along the floor, shaping itself exactly like the columns, only horizontally and, of course, moving.

It was going to reach Po while he was scrambling through the tunnel.

“Leave the light!” shouted Sel. “Leave it!”

In a few moments, Sel could see the light leaning against the wall of the cavern, beside where the low tunnel began, leading toward the outside world. Po must already be inside the tunnel.

The larva was ignoring the light and heading into the tunnel behind Po. The larva didn’t have to crawl or walk bent over—it would catch Po easily.

“No. No, stop!” But then he thought: What if Po hears me? “Keep going, Po! Run!”

And then, wordlessly, Sel shouted inside his mind: Stop and come back here! Come back to the cavern! Come back to your children!

Sel knew it was insane, but it was all he could think of to do. The formics communicated mind to mind. This was also a large insectoid life form from the formics’ home world. Maybe he could speak to it the way the hive queens spoke to the individual worker and soldier formics.

Speak? That was asinine. They had no language. They wouldn’t speak.

Sel stopped and formed in his mind a clear picture of the gold bug lying on the cavern floor. Only the legs were writhing. And as he pictured it, Sel tried to feel hungry, or at least remember how it felt to be hungry. Or to find hunger within himself—after all, he hadn’t eaten for a few hours.

Then he pictured the larva coming to the gold bug. Circling it.

The larva reemerged from the tunnel. There had been no screaming from Po—it hadn’t caught him. Maybe it got too near the sunlight and it blinded the larva and it couldn’t go on. Or maybe it had responded to the images and feelings in Sel’s mind. Either way, Po was safely outside.

Of course, maybe the larva had simply decided not to bother with the prey that was running, and had come back for the prey that was standing very still, pressing himself against a column.

CHAPTER 16

To: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy

From: MinCol@ColMin.gob

Subj: As requested

Handshake key: 3390ac8d9afff9121001

Dear Ender,

As you have requested, I have sent a holographic message from me and Polemarch Bakossi Wuri to the ship’s system, using the hook you inserted into the ship’s ansible software. If your program runs as advertised, it will take over all the ship’s communications. In addition, I have attached the official notification to Admiral Morgan for you to print out and hand to him.

I hope you have won his trust well enough that he will let you have the access you need to use any of this.

This message will leave no trace of its existence, once you delete it.

Good luck,
Hyrum

Admiral Morgan had been in communication with the acting acting governor, Ix Tolo—ridiculous name—because the official acting governor had had the bad manners to take off on a completely meaningless trip right when he was needed for the official public transfer of power. The man probably couldn’t stand being displaced from his office. The vanity of some people.

Morgan’s executive officer, Commodore das Lagrimas, confirmed that, as far as could be ascertained from orbit, the runway the colonists had constructed for the shuttle met the specifications. Thank heaven they didn’t have to pave these things anymore—it must have been tedious in the days when flying vehicles had to land on wheels.

The only thing that worried him was bringing the Wiggin boy down with him for the first landing. It would be easy enough to tell the old settlers that Morgan had come ahead of Wiggin to prepare the way. That would give him plenty of chance to make sure they were aware that Wiggin was a teenage boy and hardly likely to be the real governor.

Dorabella agreed with him. But then she pointed out, “Of course, all the older people in this colony are the pilots and soldiers who fought under Ender’s command. They might be disappointed not to see him. But no, it will make it all the more special when he comes down later.”

Morgan thought about it and decided that having Wiggin with him might be more of an asset than not. Let them see the legendary boy. Which was why he called the Wiggin boy to his quarters.

“I don’t know that you need to say anything to the colonists on this first occasion,” said Admiral Morgan. This was the test—would Wiggin be miffed at being held in silence?

“Fine with me,” said Wiggin instantly. “Because I’m not good at speeches.”

“Excellent,” said Morgan. “We’ll have marines there in case these people are planning some sort of resistance—you never know, all their cooperation might be a ruse. Four decades on their own here—they might resent the imposition of authority from forty lightyears away.”

Wiggin looked serious. “I never thought of that. Do you really think they might rebel?”

“No, I don’t,” said Morgan. “But a good commander prepares for everything. You’ll acquire habits like that in time, I’m sure.”

Wiggin sighed. “There’s so much stuff to learn.”

“When we get there, we’ll put the ramp down at once and the marines will secure the immediate perimeter. When the people have assembled around the base of the ramp, then we’ll come out. I’ll introduce you, I’ll say a few words, then you’ll go back inside the shuttle until I can secure appropriate quarters for you in the settlement.”

“Toguro,” said Wiggin.

“What?”

“Sorry. Battle School slang.”

“Oh, yes. Never went to Battle School myself.” Of course the little brat had to give his little reminder that he had gone to Battle School and Morgan had not. But his use of slang was encouraging. The more childish Wiggin appeared, the easier it would be to marginalize him.

“When can Valentine come down?”

“We won’t start bringing down the new colonists for several days. We have to make sure we do this in an orderly way—we don’t want to swamp the old settlers with too many new ones before there’s housing and food for them all. The same thing with supplies.”

“We’re going down empty-handed?” asked Wiggin, sounding surprised.

“Well, no, of course not,” said Morgan. He hadn’t thought of it that way. It would be a nice gesture to have some key supplies with them. “What do you think, some food? Chocolates?”

“They have better food than we do,” said Ender. “Fresh fruits and vegetables—that’s going to be their gift to us. I bet they’d go boky over the skimmers, though.”

“Skimmers! That’s serious technology.”

“Well, it’s not like they’re any use up here in the ship,” said Ender, laughing. “But some of the xeno equipment, then. Something to show them how much it’s going to help them, now that we’re here. I mean, if you’re worried they’ll resent us, giving them some really useful tech will make us heroes.”

“Of course—that’s what I was planning. I just didn’t think of the skimmers on our first landing.”

“Well, it’d sure help with carrying cargo to wherever it’s going to be warehoused. I know they’d appreciate not having to lug stuff by hand or in carts or whatever they use for transportation.”

“Excellent,” said Morgan. “You’re catching on to this leadership thing already.” The kid really was clever. And Morgan would be the one to reap the good will that bringing the skimmers and other high-tech equipment would create. He would have thought of all this himself if he ever had a chance to stop and think about things. The boy could sit around and think about things, but Morgan couldn’t afford the time. He was constantly on call, and though das Lagrimas handled most things well, Morgan also had to deal with Dorabella.

Not that she was demanding. In fact, she was amazingly supportive. Never interfered with anything, didn’t try to butt in when it was none of her business. She never complained about anything, always fit in with his plans, always smiled and encouraged and sympathized but never tried to advise or suggest.

But she distracted him. In a good way. Whenever he wasn’t actually busy with a meeting, he would find himself thinking about her. The woman was simply amazing. So willing. So eager to please. It was as if Morgan only had to think of something and she was doing it. Morgan found himself looking for excuses to go back to his quarters, and she was always there, always happy to see him, always eager to listen, and her hands, touching him, making it impossible for him to ignore her or leave as quickly as he should.

He’d heard from other people that marriage was hellish. The honeymoon lasts a day, they said, and then she starts demanding, insisting, complaining. All lies.

Maybe it was only like this with Dorabella. But if so, he was glad he had waited, so he could marry the one in a million who could make a man truly happy.

For he was besotted. He knew the men joked about it behind his back—he caught their smirks whenever he came back from a rendezvous with Dorabella for an hour or two in the middle of the working day. Let them have their laughs! It was all about envy.

“Sir?” asked Wiggin.

“Oh, yes,” said Morgan. It had happened again—in the middle of a conversation, he had drifted off into thinking about Dorabella. “I have a lot on my mind, and I think we’re through here. Just be in the shuttle at 0800—that’s when we’re closing the doors, everything loaded by the dawn watch. The descent will take several hours, the shuttle pilot tells me, but nobody will be able to sleep—you’ll want to get to bed early tonight so you’re well rested. And it’s better to enter the atmosphere on an empty stomach, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes sir,” said Wiggin.

“Dismissed, then,” said Morgan.

Wiggin saluted and left. Morgan almost laughed out loud. The kid didn’t realize that even on Morgan’s ship, Wiggin’s seniority as a rear admiral entitled him to courtesies, including the right to leave when he felt like it instead of being dismissed like a subordinate. But it was good to keep the boy in his place. Just because he had the office of admiral bestowed on him before Morgan actually earned his didn’t mean Morgan had to pretend to show respect to an ignorant teenager.

Wiggin was in his place before Morgan got there, dressed in civilian clothes instead of military uniform—which was all to the good, since it would not be helpful for people to see that they had identical dress uniforms and rank insignias, while Ender had markedly more battle decorations. Morgan merely nodded to Wiggin and went to his own seat, in the front of the shuttle with a communications array at his disposal.

At first the shuttle flight was normal space travel—smooth, perfectly controlled. But as they orbited the planet and then dipped down into their point of entry, the shuttle reoriented itself to have the shield meet and dissipate the heat, which is when the bouncing and yawing and rolling began. As the pilot told him beforehand, “Roll and yaw mean nothing. If we start to pitch, then we’ve got problems.”

Morgan found himself quite nauseated by the time they steadied out into smooth flight at ten thousand meters. But poor Wiggin—the boy practically flew back to the head, where he was no doubt retching his poor head off. Unless the kid had forgotten not to eat and really had something to puke up.

The landing went smoothly, but Wiggin hadn’t returned to his seat—he took the landing in the head. And when the marines reported that the people were gathering, Wiggin was still inside.

Morgan went to the door of the head himself and rapped on it. “Wiggin,” he said, “it’s time.”

“Just a few more minutes, sir,” said Wiggin. His voice sounded weak and shaky. “Really. Looking at the skimmers will keep them busy for a few minutes, and then they’ll meet us with a cheer.”

It hadn’t crossed Morgan’s mind to send the skimmers out ahead of his own entrance, but Wiggin was right. If the people had already seen something wonderful from Earth technology, it would make them all the more enthusiastic when he came out himself. “They can’t watch the skimmers forever, Wiggin,” said Morgan. “When it’s time to go out, I hope you’re ready to join me.”

“I will,” said Wiggin. But then another retching sound gave the lie to that statement.

Of course, retching sounds could be made with or without nausea. Morgan had a momentary suspicion and so he acted on it, opening the door without any warning.

There was Wiggin, kneeling in front of the john, his belly convulsing as his body arched with another retch. He had his jacket and shirt off, tossed on the floor near the door—at least the kid had thought ahead and arranged not to get vomit on his suit. “Anything I can do to help?” asked Morgan.

Wiggin looked at him, his face a mask of barely controlled nausea. “I can’t keep this up forever,” he said weakly, managing a faint smile. “I’ll be fine in a minute.”

And then he turned his face toward the bowl again. Morgan closed the door and suppressed a smile. So much for any worries that the kid might not cooperate. Wiggin was going to miss his own grand entrance, and it wasn’t even going to be Morgan’s fault.

Sure enough, the midshipman he sent for Wiggin returned with a message, not the boy. “He says he’ll come out as soon as he can.”

Morgan toyed with sending back word that he was not going to have Wiggin’s late arrival distract from his own speech. But no, he could afford to be magnanimous. Besides, it didn’t look as if Wiggin would be ready any time soon.

The air of Shakespeare was pleasant but strange; there was a light breeze, and it carried some kind of pollen on it. Morgan was quite aware that just by breathing, he might be poisoning himself with the blood-sucking worm that almost killed this colony at the start, but they had treatments for it, and they’d get their first dose in plenty of time. So he savored the smell of planetside air for the first time in ages—he had last been on Earth six years before this voyage began.

In the middle distance, the scenery was savannah-like—trees dotting the landscape here and there, lots of bushes. But on either side of the runway, there were crops growing, and he realized that the only way they could accommodate the runway was in the midst of their fields. They had to resent that—it was a good thing he had thought of sending out the skimmers first, to take their minds off the damage their landing had done to the crops.

The people were surprisingly numerous. He vaguely remembered that the hundreds in the original invasion force would now be more than two thousand, since they’d been reproducing like rabbits, even with the relatively few women in the original force.

What mattered most was that they were applauding when he came out. Their applause might be more for the skimmers than for him, but he was content with that, as long as there was no resistance.

His aides had set up a public address system, but Morgan didn’t think they’d need it. The crowd was numerous, but many of them were children, and were so crowded together that from the top of the ramp they were all within easy hailing distance. Still, now that the lectern had been set up, it would look foolish of Morgan not to use it. So he strode to it and gripped it with both hands.

“Men and women of Shakespeare Colony, I bring the greetings of the International Fleet and the Ministry of Colonization.”

He had expected applause for that, but…nothing.

“I am Rear Admiral Quincy Morgan, the captain of the ship that brought the new colonists, and new equipment and supplies, to your settlement.”

Again, nothing. Oh, they were attentive, and not at all hostile, but they only nodded, and only a few of them. As if they were waiting. Waiting for what?

Waiting for Wiggin. The thought came to him like bile into his throat. They know that Wiggin is supposed to be their governor, and they’re waiting for him.

Well, they’ll find out soon enough just what Wiggin is—and isn’t.

Then Morgan heard the sound of running footfalls from inside the shuttle and coming out onto the ramp. Wiggin couldn’t have timed it better. This really would go more smoothly with him for the crowd to look at.

The crowd’s attention shifted toward Wiggin, and Morgan smiled. “I give you…”

But they didn’t hear his answer. They knew who it was. The applause and shouting overpowered Morgan’s voice, even with the amplification, and he did not need to say Wiggin’s name, because the crowd was shouting it.

Morgan turned to give a welcoming gesture to the boy, and was shocked to see that Wiggin was in full dress uniform. His decorations were almost obscenely vast—dwarfing anything on Morgan’s chest. It was so ridiculous—Wiggin had been playing videogames, for all he knew, and here he was wearing decorations for every battle in the war, along with all the other medals he was given after his victory.

And the little bastard had deliberately deceived him. Wearing civilian clothes, and then changing in the bathroom, just so he could upstage him. Was the nausea all faked, too, so that he could make this grand entrance? Well, Morgan would wear a phony smile and then he’d make the kid pay for this later. Maybe he wouldn’t keep Wiggin as a figurehead after all.

But Wiggin didn’t go to the place that Morgan was gesturing him to take at his side, behind the lectern. Instead, Wiggin handed a folded piece of paper to Morgan and then jogged on down the ramp to the ground—where he was immediately surrounded by the crowd, their shouts of “Ender Wiggin!” now giving way to chatter and laughter.

Morgan looked at the paper. On the outside, in pencil, Wiggin had written: “Your supremacy ended when this shuttle touched ground. Your authority ends at the bottom of this ramp.” And he signed it, “Admiral Wiggin”—reminding him that in port, Wiggin was senior to him.

The gall of the boy. Did he think such claims would hold up here, forty years away from any higher authority? And when it was Morgan who commanded a contingent of highly trained marines?

Morgan unfolded the paper. It was a letter. From Polemarch Bakossi Wuri and Minister of Colonization Hyrum Graff.

Ender recognized Ix Tolo immediately, from Vitaly’s description of him, and ran right up to him. “Ix Tolo,” he shouted as he came. “I’m glad to meet you!”

But even before he reached Tolo and shook his hand, Ender was looking for old men and women. Most of them were surrounded by younger people, but Ender sought them out and tried to recognize the younger faces he had studied and memorized before this voyage even launched.

Fortunately, he guessed right about the first one, and the second one, calling them by rank and name. He made it solemn, that first meeting with the pilots who had actually fought in the war. “I’m proud to meet you at last,” he said. “It’s been a long wait.”

At once the crowd caught on to what he was doing, and backed away, thrusting the old people forward so Ender could find them all. Many of them wept as they shook Ender’s hands; some of the old women insisted on hugging him. They tried to speak to him, to tell him things, but he smiled and held up a hand, signaling, Wait a minute, there are more to greet.

He shook every soldier’s hand, and when he occasionally guessed at the wrong name, they laughingly corrected him.

Behind him, there was still silence from the loudspeakers. Ender had no idea what Morgan would do about the letter, but he had to keep things moving forward here on the ground, so there was never a gap in which Morgan could insert himself.

The moment he had shaken the last old man’s hand, Ender raised that hand up and then turned around, signaling for the people to gather around him. They did—in fact, they already had, so he was now completely surrounded by the crowd. “There are names I didn’t get to call,” he said. “Men and women I didn’t get to meet.” Then, from memory, he spoke the names of all those who had died in the battle. “Too many lost. If only I had known what price was being paid for my mistakes, maybe I could have made fewer of them.”

Oh, they wept at that, even as some of them called out, “What mistakes!”

And then Ender reeled off another list of names—the colonists who had died in those first weeks of the settlement. “By their deaths, by your heroic efforts, this colony was established. Governor Kolmogorov told me about how you lived, what you accomplished. I was still a twelve-year-old boy on Eros when you were fighting the war against the diseases of this land, and you triumphed without any help from me.”

Ender raised his hands to face level and clapped them, loudly and solemnly. “I honor those who died in space, and those who died here.”

They cheered.

“I honor Vitaly Kolmogorov, who led you for thirty-six years of war and peace!” Another cheer. “And Sel Menach, a man so modest he could not bear to face the attention he knew would be paid to him today!” Cheers and laughter. “Sel Menach, who will teach me everything I need to know in order to serve you. Because I’m here, he will now have time to get back to his real work.” A roar of laughter, and a cheer.

And now, from the back of the crowd, from the loudspeakers, came the sound of Morgan’s voice. “Men and women of Shakespeare Colony, please forgive the interruption. This was not how the program for today was supposed to go.”

The people around Ender glanced in puzzlement toward the top of the ramp. Morgan was speaking in a pleasant, perhaps jocular tone. But he was irrelevant to what had just been happening. He was an intruder in this ceremony. Didn’t he see that Ender Wiggin was a victorious commander meeting with his veterans? What did Quincy Morgan have to do with that?

Hadn’t he read the letter?

Morgan could only spare half his attention for the letter, he was so furious at Wiggin for heading straight into the crowd. What was he doing? Did he actually know these people’s names?

But then the letter began to register with him and he read it with his full attention.

Dear Rear Admiral Morgan,

Former Polemarch Chamrajnagar, before his retirement, warned us that there was some risk that you would misunderstand the limited nature of your responsibilities upon reaching Shakespeare Colony. He takes full responsibility for any such misunderstanding, and if he was mistaken, we apologize for the actions we have taken. But you must understand that we were compelled to take preventive measures in case you had been misled into thinking that you were to exercise even momentary authority on the surface of the planet. We have been careful to make sure that if you behave with exact correctness, no one but you and Vice-Admiral Andrew Wiggin will ever know how we were prepared to deal with the situation if you acted inappropriately.

Correct action is this: You will recognize that upon setting foot on Shakespeare, Vice-Admiral Wiggin becomes Governor Wiggin, with absolute authority over all matters concerning the colony and all transfers of persons and material to and from the colony. He retains his rank of Vice-Admiral, so that outside your actual ship, he is your superior officer and you are subject to his authority.

You will return to your ship without setting foot on the planet. You will not meet with any persons from the colony. You will provide a full and orderly transfer of all cargos and persons from your ship to the colony, exactly as Governor Wiggin specifies. You will make all your actions transparent to IFCom and ColMin by reporting hourly by ansible on all actions taken in compliance with Governor Wiggin’s orders.

We assume that this is what you intended to do all along. However, because of Polemarch Chamrajnagar’s warning, we anticipate the possibility that you had different plans, and that you might consider acting on them. The forty-year voyage between us and you made it necessary for us to take actions which we can and will reverse upon your successful completion of this mission and your return to lightspeed.

Every twelve hours, Governor Wiggin will report to us by holographic ansible, assuring us of your compliance. If he fails to report, or seems to us to be under duress of any kind, we will activate a program now embedded in your ship’s computer. The program will also be activated by any attempt to rewrite the program itself or restore an earlier state of the software.

This program will consist of the vocal and holographic transmission to the ansibles aboard your ship and shuttles, through every speaker and computer display on your ship and shuttles, and to every ansible in Shakespeare Colony, stating that you are charged with mutiny, ordering that no one obey you, and that you be arrested and placed in stasis for the return voyage to Eros, where you will be tried for mutiny.

We regret that the existence of this message will certainly cause offense to you if you did not plan to behave any way other than correctly. But in that case, your correct actions will ensure that no one sees this message, and when you have returned to lightspeed flight after successfully carrying out your mission, the message will be eliminated from your ship’s computer and there will be no record whatsoever of this action. You will return with full honors and your career will continue without blemish.

A copy of this letter has been sent to your executive officer, Commodore Vlad das Lagrimas, but he cannot open it as long as Governor Wiggin continues to certify to us that you are taking correct actions.

Since yours is the first colony ship to arrive at its destination, your actions will establish the precedent for the entire I.F. We look forward to reporting on your excellent actions to the entire fleet.

Sincerely,
Polemarch Bakossi Wuri
Minister of Colonization Hyrum Graff

Morgan read the letter, filled with rage and dread at first, but gradually taking a very different attitude. How could they imagine that he planned anything other than to oversee Wiggin’s orderly assumption of power? How dare Chamrajnagar tell them anything that would lead them to think he intended anything else?

He would have to send them a very stiff letter informing them of his disappointment that they would treat him in this high-handed and completely unnecessary way.

No, if he sent a letter it would go into the record. He had to keep his record clean. And they were going to make a lot of hoopla about his being the first captain of a colony ship to complete his mission—that would be a huge plus for his career.

He had to act as if this letter didn’t exist.

The crowd was cheering. They had been cheering and clapping over and over again while Morgan read the letter. He looked out to see that they were now completely surrounding Wiggin, none of them even glancing at the shuttle, at the ramp, at Admiral Morgan. Now that he was looking at them, he could see that everyone was gazing intently at Ender Wiggin, devotedly, eagerly. Every word he said, they cheered at, or laughed, or wept.

Incredibly, they loved him.

Even without this letter, even without any intervention from IFCom or ColMin, Morgan lost this power struggle from the moment Ender Wiggin appeared in full uniform and called the veterans by name and invoked their memories of the dead. Wiggin knew how to win their hearts, and he did it without deception or coercion. All he did was care enough to learn their names and faces and remember them. All he did was lead them in victory forty-one years ago. When Morgan was in charge of a supply operation in the asteroid belt.

For all I know, this letter is a complete bluff. Wiggin wrote it himself. Just to keep me distracted while he carried out his public relations coup. If I decided to be obstructive, if I decided to work behind his back to undermine their confidence in him, to destroy him as governor so that I would have to step in and…

The people cheered again, as Wiggin invoked the name of the acting governor.

No, Morgan would never be able to undermine their confidence in Wiggin. They wanted him to be their governor. While to them, Morgan was nothing. A stranger. An interloper. They weren’t in the I.F. anymore. They didn’t care about authority or rank. They were citizens of this colony now, but they had the legend of how they were founded. The great Ender Wiggin, by his victory, slew all the formics on the surface of this world, opening the land to these humans so they could come and dwell here. And now Wiggin had come among them in person. It was like the second coming of Christ. Morgan had zero chance now.

His aides were watching him intently. They had no idea what was in the letter, but he was afraid that his face might not have been as impassive as he’d meant, while he was reading it; in fact, his impassivity would be a strong message in itself. So now Morgan smiled at them. “Well, so much for our script. It seems Governor Wiggin had his own plans for how this day would go. It would have been nice of him to inform us, but…there’s no accounting for the pranks that boys will play.”

His aides chuckled, because they knew he expected them to. Morgan knew perfectly well that they understood exactly what had happened here. Not the threats in the letter, but Wiggin’s complete triumph. Nevertheless, Morgan would act as if this was exactly how things were always meant to turn out, and they would join him in acting that way, and ship’s discipline would be maintained.

Morgan turned to the microphone. In a lull in the cheering and shouting of the crowd, he spoke, taking a friendly, joking tone. “Men and women of Shakespeare Colony, please forgive the interruption. This was not how the program for today was supposed to go.”

The crowd turned toward him, distractedly, even annoyed. They immediately turned back to Wiggin, who faced Morgan, not with the jaunty smile of victory, but with the same solemn face that he always presented on the ship. The little bastard. He’d been plotting this the whole time, and never showed a sign of it. Even when Morgan looked over the vids of him in his quarters, even when he watched Wiggin with Dorabella’s daughter, the boy never let his pretense lapse, not for a second.

Thank the stars he’ll be staying on this world, and not returning to be my rival for preeminence in the I.F.

“I won’t take but a moment more of your time,” said Morgan. “My men will immediately unload all the equipment we brought with us, and the marines will stay behind to assist Governor Wiggin however he might desire. I will return to the ship and will follow Governor Wiggin’s instructions as to the order and timing of the transfer of materials and persons from the ship to the ground. My work here is done. I commend you for your achievements here, and thank you for your attention.”

There was scattered applause, but he knew that most of them had tuned him out and were merely waiting for him to be done in order to get back to lionizing Andrew Wiggin.

Ah well. When he got back to the ship, Dorabella would be there. It was the best thing he had ever done, marrying that woman.

Of course, he had no idea how she would take the news that she and her daughter would not be colonists after all—that they would be staying with him on his voyage back to Earth. But how could they complain? Life in this colony would be primitive and hard. Life as the wife of an admiral—the very admiral who was first to bring new settlers and supplies to a colony world—would be a pleasant one, and Dorabella would thrive in such social settings; the woman really was brilliant at it. And the daughter—well, she could go to university and have a normal life. No, not normal, exceptional—because Morgan’s position would be such that he could guarantee her the finest opportunities.

Morgan had already turned to go back inside the shuttle when he heard Wiggin’s voice calling to him. “Admiral Morgan! I don’t think the people here have understood what you have done for us all, and they need to hear it.”

Since Morgan had the words of Graff’s and Wuri’s letter fresh in his mind, he could not help but hear irony and bad intent in Wiggin’s words. He almost decided to keep moving back into the shuttle, as if he hadn’t heard the boy.

But the boy was the governor, and Morgan had his own command to think about. If he ignored the boy now, it would look to his own men like an acknowledgment of defeat—and a rather cowardly one at that. So, to preserve his own position of respect, he turned to hear what the boy had to say.

“Thank you, sir, for bringing us all safely here. Not just me, but the colonists who will join with the original settlers and native-born of this world. You have retied the links between the home of the human race and these far-flung children of the species.”

Then Wiggin turned back to the colonists. “Admiral Morgan and his crew and these marines you see here did not come to fight a war and save the human race, and none of them will die at the hands of our enemies. But they made one great sacrifice that is identical to one made by the original settlers here. They cut themselves loose from all that they knew and all that they loved and cast themselves out into space and time to find a new life among the stars. And every new colonist on that ship has given up everything they had, betting on their new life here among you.”

The colonists spontaneously began applauding, a few at first, but soon all of them, and then cheering—for Admiral Morgan, for the marines, for the unmet colonists still on the ship.

And the Wiggin boy, damn him, was saluting. Morgan had no choice but to return the salute and accept the gratitude and respect of the colonists as a gift from him.

Then Wiggin strode toward the shuttle—but not to say anything more to Morgan. Instead, he walked toward the commander of the marine squad and called out to him by name. Had the boy learned the names of all of Morgan’s crew and marines as well?

“I want you to meet your counterpart,” Wiggin said loudly. “The man who commanded the marines with the original expedition.” He led him to an old man, and they saluted each other, and in a few moments the whole place was chaotic with marines being swarmed by old men and women and young ones as well.

Morgan knew now that little of what Wiggin had done was really about him. Yes, he had to make sure Morgan knew his place. He accomplished that in the first minute, when he distracted Morgan with the letter while he showed that he knew all the original settlers by name, and acted—with justification—as the commander of veterans meeting with them forty-one years after their great victory.

But Wiggin’s main purpose was to shape the attitude that this community would have toward Morgan, toward the marines, toward the starship’s crew, and, most important, toward the new colonists. He brought them together with a knowledge of their common sacrifice.

And the kid claimed that he didn’t like making speeches. What a liar. He said exactly what needed saying. Next to him, Morgan was a novice. No, a fumbling incompetent.

Morgan made his way back inside the shuttle, pausing only to tell the waiting officers that Governor Wiggin would be giving them their orders about unloading the cargo.

Then he went to the bathroom, tore the letter into tiny pieces, chewed them into pulp, and spat the wad into the toilet. The taste of paper and ink nauseated him, and he retched a couple of times before he got control of himself.

Then he went into his communications center and had lunch. He was still eating it when a lieutenant commander supervised a couple of the natives in bringing in a fine mess of fresh fruits and vegetables, just as Wiggin had predicted. It was delicious, and afterward, Morgan napped until one of his aides woke him to tell him the unloading was finished, they had taken aboard a vast supply of excellent foodstuffs and fresh water, and they were about to take off to return to the ship.

“The Wiggin boy will make a fine governor, don’t you think?” Morgan said.

“Yes, sir, I believe so, sir,” said the aide.

“And to think I imagined that he might need help from me to get started.” Morgan laughed. “Well, I have a ship to run. Let’s get back to it!”

Sel watched warily as the larva made its way back into the cavern. Was it heading for him, or just returning the way he came? He might test it by moving, but then his very motion might draw its attention to him.

“Nice larva,” whispered Sel. “How about some nice dried dog?”

When he reached for his pack, to extract the food, it wasn’t there. Po had his pack.

But Sel had the little bag at his waist where he carried his own food for each day’s hike. He opened it, took out the dried dog meat and the vegetables that he carried there, and tossed them toward the larva.

It stopped. It nudged the food lying on the ground. Just in case sending mental images had actually worked, Sel created a mental image of the food as being part of the belly of a dying gold bug. This is magical thinking, he told himself, to believe that what I form in my mind will affect the behavior of this beast. But at least it occupied his mind while he waited to see whether the larva liked its food in small batches, or large and on the hoof.

The larva rose up and plunged its gaping mouth down on the food like a remora attaching itself to a shark.

Sel could imagine a smaller version of the larva being exactly that—a remora, attaching itself to larger creatures to suck the blood out of them. Or to burrow into them?

He remembered the tiny parasites that had killed people when the colony was first formed. The ones Sel had invented blood additives to repel.

This creature is a hybrid. Half native to this world. Half derived from organisms of the formic world.

No, not “organisms.” Derived from the formics themselves. The body structure was basically formicoid. It would take very creative and knowledgeable gene-splicing to construct a viable creature that combined attributes of two species growing out of such disparate genetic heritages. The result would be a species that was half formic, so that perhaps the hive queens could communicate with them mentally, control them like any other formics. Only they were still different enough that they didn’t completely bond with the queen—so when this world’s hive queen died, the gold bugs didn’t.

Or maybe they already had a species they used for menial tasks, one that had a weak mental bond with the hive queens, and that’s what they interbred with the parasitic worms. Those incredible teeth that could burrow right through leather, cloth, skin, and bone. But sentient, or nearly so. It could still be ruled by the hive queen’s mind.

Or my mind. Did it come back at my summoning? Or was it simply taking the easy food first?

By now the larva had plunged down onto each of the bits of food and devoured them—along with a thin layer of the stone floor at each spot. The thing was hungry.

Sel formed a picture in his mind—a complicated one now. A picture of Sel and Po bringing food into the tunnel. Feeding the larva. He pictured himself and Po going in and out of the cave, bringing food. Lots of food. Leaves. Grain. Fruit. Small animals.

The larva came toward him, but then circled around him. Writhed around his legs. Like a constrictor? Did it have that snakelike pattern, too?

No. It didn’t get tighter. It was more like a cat.

Then it pushed from behind. Nudging him toward the tunnel.

Sel obeyed. The thing understood. There was rudimentary communication going on.

Sel hurried to the tunnel, then knelt and sat and started to try to slide along as he had coming in.

The larve slid past him in the tunnel and then stopped. Waiting.

The image came into his mind, just a flash of it: Sel holding on to the larva.

Sel took hold of the creature’s dry, articulated surface, and it began moving forward again. It was carefully not thrashing him against the wall, though he scraped now and then. It hurt and probably drew blood, but none of his bones broke and none of the lacerations were deep. Perhaps it was bred to give rides like this to formics when they were still alive. It wouldn’t have bothered a formic to bash against the walls a little.

The larva stopped. But now Sel could see the light of day. So could the larva. It didn’t go out there; it shied from the light and backed down the tunnel past Sel.

When Sel emerged into the daylight and stood up, Po ran to him and hugged him. “It didn’t eat you!”

“No, it gave me a ride,” he said.

Po wasn’t sure how to make sense of this.

“All our food,” said Sel. “I promised we’d feed it.”

Po didn’t argue. He ran to the pack and started handing food to Sel, who gathered it into a basket made by holding his shirt out in front of him. “Enough for the moment,” said Sel.

In a few moments, he had his shirt off and stuffed with food. Then he started laboriously down the tunnel again. In moments the larva was there again, coiling around him. Sel opened the shirt and dropped the food. The larva began eating ravenously. Sel was still close enough to the entrance that he could squat-walk out again.

“We’ll need more food,” said Sel.

“What’s food to the larva?” asked Po. “Grass? Bushes?”

“It ate the vegetables from my lunch pack.”

“There’s not going to be anything edible growing around here.”

“Not edible to us,” said Sel. “But if I’m right, this thing is half native to this world, and it can probably metabolize the local vegetation.”

If there was one thing they knew how to do, it was identify the local flora. Soon they were shuttling shirtfuls of tuberous vegetables down the tunnel. They took turns carrying food to the larva.

Morgan had gone inside the shuttle; Ender had given his orders and the ship’s crew was unloading the shuttle while the locals loaded up the skimmers and transported the cargo to the right places. Other people knew better than Ender how to direct and carry out these tasks, so he left them to it while Ix took him to the xeno station where Sel’s ansible was waiting, amid the other communications equipment. “I just need to transmit a quick message back to Eros,” Ender said.

While he was still composing it, the voice of young Po Tolo came in on the radio.

“No, I’m not your father,” said Ender. “I’ll call him.”

He didn’t have to—Ix had heard his voice, probably heard Po’s voice on the radio, and he was there in a moment. Ender quickly finished his message while catching the gist of Ix’s conversation with his son. Ender transmitted to Graff and Wuri just as Ix said, “We’ll be there quicker than you can guess.”

Ix turned to Ender. “We need to take a skimmer to Sel and Po. They’re out of supplies.”

Ender couldn’t believe Sel would plan so badly that he could do anything as foolish as that. But before he could say anything, Ix went on.

“They’ve found a creature,” said Ix. “At least a hybrid. Cave dweller. Six legs in the adult form. Huge wormlike larva. It can chew rock, but it doesn’t metabolize it. It was starving, so they gave it all their food.”

“He’s such a generous man,” said Ender.

“The skimmer can travel that far? Two hundred clicks, over uneven terrain?”

“Easily,” said Ender. “It charges by solar, but the normal range is five hundred kilometers without a pause for recharge.”

“I’m very glad you got here when you did.”

“Not a coincidence,” said Ender. “Sel left because I was coming, remember?”

“But he didn’t need to,” said Ix.

“I know. But as I said, he’s a generous man.”

They had two of the skimmers loaded with food in about twenty minutes, and along with experienced marines to pilot the things, Ender brought along Ix himself. They rode together on the more lightly loaded of the two.

Too bad none of the new xenos had been wakened yet—they would have killed for a chance to be along for the ride. But all in good time.

On the way, Ix explained to Ender as much as he had gleaned from talking to his son. “Po didn’t want to leap to conclusions—he’s a cautious boy—but from what he says, Sel thinks it’s some kind of genetic merge between a formicoid species and a local worm—conceivably even the bloodworm that tried to wipe out our first generation.”

“The one you take injections to control?”

“We have better methods now,” said Ix. “Preventive rather than maintenance. They can’t take hold. The original problem was that we were already deeply infected before we knew the problem existed—they had to be rooted out. But my generation never got the infection. You won’t either. You’ll see.”

“Define ‘formicoid,’” said Ender.

“Look, I’m not sure myself, Po and I didn’t talk long. But…my guess is that he meant ‘formicoid’ the way we’d say ‘mammalian’ or even ‘chordate,’ rather than ‘humanoid.’”

Ender looked a little disappointed. “You’ve got to understand, I’m a little obsessed with the formics. My old enemy, you know? Anything that might bring me closer to understanding them…”

Ix said nothing. Either he understood or he didn’t. Either way, what he cared about was that both his son and his mentor were out there, without food and with a vastly important scientific discovery that would make waves on Earth and in all the colonies.

With only one satellite in the sky so far—the original transport ship—there was no way to triangulate a global positioning system. That would come later, when Morgan’s people placed their network of geosyncs into orbit. For now, they depended entirely on the maps that had been generated before they landed, and Po’s description of the route they would need to follow. Ender was impressed that the kid’s instructions were perfect. Not a missed landmark, not a wrong turn. No delays at all.

Even proceeding cautiously, they made good time. They were there five hours after the call from Po, and it was still daylight, though it wouldn’t be for much longer. As they skimmed into the valley with all its cave entrances, Ender saw with some amusement that the young man waving to them was no more than a year or two older than he was. Why had he been surprised that Po could do a good, reliable job? Hadn’t Ender himself been doing a man’s job for years?

Ix was off the skimmer almost before it stopped, and ran to his son and embraced him. Ender might be governor, but Ix was in charge here, giving instructions to the marines about where to park and unload. Ender authorized the instructions with a wink, and then set to work helping the men with their work. He was tall enough now that he could do a decent share of it, though not as much as two adult men with marine training. They found things to chat about while they worked, and Ender broached a subject that he’d been thinking about through most of the voyage.

“A world like this,” said Ender, “almost makes you sorry to leave again, doesn’t it?”

“Not me,” said one of them. “Everything’s so dirty. Give me shipboard life and crappy food!”

But the other one said nothing, just glanced at Ender and then looked away. So he was considering it. Staying. That was something Ender would have to negotiate with Morgan. He would be sorry if the way he thwarted Morgan’s plans made it impossible to work out a way for some of the crew to stay. Still, there’d be time to figure it out. Work out a trade—because there had to be at least a few of the younger generation born here on Shakespeare who were longing to get out of this place, this tiny village, and see a wider world. It was the old tradition of the sea. And of the circus. Lose a few crew members in every port or town, but pick up a few others who have an itchy foot or a dreamy eye.

Out of the cavern emerged an old man, who took more than a few moments to straighten up from being inside the cave. He spoke for a few moments to Po and Ix, and then, as they headed inside the cavern, dragging a sledge filled with roots and fruits—a sledge that Ix had made sure they loaded onto a skimmer—Sel Menach turned to look at Ender for the first time.

“Ender Wiggin,” he said.

“Sel Menach,” said Ender. “Po said you had a giant worm situation going on here.”

Sel looked at the marines, who had their hands on their sidearms. “No weapons needed. We’re not exactly talking with the things, but they understand rudimentary images.”

“Things?” asked Ender.

“While we were feeding the one, two others came up. I don’t know if it’s enough to sustain a breeding population, but it’s better than coming upon a species when only one specimen is left alive. Or none.”

“‘Formicoid’ is a word that’s been bandied about,” said Ender.

“Can’t be sure till we get the genetic material scoped and scanned,” said Sel. “If they were really formics, they’d be dead. The adult bodies have carapaces; they’re not furred, with an endoskeleton. Might not even be as close to formics as lemurs are to us—or they might be as close as chimps. But Ender,” said Sel, his eyes glistening. “I talked to it. No, I thought to it. I gave it an image and it responded. And it gave me one back. Showed me how to hitch a ride on it through the tunnel.”

Ender looked at Sel’s scraped and torn clothing. “Rough ride.”

“Rough road,” said Sel. “The ride was fine.”

“You know I came here for the formics,” said Ender.

“Me too,” said Sel, grinning. “To kill them.”

“But now to understand them,” said Ender.

“I think we’ve found a key here. Maybe not to every last door, but it’ll open something.” Then he put an arm across Ender’s shoulder and led him away from the others. Ender usually disliked the arm-across-the-shoulder move—it was how one man asserted superiority over another. But there was no hint of that in Sel. It was more like an assertion of camaraderie. Even conspiracy. “I know we can’t talk openly,” said Sel, “but give it to me straight. Are you governor or not?”

“In fact as well as name,” said Ender. “The threat was averted and he’s back on the ship, cooperating as if that’s all he ever intended.”

“Maybe it was,” said Sel.

Ender laughed. “And maybe this larva you’ve found will teach us calculus before the day is out.”

“I’ll be happy if it knows how to count to five.”

Later, after night fell and the men sat around a fire eating the fresh, easily spoiled food Po’s mother had sent for tonight’s supper, Sel was expansive, full of speculation, full of hope. “These creatures metabolize gold and extrude it in their carapaces. Maybe they do it with whatever metal is in the ore, or maybe they bred separate subspecies for each metal they needed. Maybe this isn’t the only population with survivors. Maybe we can locate iron miners, copper miners, tin, silver, aluminum, anything we need. But if this group is average, then we’ll find some groups that are all dead, and some that have larger populations. It would be too freakish for this to be the last surviving group in the world.”

“We’ll get on it right away,” said Ender. “While we still have marines from the ship to help in the search. And they can take…locals with them to learn how to fly the skimmers like experts before the ship goes away.”

Ix laughed. “You almost said ‘natives’ instead of ‘locals.’”

“Yes,” Ender admitted freely. “I did.”

“It’s all right,” said Ix. “The formics didn’t evolve here either. So ‘native’ just means ‘born here,’ and that describes me and Po—everybody except the ancient ones of Sel’s generation. Natives and newcomers, but in the next generation, we’ll all be natives.”

“Then you think that’s the term we should use?”

“Native Shakespearians,” said Ix. “That’s what we are.”

“I hope we don’t have to do some kind of blood ceremony or initiation to be accepted into the tribe.”

“No,” said Ix. “White man bringing skimmer is always welcome.”

“Just because I’m white doesn’t mean—” Then Ender saw the laughter in Ix’s eyes and smiled. “I’m too eager not to give offense,” said Ender. “So eager I was too quick to take offense.”

“You’ll get used to our Mayan sense of humor eventually,” said Ix.

“No he won’t,” said Sel. “Nobody else has gotten used to it, anyway.”

“Everybody but you, old man,” said Ix.

Sel laughed along with the others, and then the conversation took another turn, with the marines describing their training, and talking about what life was like on Earth and in the high-tech society that moved throughout the solar system.

Ender noticed Sel getting a faraway look in his eyes, and misunderstood what it meant. As they prepared for sleep, Ender took a moment to ask Sel, “Do you ever give any thought to going back? Home? To Earth?”

Sel visibly shuddered. “No! What would I do there? Here’s where everyone and everything I love and care about are.” Then he got that wistful look again. “No, I just can’t help but think that it’s just a damn shame that I didn’t find this place thirty or twenty or even ten years ago. So busy, so much work right around the settlement, always meant to make this trip, and if I’d only done it back then, there’d have been more of them alive, and I’d have had more years to take part in the work. Missed opportunity, my young friend! There is no life without regret.”

“But you’re glad that you found them now.”

“Yes I am,” said Sel. “Everybody misses some things, finds others. This is something I helped to find. With not a minute to spare.” Then he smiled. “One thing I noticed. I don’t know if it matters, but…the larva hadn’t eaten the gold bug we found, the one that was still alive. And those larvae, they’re voracious.”

“They only eat carrion?” asked Ender.

“No, no, they went down on the turtles just fine. Not Earth turtles, but we call them that. They like living meat. But eating the gold bugs, that was cannibalism, you understand? That was their parents’ generation. Eating them because there was nothing else. But they waited until they were dead. You see?”

Ender nodded. He saw perfectly. A rudimentary sense of respect for the living. For the rights of others. Whatever these gold bugs were, they were not mere animals. They weren’t formics, but maybe they would give Ender his chance to get inside the formic mind, at least at one remove.

CHAPTER 17

To: MinCol@ColMin.gov

From: Gov%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov

Subj: Let’s have a very quiet revolution

Dear Hyrum,

I have been warmly received as governor here, in no small part due to your long-distance intervention, as well as the enthusiasm of the natives.

We are still bringing colonists down from the ship as quickly as housing can be constructed for them. We are branching out into four settlements—the original, Miranda; and Falstaff, Polonius, and Mercutio. There was some enthusiasm for a Caliban village, but it quickly dissipated when people contemplated a future village school and what the mascot might look like.

You do understand, don’t you, that local self-government is inevitable in the colonies, and the sooner the better. Well-intentioned as you are, and vital as it is that Earth continue to pay the astronomical (pun intended) expenses of starflight in the faint hope that it will eventually pay for itself, there is no way that the I.F. can force an unwanted governor on an unwilling populace—not for long.

Far better that I.F. ships come with ambassadorial status, to promote trade and good relations and deliver colonists and supplies to compensate for the burden they place on the local economy.

In token of which good counsel, I intend to serve for two years as governor, during which time I will sponsor the writing of a constitution. We will submit it to ColMin, not for approval—if we like it, it’s our constitution—but for your judgment as to whether ColMin can recommend Shakespeare as a destination for colonists. That’s where your power comes from—your ability to decide whether colonists can join an existing colony or not.

And perhaps some regulatory commission can meet by ansible, with a representative and single vote from every colony, to certify each other as worthy trading partners. In this way, a colony that sets up an intolerable government can be ostracized and cut off from trade and new colonists—but no one will commit the absurdity of trying to wage war (another word for enforcing policy) against a settlement that it takes half a lifetime to reach.

Does this letter constitute a declaration of in dependence? Not a very principled one. It’s more a simple recognition that we’re in dependent whether we make it official or not. These people survived for forty-one years completely on their own. They’re glad to have received the supplies and the new breeding stock (plant, animal, human), but they did not have to have them.

In a way, each of these colonies is a hybrid—human by gene and cultural forebear, but formic by infrastructure. The formics built well; we don’t have to clear land or search for water or process it, and their sewage systems seem to have been built for the ages. A fine monument! They still serve us by carrying away our poo. Because of what the formics prepared and what good scientists like Sel Menach accomplished in the colonies, the I.F. and ColMin don’t have the clout that they might have had.

I say all this along with the sincere hope that we can eventually reach a point where every colony is visited every single year. Not in your lifetime or mine, probably, but that should be the goal.

Though if history is any guide, that ambition will seem absurdly modest within fifty years, as ships may very well come and go every six months, or every month, or every week of the year. May we both live to see it.

—Andrew

There is no accounting for the whims of children. When Alessandra was a toddler, Dorabella merely chuckled at the strange things she tried to do. When Alessandra was old enough to speak, her questions seemed to come from thought processes so random that it made Dorabella half believe that her child really was sent to her by fairies.

But by school age, children tended to become more reasonable. It was not teachers or parents who did it to them, but the other children, who either ridiculed or shunned a child whose actions and utterances did not conform with their standard of ordinariness.

Still, Alessandra never ceased to be able to come up with complete surprises, and of all times, with poor Quincy so frustrated at the way Ender had bested him in bureaucratic maneuvering, she picked this one to be completely unreasonable.

“Mother,” said Alessandra, “most of the sleepers have woken now and gone down to Shakespeare, and I’ve been packed for days. When are we going?”

“Packed?” said Dorabella. “I thought you had been seized by a fit of tidiness. I was going to ask the doctors to test you for some odd disease.”

“I’m not joking, Mother. We signed on to go to the colony. We’re at the colony. Just one shuttle trip away. We have a contract.”

Dorabella laughed. But the girl really wasn’t going to be teased out of this. “Darling daughter of mine,” said Dorabella. “I’m married now. To the admiral who captains this ship. Where the ship goes, he goes. Where he goes, I go. Where I go, you go.”

Alessandra stood there in utter silence. She seemed poised to argue.

And then she didn’t argue at all. “All right, Mother. So it’s clean indoor living for another few years.”

“My dear Quincy tells me that our next destination is another colony, nowhere near so far from us as Earth. Only a few months of flying time.”

“But very tedious for me,” said Alessandra. “With all the interesting people gone.”

“Meaning Ender Wiggin, of course,” said Dorabella. “I did so hope that you might manage to attract that fine young man with prospects. But he seems to have chosen to cast us aside.”

Alessandra looked puzzled. “Us?” she said.

“He’s a very smart boy. He knew that by forcing my dear Quincy to leave Shakespeare, he was sending you and me away, too.”

“I never thought of that,” said Alessandra. “Why, I’m very cross with him, then.”

Dorabella felt a sudden tingling of awareness. Alessandra was taking things too well. This was not like her. And this hint of childish petulance directed against Ender Wiggin seemed to be almost a parody of Dorabella’s deliberately childish fairy talk.

“What are you planning?” asked Dorabella.

“Planning? How can I plan anything when the crew are all so busy and the marines are down on the planet?”

“You’re planning to sneak onto the shuttle without permission and go down to the planet’s surface without my knowing it.”

Alessandra looked at Dorabella as if she were crazy. But since that was her normal expression, Dorabella fully expected to be lied to, and her daughter did not disappoint. “Of course I wasn’t,” said Alessandra. “I fully expect to have your permission.”

“Well, you don’t.”

“We came all this way, Mother.” Now she sounded like her petulant self, so that her arguments might be sincere. “I at least want to visit. I want to say good-bye to all our friends from the voyage. I want to see the sky. I haven’t seen sky for two years!”

“You’ve been in the sky,” said Dorabella.

“Oh, that was a smart answer,” said Alessandra. “That makes my longing to be outdoors go away…just. Like. That.”

Now that Alessandra mentioned it, Dorabella realized that she, too, longed for a bit of a walk outdoors. The gym on the ship was always full of marines and crew members, and even though they were required to walk for a certain number of minutes a day on the treadmill, it was not as if that ever felt like you had truly gone somewhere.

“That’s not unreasonable,” said Dorabella.

“You’re joking,” said Alessandra.

“What, do you think it is unreasonable?”

“I didn’t think you would ever think it was reasonable.”

“I’m hurt,” said Dorabella. “I’m a human being, too. I long for the sight of clouds in the sky. They do have clouds here, don’t they?”

“How would I know, Mother?”

“We’ll go together,” said Dorabella. “Mother and daughter, saying good-bye to our friends. We never got to do that when we left Monopoli.”

“We didn’t have any friends,” said Alessandra.

“We certainly did too, and they must have thought we were so rude to leave without them.”

“I bet they brood about it every day. ‘Whatever happened to that rude girl Alessandra, who left us without saying good-bye—forty years ago.’”

Dorabella laughed. Alessandra did have such biting wit. “That’s my smart little fairy daughter. Titania had nothing on you when it came to bitchiness.”

“I wish you had stopped reading Shakespeare with Taming of the Shrew.”

“I’ve been living inside A Midsummer Night’s Dream my whole life and I never knew it,” said Dorabella. “That was what felt like coming home to me, not reaching some strange planet.”

“Well, I live inside The Tempest,” said Alessandra. “Trapped on an island and desperate to get off.”

Dorabella laughed again. “I’ll ask your father to let us ride down with one of the shuttles and come back up with another. How’s that?”

“Excellent. Thank you, Mother.”

“Wait a minute,” said Dorabella.

“What do you mean?”

“You agreed too quickly. What are you planning? Do you think you can sneak away into the woods and hide till I go off and leave without you? That will never happen, my dear. I will not go without you, and Quincy will not go without me. If you try to run away, marines will track you down and find you and drag you back to me. Do you understand?”

“Mother,” said Alessandra, “the last time I ran away was when I was six.”

“My dear, you ran away only a few weeks before we left Monopoli. When you skipped school and went to visit your grandmother.”

“That wasn’t running away,” said Alessandra. “I came back.”

“Only after you found out that your grandmother was Satan’s widow.”

“I didn’t know the devil was dead.”

“Married to her, can you imagine he wouldn’t kill himself?”

Alessandra laughed. That’s how it was done—you lay down the law, but then you make them laugh and be happy about obeying you.

“We’ll visit Shakespeare, and then we’ll come back home to the ship. The ship is home now. Don’t forget that.”

“Of course not,” said Alessandra. “But Mama.”

“Yes, darling fairy girl?”

“He’s not my father.”

Dorabella took a moment to figure out what she was talking about. “Who’s not your what?”

“Admiral Morgan,” said Alessandra. “Not my father.”

“I’m your mother. He’s my husband. What do you think that makes him, your nephew?”

“Not. My. Father.”

“Oh, I’m so sad,” said Dorabella. “Here I thought you were happy for me.”

“I’m very happy for you,” said Alessandra. “But my father was a real man, not the king of the fairies, and he didn’t prance off into the woods, he died. Anyone you marry now will be your husband, but not my father.”

“I didn’t marry anyone, I married a wonderful man with whom I am bound to have more children, so that if you reject him as your father, he will have no shortage of other heirs on whom to bestow his estate.”

“I don’t want his estate.”

“Then you’d better marry well,” said Dorabella, “because you don’t want to raise your own children in poverty the way I did.”

“Just don’t call him my father,” said Alessandra.

“You have to call him something, and so do I. Be reasonable, darling.”

“Then I’ll call him Prospero,” said Alessandra, “because that’s what he is.”

“What? Why?”

“A powerful stranger who has us completely under his control. You’re Ariel, the sweet one who loves your master. I’m Caliban. I just want to be set free.”

“You’re a teenager. You’ll grow out of it.”

“Never.”

“There is no such thing as freedom,” said Dorabella, getting impatient. “Sometimes, though, there’s a chance to choose your master.”

“Very well, Mother. You chose your master. But I haven’t chosen mine.”

“You still think the Wiggin boy even notices you.”

“I know that he does, but I’m not pinning my hopes on him.”

“You offered yourself to him, my dear, and he turned you down flat. It was quite humiliating, even if you didn’t realize it.”

Alessandra’s face turned a bit red and she stalked to the door of their quarters. Then she whirled around, real pain and fury on her face. “You watched,” she said. “Quincy recorded it and you watched!”

“Of course I did,” said Dorabella. “If I hadn’t, he or some crewman would have watched. Do you think I wanted them ogling your body?”

“You sent me to Ender expecting me to get naked with him, and you knew they were recording it, and you watched it. You watched me.”

“You didn’t get naked, did you? And so what if you had? I saw your naked body from angles you’ve never even thought of during the butt-wiping years.”

“I hate you, Mother.”

“You love me, because I always watch out for you.”

“And Ender didn’t humiliate me. Or reject me. He rejected you. He rejected the way you made me act!”

“What happened to, ‘Oh thank you, Mother! Now I shall have the man I love’?”

“I never said that.”

“You thanked me and giggled and thanked me again. You stood there and let me make you up like a whore to entice him. At what point did I force you to do something against your will?”

“You told me what I had to do if I wanted Ender to love me. Only a man like Ender doesn’t fall for tricks like yours!”

“A man? A boy is what you mean. The only reason he didn’t fall for that ‘trick’ was because he probably hasn’t reached sexual maturity. If he’s even a heterosexual.”

“Listen to yourself, Mother,” said Alessandra. “One minute Ender is the beginning and end of the world, the best chance for a great man that I’ll ever have a chance to find. The next minute, he’s a gay little boy who shamed me. You judge him according to whether he’s useful to you.”

“No, my pet. Whether he’s useful to my little girl.”

“Well, he isn’t,” said Alessandra.

“That was my point,” said Dorabella. “And yet you gave me a tongue-lashing for saying so. Do make up your mind, my little Caliban.” Then Dorabella burst into laughter, and, completely against her will, so did Alessandra. The girl was so angry at herself for laughing, or at Dorabella for making her laugh, that she fled from the room, slamming the door behind her. Or trying to—the pneumatics caught it and it closed quite gently.

Poor Alessandra. Nothing went the way she wanted.

Welcome to the real world, my child. Someday you’ll see that my getting dear Quincy to fall in love with me was the best thing I ever did for you. Because I do everything for you. And all I ask in return is that you hold up your end and take the opportunities I get for you.

Valentine tried to walk normally into the room, to remain perfectly calm. But she was so disgusted with Ender that she could hardly contain herself. The boy was so busy making himself “available” to all the new colonists and old settlers, answering questions, chatting about things that he could not possibly remember from half-hour interviews two years ago, when he was so tired he could hardly speak. Yet when someone with whom he had a genuine personal relationship was looking for him, he was nowhere to be found.

It was just like the way he had refused to write to their parents. Well, he hadn’t refused. He had always promised to do it. Then he simply never did.

For the past two years, he had promised—by implication, if not by word—that if the poor Toscano girl fell in love with him, it would not be unwelcome. Now she and her mother had come down to the planet’s surface, to do some “sightseeing.” The girl was obviously looking for only one sight: Ender Wiggin. And he was nowhere.

Valentine was fed up. The boy could be bold and brave indeed, except when there was something emotionally demanding that he didn’t actually have to do. He could evade this girl, and maybe he thought that was some kind of clear message, but he owed her words. He owed her at least a good-bye. It didn’t have to be a fond one, it just had to happen.

She finally found him in the XB’s ansible room, writing something—probably a letter to Graff or someone equally irrelevant to their life on this new world.

“The fact that you’re here,” said Valentine, “leaves you without any excuse at all.”

Ender looked up at her, seeming to be genuinely puzzled. Well, he probably wasn’t faking it—he probably blocked the girl out of his mind so thoroughly that he had no clue what Valentine was talking about.

“You’re looking through your mail. That means you got the passenger log for this shuttle trip.”

“I already met the new colonists.”

“Except one.”

Ender raised an eyebrow. “Alessandra isn’t a colonist anymore.”

“She’s looking for you.”

“She could ask anybody where I am and they’ll tell her. It’s no secret.”

“She can’t ask.”

“Well, then, how does she expect to find me?”

“Don’t put on this stupid act. I’m not so stupid as to believe you’re stupid, even if you’re acting as stupid as can be.”

“OK, I’ve got the stupid part. Can you be more specific?”

“Extremely stupid.”

“Not the degree, dear sister.”

“Emotionally insensitive.”

“Valentine,” said Ender, “doesn’t it occur to you that I actually know what I’m doing? Can’t you have a little faith in me?”

“I think you’re evading an emotionally difficult confrontation.”

“Then why don’t I hide from you?”

She wasn’t sure whether to be even more annoyed at him for turning the tables on her, or to be a bit relieved that he considered a confrontation with her to be emotional. She wasn’t actually sure she had enough of a hold on him for their confrontations to be emotional—on his side, anyway.

Ender glanced at the time in the computer display and sighed. “Well, your timing, as usual, is impeccable, even if you don’t have a clue.”

“I’d have a clue if you gave me one,” said Valentine.

Ender was standing now, and to her surprise, he really was taller than her. She had noticed he was getting tall, but hadn’t realized that he had passed her. And it wasn’t thick shoes—he wasn’t wearing any.

“Val,” he said softly. “If you looked at what I say and do, it would be obvious to you what’s going on. But you don’t analyze. You see something that doesn’t look right, and you leap past all the thinking part and go straight to ‘Ender is doing something wrong and I must put a stop to it.’”

“I think! I analyze!”

“You analyze everything and everybody. That’s what makes your history of Battle School so wonderful and truthful.”

“You’ve read it?”

“You gave it to me three days ago. Of course I’ve read it.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“This is the first time I’ve seen you since I finished it. Val, think, please.”

“Don’t patronize me!”

“Feeling patronized isn’t thinking,” he said, sounding irritated at last. That made her feel a little better. “Don’t judge me until you understand me. You can’t understand me if you’ve already judged me. You think I’ve treated Alessandra badly, but I haven’t. I’ve treated her extremely well. I’m about to save her life. But you can’t trust me to do the right thing. You don’t even bother to think what the right thing is before you decide that I’m not doing it.”

“What is it that I think you’re not doing that you are doing? That girl is pining for you—”

“Her feelings. Not her needs. Not what’s actually good for her. You think the worst danger she faces is having her feelings hurt.”

Valentine felt the righteous anger bleed out of her. What danger was he talking about? What need did Alessandra have, beyond her need for Ender? What was Valentine missing?

Ender put his arms around her, hugged her, and then moved past her, out of the room, then out of the building. Valentine had no choice but to follow.

He moved briskly across the grassy square in the middle of the science complex—really, just four one-story structures where the handful of scientists worked on the biology and technology that kept the colonists and the colony running. Now, though, with the newcomers from the ship, the houses were teeming with people, and Ender had already asked the fore-men of the crews to shift their priorities and get additional science buildings. The noise of building wasn’t deafening, because there were few power tools. But the calling out of instructions, the shouted warnings, the pounding of axes and hammers, it was a vigorous sound, taken all together. The sound of deliberate, welcome change.

Did Ender really know exactly where the Toscanos would be? He certainly walked straight toward the place. And now that Valentine thought about it—analyzed, yes, Ender—she realized that Ender must have been waiting till the end of their visit, until the shuttle was loading up for the return trip. Not quite the last one, but the last that wouldn’t be full of marines and crew. The last shuttle with room for nonessential passengers.

He cut it rather close, even so. Alessandra was standing forlorn at the bottom of the ramp, with her mother tugging at her sleeve, urging her to move on into the shuttle. Then she saw Ender coming toward her and broke away from her mother, running to Ender. Could the poor girl be any more obvious?

She flung her arms around Ender, and to his credit, he embraced her willingly. In fact, Valentine was surprised at the way he held her, nuzzling her shoulder with real affection. What did he mean by that? What was the girl going to think he meant? Ender, are you really that insensitive?

When she practically jumped into his arms, Ender took a step back to bear the sudden momentum; but he made sure to get his face down close to her ear.

“Sixteen is old enough to join a colony without parental permission,” he said softly.

Alessandra pulled away from him, looked searchingly in his eyes.

“No,” said Ender. “Nothing will happen between us. I’m not asking you to stay for me.”

“Then why would you ask me to stay at all?”

“I’m not,” said Ender. “I’m telling you how. Right now, right here, I can set you free from your mother. Not to take her place, not to take control of your life, but to let you take control of it. The question is, do you want it?”

Alessandra’s eyes filled with sudden tears. “You don’t love me?”

“I care about you,” said Ender. “You’re a good person who has never had a moment’s freedom. Your mother controls your coming and going. She spins stories around you and eventually you always believe them and do what she wants. You barely know what you want. Here in Shakespeare, you’ll find out. Up there, with your mother and Admiral Morgan, I wonder if you’ll ever know.”

She nodded, understanding. “I know what I want. I want to stay.”

“Then stay,” said Ender.

“Tell her,” said Alessandra. “Please.”

“No.”

“If I talk to her, she’ll find some reason why I’m being stupid.”

“Don’t believe her.”

“She’ll make me feel guilty. Like I’m doing something really awful to her.”

“You’re not. In a way, you’re setting her free, too. She can have Morgan’s children and not worry about you.”

“You know about that? You know she’s going to have children with him?”

Ender sighed. “We don’t have time for this conversation now. Your mother’s coming because the shuttle has to leave and she expects you to be on it. If you decide to stay, I’ll back you up. If you go with her willingly, I won’t lift a hand to stop you.”

Then Ender stepped away from her, just as Dorabella arrived.

“I can see what he’s doing,” said Mother. “Promising you anything you want, just to get you to stay and become his plaything.”

“Mother,” said Alessandra, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know that whatever he promised you is a lie. He doesn’t love you.”

“I know he doesn’t,” said Alessandra. “He told me he doesn’t.”

It was rather satisfying to see how surprised Mother looked. “Then what was all that hugging about? The way he nuzzled you?”

“He was whispering in my ear.”

“What did he say?”

“He only reminded me of something I already knew,” said Alessandra.

“Tell me on the shuttle, my dear little fairy princess, because they’re getting quite impatient. They don’t want to make your father angry by arriving late.”

It hadn’t been a whole day since Alessandra told her mother never to call Quincy her “father,” and she was already doing it again. That’s how it always was—Mother decided how things should be, and nothing Alessandra did could change her. Instead Alessandra always had to change. Whatever Mother wanted, eventually Alessandra would go along with because it was easier. Mother made sure that doing things her way was always easier.

The only time I ever defied her was behind her back. When she wasn’t looking, when I could pretend she wouldn’t know. I walk in fear of her, even though she’s not a monster like my grandmother. Or…or maybe she is, but I never defied her enough to find out.

I don’t have to go with her. I can stay here.

But Ender doesn’t love me. Who do I have here? No friends, really. People I know from the voyage, but they all related to Mother, not to me. They talked about me, right in front of me, because Mother did. When they did speak to me, it was to say the things that Mother had virtually commanded them to say. I have no friends.

Ender and Valentine were the only ones who treated me like a person in my own right. And Ender doesn’t love me.

Why doesn’t he love me? What’s wrong with me? I’m pretty, I’m smart. Not as smart as he is, or Valentine is, but nobody’s that smart, not even on Earth. He said he desired me, that time back on the ship. He wants me, but he doesn’t love me. I’m just a body to him, just a big nothing, and if I stay here, I’ll be reminded of that all the time.

“My fairy darling,” said Mother, tugging at her sleeve again. “Come with me. We’re going to be so happy together, voyaging among the stars! You’ll get a superb education with the midshipmen—your father already promised me that—and by the time you’re the right age, we’ll certainly be back near Earth, so you can go to a real university and you can find a man instead of this obnoxious, self-centered boy.”

By now Mother was almost dragging her toward the shuttle. It was how things always went. Mother made it seem so inevitable to go along with her plans. And the alternatives were always so awful. Other people never understood Alessandra the way Mother did.

But Mother doesn’t, thought Alessandra. She doesn’t understand me. She just understands the insane picture she has of me. Her fairy changeling daughter.

Alessandra looked back over her shoulder, looking for Ender. There he was, showing nothing on his face at all. How can he do that? Has he no feelings? Won’t he miss me? Won’t he call me back? Won’t he plead for me?

No. He said he wouldn’t. He told me…my own choice…willingly…

Am I going with her willingly?

She’s dragging at me, but not with very much force at all. She’s talking me into it with every step, and I’m going. Like the rats following the pied piper of Hamelin. The music of her voice entrances me, and I follow, and then I find myself…here, on the ramp, heading to the shuttle.

Going back to where I’ll be under her thumb all the time. A rival to the children she and Quincy have together. A nuisance, ultimately. What will happen then, when she turns on me? And even if she doesn’t, it will only be because I’m complying completely with what she wants for me.

Alessandra stopped.

Mother’s hand slipped away from her arm—she really hadn’t been gripping her, or just barely.

“Alessandra,” said Mother. “I saw you look back at him, but you see? He doesn’t want you. He isn’t calling for you. There’s nothing for you here. But up there, in the stars, there’s my love for you. There’s the magic of our wonderful world together.”

But their wonderful world together wasn’t magic, it was a nightmare that Mother only called magic. And now there was someone else in that “wonderful world,” someone that Mother was sleeping with and going to have babies with.

Mother isn’t just lying to me, she’s lying to herself. She doesn’t really want me there. She has found her own new life, and she’s only pretending that nothing will be changed by it. The fact is that Mother desperately needs to be rid of me, so she can get on with her happiness. For sixteen years I’ve been the weight dragging her down, holding her to the ground, keeping her from doing any of the things she dreamed of. Now she has the man of her dreams—well, a man who can give her the life of her dreams. And I am in the way.

“Mother,” said Alessandra. “I’m not going with you.”

“Yes you are.”

“I’m sixteen,” said Alessandra. “The law says I can decide for myself whether to join a colony.”

“Nonsense.”

“It’s true. Valentine Wiggin joined this colony when she was only fifteen. Her parents didn’t want her to, but she did it.”

“Is that the lie she told you? It may seem romantic and brave, but you’ll just be lonely all the time.”

“Mother,” said Alessandra. “I’m lonely all the time anyway.”

Mother recoiled from her words. “How can you say that, you ungrateful little brat,” she said. “I’m with you. You’re never lonely.”

“I’m always lonely,” said Alessandra. “And you’re never with me. You’re with your darling angel fairy changeling child. And that’s not me.”

Alessandra turned away and headed back down the ramp.

She heard Mother’s footsteps. No, she felt them, as the ramp bounced slightly under the impact of her feet.

Then she felt Mother shove her from behind, a brutal shove that threw her completely off balance. “Go, then, you little bitch!” Mother screamed.

Alessandra struggled to get her feet under her, but her upper body was moving far faster than her feet could match, and she felt herself falling forward, the ramp looking so steep, she was going to hit so hard and her hands wouldn’t be able to hold her up—

All of those thoughts in a split second, and then she felt her arm grabbed from behind and instead of hitting the ramp she swung down and then up again and it wasn’t Mother who caught her, Mother was still a few steps away, where she had been when she shoved her. This was Ensign Akbar, and his face looked so concerned, so kind.

“Are you all right?” he said, once he had her standing up.

“That’s right!” Mother shouted. “Bring that ungrateful little brat right inside here.”

“Do you want to go back to the ship with us?” asked Ensign Akbar.

“Of course she does,” said Mother, who was now at Akbar’s elbow. Alessandra could see the transformation in Mother’s face as she switched from the screamer who called Alessandra a bitch and a brat to the sweet fairy queen. “My darling fairy child is only happy when she’s with her mother.”

“I think I want to stay here,” said Alessandra softly. “Will you let me go?”

Ensign Akbar leaned over to her and whispered in her ear, exactly as Ender had done. “I wish I could stay here with you,” he said. Then he stood up to military attention. “Good-bye, Alessandra Toscano. Have a happy life here in this good world.”

“What are you saying! My husband will court-martial you for this!” The Mother moved past him, heading for Alessandra, a hand reaching out for her like the bony hand of death.

Ensign Akbar caught her by the wrist.

“How dare you,” she hissed directly into his face. “You’ve signed your death warrant for mutiny.”

“Admiral Morgan will approve of my preventing his wife from breaking the law,” said Ensign Akbar. “He will approve of my allowing this free colonist to exercise her right to fulfil her contract and stay in this colony.”

Mother put her face right up into his, and Alessandra could see how flecks of her spittle sprayed right into his mouth, his nose, and onto his chin and cheeks. Yet he didn’t budge. “It won’t be about this, you fool,” she said. “It will be about the time you tried to rape me in a darkened room on the ship.”

For a moment, Alessandra found herself wondering when such a thing might have happened, and why Mother didn’t mention it at the time.

Then she realized: It hadn’t happened. Mother only intended to say it had. She was threatening Ensign Akbar with a lie. And there was one thing for sure—Mother was a good liar. Because she believed her own lies.

But Akbar only smiled. “The lady Dorabella Morgan has forgotten something.”

“What is that?”

“Everything is recorded.” Then Akbar let go of Mother’s wrist, turned her around, and gave her a gentle nudge up the ramp.

Alessandra couldn’t help herself. She gave one short, sharp laugh.

Mother whirled around, her face full of rage. Looking so much like Grandmother. “Grandmother,” Alessandra said aloud. “I thought we left her behind, but look, we brought her with us.”

It was the cruelest thing Alessandra could have said, that was plain. Mother was dumbstruck with the pain of it. Yet it was also the simple truth, and Alessandra hadn’t said it to hurt her mother, it had simply spilled out of her mouth the moment she realized it was so.

“Good-bye, Mother,” said Alessandra. “Have lots of babies with Admiral Morgan. Be happy all the time. I wish you would. I hope you will.” Then she let Ensign Akbar take her down the ramp.

Ender was there—he had come closer while Mother was distracting her, and Alessandra hadn’t realized it. He had come for her after all.

She and Akbar reached the base of the ramp; she noticed that Ender did not set foot on it.

“Ensign Akbar,” said Ender, “you’re mistaken about Admiral Morgan. He will believe her, if only to have peace with her.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” he said. “But what can I do?”

“You can resign your commission. Both by real time and relativistic time, your term of enlistment has expired.”

“I can’t resign in mid-voyage,” said Akbar.

“But you’re not in mid-voyage,” said Ender. “You’re in a port that is under the authority of the Hegemony, in the person of myself, the governor.”

“He won’t let it happen,” said Akbar.

“Yes he will,” said Ender. “He will obey the law, because it’s the same law that gives him his absolute authority during a voyage. If he breaks it against you, then it can be broken against him. He knows that.”

“And if he didn’t,” said Akbar, “you’re telling him right now.”

Only then did Alessandra realize that their words were still being recorded.

“I am,” said Ender. “So you don’t have to face the consequences of defying Mrs. Morgan. You acted with complete propriety. Here in the town of Miranda, you’ll be treated with the respect that a man of your integrity deserves.” Ender turned and with a sweep of his hand indicated the whole settlement. “The town is very small. But look—it’s so much larger than the ship.”

It was true. Alessandra could see that now for the first time. That this place was huge. There was room to get away from people if you didn’t like them. Room to carve out a space for yourself, to say things that nobody else could hear, to think your own thoughts.

I’ve made the right choice.

Ensign Akbar stepped off the end of the ramp. So did Alessandra. Back on the ramp, Mother howled something. But Alessandra did not make any sense of the sound. She could hear no words in it, though surely words were being said.

She didn’t have to hear it. She didn’t have to understand it. She no longer lived in Mother’s world.

CHAPTER 18

From: MinCol@ColMin.gov

To: Gov%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov

Subj: Unexpected colonists

Dear Ender,

I’m glad to hear that things are going so well in Shakespeare Colony. The successful assimilation of the new colonists is not being matched everywhere, and we have granted the petition of the governor of Colony IX that we not send them colonists—or a new governor—after all. In short, they have declared themselves even more in dependent than you have. (Your declaration that Shakespeare would accept no more offworld governors was cited as having prompted them to decide whether they wanted new colonists, so in a way this is all your fault, don’t you think?)

Unfortunately, their declaration came when I already had a ship with several thousand colonists, a new governor, and a huge amount of supplies most of the way toward their planet. They left not very long after your ship. Now they’re thirty-nine lightyears from home, and the party they were invited to has been canceled.

However, Shakespeare is close to the route they were taking, and at this moment, they are in such a position that we can bring them out of lightspeed, start turning them as soon as that becomes feasible, and get them to your planet in about a year.

These colonists will all be strangers to you. They have their own governor—again, someone you do not know or even know of. It would almost certainly work best if they establish their own settlement, accepting guidance and medical help and supplies from you, but governing themselves.

Since you have already divided your colony into four villages, the settlement they form will be larger than any of yours. It will be a far more difficult assimilation than when your ship arrived, and I suggest a federation of two colonies rather than incorporating them in your colony. Or, if you prefer, a federation of five cities, though having the new colonists outnumbered four-to-one in such a federation will cause its own tensions.

If you tell me not to send them, I will follow your wishes; I can keep them on a holding pattern, even putting most of the crew in stasis, until one of the planets we’re terraforming is ready for them.

But if anyone can adapt to this situation, and induce his colony to accept the newcomers, it is you.

I am attaching full information, including bios and manifest.

—Hyrum

From: Gov%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov

To: MinCol@ColMin.gov

Subj: Re: Unexpected colonists

Dear Hyrum,

We’ll find a site for them and have habitations prepared when they arrive. We will put them near a formic city, so they can mine their technology and farm their fields, as we did; and because you’ve given us a year’s notice, we’ll have time to plant fields and orchards for them with human-adapted local crops and genetically altered Earth crops. The people of Shakespeare voted on this and are embracing the project with enthusiasm. I will leave shortly to choose an appropriate site.

—Andrew

In all eleven years of Abra’s life, only one thing had ever happened that mattered: the arrival of Ender Wiggin.

Until then, it was all work. Children were expected to do whatever was within their ability, and Abra had the misfortune to be clever with his hands. He could untie knots and tie them before he could make sentences. He could see how machinery worked and when he became strong enough to use adult tools, he could fix it or adapt it. He understood the flow of power through the metal parts. And so there were jobs for him to do even when other children were playing.

His father, Ix, was proud of his son, and so Abra was proud of himself. He was glad to be a child who was needed for grownup tasks. He was much smaller than his older brother Po, who had gone along with Uncle Sel to find the gold bugs; but he was sent to help rig the low trolley that people rode into and out of the cave, and on which food was taken to the colony of bugs, and gold carcasses removed.

Yet Abra also looked wistfully as the children his age (he couldn’t call them friends, because he spent so little time with them) headed for the swimming hole, or climbed trees in the orchard, or shot at each other with wooden weapons.

Only his mother, Hannah, saw him. She urged him sometimes to go with the others, to leave whatever job he was doing. But it was too late. Like a baby bird that a child has handled, so it has the scent of man on it, Abra was marked by his work with adults. There was no resentment on their part. They just didn’t think of him as one of them. If he had tried to come along, it would have seemed to all of them as inappropriate as if some adult had insisted on playing their games with them. It would ruin things. Especially because Abra was secretly convinced that he would be very bad at children’s games. When he was little, and tried to build with blocks, he would weep when other children knocked down his structures. But the other children couldn’t seem to understand why he would build, if not to see things get knocked down.

Here is what Ender’s coming meant to Abra: Ender Wiggin was the governor, and yet he was young, the same age as Po. Adults talked to Ender as if he were one of them. No, as if he were their superior. They brought problems to him for solutions. They laid their disputes before him and abided by his decisions, listening to his explanations, asking him questions, coming to accept his understanding.

I am like him, thought Abra. Adults consult me about their machines the way they consult Ender about their other problems. They stand and listen to my explanations. They do what I tell them they should do to fix the problem. He and I live the same life—we are not really children. We have no friends.

Well, Ender had his sister, of course, but she was a strange recluse, who would stay indoors all day, except for her morning walk in summer, her afternoon walk in winter. They said she was writing books. All the adult scientists wrote things and sent them off to the other worlds, and then read the papers and books that were sent back. But what she was writing wasn’t science at all. It was history. The past. Why would that matter, when there was so much to do and discover in the present? Ender could not possibly be interested in such things. Abra could not even imagine what they would talk about. “Today I gave Lo and Amato permission to divorce.” “Did it happen a hundred years ago?” “No.” “Then I don’t care.”

Abra also had siblings. Po treated him well. They all did. But they did not play with him. They played with each other.

Which was fine. Abra didn’t want to “play.” He wanted to do things that were real, things that mattered. He took as much pleasure from fixing machines and building things as they ever did from their games and mock fights and knocking-down. And now that Mother said he didn’t have to go to school anymore, so there wouldn’t be the constant humiliation of being unable to read and write, Abra spent his free time following Ender Wiggin everywhere.

Governor Wiggin noticed him, because he spoke to Abra from time to time—explaining things sometimes; just as often asking him questions. But mostly he let Abra tag along, and if other adults who were talking about serious matters sometimes glanced at Abra as if to ask Ender why he had this child with him, Ender simply ignored their silent question and soon they all carried on as if Abra were not there.

So when Ender left on his expedition to search for an appropriate site for the new starship to land and found another colony, no one even questioned the fact that Abra would be going with him. Father did take Abra aside and talk to him, though. “This is a heavy responsibility,” he said. “You are not to do anything dangerous. If something happens to the governor, your first responsibility is to report it to me by satfone. Your location will already be tracked and we’ll send help at once. Don’t try to deal with it yourself until we have been notified. Do you understand?”

Of course Abra understood. To Father, Abra was merely going along as backup. Mother’s advice was a bit less pessimistic about Abra’s value. “Don’t argue with him,” she said. “Listen first, argue after.”

“Of course, Mom.”

“You say ‘of course,’ but you aren’t good at listening, Abra, you always think you know what people are going to say, and you have to let them say it because sometimes you’re wrong.”

Abra nodded. “I’ll listen to Ender, Mother.”

She rolled her eyes—even though she yelled at the other children when they did that to her. “Yes, I suppose you will. Only Ender is wise enough to know more than my Abra!”

“I don’t think I know everything, Mom.” How could he get her to see that he only got impatient with adults when they thought they understood machinery and didn’t? The rest of the time, he didn’t speak at all. But since most of the time adults thought they knew what had gone wrong with a broken machine, and most of the time they were mistaken, most of his conversation with adults consisted of correcting them—or ignoring them. What else would they talk about except machinery, and Abra knew it better than they did. With Ender, though, it was almost never about machines. It was about everything, and Abra drank it all in.

“I’ll try to keep Po from marrying Alessandra before you get home,” said Mom.

“I don’t care,” said Abra. “They don’t have to wait for me. It’s not like they’ll need me for the wedding night.”

“Sometimes your face just needs slapping, Abra,” said Mom. “But Ender puts up with you. The boy’s a saint. Santo André.”

“San Énder,” said Abra.

“His Christian name is Andrew,” said Mom.

“But the name that makes him holy is Ender,” said Abra.

“My son the theologian. And you say you don’t think you know everything!” Mother shook her heads, apparently disgusted with him.

Abra never understood how such arguments began, or why they usually ended with adults shaking their heads and turning away from him. He took their ideas seriously (except for their ideas about machinery); why couldn’t they do the same for him?

Ender did. And he was going to spend days—weeks, maybe—with Ender Wiggin. Just the two of them.

They loaded the skimmer with supplies for three weeks, though Ender said he didn’t think they’d be gone that long. Po came along to see them off, Alessandra clinging to him like a fungus, and he said, “Try not to be a nuisance, Abra.”

“You’re jealous that he’s taking me and not you,” said Abra.

Alessandra spoke up. A talking fungus, apparently. “Po doesn’t want to go anywhere.” Meaning, of course, that he couldn’t bear to be away from her for a single second.

Po’s face stayed blank, however, so that Abra knew perfectly well that while he might be completely imasen over the girl, he would still rather go on the trip with Ender than stay behind with her. Contrary to Mother’s opinion of him, however, Abra said nothing at all. He didn’t even wink at Po. He just kept his face exactly as blank as Po’s. It was the Mayan way of laughing at somebody right in front of them, without being rude or starting a fight.

The journey was a strange experience for Abra. At first, of course, they simply skimmed along above the fields of home. Familiar ground. Then they followed the road to Falstaff, which was due west of Miranda; this was also familiar, since Abra’s married sister Alma lived there with her husband, that big stupid eemo Simon, who always tickled younger children until they wet themselves and then made fun of them for peeing themselves like babies. Abra was relieved that Ender only paused to greet the mayor of the village and then moved on without any further delay.

They camped the first night in a grassy glen, sheltered from the wind that was coming up. It brought a storm in the night, but they were snug inside a tent, and without Abra even asking, Ender told him stories about Battle School and what the game was like, in the battleroom, and how it wasn’t really a game at all, it was training and testing them for command. “Some people are born to lead,” said Ender. “They just think that way, whether they want to lead or not. While others are born craving authority, but they have no ability to lead. It’s very sad.”

“Why would people want to do something they’re not good at?” Abra tried to imagine himself wanting to be a scholar, in spite of his reading problem. It was just absurd.

“Leading is a strange thing,” said Ender. “People see it happening, but they don’t have a clue how it works.”

“I know,” said Abra. “Most people are like that with machines. But they try to fix them anyway and make everything worse.”

“So you understand exactly,” said Ender. “They don’t see what a leader does, they just see how everybody respects a good leader, and they want to have the attention and respect without understanding what you actually have to do to earn it.”

“Everybody respects you,” said Abra.

“And yet I do almost nothing,” said Ender. “I have to learn other people’s jobs well enough to help them at their work, because I just don’t have enough work of my own to do. Leading this colony is too easy to be a fulltime job.”

“Easy for you,” said Abra.

“I suppose,” said Ender. “But then, even when I’m doing other jobs, I’m still doing my job as governor. Because I’m always getting to know people. You can’t lead people you don’t know or at least understand. In war, for instance, if you don’t know what your soldiers can do, how can you lead them into battle and hope to succeed? The enemy, too. You have to know the enemy.”

Abra thought about that as they lay there in the darkness inside the tent. He thought about it so long that maybe he even dreamed for a while, about Ender sitting down and talking to the buggers—only the newcomers called them formics—and then exchanging Christmas gifts with them. But maybe he only imagined it while awake, because he was awake when he whispered, “Is that why you spend so much time with the gold bugs?”

It was as if Ender had been thinking about the same thing, because he didn’t give one of those impatient adult answers, like, What are you talking about? He knew that Abra was still holding to the thread of their prior conversation. In fact, Ender sounded sleepy, and Abra wondered if he had been dozing and Abra’s voice had woken him and still Ender knew what he was talking about.

“Yes,” said Ender. “I understood the hive queens well enough to defeat them. But not well enough to understand why they let me.”

“They let you?”

“No, they fought hard against me, to prevent my victory. But they also brought themselves together where I could kill them all in a single battle. And they knew I had the weapon that could do it. A weapon they understood better than we did, because we got it from them. We still don’t fully understand the science of it. But they must have. And yet they gathered together and waited for me. I don’t understand it. So…I try communicating with the gold bug larvae. To get some idea of how the hive queens thought.”

“Po says nobody’s better at it than you.”

“Does he?”

“He says everybody else has to work and work to get a glimmer of an image into or out of the gold bugs’ heads, but you could do it the very first time.”

“I didn’t realize I was all that unusual,” said Ender.

“They talk about it when you’re not there. Po talks about it with Papa.”

“Interesting,” said Ender. He didn’t sound like he felt flattered, or like he was acting modest—Ender truly sounded like he thought of his unusual talent for talking with the gold bugs as a simple fact.

When he thought about it, this made sense to Abra. You shouldn’t be proud of being good at something, if you were born with it. That would be as dumb as being proud of having two legs, or speaking a language, or pooping.

Because he was with Ender, Abra felt free to say what he had just thought of, and Ender laughed. “That’s right, Abra. Something you work to achieve, that’s one thing. Why not be proud of it? Why not feel good about it? But something you were born with, that’s just the way you are. Do you mind if I quote you?”

Abra wasn’t sure what he meant by quoting. Was he going to write a scholarly paper? A letter to somebody? “Go ahead,” said Abra.

“So…I’m unusually good at talking to the gold bugs,” said Ender. “I had no idea. It’s not talking, though. It’s more like they show you what they remember, and put a feeling with it. Like, here’s my memory of food, and they put hunger with it. Or the same image of food, plus a feeling of revulsion or fear, meaning, this is poisonous or I don’t like the taste or…you get the idea.”

“No words,” said Abra.

“Exactly.”

“The way I see machinery,” said Abra. “I have to find words to explain it to people, but when I see it, I just know. I don’t think the machinery is talking to me, though. No feelings.”

“It may not be talking,” said Ender, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t hear.”

“Exactly! Yes! That’s right!” Abra almost shouted the words, and his eyes filled with tears, and he didn’t even know why. Or…yes he did. No adult had ever known what it felt like before.

“I had a friend once, and I think he saw battles that way. I had to think things through, the way the forces were arranged, but Bean just saw. He didn’t even realize that other people took longer to understand—or never did at all. To him it was simply obvious.”

“Bean? Is that a name?”

“He was an orphan. It was a street name. He didn’t find out his real name until later, when people who cared about him did enough research to find out that he had been kidnapped as an embryo and genetically altered to make him such a genius.”

“Oh,” said Abra. “So that’s not what he really was.”

“No, Abra,” said Ender. “We really are what our genes make us. We really have whatever abilities they give. It’s what we start with. Just because his genes were shaped deliberately, by a criminal scientist, doesn’t mean they’re any less his than our genes, which are shaped by random selection between the genes of our father and the genes of our mother. I was shaped deliberately, too. Not by illegal science, but my parents chose each other partly because they were each so brilliant, and then the International Fleet asked them to have a third child because my older brother and sister were so brilliant but still were not quite what the I.F. wanted. Does that mean that I’m not really me? Who would I be, if my parents hadn’t given birth to me?”

Abra was having a hard time following the conversation. It made him sleepy. He yawned.

Then Ender came up with a comparison Abra understood. “It’s like saying, What would this pump be, if it weren’t a pump?”

“That’s just dumb. It is a pump. If it weren’t a pump, it wouldn’t be anything at all.”

“So now you understand.”

Abra whispered the next question. “So you’re like my father, and you don’t believe people have souls?”

“No,” said Ender. “I don’t know about souls. I just know that while we’re alive, in these bodies, we can only do what our body can do. My parents believe in souls. I’ve known people who were absolutely sure. Smart people. Good people. So just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean I’m sure it can’t be true.”

“That’s like what Papa says.”

“See? He doesn’t disbelieve in souls.”

“But Mom talks like…she says that she can look in my eyes and see into my soul.”

“Maybe she can.”

“Like you can look into a gold bug larva and see what it’s thinking?”

“Maybe,” said Ender. “I can’t see what it’s thinking, though. I can only see what it pushes into my mind. I try to push thoughts into its mind, but I don’t think I’m actually pushing. I think the ability to communicate by thoughts belongs completely to the larva. It pushes things into my mind, and then takes from my mind whatever I show it. But I’m not doing anything.”

“Then how can you be better at it than other people, if you’re not doing anything?”

“If I’m really better—and remember, your father and Po can’t really know whether I am or not—then maybe it’s because I have a mind that it’s easier for a gold bug to get inside of.”

“Why?” asked Abra. “Why would a human being born on Earth have a brain that was easier for a gold bug to get inside of?”

“I don’t know,” said Ender. “That’s one of the things I came to this world to find out.”

“That’s not even true,” said Abra. “You couldn’t have come here to find out why your brain was easier for the buggers to understand because you didn’t know your brain could do that until you got here!”

Ender laughed. “You just don’t have any tolerance for kuso, do you?”

“What’s kuso?”

“Mierda,” said Ender. “Bullshit.”

“Were you lying to me?”

“No,” said Ender. “Here’s the thing. I had dreams when I was fighting the war on Eros. I didn’t know I was fighting the war, but I was. I had one dream where a bunch of formics were vivisecting me. Only instead of cutting open my body, they were cutting up my memories and displaying them like holographs and trying to make sense of them. Why did I have that dream, Abra? After I won the war and found out that I had really been fighting the hive queens and not just a computer simulation, or my teacher, I thought back to some of my dreams and I wondered. Were they trying just as hard to understand me as I was trying to understand them? Was that dream because on some level I was aware that they were getting inside my head, and it frightened me?”

“Wow,” said Abra. “But if they could read your mind, why couldn’t they beat you?”

“Because my victories weren’t in my mind,” said Ender. “That’s the weird thing. I thought through the battles, yes, but I didn’t see them like Bean did. Instead, I saw the people. The soldiers under me. I knew what those kids were capable of. So I put them in a situation where their decisions would be crucial, told them what I wanted them to do, and then I trusted them to make the decisions that would achieve my objective. I didn’t actually know what they’d do. So being inside my head would never show the hive queens what I was planning, because I had no plan, not of a kind they could use against me.”

“Is that why you thought that way? So they couldn’t read your plans?”

“I didn’t know the game was real. I’ve only thought of these things afterward. Trying to understand.”

“But if that’s true, then you were communicating with the buggers—formics—hive queens all along.”

“I don’t know. Maybe they were trying, but they couldn’t make sense of it. I’m sure they didn’t push anything into my head, or at least not clearly enough for me to understand it. And what could they take from my thoughts? I don’t know. Maybe it didn’t happen at all. Maybe I only dreamed about them because I kept thinking about them. What will I do when I face real hive queens? If this simulation were a real battle, how would a hive queen think? That sort of thing.”

“What does Papa think?” asked Abra. “He’s really smart and he knows more than anybody about the gold bugs now.”

“I haven’t discussed this with your father.”

“Oh.” Abra digested that thought in silence.

“Abra,” said Ender. “I haven’t talked about this with anybody.”

“Oh.” Abra felt overwhelmed by Ender’s trust. He could not speak.

“Let’s go to sleep,” said Ender. “I want us to be wide awake and on our way at first light. This new colony needs to be several days’ journey away, even by skimmer. And once we find the general area, I have to mark out specific places for buildings and fields and a landing strip for the shuttle and all that.”

“Maybe we’ll find another gold bug cave.”

“Maybe,” said Ender. “Or some other metal. Like the bauxite cave you found.”

“Just because the aluminum bugs were all dead doesn’t mean we won’t find another cave that has living bugs, right?” said Abra.

“We might have found the only survivors,” said Ender.

“But Papa says the odds are against that. He says it would be too co-incidental if the longest-surviving gold bugs just happened to be the ones that Uncle Sel and Po happened to discover.”

“Your father’s not a mathematician,” said Ender. “He doesn’t understand probability.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sel and Po did find the cave with living gold bug larvae in it. Therefore the chance of their finding it, in this causal universe, is one hundred percent. Because it happened.”

“Oh.”

“But since we don’t know how many other bug caves there are, or where they’re situated, any guess at how likely we are to find one isn’t about probability—it’s just a guess. There’s not enough data for mathematical probabilities.”

“We know there was a second one,” said Abra. “So it’s not like we know nothing.”

“But from the data we actually have, one cave with living gold bugs and one with dead aluminum ones, what would you conclude?”

“That we have as much chance of finding live ones as dead. That’s what Father says.”

“But that isn’t really true,” said Ender. “Because in the cave Sel and Po found, the bugs weren’t thriving. They had almost died out. And in the other cave, they had died out. So now what are the odds?”

Abra thought hard about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “It depends on how big each colony was, and whether they would think of eating their own parents’ bodies like these bugs did, and maybe other stuff I don’t even know about.”

“Now you’re thinking like a scientist,” said Ender. “Now, please think like a sleeping person. We have a long day tomorrow.”

They traveled all day the next day, and it all began to look the same to Abra. “What’s wrong with any of these places?” said Abra. “The…formics farmed there, and they did fine. And a landing strip could go there.”

“Too close,” said Ender. “Not enough room for the newcomers to develop their own culture. So close that if they became envious of Falstaff village, they might try to take it over.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because they’re human,” said Ender. “And, specifically, because then they’d have people who knew everything that we know and can do everything we do.”

“But they’d still be our people,” said Abra.

“Not for long,” said Ender. “Now that the villages are separate, the Falstaffians will start thinking about what’s good for Falstaff. They might resent Miranda for thinking we should be their boss, and maybe they’d want to join these new people voluntarily.”

Abra thought about that for about ten clicks. “What would be wrong with that?” he said.

This time it took Ender a moment of thought before he was able to answer. “Ah, Falstaff joining the new people voluntarily. Well, I don’t know if anything would be wrong with it. I just know that what I want to happen is for all the villages—including the new one—to be separate enough to develop their own traditions and cultures, and far enough apart that they won’t fight over the same resources, yet close enough to intermarry and trade. I’m hoping that there’s some perfect distance apart that will make it so they don’t start fighting each other, or at least not for a long time.”

“As long as we have you as governor, we’ll just win anyway,” said Abra.

“I don’t care who wins,” said Ender. “It’s having a war at all that would be terrible.”

“That’s not how you felt when you beat the formics!”

“No,” said Ender. “When the survival of the human race is at stake, you can’t help but care who wins. But in a war between colonists on this planet, why would I care which side won? Either way, there’d be killing and loss and grief and hate and bitter memories and the seeds of wars to come. And both sides would be human, so no matter what, humans would lose. And lose and keep on losing. Abra, I sometimes say prayers, did you know that? Because my parents prayed. I sometimes talk to God even though I don’t know anything about him. I ask him: Let the wars end.”

“They have ended,” said Abra. “On earth. The Hegemon united the whole world and nobody’s at war anywhere.”

“Yes,” said Ender. “Wouldn’t it be ridiculous if they finally got peace on Earth and we just started up the whole warfare thing again here on Shakespeare?”

“The Hegemon is your brother, right?” asked Abra.

“He’s Valentine’s brother,” said Ender.

“But she’s your sister,” said Abra.

“He’s Valentine’s brother,” said Ender, and his face looked sort of dark and Abra didn’t ask him what in the world he was talking about.

On the third day of their trip, as the sun got to about two hands above the western horizon—time on clocks and watches meant nothing here, since they had all been made on Earth for Earth days, and nobody liked any of the schemes for dividing up the Shakespearian day into hours and minutes—Ender finally stopped the skimmer on the crest of a hill overlooking a broad valley with overgrown orchards and fields with forty years’ growth of trees in them. There were tunnel entrances in some of the surrounding hills, and chimneys that showed there had been manufacturing here.

“This place looks as likely as any,” said Ender. So, just like that, the site of the new colony was chosen.

They pitched the tent and Ender fixed dinner and he and Abra walked down into the valley together and looked inside a couple of the caves. No bugs, of course, since this wasn’t that kind of settlement, but there was machinery of a kind that they hadn’t seen before and Abra wanted to plunge right in and figure it all out but Ender said, “I promise you’ll be the first one to get a look at these machines, but not now. Not tonight. That’s not our mission. We have to lay out a colony. I have to determine where the fields will be, the water source—we have to find the formic sewer system, we have to see if we can wake up their generating equipment. All the things that Sel Menach’s generation did, long before you were born. But before too long, we’ll have time for the formic machines. And then, believe me, they’ll let you spend days and weeks on them.”

Abra wanted to wheedle like a little kid, but he knew Ender was right. And so he accepted Ender’s promise and stayed with him for the rest of that night’s walk.

The sun had set before they got back to camp—they had only a faint light in the sky when they turned in to sleep. This time their conversation consisted of Ender asking Abra to tell stories that his parents had told him, his father’s Mayan stories and his mother’s Chinese stories and the Catholic stories they both had in common, and that took until Abra could hardly keep his eyes open, and then they slept.

The next day, Ender and Abra marked out fields and laid out streets, recording everything on the holomaps in Ender’s field desk, which were automatically transmitted to the orbiting computer. No need even to call Papa on the satfone, because he would get all this information automatically and he could see the work they were doing.

Late in the afternoon, Ender sighed and said, “You know, this is actually kind of boring.”

“Really?” said Abra sarcastically.

“Even slaves get time off now and then.”

“Who?” Abra was afraid this was some school-learning thing that he didn’t know because he couldn’t read and stopped going to school.

“You have no idea how happy it makes me that you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Well, if Ender was happy, Abra was happy.

“For the next hour, I say we do whatever we want,” said Ender.

“Like what?” asked Abra.

“What, you mean I have to decide for you what you think would be fun?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to see if the river’s good for swimming.”

“That’s dangerous and you shouldn’t do it alone.”

“If I drown, call your father to come get you.”

“I could drive the skimmer home, you know.”

“But you couldn’t get my corpse up onto it,” said Ender.

“Don’t talk about dying!” Abra said. He meant to sound angry. Instead his voice shook and he sounded scared.

“I’m a good swimmer,” said Ender. “I’m going to test the water to make sure it won’t make me sick, and I’ll only swim where there’s no current, all right? And you’re free to swim with me, if you want.”

“I don’t like to swim.” He’d never really learned, not well.

“So—don’t go climbing into any caves or fiddling with machinery, all right?” said Ender. “Because machinery really is scary.”

“Only because you don’t understand it.”

“Right,” said Ender. “But what if something went wrong? What if I had to take your mangled or incinerated body back to your parents?”

Abra laughed. “So I can let the governor die, but you can’t let one dumb kid get killed.”

“Exactly right,” said Ender. “Because I’m responsible for you, but you’re only responsible for reporting my death if it happens.”

So Ender went back to the skimmer and got the water testing equipment. And since Abra knew perfectly well Ender was going to have to test the river anyway, he realized that Ender wasn’t really taking a break, he was giving Abra a break. Well, two could play this game. Abra would use the time to scout out the crest of the far ridge and see what lay on the other side. That was useful. That was a real job that would have to be done. So while Ender swam around in the river, Abra would be adding to the map.

It was a longer walk than Abra thought it would be. The far hills looked deceptively close. The higher he got, though, the easier it was to spot the place where Ender was, in fact, swimming. He wondered if Ender could also see him. He turned and waved a couple of times, but Ender didn’t wave back, probably because he would look like a speck to Ender, just as Ender looked like a speck to him. Or else Ender wasn’t looking, and that was fine, too. It meant Ender trusted him not to screw up and get hurt or lost.

At the top of the hill, Abra could see why the river in the valley behind him widened—there was an irrigation dam between the hills so the widening of the river was really a pond behind the dam. The drop wasn’t very severe, though, and certain sluices were permanently open so that the river flowed permanently into three channels. One was the original riverbed, and the other two carried water through slightly higher canals skirting the north side of the valley. Here on the south side of the river, the canals were permanently empty, and so Abra could easily see the difference that the irrigation made. Both sides of the lower valley were lush with life, but on the wet side, trees were growing, and on the drier side, it was grass and low shrubs.

But as he gazed at the south side—the grassy side—he realized that there was something wrong with the landscape. Instead of being a smooth flood plain, like the upper valley behind him where Ender was, there were several mounds in the plain below him. And there was nothing natural about the way they were laid out.

The formics had to have built them. But what were they for?

And now that he looked closely, he could see that there were even-more-artificial-looking structures here and there. They didn’t look like normal formic buildings, either. This was something new and strange, and even though they were overgrown with grass and vines, they were still plainly visible.

Abra scrambled down the slope—not running, because it was unfamiliar ground, and the last thing he wanted was to sprain an ankle and become a burden on Ender. He came to the largest of the artificial mounds. It was steep-sided but covered with grass, so climbing it wasn’t very hard. He reached the top and realized that it was hollow inside, and there was water gathered in it.

Abra walked the ridge line and found that at one end, two ridges extended out like legs, making a widening vale between them. And when he turned around, he realized that there were also low ridges that could be arms, and where a head would be, a large white rock glistened in the sunlight, looking for all the world like a skull.

It was shaped like a man. Not like a formic—a man.

He felt a thrill go through him—of fear, of dread, of excitement. Such a place as this could not exist. And yet it did.

He heard a voice calling his name. He looked up and saw that Ender had driven the skimmer over the ridge from the other valley and was looking for him. Abra waved and called out, “Ho, Ender!”

Ender saw him and skimmed over to the base of the steep hill where Abra had climbed. “Come up,” said Abra.

When Ender had scrambled up the slope—displacing a few turves in the process, since he was bigger than Abra and weighed more—Abra gestured to the body-like structure of the artificial hills. “Can you believe this?”

Apparently Ender didn’t see it the way Abra did. He simply looked, and said nothing.

“It’s like a giant died here,” said Abra, “and the earth grew up to cover his carcass.”

Abra heard a sharp intake of breath from Ender, so he knew now that he had seen.

Ender looked around and pointed wordlessly at some of the smaller, vine-covered structures. He pulled out his binoculars and looked for a long time. “Impossible,” he muttered.

“What? What are they?”

Ender didn’t answer. Instead he walked the length of the hill, toward the “head.” Abra scrambled down onto the neck and up the chin. “Somebody had to build this,” Abra said. He scratched at the white surface. “Look, this skull place, it’s not rock, look at it. This is concrete.”

“I know,” said Ender. “They built it for me.”

“What?”

“I know this place, Abra. The buggers built it for me.”

“They were all dead before Grandpa and Grandma even got here,” said Abra.

“You’re right, it’s impossible, but I know what I know.” Ender put a hand on Abra’s shoulder. “Abra, I shouldn’t take you with me.”

“Where?”

“Over there.” Ender pointed. “It might be dangerous. If they knew me well enough to build this place, they might be planning to—”

“To get even with you,” said Abra.

“For killing them,” said Ender.

“So don’t go, Ender. Don’t do what they want you to do.”

“If they want to get revenge, Abra, I don’t mind. But perhaps they don’t. Perhaps this is the closest they could come to talking. To writing me a note.”

“They didn’t know how to read and write.” They didn’t even know the idea of reading and writing—that’s what Father said. So how would they know about leaving notes?

“Maybe they were learning when they died,” said Ender.

“Well I’m sure as hell not sticking around here if you’re taking off somewhere. I’m going with you.”

Ender looked amused when Abra said “hell.” He shook his head, smiling. “No. You’re too young to take the risk of—”

“Come on!” said Abra with disgust. “You’re Ender Wiggin. Don’t tell me what eleven-year-old kids can do!”

So they rode in the skimmer together until they got to the first set of structures. Ender stopped and they got off. The shape of the structures came from metal frameworks underlying and supporting the vines. Now Abra realized they were swings and slides, just like those in the town park in Miranda. The ones in Miranda were smaller, because they were just for the little kids. But there was no mistaking what they were.

But formics didn’t have babies, they had larvae. Worms would hardly need swings and slides.

“They made human stuff,” said Abra.

Ender only nodded.

“They really were taking stuff out of your head,” said Abra.

“That’s one explanation,” said Ender. Then they got on the skimmer and went on. Ender seemed to know the way.

They neared the farthest structure. It was a thick tower and some lower walls, all covered with ivy. There was a window near the top of the tower.

“You knew this would be here,” said Abra.

“It was my nightmare,” said Ender. “My memory of the fantasy game.”

Abra had no idea what “the fantasy game” was, but he understood that this place represented one of those dreams that the formics were taking out of Ender when they vivisected him in that nightmare he had talked about.

Ender got out of the skimmer. “Don’t come after me,” he said. “If I’m not back in an hour, it means it’s dangerous here, and you must go home at once and tell them everything.”

“Eat it, Ender, I’m coming with you,” said Abra.

Ender looked at him coldly. “Eat it yourself, Abra, or I’ll stuff you with mud.”

His words were jocular, and so was his tone. But his eyes were not joking, and Abra knew that he meant it.

So Abra stayed with the skimmer and watched Ender jog over to the castle—for that’s what it was. And then Ender climbed up the outside of the tower and went in through the window.

Abra stayed, watching the tower, for a long time. He checked the skimmer’s clock now and then. And finally his gaze began to wander. He watched birds and insects, small animals in the grass, clouds moving across the sky.

That’s why he didn’t see Ender come out of the tower. He only saw him walking toward the skimmer, carrying his jacket in a wad under his arm.

Only it wasn’t a wad. There was something inside the jacket. But Abra didn’t ask what Ender had found. He figured that if Ender wanted him to know, he’d tell him.

“We aren’t building the new colony here,” said Ender.

“OK,” said Abra.

“Let’s go back and strike camp,” said Ender.

They searched for five more days, well to the east and south of the place they had first found, until they had another colony site. It was a bigger formic settlement, with a much larger area of fields and all the signs of a much larger annual rainfall. “This is the right place,” said Ender. “Better climate, warmer. Good, rich soil.”

They spent a week laying out the new site.

Then it was time to go home. The night before they left, lying out on the open ground—it was too hot at night inside the tent—Abra finally asked. Not what it was that Ender brought back from the tower—he would never ask that—but the deeper question.

“Ender, what did they mean? Building this for you?”

Ender was silent for a long time. “I’m not going to tell you the whole truth, Abra. Because I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t even want them to know what we found there. I hope it’s all decayed and crumbled away before people go back there. But even if it’s not, nobody else will understand it. And in the far future, nobody will believe that the formics made that place. They’ll think it’s something that human colonists did.”

“You don’t have to tell me everything,” said Abra. “And I won’t tell anybody else what we found.”

“I know you won’t,” said Ender. He hesitated again. “I don’t want to lie to you. So I’ll only tell you true things. I found the answer, Abra.”

“To what?”

“My question.”

“Can’t you tell me any of it?”

“You’ve never asked the question. I hope to God you never know what it is.”

“But the message really was for you.”

“Yes, Abra. They left a message that told me why they died.”

“Why?”

“No, Abra. It’s my burden, truly. Mine alone.” Ender reached out a hand, gripped Abra by the arm. “Let there be no rumors of what Ender Wiggin found when he came to this place.”

“There never will be,” said Abra.

“You mean that at the age of eleven, you’re prepared to take a secret to your grave?”

“Yes,” said Abra without hesitation. “But I hope I don’t have to do that very soon.”

Ender laughed. “I hope the same. I hope you live a long, long time.”

“I’ll keep the secret all my life. Even though I don’t actually know what it is.”

Ender came into the house where Valentine was working on the next-to-last volume of her history of the Formic Wars. He set his own desk on the table across from her. She looked up at him. He smiled—a jokey, mechanical smile—and started typing.

She wasn’t fooled. The smile was fake, but the happiness behind it was real.

Ender was actually happy.

What happened on that trip to lay out the new colony?

He didn’t say. She didn’t ask. It was enough for her that he was happy.

CHAPTER 19

To: jpwiggin%ret@gso.nc.pub, twiggin%em@uncg.edu

From: Gov%ShakespeareCol@MinCol.gov

Subj: Third

Dear Mother and Father,

Some things cannot be helped. For you, it has been 47 years of silence from your third and youngest child. For me, it has been my six years in Battle School, where I lived for one reason only, to destroy the formics; the year after our victory, in which I learned that I had twice killed other children, that I destroyed an entire sentient species that I don’t believe I ever understood, and that every mistake I made caused the deaths of men and women in places lightyears away; and then two years of a voyage in which I could never for a moment speak or show my true feelings about anything.

Through all of this, I have been trying to sort out what it meant that you gave life to me. To have a child, knowing that you have signed a contract to give him up to the government upon demand—isn’t there a bit of the story of Rumpelstiltskin in this? In the fairy tale, someone happens to overhear the secret name that will free them from their pledge to give their child to the dwarf. In our case, the universe did not conspire in our favor, and when Rumpelstiltskin showed up, you handed over the boy. Me.

I made a choice myself—though what I really understood at six years of age is hard to fathom. I thought I was already myself; I was aware of no deficiencies of judgment. But now, looking back, I wonder why I chose. It was partly a desire to flee from Peter’s threats and oppression, since Valentine really couldn’t stop him and the two of you had no idea what was going on among us children. It was partly a desire to save the people I knew, most particularly my own protector, Valentine, from the predations of the formics.

It was partly a hope that I might turn out to be a very important boy. It was partly the challenge of it, the hope of victory over the other children competing to be great commanders. It was partly a wish to leave a world where every day I was reminded that Thirds are illegal, unwanted, despised, taking more than their family’s share of the world’s resources.

It was partly my sense that while you cried (Mother) and you blustered (Father) it would make a positive difference in our family’s life for me to go. No longer would you be the ones who had an extra child and yet were not suffering the penalties of law. With that monitor gone, there’d be no more visible excuse. I could hear you telling people, “The government authorized his birth so he could enter military training, only when the time came, he refused to go.”

I existed for one reason only. When the time came, I believed I had no decent choice but to fulfil the purpose of my creation.

I did it, didn’t I? I dominated the other children in Battle School, though I was not the best strategist (that was Bean). I led my jeesh and, unwittingly, many pilots to complete victory in the war—though again at a crucial moment it was Bean who helped me see my way through. I am not ashamed of having needed help. The task was too great for me, too great for Bean, and too great for any of the other children, but my role was to lead by getting the best from everyone.

But when the victory was won, I could not go home. There was Graff’s court martial. There was the international situation, with nations fearing what might happen if America had the great war hero to command their Earthbound troops.

But I confess that there was something else. I became aware that both my brother and my sister were writing essays whose deliberate effect was to keep me from coming home to Earth again. Peter’s reasons I could guess at; they were an outgrowth of our relationship as young children. Peter cannot live in the same world with me. Or at least he could not then.

Here was the mystery to me. I was a twelve-year-old boy during most of my year on Eros. I was barred from returning to Earth. My siblings were siding with those who wanted me kept away. And not once on any of the newsvids did I see a quotation or a statement from my parents, pleading with the powers-that-be to let their boy come home. Nor did I hear of any effort on your part to come and see me, since I could not go to you.

Instead, once Valentine showed up, I got hints, ranging from the blunt to the oblique, that for some reason it was my obligation to write to YOU. Through the two years of our voyage—forty years to you—Valentine reported to me on her correspondence with you, and told me that I should write, I must write. And through all of this, knowing that you could easily obtain my address and that your letters would get through to me as easily as they got through to Valentine, I never heard from you.

I have waited.

Now you are getting rather old. Peter is nearly sixty years of age and he rules the world—all his dreams have come true, though there seem to have been many nightmares along the way. From news reports I gather that you have been at his side almost continuously, working for him and his cause. You have made statements to the press in support of him, and at times of crisis you stood by him quite bravely. You have been admirable parents. You know how the job is done.

And still I waited.

Recently, having learned the answers to a set of questions unrelated to you, I determined that because half of this silence between us has been mine, I would wait no longer to write to you. Still, I do not understand how it became my obligation to open this door. How did I skip directly from the irresponsibility of a six-year-old to the complete responsibility that seemed to devolve on me to reestablish our relationship after it became possible again?

I thought: You were ashamed of me. My “victory” came along with the scandal of my killings; you wanted to put me from your mind. Who am I, then, to insist that you recognize me? Yet I killed Stilson when I was still a child living in your house. You cannot blame the Battle School for that. Why didn’t you stand up and take responsibility for creating me, and for raising me those first six years?

I thought: You were so in awe of my great achievement that you felt unworthy to insist on a relationship, and as with royalty, you waited for me to invite you. Here, though, the fact that you are not too much in awe of Peter to be with him, though his achievements are arguably greater—peace on Earth, after all!—tells me that awe is not a powerful motive in your lives.

Then I thought: They have divided the family. Valentine is their co-parent, and she has been assigned to me, while they assigned themselves to Peter. Other people had taken care of training me to save the world; but who would train Peter, who would watch out for him, who would pull him up short if he over-reached or became a tyrant? That was where you were needed; that was your life’s work. Valentine would give her life to me, and you would give yours to Peter.

But if that was your thinking, then I think you made a poor choice. Valentine is as good as I remembered her to be, and as smart. But she cannot understand me or what I need, she does not know me well enough to trust me, and it drives her crazy. She is not my mother or father, she is only my sister, and yet she has been assigned—or assigned herself—to take on a motherly role. She does her best. I hope she is not too unhappy with the bargain she made, to come along on this voyage. The sacrifice she made in order to come with me was far too great. I fear she thinks the results in me have amounted to little of worth.

I do not know you, a man and a woman in their eighties. I knew a young man and woman in their early thirties, busy with their own extraordinary careers, raising extraordinary children who, for a time, each wore the monitor of the I.F. at the base of their skulls. There was always someone else watching over me. I always belonged to someone else. You never felt that I was fully your son.

Yet I am your son. There is in me, in the abilities I have, in the choices that I make without realizing that I’ve chosen, in my deep feelings about the religions that you believed in secretly, which I have studied when I could, there is in all these things a trace of you. You are the explanation of much that is unexplainable.

And my ability to shut certain things completely from my mind—to set them aside so I can work on other projects—that also comes from you, for I think that is what you have done with me. You have set me aside, and only by directly asking for it can I win your attention once again.

I have watched painful relationships between parents and children. I have seen parents who control and parents who neglect, parents who make terrible mistakes that hurt their children deeply, and parents who forgive children who have done awful things. I have seen nobility and courage; I have seen dreadful selfishness and utter blindness; and I have seen all these things in the SAME parents, raising the same children.

What I understand now is this: There is no harder job than parenting. There is no human relationship with such potential for great achievement and awful destructiveness, and despite all the experts who write about it, no one has the slightest idea whether any decision will be right or best or even not-horrible for any particular child. It is a job that simply cannot be done right.

For reasons truly out of your control, I became a stranger to you; for reasons I do not understand, you made no effort to come to my defense and bring me home, or to explain to me why you did not or could not or should not. But you let my sister come to me, giving her up from your own lives. That was a great gift, jointly offered by her and you. Even if she now regrets it, that does not reduce the nobility of the sacrifice.

Here is why I am writing. No matter how hard I try to be self-sufficient, I am not. I have read enough psychology and sociology, and I have observed enough families over the past two years, to realize that there is no replacement for parents in a person’s life, and no going on without them. I have achieved, at the age of fifteen, more than any but a handful of the greatest men in history. I can look at the records of what I did and see, clearly, that it is so.

But I do not believe it. I look into myself and all I see is the destroyer of lives. Even as I prevented a tyrant from usurping the control of this colony, even as I helped a young girl liberate herself from a domineering mother, I heard a voice in the back of my mind, saying, “What is this, compared to the pilots who died because of your clumsiness in command? What is this, compared to the death at your hands of two admittedly unpleasant but nevertheless young children? What is this, compared to the slaughter of a species that you killed without first understanding whether they needed killing?”

There is something that only parents can provide, and I need it, and I am not ashamed to ask it from you.

From my mother, I need to know that I still belong, that I am part of you, that I do not stand alone.

From my father, I need to know that I, as a separate being, have earned my place in this world.

Let me resort to the scriptures that I know have meant much to you in your lives. From my mother, I need to know that she has watched my life and “kept all these sayings in her heart.” From my father, I need to hear these words: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant…. Enter into the joy of the Lord.”

No, I don’t think I’m Jesus and I don’t think you’re God. I just happen to believe that every child needs to have what Mary gave; and the God of the New Testament shows us what a father must be in his children’s lives.

Here is the irony: Because I had to ask for these things, I will be suspicious of your replies. So I ask you not only to give me these gifts, but also to help me believe that you mean them.

In return, I give you this: I understand the impossibility of having me for a child. I believe that in every case, you chose to do what you believed would be best for me. Even if I disagree with your choices—and the more I think, the less I disagree—I believe that no one who knew no more than you did could have chosen better.

Look at your children: Peter rules the world, and seems to be doing it with a minimal amount of blood and horror. I destroyed the enemy that terrified us most of all, and now I’m a not-bad governor of a little colony. Valentine is a paragon of selflessness and love—and has written and is writing brilliant histories that will shape the way the human race thinks about its own past.

We’re an extraordinary crop of children. Having given us our genes, you then had the terrible problem of trying to raise us. From what I see of Valentine and what she tells me of Peter, you did very well, without your hand ever being heavy in their lives.

And as for me, the absent one, the prodigal who never did come home, I still feel your fingerprints in my life and soul, and where I find those traces of your parenthood I am glad of them. Glad to have been your son.

For me, there have been only three years in which I COULD have written you; I’m sorry that it took me all this time to sort out my heart and mind well enough to have anything coherent to say. For you, there have been forty-one years in which I believe you took my silence as a request for silence.

I am far away from you now, but at least we move through time at the same pace once more, day for day, year for year. As governor of the colony I have constant access to the ansible; as parents of the Hegemon, I believe you have a similar opportunity. When I was on the voyage, you might have taken weeks to compose your reply, and to me it would have seemed that only a day had passed. But now, however long it takes you, that is how long I will wait.

With love and regret and hope,
your son Andrew

Valentine came to Ender, carrying the printed-out pages of his little book. “What are you calling this?” she asked, and there was a quaver in her voice.

“I don’t know,” said Ender.

“To imagine the life of the hive queens, to see our war from their perspective, to dare to invent an entire history for them, and tell it as if a hive queen herself were speaking—”

“I didn’t invent it,” said Ender.

Valentine sat down on the edge of the table. “Out there with Abra, searching for the new colony site. What did you find?”

“You’re holding it in your hand,” said Ender. “I found what I’ve been searching for ever since the hive queens let me kill them.”

“You’re telling me that you found living formics on this planet?”

“No,” said Ender, and technically it was true—he had found only one formic. And was a dormant pupa truly describable as “living”? If you found only one chrysalis, would you say that you had found “living butterflies”?

Probably. But I have no choice except to lie to everyone. Because if it was known that a single hive queen still lived in this world, a cocoon from which she would emerge with several million fertilized eggs inside her, and the knowledge of all the hive queens before her in her phenomenally capacious mind, the seeds of the technology that nearly destroyed us and the knowledge to create even more terrible weapons if she wanted to—if that became known, how long would that cocoon survive? How long would be the life of anyone who tried to protect it?

“But you found something,” said Valentine, “that makes you certain that this story you wrote is not just beautiful, but true.”

“If I could tell you more than that, I would.”

“Ender, have we ever told each other everything?”

“Does anyone?”

Valentine reached out and took his hand. “I want everyone on Earth to read this.”

“Will they care?” Ender hoped and despaired. He wanted his book to change everything. He knew it would change nothing.

“Some will,” said Valentine. “Enough.”

Ender chuckled. “So I send it to a publisher and they publish it and then what? I get royalty checks here, which I can redeem for—what exactly can we buy here?”

“Everything we need,” said Valentine, and they both laughed. Then, more seriously, Valentine said, “Don’t sign it.”

“I was wondering if I should.”

“If it’s known that this comes from you, from Ender Wiggin, then the reviewers will spend all their time psychoanalyzing you and say almost nothing about the book itself. The received wisdom will be that it’s nothing more than your conscience trying to deal with your various sins.”

“I expect no better.”

“But if it’s published with real anonymity, then it’ll get read on its own merits.”

“People will think it’s fiction. That I made it up.”

“They will anyway,” said Valentine. “But it doesn’t sound like fiction. It sounds like truth. And some will take it that way.”

“So I don’t sign it.”

“Oh, you do,” said Valentine, “because you want to give them some name to refer to you by. The way I’m still using Demosthenes.”

“But nobody thinks it’s the same Demosthenes who was such a rabble-rouser back before Peter took over the world.”

“Come up with a name.”

“How about ‘Locke’?”

Valentine laughed. “There are still people who call him that.”

“What if I call it ‘Obituary’ and sign it…what, Mortician?”

“How about ‘Eulogy’ and you sign it ‘Speaker at the Funeral’?”

In the end, he called it simply The Hive Queen and he signed it “Speaker for the Dead.” And in his anonymous, untraceable correspondence with his publisher, he insisted that it be printed without any kind of copyright notice. The publisher almost didn’t go through with it, but Ender became even more insistent. “Put a notice on the cover that people are free to make as many copies of this book as they want, but that your edition is especially nice, so that people can carry it with them and write in it and underline it.”

Valentine was amused. “You realize what you’re doing?” she said.

“What?”

“You’re having them treat it like scripture. You really think that people will read it like that?”

“I don’t know what people will do,” said Ender, “but yes, I think of it as something holy. I don’t want to make money from it. What would I use money for? I want everyone to read it. I want everyone to know who the hive queens were. What we lost when we took them out of existence.”

“We saved our lives, Ender.”

“No,” said Ender. “That’s what we thought we were doing, and that’s what we should be judged for—but what we really did was slaughter a species that wanted desperately to make peace with us, to try to understand us—but they never understood what speech and language were. This is the first time they’ve had a chance to find a voice.”

“Too late,” said Valentine.

“Tragedies are like that,” said Ender.

“And their tragic flaw was…muteness?”

“Their tragic flaw was arrogance—they thought they could terraform any world that didn’t have intelligence of the kind they knew how to recognize—beings that spoke to each other mind to mind.”

“The way the gold bugs speak to us.”

“The gold bugs are grunting—mentally,” said Ender.

“You found one,” said Valentine. “I asked you if you found ‘formics’ and you said no, but you found one.”

Ender said nothing.

“I will never ask again,” said Valentine.

“Good,” said Ender.

“And that one—it’s alone.”

Ender shrugged.

“You didn’t kill it. It didn’t kill you. It told you—no, showed you—all the memories that you put into your book.”

“For someone who was never going to ask again, you sure have a lot of questions, missy,” said Ender.

“Don’t you dare talk down to me.”

“I’m a fifty-four-year-old man,” said Ender.

“You may have been born fifty-four years ago,” said Valentine, “but you’re only sixteen, and no matter how old you are, I’m two years older.”

“When the colony ship arrives, I’m getting on it,” said Ender.

“I think I knew that,” said Valentine.

“I can’t stay here. I have to take a long journey. To get away from every living human.”

“The ships only go from world to world, with people on all of them.”

“But they take time doing it,” said Ender. “If I take voyage after voyage, eventually I’ll leave behind the human race as it now is.”

“That’s a long, lonely journey.”

“Only if I go alone.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“To come with me as long as you find it interesting,” said Ender.

“Fair enough,” said Valentine. “My guess is that you’ll be better company now that you aren’t in a perpetual funk.”

“I don’t think so,” said Ender. “I intend to remain in stasis through every voyage.”

“And miss the play readings on the way?”

“Can you finish your book before it’s time to leave?” asked Ender.

“Probably,” she said. “Certainly this volume.”

“I thought this was the last one.”

“Last but one,” said Valentine.

“You’ve covered every aspect of the Formic Wars and you’re writing the last battle now.”

“There are two great knots to unravel.”

Ender closed his eyes. “I think my book unravels one of them,” he said.

“Yes,” said Valentine. “I’d like to include it at the end of my last volume.”

“It’s not copyrighted,” said Ender. “You can do what you want.”

“Do you want to know what the other knot is?” asked Valentine.

“I assume it’s Peter bringing the whole world together after the war was over,” said Ender.

“What does that have to do with a history of the Formic Wars?” she said. “The last knot is you.”

“I’m a Gordian knot. Don’t unravel, just slice.”

“I’m going to write about you.”

“I won’t read it.”

“Fine,” said Valentine. “I won’t show it to you.”

“Can’t you please wait?” He wanted to say: Until I’m dead. But he didn’t get that specific.

“Maybe a while,” said Valentine. “We’ll see.”

Ender filled his days now with the business of the new colony, laying the groundwork for their arrival, making sure there were plenty of surplus crops being grown at all four of the villages as well as the new colony site, so that the newcomers could have failed harvests for two, even three years, and there’d still be no hunger. “And we’ll need money,” said Ender. “Here where we all know each other, this sort of ad hoc communism we’ve been using has worked out. But for trade to work well, we need a medium of exchange.”

“Po and I found you the gold bugs,” said Sel Menach. “So you’ve got the gold. Make coins.”

Abra figured out how to adapt an oil press to make a coin stamper, and one of the chemists came up with an alloy that wouldn’t constantly be shedding gold as the coins passed from hand to hand. One of the talented youngsters drew a picture of Sel Menach and one of the old women drew, from memory, the face of Vitaly Kolmogorov. Sel insisted that Kolmogorov get the cheaper coin, “Because that’s the face they’ll see the most. You always give the greatest man the smallest denomination.”

They practiced using the money, so the prices would be set before the new colonists arrived. It was a joke at first. “Five chickens don’t make a cow.” And instead of calling the coins “fives” and “ones,” they became “sels” and “vits.” “Render unto Sel that which is Sel’s, but hang on to Vit.” “Sel wise, Vit foolish.”

Ender wrestled with trying to set a value for the coins relative to the international dollar of the Hegemony, but Valentine stopped him. “Let it find its own value, tied to whatever people eventually pay for whatever it is we eventually export to other worlds.” So the currency floated within their own private universe.

The first edition of The Hive Queen sold slowly at first, but then faster and faster. It was translated into many languages, even though almost everyone on Earth had a working knowledge of Common, since that was the official language of Peter’s “Free People of Earth”—the propagandistic name he had chosen for his new international government.

Meanwhile, free copies circulated on the nets, and one day it was included in a message one of the xenobotanists received. She started telling everyone in Miranda about it, and copies were printed out and handed around. Ender and Valentine made no comment; when Alessandra pressed a copy on Ender, he accepted it, waited a while, and returned it. “Isn’t it wonderful?” Alessandra asked.

“I think it is, yes,” said Ender.

“Oh, yes, that analytical voice, that dispassionate attitude.”

“What can I say?” said Ender. “I am who I am.”

“I think this book has changed my life,” said Alessandra.

“For the better, I hope,” said Ender. And then, glancing at her swollen belly, he asked, “Changed your life more than that?”

Alessandra smiled. “I don’t know yet. I’ll tell you in a year.”

Ender did not say: In a year I’ll be on a starship and far away.

Valentine finished her penultimate volume and when it was published, she included the full text of The Hive Queen at the end, with an introductory note:

“We know so little of the formics that it is impossible for me, as a historian, to tell of this war from their point of view. So I will include an artistic imagining of the history, because even if it can’t be proved, I believe this is the true story.”

Not long after, Valentine came to Ender. “Peter read my book,” she said.

“I’m glad someone did,” said Ender.

“He sent me a message about the last chapter. He said, ‘I know who wrote it.’”

“And was he right?”

“He was.”

“Isn’t he the clever one.”

“He was moved, Ender.”

“People seem to be liking it.”

“More than liking, and you know it. Let me read what Peter said: ‘If he can speak for the buggers, surely he can speak for me.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He wants you to write about him. About his life.”

“When I last saw Peter I was six and he had threatened to kill me just a few hours before.”

“So you’re saying no.”

“I’m saying that I’ll talk to him and we’ll see what happens.”

On the ansible, they talked for an hour at a time, Peter in his late fifties, with a weak heart that had the doctors worried, Ender still a boy of sixteen. But Peter was still himself, and so was Ender, only now there was no anger between them. Maybe because Peter had achieved everything he dreamed of, and Ender hadn’t stood in his way or even, at least in Peter’s mind, surpassed him.

In Ender’s mind, too. “What you did,” said Ender, “you knew you were doing.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Nobody had to trick Alexander into conquering Persia,” said Ender. “If they had, would we call him ‘the Great’?”

When Peter had told of his whole life, everything he did that mattered enough to come up in these conversations, Ender spent only five days writing a slim volume called “The Hegemon.”

He sent a copy to Peter with a note: “Since the author will be ‘Speaker for the Dead,’ this can’t be published until after you die.”

Peter wrote back: “It can’t happen a moment too soon for me.” But in a letter to Valentine, he poured out his heart about what it meant to him to feel so completely understood. “He didn’t conceal any of the bad things I did. But he kept them in balance. In perspective.”

Valentine showed the letter to Ender and he laughed. “Balance! How can anybody know the relative weight of sins and great achievements? Five chickens do not make a cow.”

CHAPTER 20

To: MinCol@ColMin.gov

From: Gov%ShakespeareCol@MinCol.gov

Subj: Is that job still open?

Dear Hyrum,

I have reasons of my own that I won’t go into, but I also believe that Shakespeare will be well served if, when this colony ship leaves, I am on it. I will be here throughout the arrival and establishment of the new colonists. The present settlers have already passed through a profound change: The colonists who arrived with me are now included in the term “old settlers” in anticipation of the arrival of the ship. The old folks who fought the formics are now called “originals” but there is no common term to distinguish between their descendants and the people who arrived with me.

If I remained, then both the governor of the new settlement and I would be appointees from ColMin. If I leave, replaced by an elected council of the four settlements, with an elected president and elected mayors, it will create almost irresistible pressure on the new governor to limit himself to a single two-year term, as I did, and allow himself to be replaced by an elected mayor.

Meanwhile, the “old settlers” have planted their crops for them, but have built only half enough houses. That is at my suggestion, so that the new colonists can join with them in building the rest. They need to experience how much work it takes, so they’ll appreciate better just how much work was done for them by the old settlers. And working side by side will help keep the two groups from being strangers—even though I have located them far enough away that your goal of separate development will also have a chance of being met. They can’t be completely separated, however, or exogamy would be impractical and genes are more important than culture at this moment for the future health of this world’s human stock.

Human stock…but we ARE having to concern ourselves with the physical bodies in just the way herders always have. Uncle Sel would be the first to laugh and say that this is exactly right. We’re mammals before we’re humans, and if we ever forget the mammal, then all that makes us human will be overwhelmed by the hungry beast.

I’ve been studying everything I can about Virlomi and the wars she fought. What an astonishing woman! Her Battle School records show only an ordinary student (in an admittedly extraordinary group). But Battle School is about war, not revolution or national survival; nor did your tests measure anyone’s propensity for becoming a demigod. If you had such a test, I wonder what you would have found out about Peter, back when he was a child and not ruler of the world.

Speaking of Peter, he and I are in conversation; perhaps you knew. We’re not messaging, we’re using ansible bandwidth for conversation. It’s bittersweet to see him at nearly sixty years of age. Hair turning steely grey, face lined, carrying a little weight (but still fit), and the lines of responsibility etched on his face. He’s not the boy I knew and hated. But the existence of this man does not erase that boy from my memory. They are simply two separate people in my mind, who happen to have the same name.

I find myself admiring the man; even loving him. He has faced choices every bit as terrible as mine ever were—and he dealt with them with his eyes open. He knew before he made his decisions that people would die from them. And yet he has more compassion than he—or I, or Valentine for that matter—ever expected of him.

He tells me that in his childhood, after I was in Battle School, he decided that the only way to succeed in his work was to deceive people into thinking he was as lovable as me. (I thought he was joking, but he was not; I don’t believe my reputation in Battle School was “lovable” but Peter was dealing with the way I was remembered at home.) So from then on, he looked at all his choices and said, What would a good person do, and then did it. But he has now learned something very important about human nature. If you spend your whole life pretending to be good, then you are indistinguishable from a good person. Relentless hypocrisy eventually becomes the truth. Peter has made himself into a good man, even if he set out on that road for reasons that were far from pure.

This gives me great hope for myself. All I have to do now is find some work to do that will lay to rest the burden that I carry. Governing a colony has been interesting and valuable work, but it does not do for me what I hoped it would. I still wake up with dead formics and dead soldiers and dead children in my head. I still wake up with memories that tell me that I am what Peter used to be. When those go away, I can be myself again.

I know that it troubles you that I have this mindset. Well, that’s your burden, isn’t it? Let me assure you, however, that my burden is half of my own making. You and Mazer and the rest of the officers training and using me and the other children did what you did in a righteous cause—and it worked. Toward me you have the same responsibility that commanders always have for those soldiers who survive, but maimed. The soldiers are still responsible for the lives they make for themselves after the fact; it’s bitterly ironic that your true answer to them is: It’s not my fault that you lived. If you had been killed you would not have to deal with all these wounds. This is the portion of life that was given back to you; it was the enemy who took from you the wholeness that you do not have. My job was to make it so that your death or injuries meant something, and I have done that.

That is what I have learned from the soldiers here. They still remember their comrades who fell; they still miss the life they left behind on Earth, the families they never saw again, the places they can revisit only in their dreams and memories. Yet they do not blame me. They’re proud of what we did together. Almost every one of them has said to me, at one time or another, “It was worth it.” Because we won.

So I say that to you. Whatever burden I’m carrying, it was worth it because we won.

So I appreciate your warning about this little book that’s going around, The Hive Queen. Unlike you, I don’t believe it’s nonsense; I think this “Speaker for the Dead” has said something truthful, whether it’s factual or not. Suppose the hive queens were every bit as beautiful and well-meaning as they are in this Speaker for the Dead’s imagination. That does not change the fact that during the war they could not tell us that their intentions had changed and they regretted what they had done. It does not change our blamelessness (though blamelessness does not relieve us of responsibility).

I have a suspicion that I cannot verify: I think that even though the individual formics were so dependent on the hive queens that when the queens died, so did the soldiers and workers, that does not mean that they were a single organism, or that the hive queens did not have to take the deep needs, the will of the individuals, into account. And because the formics were individually so very stupid, the hive queens could not explain subtleties to them. Isn’t it possible that if the hive queens had refused to fight those initial battles, letting us slaughter them like true pacifists, the survival instinct of the individual formics would have asserted itself with so much strength as to overwhelm the power of their mistresses? We would have had the battles anyway—only the formics would have fought without coherence or real intelligence. This in turn might have caused formics everywhere to rebel against their queens. Even a dictator has to respect the will of the pawns, for without their obedience, he has no power. Those are my thoughts about The Hive Queen, since you asked. And about everything else, because you need to hear my thoughts as much as I need to say them. You were my hive queen, and I was your formic, during this war. Twice I wanted to reject your overlordship; twice, Bean stepped in and put me back under the yoke. But all that I did, I did of my own free will, like any good soldier or servant or slave. The task of the tyrant is not to compel, but to persuade even the unwilling that compliance better serves their interest than resistance.

So if you wish to send this arriving ship to Ganges Colony, I will go and see what I can do to help Virlomi deal with Bean’s kidnapped son and his very strange mother (though it is not her spitting on you that proves her to be strange; there are—or were—hundreds who would have stood in line for the privilege). I have a feeling that Virlomi will indeed find herself over her head, because her colony is so overwhelmingly Indian. It will make all her decisions seem unjust to the non-Indians, and if this Randall Firth is anything like as smart as his father, and if his mother has raised him to hate any who ever stood in Achilles Flandres’s way, which certainly includes Virlomi, then this is the wedge that Randall will exploit to try to destroy her and gain power.

And while there are those in the I.F. and even in ColMin who believe that nothing that happens in the colonies can threaten Earth, I’m glad you recognize that this is not so. A warrior-rebel in a colony world can capture the imagination of millions on Earth. Billions, perhaps. And The Hive Queen may turn out to be part of this. A clever demagogue from the colonies can wrap himself in the mantle of the vanished hive queens, playing upon the powerful sentiment that the colony worlds were somehow “wronged” by Earth and are owed something. It is irrational, but there are precedents for even more illogical leaps of judgment.

Even if you cannot or no longer wish to send me to Ganges, however, I will be aboard that ship, so I hope our flight plan will send me somewhere interesting. Valentine has not yet decided whether to come with me, but since, because of working on her histories, she has remained completely detached from this colony, emotionally and socially, I think she’ll come with me, having no incentive to remain here without me.

Your lifelong worker bee,
Ender

Achilles came to the hut where Governor Virlomi lived in her lofty poverty. She made such a show of having the simplest of habitations—but it was completely unnecessary to build adobe walls and a thatched roof, with so much fine lumber nearby. Virlomi’s every action was calculated to enhance her prestige among the Indian colonists. But the whole display filled Achilles with contempt.

“Randall Firth,” he said to the “friend” standing outside. Virlomi had said, “My friends stand watch to protect my time,” she said, “so I can meditate sometimes.” But her “friends” ate at the common table and drew their full share at harvest, so that their service to her was, in effect, paid. They were cops or guards, and everyone knew it. But no, the Indians all said, they really are volunteers, they really do a full day’s labor besides.

A full day’s labor…for an Indian. It gets a little hot and they go lie down when regular fullsize people have to take up the slack for them.

No wonder my father, Achilles the Great, led the Chinese to conquer the Indians. Someone had to teach them how to work. Nothing, though, could teach them how to think.

Inside the hut, Virlomi was spinning yarn by hand. Why? Because Gandhi did it. They had four spinning jennies and two power looms, and spare parts to keep them running for a hundred years, by which time they should have the ability to manufacture new ones. There was no need for homespun. Even Gandhi only did it because he was protesting against the way English power looms were putting Indians out of work. What was Virlomi trying to accomplish?

“Randall,” she said.

“Virlomi,” he answered.

“Thank you for coming.”

“No one can resist a command from our beloved governor.”

Virlomi lifted weary eyes to him. “And yet you always find a way.”

“Only because your power here is illegitimate,” said Achilles. “Even before we founded our colony, Shakespeare declared its independence and started electing governors to two-year terms.”

“And we did the same,” said Virlomi.

“They always elect you,” said Achilles. “The person appointed by ColMin.”

“That’s democracy.”

“Democracy only because the deck was stacked. Literally. With Indians. And you play this holy-woman game to keep them in your thrall.”

“You have far too much time to read,” said Virlomi, “if you know words like ‘thrall.’”

Such an easy opening. “Why do you feel the need to discourage citizens from educating themselves?” asked Achilles.

Virlomi’s pleasant expression didn’t crack. “Why must everything be political with you?”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if other people ignored politics, so you could have it all to yourself?”

“Randall,” said Virlomi, “I didn’t bring you here because of your agitation among the non-Indian colonists.”

“And yet that’s why I came.”

“I have an opportunity for you.”

Achilles had to give her credit: Virlomi kept on plugging away. Maybe that’s one of the attributes of Indian goddesshood. “Are you going to offer me another placeholder job to assuage my ego?”

“You keep saying that you’re trapped on this world, that you’ve never been anywhere else, so your entire life will be lived under the dominion of Indians, surrounded by Indian culture.”

“Your spies have reported accurately.”

He expected her to get sidetracked on whether her informants were spies or not, since they were ordinary citizens who freely attended public events and then talked about them afterward. But apparently she was as weary of that topic as he was. And besides, she clearly had an urgent agenda.

“A starship is arriving here in about a month,” said Virlomi. “It comes from Shakespeare Colony, and it’s bringing us several of their highly successful hybrids and genetic alterations to augment our agricultural resources. A very important visit.”

“I’m not a farmer,” said Achilles.

“When starships come here,” said Virlomi, “it’s never permanent. They come, and then they go.”

Now Achilles understood exactly what she was offering him. If it was an offer, and not an involuntary exile. “Go where?” he asked.

“In this case, I am assured that the pilot is taking his starship back to Earth—well, near to Earth—so that the samples from Shakespeare, along with our own poor offerings, can be examined, propagated, studied, and shared with all the colonies. Some may even be cultivated on Earth itself, because the high yields and climatic adaptations are so favorable.”

“Are they naming one of the species after you?” asked Achilles.

“I’m offering you a chance to go to that big wide world and see it for yourself. Indians are only about a quarter of Earth’s population at the moment, and there are many places you can go where you’ll almost never see an Indian.”

“It’s not Indians that I don’t like,” said Achilles blandly.

“Oh?”

“It’s smug authoritarian government pretending to be democratic.”

“Indians are in the majority here. By definition democratic, even if smug,” said Virlomi.

“Earth is ruled by an evil dictatorship.”

“Earth is ruled by an elected Congress, and presided over by an elected hegemon.”

“A hegemony established through the murder of—”

“Of the man you mistakenly believe to be your father,” said Virlomi.

That sentence struck Achilles like a blow with a sledgehammer. In all his life, he and his mother had kept his parentage a secret, just as no one had ever heard him called by his secret—but true—name, Achilles. It was always Randall this and Randall that; only in moments of tender privacy did Mother ever speak to him as Achilles. Only in his own mind did he call himself that name.

But Virlomi knew. How?

“I watched your supposed father murder children in cold blood,” said Virlomi. “He murdered a good friend of mine. There was no provocation.”

“That’s a lie,” said Achilles.

“Ah. You have a witness who will contradict me?”

“There was provocation. He was trying to unite the world and establish peace.”

“He was a psychotic who murdered everyone who ever helped him—or saw him helpless.”

“Not everyone,” said Achilles. “He let you live.”

“I didn’t help him. I didn’t thwart him. I stayed invisible, until at last I was able to escape from him. Then I set out to liberate my country from the cruel oppression he had unleashed upon us.”

“Achilles Flandres was establishing world peace, and you brought war back to a country that he had pacified.”

“But you have no problem with admitting that you believe the fantasy that he is your father.”

“I think my mother knows more than anyone else about that.”

“Your mother knows only what she was told. Because she’s a surrogate—not your genetic mother. Your embryo was implanted in her. She was lied to. She has passed that lie down to you. You are nothing but another of Achilles’ kidnap victims. And your imprisonment by him continues to this day. You are his last and most pathetic victim.”

Achilles’ hand lashed out before he could stop himself. The blow he struck was not hard—not as hard as his height and strength could have made it.

“I have been assaulted,” said Virlomi quietly.

Two of her “friends” came into the hut. They took Achilles by the arms.

“I charge Randall Firth with assault on the governor. Under penalty of perjury, Randall, do you admit that you struck me?”

“What an absurd lie,” said Achilles.

“I thought you’d say that,” said Virlomi. “Three vids from different angles should substantiate the charge and the perjury. When you’re convicted, Randall, I will recommend that your sentence be exile. To Earth—the place you seem to think would be infinitely preferable to Ganges. Your mother can go with you or not, as she chooses.”

She played me like a fish, thought Achilles. My father would never have stood for this. Humiliation—the unbearable offense. That’s how my father lived, and that’s how I will live.

“The whole recording,” said Achilles. “That’s what they’ll see—how you goaded me.”

Virlomi rose smoothly to her feet and came close to him, putting her mouth close to his ear. “The whole recording,” said Virlomi, “will show who you think your father is, and your approval of his actions, which still are seen as the epitome of evil by the entire human race.”

She stepped back from him. “You can decide for yourself whether the whole record or an edited portion will be shown.”

Achilles knew that this was the point where he was expected to make threats, to bluster pathetically. But the recording was still running.

“I see that you know how to manipulate a child,” said Achilles. “I’m only sixteen, and you provoked me to anger.”

“Ah, yes, sixteen. Big for your age, aren’t you?”

“In heart and mind, as well as skin and bone,” said Achilles—his standard answer. “Remember, Your Excellency the Governor, that setting me up is one thing, and knocking me out is another.”

He turned—and then waited as the men clinging to his arms scrambled to move around again to be beside him. They left the hut together. Then Achilles stopped abruptly. “You do know that I can shake you off like house flies if I feel like it.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Firth. Our presence was as witnesses. Otherwise our taking hold of you was merely symbolic.”

“And you hoped I’d knock one of you down on camera.”

“We hope that all men and women can live together without violence.”

“But you don’t mind being the victim of violence, if you can use it to discredit or destroy your enemy.”

“Are you our enemy, Mr. Firth?”

“I hope not,” said Achilles. “But your goddess wants me to be.”

“Oh, she is not a goddess, Mr. Firth.” They laughed as if the idea were absurd.

As Achilles walked away, he was already formulating his next move. She was going to use his father’s reputation against him—and he did not believe she would keep it a secret, since she was right and any link between him and Achilles the Great would permanently besmirch him.

If my father is widely believed to be the worst man in human history, then I must find a worse one to link her with.

As for the claim that Mother was only a surrogate, Randall would not let Virlomi’s lie come between him and his mother. It would break her heart for him even to question her motherhood of him. No, Virlomi, I will not let you turn me into a weapon to hurt my mother.

CHAPTER 21

To: AWiggin%Ganges@ColLeague.adm

From: hgraff%retlist@IFCom.adm

Subj: Welcome back to the human universe

Of course my condolences on the passing of your parents. But I understand from them that you and they corresponded to great mutual satisfaction before they died. The passing of your brother must have come as more of a surprise. He was young, but his heart gave out. Pay no attention to the foolish rumors that always attend the death of the great. I saw the autopsy, and Peter had a weak heart, despite his healthy lifestyle. It was quick, a clot that stopped his life while he slept. He died at the peak of his power and his powers. Not a bad way to go. I hope you’ll read the excellent essay on his life written by supposedly the same author as The Hive Queen. It’s called The Hegemon, and I’ve attached it here.

An interesting thing happened to me while you were in stasis, sailing from Shakespeare to Ganges. I was fired.

Here is something I hadn’t foreseen (believe it; I have foreseen very little in my long life; I survived and accomplished things because I adapted quickly), though I should have: When you spend ten months of every year in stasis, there is a side effect: Your underlings and superiors begin to regard your awakenings as intrusions. The ones who were fiercely loyal to you retire, pursue their careers into other avenues, or are maneuvered out of office. Soon, everyone around you is loyal to themselves, their careers, or someone who wants your job.

Everyone put on such a show of deference to me whenever I awoke. They reported on how all my decisions from my last awakening had been carried out—or had explanations as to why they had not.

For three awakenings, I should have noticed how unconvincing those explanations had become, and how in effectively my orders had been carried out. I should have seen that the bureaucratic soup through which I had navigated for so many years had begun to congeal around me; I should have seen that my long absences were making me powerless.

Just because I wasn’t having any fun, I didn’t realize that my months in stasis were, in effect, vacations. It was an attempt to prolong my tenure in office by not attending to business. When has this ever been a good idea?

It was pure vanity, Ender. It could not work; it could not last. I awoke to find that my name was no longer on my office door. I was on the retired list of IFCom—and at a colonel’s pay, to add insult to injury. As for any kind of pension from ColMin, that was out of the question, since I had not been retired, I had been dismissed for nonperformance of my duties. They cited years of missed meetings when I was in stasis; they cited my failure to seek any kind of leave; they even harked back to that ancient court martial to show a “pattern of negligent behavior.” So…dismissed with cause, to live on a colonel’s half pay.

I think they actually assumed that I had managed to enrich myself during my tenure in office. But I was never that kind of politician.

However, I also care little for material things. I am returning to Earth, where I still own a little property—I did make sure the taxes were kept up. I will be able to live in peaceful retirement on a lovely piece of land in Ireland that I fell in love with and bought during the years when I traveled the world in search of children to exploit and quite possibly destroy in Battle School. No one there will have any idea of who I am—or, rather, who I was. I have outlived my infamy.

One thing about retirement, however: I will have no more ansible privileges. Even this letter is going to you with such a low priority that it will be years before it’s transmitted. But the computers do not forget and cannot be misused by anyone vindictive enough to want to prevent my saying good-bye to old friends. I saw to the security of the system, and the leaders of the I.F. and the FPE understand the importance of maintaining the in dependence of the nets. You will see this message when you come out of stasis yourself upon arriving at Ganges four years from now.

I write with two purposes. First, I want you to know that I understand and remember the great debt that I and all the world owe to you. Fifty-seven years ago, before you went to Shakespeare, I assembled your pay during the war (which was all retroactively at admiral rank), the cash bonuses voted for you and your jeesh during the first flush of gratitude, and your salary as governor of Shakespeare, and piggybacked them onto six different mutual funds of impeccable reputation.

They will be audited continuously by the best software I could find, which, it may amuse you to know, is based on the kernel of the Fantasy Game (or “mind game,” as it was also called in Battle School). The program’s ability to constantly monitor itself and all data sources and inputs, and to reprogram itself in response to new information, made it seem the best choice to make sure your best interests, financially, were well watched out for. Human financial managers can be incompetent, or tempted to embezzle, or die, only to be replaced by a worse one.

You may draw freely from the accruing interest, without paying taxes of any kind until you come of age—which, since so many children are voyaging, is now legally accounted using the sum of ship’s time during voyages added to the days spent in real time between voyages, with stasis time counting zero. I have done my best to shore up your future against the vicissitudes of time.

Which brings me to my second purpose. I am an old man who thought he could manipulate time and live to see all his plans come to fruition. In a way, I suppose I have. I have pulled many strings, and most of my puppets have finished their dance. I have outlived most of the people I knew, and all of my friends.

Unless you are my friend. I have come to think of you that way; I hope that I do not overstep my bounds, because what I offer you now is a friend’s advice.

In rereading the message in which you asked me to send you to Ganges, I have seen in the phrase “reasons of my own” the possibility that you are using starflight the way I was using stasis—as a way to live longer. In your case, though, you are not seeking to see all your plans to fruition—I’m not sure you even have plans. I think instead that you are seeking to put decades, perhaps centuries, between you and your past.

I think the plan is rather clever, if you mean to outlast your fame and live in quiet anonymity somewhere, to marry and have children and rejoin the human race, but among people who cannot even conceive of the idea that their neighbor, Andrew Wiggin, could possibly have anything to do with the great Ender Wiggin who saved the world.

But I fear that you are trying to distance yourself from something else. I fear that you think you can hide from what you (all unwittingly) did, the matters that were exploited in my unfortunate court martial. I fear that you are trying to outrun the deaths of Stilson, of Bonzo Madrid, of thousands of humans and billions of formics in the war you so brilliantly and impossibly won for us all.

You cannot do it, Ender. You carry them with you. They will be freshly in your mind long after all the rest of the world has forgotten. You defended yourself against children who meant to destroy you, and you did it effectively; if you had not done so, would you have been capable of your great victories? You defended the human race against a nonverbal enemy who destroyed human lives carelessly in the process of taking what it wanted—our world, our home, our achievements, the future of planet Earth. What you blame yourself for, I honor you for. Please hear my voice in your head, as well as your own self-condemnation. Try to balance them.

You are the man you have always been: one who takes responsibility, one who foresees consequences and acts to protect others and, yes, yourself. That man will not easily surrender a burden.

But do not use starflight like a drug, using it to seek oblivion. I can tell you from experience that a life lived in short visits to the human race is not a life. We are only human when we are part of a community. When you first came to Battle School, I tried to isolate you, but it could not be done. I surrounded you with hostility; you took most of your enemies and rivals and made friends of them. You freely taught everything you knew, and nurtured students that we teachers had, frankly, given up on; some of them ended up finding greatness in themselves, and achieved much. You were a part of them; they carried you inside them all their lives. You were better at our job than we were.

Your jeesh loved you, Ender, with a devotion I could only envy—I have had many friends, but never the kind of passion that those children had for you. They would have died for you, every one of them. Because they knew you would have died for them. And the reports I had from Shakespeare Colony—from Sel Menach, from Ix Tolo and his sons Po and Abra, and from the colonists who never even knew you, but found the place you had prepared for them—I can tell you that you were universally loved and respected, and all of them regarded you as the best member of their communities, their benefactor and friend.

I tell you this because I fear that the lesson I taught you first was the one you learned the best: that you are always alone, that no one will ever help you, that whatever must be done, only you can do. I cannot speak to the deep recesses of your mind, but only to the uppermost part, the conscious mind that has spoken and written to me so eloquently all these years. So I hope you can hear my message and pass it along to the part of you that will not at first believe it:

You are the least-alone person I have ever known. Your heart has always included within it everyone who let you love them, and many who did not. The meetingplace of all these communities you formed was your own heart; they knew you held them there, and it made them one with each other. Yet the gift you gave them, none was able to give you, and I fear this is because I did my evil work too well, and built a wall in your mind that cannot let you receive the knowledge of what and who you are.

It galls me to see how this “Speaker for the Dead” with his silly little books has achieved the influence that YOU deserved. People are actually turning it into a religion—there are self-styled “speakers for the dead” who presume to talk at funerals and tell “the truth” about the dead person, an appalling desecration—who can know the truth about anyone? I have left instructions in my will that none of these poseurs is to be allowed anywhere near my funeral, if anyone even bothers to have one. You saved the world and were never allowed to come home. This mountebank makes up a fake history of the formics and then writes an apologia for your brother Peter and people make a religion out of it. There’s no accounting for the human race.

You have Valentine with you. Show her this letter, and see if she does not affirm that every word I’ve said about you is true. I may not be alive when you read this, but many who knew you as students in Battle School are still alive, including most of your jeesh. They are old, but not one of them has forgotten you. (I still write to Petra now and then; she has been widowed twice, and yet remains an astonishingly happy and optimistic soul. She keeps in touch with all the others.) They and I and Valentine can all attest to the fact that you have belonged to the human race more deeply and fully than most people could even imagine.

Find a way to believe that, and don’t hide from life in the unfathomable, lightless depths of relativistic space.

I have achieved much in my life, but the greatest of my achievements was finding you, recognizing what you were, and somehow managing not to ruin you before you could save the world. I only wish I could then have healed you. But that will have to be your own achievement—or perhaps Valentine’s. Or perhaps it will come from the children that you must, you must have someday.

For that is my greatest personal regret. I never married and had children of my own. Instead I stole other people’s children and trained them—not raised them. It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don’t live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child’s arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into his heart.

I had no such moments, because I did not treat my kidnapped Battle School children that way. I was no one’s father, by birth or adoption. Marry, Ender. Have children, or adopt them, or borrow them—whatever it takes. But do not live a life like mine.

I have done great things, but now, in the end, I am not happy. I wish I had let the future take care of itself, and instead of skipping forward through time, had stopped, made a family, and died in my proper time, surrounded by children.

See how I pour out my heart to you? Somehow, you took me into your jeesh as well.

Forgive the maudlinness of old men; when you are my age, you will understand.

I never treated you like a son when I had you in my power, but I have loved you like a son; and in this letter I have spoken to you as I’d like to think I might have spoken to the sons I never had. I say to you: Well done, Ender. Now be happy.

Hyrum Graff
I.F. Col. Ret.

Ender was shocked at the difference in Valentine when he emerged from stasis at the end of the voyage. “I told you I wasn’t going into stasis until my book was finished,” she said when she saw his expression.

“You didn’t stay awake for the whole voyage.”

“I did,” she said. “This wasn’t a forty-year voyage in two years like our first one, it was only an eighteen-year voyage in a bit over fourteen months.” Ender did the arithmetic quickly and saw that she was right. Acceleration and deceleration always took about the same amount of time, while the length of the voyage in between determined the difference in subjective time.

“Still,” he said. “You’re a woman.”

“How flattering that you noticed. I was disappointed that I didn’t have any ship’s captains falling in love with me.”

“Perhaps the fact that Captain Hong brought his wife and family with him had an effect on that.”

“Bit by bit, they’re learning that you don’t have to sacrifice everything to be a star voyager,” said Valentine.

“Arithmetic—I’m still seventeen, and you’re nearly twenty-one.”

“I am twenty-one,” she said. “Think of me as your Auntie Val.”

“I will not,” he said. “You finished your book?”

“I wrote a history of Shakespeare Colony, up to the time of your arrival. I couldn’t have done it if you had been awake.”

“Because I would have insisted on accuracy?”

“Because you wouldn’t have let me have complete access to your correspondence with Kolmogorov.”

“My correspondence is double-password encrypted.”

“Oh, Ender, you’re talking to me,” said Valentine. “Do you think I wouldn’t be able to guess ‘Stilson’ and ‘Bonzo’?”

“I didn’t use their names just like that, naked.”

“To me they were naked, Ender. You think nobody really understands you, but I can guess your passwords. That makes me your password buddy.”

“That makes you a snoop,” said Ender. “I can’t wait to read the book.”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t mention your name. His emails are cited as ‘letter to a friend’ with the date.”

“Aren’t you considerate.”

“Don’t be testy. I haven’t seen you in fourteen months and I missed you. Don’t make me change my mind.”

“I saw you yesterday, and you’ve snooped my files since then. Don’t expect me to ignore that. What else did you snoop?”

“Nothing,” said Valentine. “You have your luggage locked. I’m not a yegg.”

“When can I read the book?”

“When you buy it and download it. You can afford to pay.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“You haven’t read Hyrum Graff’s letter yet,” said Valentine. “He got you a nice pension and you can draw on it without paying any taxes until you come of age.”

“So you didn’t confine yourself to your research topic.”

“I can never know whether a letter contains useful data until I read it, can I?”

“So you read all the letters ever written in the history of the human race, in order to write this book?”

“Only the ones written since the founding of Colony One after the Third Formic War.” She kissed his cheek. “Good morning, Ender. Welcome back to the world.”

Ender shook his head. “Not Ender,” he said. “Not here. I’m Andrew.”

“Ah,” she said. “Why not ‘Andy,’ then? Or ‘Drew’?”

“Andrew,” Ender repeated.

“Well, you should have told the governor that, because her letter of invitation is addressed to ‘Ender Wiggin.’”

Ender frowned. “We never knew each other in Battle School.”

“I imagine she thinks she knows you, having been so intimately involved with half your jeesh.”

“Having had her army beaten into the ground by them,” said Ender.

“That’s a kind of intimacy, isn’t it? A sort of Grant-and-Lee thing?”

“I suppose Graff had to warn her that I was coming.”

“Your name was also on the manifest, and it included the fact that you were governor of Shakespeare until your two-year term ended. That narrows you down among all the possible Andrew Wiggins in the human race.”

“Have you been down to the surface?”

“No one has. I asked the captain to let me wake you so you could be on the first shuttle. Of course he was pleased to do anything for the great Ender Wiggin. He’s of that generation—he was on Eros when you won that final victory. He says he saw you in the corridors there, more than once.”

Ender thought back to his brief meeting with the captain before going into stasis. “I didn’t recognize him.”

“He didn’t expect you to. He really is a nice man. Much better at his job than old what’s-his-name.”

“Quincy Morgan.”

“I remembered his name, Ender, I just didn’t want to say it or hear it.”

Ender cleaned himself up. Stasis left him with a sort of scum all over his body; his skin seemed to crackle just a little when he moved. This can’t be good for you, he thought as he scrubbed it off and the skin protested by giving him little stabbing pains. But Graff does stasis ten months of the year and he’s still going strong.

And he got me a pension. Isn’t that nice. I can’t imagine Ganges is using Hegemony money any more than Shakespeare was, but once interstellar trade starts up, maybe there’ll start being some buying power in the FPE dollar.

Dried and dressed, Ender got his luggage out of storage and, in the privacy of Valentine’s locked stateroom, from which she had discreetly absented herself, Ender opened the case containing the cocoon of the last hive queen in the universe.

He was afraid, for a moment, that she had died during the voyage. But no. After he had held the cocoon in his bare hands for a few minutes, an image flickered into his mind. Or rather a rapid series of images—the faces of hundreds of hive queens, a thousand of them, in such rapid succession that he couldn’t register any of them. It was as if, upon waking—upon rebooting—all the ancestors in this hive queen’s memory had to make an appearance in her mind before settling back and letting her have control of her own brain.

What ensued was not a conversation—it could not be. But when Ender thought back on it, it seemed to him like a conversation, complete with dialogue. It was as if his brain was not designed to remember what had passed between them—the direct transfer of shaped memory. Instead, it translated the exchange into the normal human mode of interresponsive language.

“Is this my new home? Will you let me come out?” she asked him—or rather, she showed herself emerging from the cocoon into the cool air of a cave, and the feeling of a question—or a demand?—came along with the image.

“Too soon,” he said—and in his mind there really were words, or at least ideas shapable into language. “Nobody’s forgotten anything yet. They would be terrified. They’d kill you as soon as they discovered you or any of your children.”

“More waiting,” she said. “Wait forever.”

“Yes,” he said. “I will voyage as often as I can, as far as I can. Five hundred years. A thousand years. I don’t know how long it will be before I can safely bring you out, or where we’ll be.”

She reminded him that she was not affected by the relativistic effects of time travel. “Our minds work on the principle of your ansible. We are always connected to the real time of the universe.” For this she used images of clocks that she drew from his own memory. Her own metaphor for time was the sweep of sun across sky for days, and its drift northward and south again to show years. Hive queens never needed to subdivide time into hours and minutes and seconds, because with her own children—the formics—everything was infinitely now.

“I’m sorry that you have to experience all the time of the voyage,” said Ender. “But you want me in stasis during the voyage, so I’ll stay young long enough to find you a home.”

Stasis—she compared his hibernation with her own pupation. “But you come out the same. No change.”

“We humans don’t change in cocoons. We stay awake through our maturation process.”

“So for you, this sleep isn’t birth.”

“No,” said Ender. “It’s temporary death. Extinguishment, but with a spark left glowing in the ash. I didn’t even dream.”

“All I do is dream,” she said. “I dream the whole history of my people. They are my mothers, but now they are also my sisters, because I remember doing all the things they do.”

For this, she had drawn on the images of Valentine and Peter to say “sisters.” And when Peter’s face appeared, there was fear and pain in the memory.

“I don’t fear him anymore,” said Ender. “Or hate him. He turned out to be a great man.”

But the hive queen didn’t believe him. She drew from his mind the image of the old man from their ansible conversations, and compared it with the child Peter in Ender’s deepest memory. They were too different to be the same.

And Ender could not argue the point. Peter the Hegemon was not Peter the monster. Maybe he never was. Maybe both were an illusion. But Peter the monster was the one buried deep in Ender’s memory, and he was unlikely to expunge him from it.

He put the cocoon back in its hiding place, locked it, and then left it on the cart of luggage being taken down to the surface.

Virlomi actually came to meet the shuttle; and in moments she made it clear she was extending this courtesy only for Ender’s sake. She came aboard the shuttle to talk to him.

Ender did not take this as a good sign. While they waited for her to come aboard, Ender said to Valentine, “She doesn’t want me here. She wants me to go back onto the ship.”

“Wait and see what she wants,” said Valentine. “Maybe she just wants to know what you intend.”

When she came in, Virlomi looked so much older than the girl whose face Ender had seen on the vids of the Sino-Indian War. A year or two of brooding over defeat, and then sixteen years of governing a colony—they were bound to take their toll.

“Thank you for letting me visit you so early,” she said.

“You have flattered us beyond measure,” said Ender. “To come out and receive us yourself.”

“I had to see you,” she said, “before you emerged into the colony. I swear to you that I told no one of your coming.”

“I believe you,” said Ender. “But your remark seems to imply that people know I’m here.”

“No,” she said. “No, there’s no rumor of that, thank God.”

Which God, Ender wondered. Or, being reputed a goddess, did she thank herself?

“When Colonel Graff—oh, whatever his title was then—he’ll always be Colonel Graff to me—when he told me he had asked you to come, it was because he anticipated problems with a particular mother and son.”

“Nichelle and Randall Firth,” said Ender.

“Yes,” she said. “It happens that I had also noticed them as a potential problem during setup back in Battle School—Ellis Island—whatever the name of the place was by then. So I understood his concern. What I didn’t know was why he thought you could handle them better than I could.”

“I’m not sure he thought I could. Perhaps he only wanted you to have a resource to draw on, in case I had some ideas. Have they been a problem?”

“The mother was your ordinary reclusive paranoid,” said Virlomi. “But she worked hard, and if she seemed obsessively protective of her son, there was nothing perverse about their relationship—she never tried to keep him in her bed, for instance, and she never bathed him after infancy—none of the danger signs. He was such a tiny baby. Almost like a toy. But he walked and talked incredibly young. Shockingly young.”

“And he stayed small,” said Ender, “until he was in his teens. Just kept growing at an ordinary pace and then didn’t stop. I imagine he’s something of a giant now.”

“Two full meters in height with no sign of stopping,” said Virlomi. “How did you know this?”

“Because of who his parents are.”

Virlomi gasped. “Graff knows who the real father is. And he didn’t tell me. How was I supposed to deal with this situation if he didn’t give me all the information?”

“Forgive me for reminding you,” said Ender, “but you were not widely trusted at the time.”

“No,” she said. “But I thought if he made me governor, he’d give me…but that’s past and gone.”

Ender wondered if, indeed, Graff was gone. He wasn’t on any of the registries he could access—but he didn’t have ansible privileges like those he’d had before, as a new governor coming to his colony. There were deep searches he simply wasn’t given time to pursue.

“Graff didn’t want to leave you without knowledge. But he gave it to me, and left it to me to judge how much to tell you.”

“So you don’t trust me either?” Her voice sounded jocular, but there was pain under it.

“I don’t know you,” said Ender. “You made war against my friends. You liberated your country from the invaders. But then you became a vengeful invader yourself. I don’t know what to do with this information. Let me make up my mind as I come to know you.”

Valentine spoke up for the first time since their initial greetings. “What is it that has happened that made you assure us that you told no one Ender was coming?”

Virlomi turned to her respectfully. “It’s part of the longstanding struggle between me and Randall Firth.”

“Isn’t he still a child?”

Virlomi laughed bitterly. “Do Battle School graduates really say such things to each other?”

Ender chuckled. “Apparently so. How long has this struggle gone on?”

“By the time he was twelve, he was such a precocious…orator…that he had the old settlers and the non-Indian colonists who came with me eating out of his hand. At first he was their clever mascot. Now he is something closer to a spiritual leader, a…”

“A Virlomi,” said Ender.

“He has made himself into their equivalent of the way the Indian colonists regard me, yes,” she said. “I never claimed to be a goddess.”

“Let’s not argue such old issues.”

“I just want you to know the truth.”

“No, Virlomi,” said Valentine, intruding again, or so Virlomi’s expression seemed to say. “You deliberately constructed the goddess image, and when people asked you, you gave nondenial denials: ‘Since when do goddesses walk the earth?’ ‘Would a goddess fail so often?’ And the most loathsomely deceptive of them all: “What do you think?’”

Virlomi sighed. “You have no mercy,” she said.

“No,” said Valentine. “I have a lot of mercy. I just don’t have any manners.”

“Yes,” said Virlomi. “He has learned from watching me, how I handle the Indians, how they worship me. His group has no shared religion, no traditions in common. But he constructed one, especially because everyone knew that evil book The Hive Queen.”

“How is it evil?” asked Ender.

“Because it’s a pack of lies. Who could know what the hive queens thought or felt or remembered or tried to do? But it has turned the formics into tragic figures in the minds of the impressionable fools who memorize that damnable book.”

Ender chuckled. “Smart boy.”

“What?” Virlomi asked him, looking suspicious.

“I assume you’re telling me this because he somehow claims that he is the heir of the hive queens.”

“Which is absolutely absurd because ours is the first colony that was not founded on the ruins of formic civilization.”

“So how does he manage it?” asked Ender.

“He claims that the Indian population—eighty percent of the total—are merely trying to reestablish here the exact culture they had on Earth. While he and the others are the ones who are trying to create something new. He really does have the gall to call his little movement the ‘Natives of Ganges.’ And he says we Indians are like the jackals who have settled other worlds—destroying the natives and then stealing all that they accomplished.”

“And people buy this?”

“Oddly enough,” she said, “not that many do. Most of the non-Indian colonists are trying to get along.”

“But some believe him,” said Ender.

“Millions.”

“There aren’t that many colonists,” said Valentine.

“He isn’t just playing to the local crowd,” said Virlomi. “He sends his writings out by ansible. There are chapters of the Natives of Ganges in most of the major cities of Earth. Even in India. Millions, as I told you.”

Valentine sighed. “I saw them referred to only as ‘the Natives’ on the nets and I wasn’t interested. That originated here?”

“They regard The Hive Queen as their scripture, and the formics as their spiritual forebears,” said Virlomi. “On Earth, their doctrine is almost the opposite of what Randall preaches here. They claim that the FPE should be abolished because it erases all the ‘genuine,’ ‘native’ cultures of Earth. They refuse to speak Common. They make a big show of following native religions.”

“While here, Randall condemns your people for doing exactly that,” said Ender. “Preserving your culture from Earth.”

“Yes,” said Virlomi. “But he claims it isn’t inconsistent—this is not where Indian culture originated. It’s a new place, and so he and his ‘Natives of Ganges’ are creating the real native culture of this world, instead of a warmed-over copy of an old one from Earth.”

Ender chuckled.

“It’s funny to you,” Virlomi said.

“Not at all,” said Ender. “I’m just thinking that Graff really was such a genius. Not as smart as the kids he trained in Battle School, but…with Randall just an infant in his mother’s arms, he knew that they would cause trouble.”

“And sent you to save me,” she said.

“I doubt you need saving,” said Ender.

“No, I don’t,” she said. “I’ve already dealt with it. I provoked him into assaulting me in my house. It’s on vid and we’ve already held the trial and sentenced him to be exiled. He’s going back to Earth—along with any of his malcontents who want to go with him.”

Ender shook his head. “And it doesn’t occur to you that that’s exactly what he wants you to do?”

“Of course it did. But I also don’t care, as long as I don’t have to deal with him.”

Ender sighed. “Of course you care, Virlomi. If he already has a following there, and then he returns to Earth as an exile from what he calls his ‘native world,’ then you have just sown the seed that can bring down the FPE and restore the Earth to the miserable chaos of war and hatred that Peter Wiggin ended such a short time ago.”

“That’s not my problem,” said Virlomi.

“Our generation is gone from power, Virlomi,” said Ender, “except in a few remote colonies. Peter is dead. His successors are lackluster placeholders. Do you think they’ll be competent to deal with this Randall Firth?”

Virlomi hesitated. “No.”

“So if you knowingly infect someone with a virus that you know their body can’t fight off, have you not murdered them?”

Virlomi buried her face in her hands. “I know,” she said. “I tried not to know, but I know.”

“What I can’t yet determine,” said Valentine, “is why your first words to us were a protest that you hadn’t told anyone that Ender was coming. Why would that matter?”

Virlomi raised her face. “Because at the trial and ever since then, he has been using you. And linking himself to his monster of a father. Who he thinks his father is.”

“Specifically,” prompted Valentine.

“He calls you ‘Ender the Xenocide,’” said Virlomi. “He says you’re the worst war criminal in all of history, because you were the one who slaughtered the native people of all these worlds so that the robbers could come in and steal their houses and lands.”

“Predictable,” said Ender.

“And Peter is called the ‘Brother of the Xenocide,’ who tried to extinguish all the native cultures of Earth.”

“Oh my,” said Ender.

“While Achilles Flandres was not a monster—that’s just propaganda from the pro-xenocide party. He was the only one who stood against Peter’s and Ender’s evil plans. He tried to stop you in Battle School, so your friends got him sent back to be imprisoned in an insane asylum on Earth. Then, when he escaped and began his work of opposing the threat of the Hegemon becoming dictator of the world, Peter’s propaganda mill went to work, slandering him.” Virlomi sighed. “Here’s the irony. Through all of this, he pretends to honor me greatly. As a hero who stood against the jeesh of the xenocides—Han Tzu, Alai, Petra, all who served with you.”

“And yet he struck you.”

“He states that he was provoked. That it was all a setup. That a man of his size—if he had meant to hurt me, I’d be dead. He was merely trying to wake me up to the enormity of the lies I was telling and believing. His followers accept this explanation completely. Or don’t care whether it’s true or not.”

“Well, it’s nice that even while I’m in stasis, somebody found me useful,” said Ender.

“It’s not a joke,” said Virlomi. “All over the nets, his revisionist view is gaining more and more acceptance. All the nonsense from Graff’s court martial came into even more prominence. Pictures of the dead bodies of…those bullies…”

“Oh, I can guess,” said Ender.

“You had to know before you got off the shuttle,” said Virlomi. “He can’t have known you were coming. He just chose this time to invoke your name. I think it’s because I was using Achilles’ name as the symbol of a monster. So he decided to use your name to outmonster Achilles. If it weren’t for that horrible pack of lies called The Hive Queen, he wouldn’t have found so much fertile ground for his nonsense.”

“I did everything he accuses me of,” said Ender. “Those boys died. So did all the formics.”

“But you’re not a murderer. I read those trial transcripts too, you know. I understood—I was in Battle School, I talked to people who knew you, we all knew how the adults shaped our lives and controlled us. And we all recognized that your devastating self-defense was perfect military doctrine.”

Ender did what he always did when somebody tried to exonerate him—he shunted her words aside without comment. “Well, Virlomi, I’m not sure what you think I should do about this.”

“You could get back on the ship and go.”

“Is that what you’re asking me to do?” asked Ender.

“He’s not here to take over your job,” said Valentine. “He’s not a threat to you.”

Virlomi laughed. “I’m not trying to get rid of your brother, Valentine. He’s welcome to stay. If he does, then I will definitely need and take his help and advice. For my own sake, I’m happy he’s here. Randall will have no choice but to turn all his hatred onto you. Please, stay.”

“I’m glad you asked,” said Ender. “I accept.”

“No,” said Valentine. “This is the kind of situation that leads to violence.”

“I promise not to kill anybody, Valentine,” said Ender.

“I’m talking about violence against you,” she said.

“So am I,” said Ender.

“If he chooses to whip a mob into a frenzy—”

“No,” said Virlomi. “You have nothing to fear on that score. We will protect you fully.”

“Nobody can protect anybody fully,” said Valentine.

“Oh, I’m sure Virlomi’s people will do a splendid job,” said Ender. “As I said, I accept your kind invitation. Now, let’s leave this boat and go ashore, neh?”

“As you wish,” said Virlomi. “I’ll be glad to have you. But I also warned you, and as long as this ship is still here, you’re free to move on. You won’t like it when Randall turns his wrath on you. He has a way with words.”

“Just words?” said Ender. “So he’s nonviolent?”

“So far,” said Virlomi.

“Then I’m safe,” said Ender. “Thank you for the great honor you paid me. Please let it be known that I’m here. And that I really am that Andrew Wiggin.”

“Are you sure?” asked Virlomi.

“Insane people are always sure,” said Valentine.

Ender laughed, and so Virlomi did, too—a nervous chuckle.

“I’d invite you to join me for supper tonight,” said Virlomi, “only one of my affectations is to eat little, and of course, as a Hindu, I eat an entirely vegetarian cuisine.”

“Sounds excellent,” said Valentine.

“Tell us when and where, and we’ll be there,” said Ender.

With a few more parting words, Virlomi left.

Valentine turned on Ender, angry and sad, both at once. “Did you bring me here to watch you die?”

“I didn’t bring you anywhere,” said Ender. “You just came.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Everyone dies, Valentine. Mother and Father are dead. Peter is dead. Graff is probably dead by now.”

“You forget that I know you, Ender,” said Valentine. “You have decided to die. You’ve decided to provoke this boy into killing you.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Look at the names you chose for passwords, Ender! You can’t live with the guilt.”

“Not guilt, Val,” said Ender. “Responsibility.”

“Don’t make this boy kill you,” said Valentine.

“I won’t make anybody do anything. How about that?”

“I should have stayed home and watched Peter conquer the world.”

“Oh, no, Valentine. We’re on a much more interesting trajectory through space-time.”

“I’m not going to sleep through my life like you are, Ender. I have work to do. I’m going to write my histories. I’m not burdened with a death wish.”

“If I wished to be dead,” said Ender, “I would have let Bonzo Madrid and his friends beat my brains out in a bathroom in Battle School.”

“I know you,” said Valentine.

“I know you think you do,” said Ender. “And if I die, you’ll think I chose to. The truth is much more complicated. I don’t intend to die. But I’m not afraid of the risk of death. Sometimes a soldier has to put himself in harm’s way in order to achieve victory.”

“It’s not your war,” said Valentine.

Ender laughed. “It’s always my war.”

CHAPTER 22

To: VWiggin%Ganges@ColLeague.Adm/voy

From: AWiggin%Ganges@ColLeague.Adm/voy

Subj: If I am dead

Dear Val,

I don’t expect to be dead. I expect to be alive, in which case, you won’t receive this, because I will keep sending the do-not-deliver code until after the coming confrontation.

This is about the case. The code to unlock it is the name of your favorite stuffed animal when you were six. When you open it, hold what you find in your hands for a good long time. If you come up with some good ideas, then act on them; otherwise, please repack the item exactly as you found it, and arrange to ship it to Abra Tolo on Shakespeare with a message: “This is what I found that day. Please don’t let it be destroyed.”

But you won’t need this, because, as is my fashion, I expect to win.

Love,
your demanding and mysterious little brother,
Ender
or, I suppose I should now say: Ended

Since the starship had not arrived full of new colonists, it was almost inconsequential to most of the people of the city of Andhra. Of course everyone turned out to watch the shuttle land. And there was some commotion as a few trade goods were loaded off and many supplies were loaded on. But the tasks being carried out were repetitive and people quickly lost interest and went back to their work. Governor Virlomi’s visit to the shuttle was taken as good manners by those who heard about it—few knew or cared what the ordinary protocol would be, and so didn’t realize that it had been altered. And those who did know simply took it as part of Virlomi’s character—or her pose—that she did not make the visitors come to her.

Only when that evening’s supper saw strangers come to Virlomi’s house—which Achilles and his fellow “Natives of Ganges” liked to refer to as “the governor’s mansion”—did anyone’s curiosity get aroused. A teenage boy; a young woman of about twenty. Why were they the only passengers on the starship? Why was Virlomi giving them special honors? Were they new colonists or government officials or…what?

Since this was the ship that was supposed to take Achilles into exile for his “crime” of striking the governor, he was, quite naturally, anxious to find out anything he could to derail the plan. These guests were unusual, unexpected, unannounced, unexplained. That had to mean they presented an opportunity to embarrass Virlomi, at the very least—to stymie her or destroy her, if things went well.

It took two days of having his supporters consort with the crew before someone finally got their hands on the manifest and discovered the names of the passengers. Valentine Wiggin, student. Andrew Wiggin, student.

Student?

Achilles didn’t even have to look anything up. The ship’s last call had been to Shakespeare Colony. Up to the time of that ship’s arrival, the governor of Shakespeare had been Andrew Wiggin, retired admiral of the I.F. and much-cited commander of the I.F. forces in the Third Formic War. Two starflights at relativistic speed explained the boy’s age. Boy? One year older than Achilles.

Wiggin was tall, but Achilles was taller; strong, but Achilles was stronger. Wiggin was chosen for Battle School because he was smart, but Achilles had never encountered anyone in his life who was as intelligent as he. Virlomi was Battle School bright—but she forgot things that he remembered, overlooked things that he noticed, thought two moves ahead instead of ten. And she was the closest to being in his league.

Achilles had learned to conceal just how intelligent he was, and to treat others as if he thought them his equal. But he knew the truth and counted on it: He was quicker, smarter, deeper, subtler than anyone else. Hadn’t he, as a mere boy on a faraway colony world, using only the lowest-priority ansible messaging, created a significant political movement on Earth?

Even intelligent people are sometimes just plain lucky. Wiggin’s arrival just at this time clearly fell into that category. Wiggin couldn’t have known that he was coming to the colony where dwelt the son of Achilles the Great, whom Ender’s brother had arranged to murder. And when Achilles-who-was-called-Randall launched his attack on the reputation of Ender Wiggin, labeling him as Ender the Xenocide, he had no idea that within the month that very Andrew Wiggin would be having supper at Virlomi’s house.

It was an easy thing to get pictures of Virlomi and Wiggin together. It was just as easy to get, from the nets, pictures of Peter the Hegemon at roughly the same age as Ender was now. Juxtaposing their pictures made it easy to see they were brothers, the resemblance was so strong. Achilles then put pictures of Ender and Virlomi, so that anyone could see that Peter’s brother was consorting with the anti-native governor of Ganges.

Never mind that it was Peter who had sent Virlomi into exile. Achilles dismissed that as an obvious fraud—Virlomi had been part of Peter’s conspiracy all along. Her consorting with Ender Wiggin proved it, if anyone had doubts.

Now Achilles could paint his exile as the result of an obvious conspiracy between Virlomi and her Wiggin masters—Ender’s sister was along for the ride. They were exiling him so that Wiggin’s xenocidal, anti-native plots could proceed on Ganges without opposition.

It would take a week for any of this story to reach Earth, but the computers worked impartially, and Virlomi couldn’t stop him from sending them. And locally, the story and pictures went up immediately.

Achilles watched with delight as people began watching the Wiggins’ every move. Everything he did or said was seen through the lens of Achilles’ accusations. Even the Indians, who regarded Achilles with suspicion or hostility, were convinced by the pictures that Achilles was not lying. What was going on?

It’s costing you, Virlomi. You attacked my father, and through him, me. You tried to exile me—hoping my troublesome mother would disappear along with me. Well, I have attacked Ender Wiggin, and through him, you—and you very kindly have taken him in as your honored guest at precisely the moment when it was most useful to me.

Three days after his public tagging of Ender Wiggin, Achilles made his next move. This time, he used a surrogate writer—one of his brighter supporters, who could actually put sentences together coherently—to put out the allegation, disguised as a denial, that Virlomi’s plan was to have Ender Wiggin himself murder Randall Firth on the trip to Earth. He would be sent into exile, supposedly, but he would never be seen again.

Randall Firth has offended, not just the Wiggin stooge Virlomi, but the whole hegemonistic conspiracy. He has to be eliminated, or so the story goes. But we have found no evidence to corroborate this account, and therefore we must dismiss it as nothing but a rumor, a mere suspicion. How else can we explain Wiggin’s multiple secret meetings with Virlomi?

Randall Firth himself, when questioned, asserted that Virlomi is too intelligent to consort openly with Wiggin if she were planning any violent action against Firth. Therefore he fears nothing.

But we wonder: Does Virlomi count on Firth making that assumption, so that his guard will be down? Will she insist that he goes into stasis, from which Wiggin, aboard the ship, will make sure he never wakes up? It would be so easy to call it an accident.

Firth is too brave for his own good. His friends are more worried about him than he is about himself.

This time Achilles’ foray brought a response from Virlomi—which was, after all, what he wanted. “Andrew Wiggin’s visit here is an obvious coincidence—he set out on his voyage when Randall Firth was still an infant on a starship and Ganges Colony had not even been founded.”

“This is an obvious nondenial denial,” wrote Achilles’ surrogate. “Virlomi says that it is a coincidence that Wiggin is here. She does not say that Randall Firth will not be at Wiggin’s mercy on his voyage of ‘exile’—or, as some assert, ‘death.’”

The colony was now riven with heated arguments, and Achilles noted with delight that there were even Indians now on the side that said, “You can’t send Randall out on the same ship with Wiggin.” “Isn’t Wiggin the one who already murdered two children?” “Randall Firth’s crime is not worthy of the death penalty.”

There was a groundswell building to commute Randall Firth’s sentence and keep him on Ganges. Meanwhile, there was even talk of arresting Ender Wiggin for his crimes against humanity. Achilles publicized these proposals by making statements opposing them. “The statute of limitations has surely passed, even for the monstrous crime of xenocide,” he wrote. “It has been sixty-one years since Ender Wiggin wiped out the hive queens. What court has jurisdiction now?”

By now the demand from Earth was so great that any writings of Achilles or his surrogates were being moved up to a higher priority in the queue. On Earth, there were open demands that the I.F. arrest Andrew Wiggin and bring him back to Earth for trial, and polls showing that a small but growing minority was demanding justice for the murder of the hive queens.

It was time for Randall Firth to meet Ender Wiggin face to face.

It was easy enough to arrange. Achilles’ supporters kept watch on Wiggin, and when he, his sister, and the governor passed along the banks of the great river one morning, Achilles was there—alone.

Virlomi stiffened when she saw him, and tried to draw Ender away, but Wiggin strode forward to meet Achilles and held out his hand. “I’ve wanted to meet you, Mr. Firth,” he said. “I’m Andrew Wiggin.”

“I know who you are,” said Achilles, letting scorn and amusement into his voice.

“Oh, I doubt that,” said Ender, his apparent amusement even greater. “But I’ve been wanting to see you, and I think the governor has been trying to keep us apart. I know you have been aching for this moment.”

Achilles wanted to say, What do you know about me? But he knew that’s what Wiggin wanted him to say—that Wiggin wanted to determine the course of the conversation. So instead he asked, “Why would you want to see me? You’re the celebrity, I think.”

“Oh, we’re both quite famous enough,” said Ender, now chuckling outright. “Me for what I’ve done. You for what you’ve said.”

And with that, Ender smiled. Mockingly?

“Are you trying to goad me into some ill-considered action, Mr. Wiggin?”

“Please,” said Ender. “Call me Andrew.”

“The name of a Christian saint,” said Achilles. “I prefer to call you by the name of a monstrous war criminal…Ender.”

“If there were some way to bring back the hive queens,” said Ender, “and restore them to their former glory and power, would you do it, Mr. Firth?”

Achilles recognized the trap at once. It was one thing to read The Hive Queen and shed a tear for a vanished race. It was quite another to wish for them to return—it was an invitation for headlines saying, “Leader of Natives Movement would bring back formics,” along with grisly pictures from the Scouring of China.

“I don’t indulge in hypotheticals,” said Achilles.

“Except the hypothetical charge that I plan to kill you in your sleep during the voyage back to Earth.”

“Not my accusation,” said Achilles. “I was quoted in your defense.”

“Your ‘defense’ is the only reason anyone heard of the accusation,” said Ender. “Please don’t think that I’m fooled.”

“Who would hope to fool a genius like you?”

“Well, we’ve sparred long enough. I just wanted to look at you.”

Achilles made a flamboyant turn, so Ender could inspect him from all sides. “Is that enough?”

Suddenly tears came into Ender’s eyes.

What game was he playing now?

“Thank you,” Ender said. Then he turned away to rejoin his sister and the governor.

“Wait,” said Achilles. He didn’t understand what that teary-eyed thing meant, and it disconcerted him.

But Wiggin didn’t wait, or turn back. He simply walked to the others and they turned away from the river, walking back into the city.

Achilles had meant this confrontation—which was being recorded by zoom lens and microphone—for a propaganda vid. He had expected to be able to goad Ender into some rash statement or absurd denial. Even a clip of Ender angry would have done the job. But he was unflappable, he had fallen into no traps, and with that last bit of maudlin emotion he may well have set or sprung one, though Achilles could not think of what the trap might be.

An unsatisfactory encounter in every way. And yet he could not explain to his followers why he didn’t want to use the vid they had so painstakingly created. So he allowed them to post it, then waited for the other shoe to drop.

No one on Earth knew what to make of it, either. Commentators noticed the tears in Ender’s eyes, of course, and speculated about it. Some Nativists proclaimed it to be crocodile tears—the weeping of the predator at the coming fate of his victim. But some saw something else. “Ender Wiggin did not look the part he’s been cast in—the killer, the monster. Instead, he seemed to be a gentle young man, bemused at the obviously planned confrontation. At the end, those infamous tears seemed to me to be a kind of compassion. Perhaps even love for his challenger. Who is trying to pick the fight here?”

That was terrible—but it was only one voice among many. And Achilles’ supporters on Earth quickly replied: Who would dare to pick a fight with Ender the Xenocide? It always turns out so badly for those who do.

All his life, Achilles had been able to control things. Even when unexpected things happened, he had adapted, analyzed, and learned. This time he had no idea what to learn.

“I don’t know what he’s doing, Mother,” said Achilles.

She stroked his head. “Oh, my poor darling,” she said. “Of course you don’t, you’re such an innocent. Just like your father. He never saw their plots. He trusted that Suriyawong monster.”

Achilles didn’t actually like it when she talked that way. “It’s not our place to pity him, Mother.”

“But I do. He had such great gifts, but in the end, his trusting nature betrayed him. It was his tragic flaw, that he was too kind and good.”

Achilles had studied his father’s life and had seen strength and hardness, the willingness to do whatever was necessary. Compassion and a trusting nature were not obvious attributes of Achilles the Great, however.

Let Mother sentimentalize him as she wished. After all, didn’t she now “remember” that Achilles the Great had actually visited her and slept with her in order to conceive a son? Yet when he was little she had made no such claim, and had talked of the messenger who arranged to have her ova fertilized with Achilles’ precious sperm. From that—and many other examples of shifting memory—he knew that she was no longer a reliable witness.

Yet she was the only one who knew his true name. And she loved him with perfect devotion. He could talk to her without fear of censure.

“This Ender Wiggin,” he said. “I can’t read him.”

“I’m glad you can’t understand the mind of a devil.”

But she had not called him a devil until Achilles’ own propaganda campaign against him. She had ignored Ender Wiggin, because he had never actually fought against her precious Achilles Flandres, even if his brother had.

“I don’t know what to do with him now, Mother.”

“Well, you’ll avenge your father, of course.”

“Ender didn’t kill him.”

“He’s a killer. He deserves to die.”

“Not at my hands, Mother.”

“The son of Achilles the Great slays the monster,” said Mother. “No better hands than yours.”

“They would call me a murderer.”

“They called your father by that name as well,” she said. “Are you better than him?”

“No, Mother.”

She seemed to think that closed the discussion. He was disconcerted. Was she saying she wanted him to murder a man?

“Let the Hegemon’s nearest blood pay for the murder of my Achilles,” she said. “Let all the Wiggins be extinguished. All that vicious tribe.”

Oh, no, she was in her bloody vengeance mood. Well, he had brought it on, hadn’t he? He knew better. Now he’d have to hear her out.

On and on she went, about how great crimes could only be expunged by the shedding of blood. “Peter Wiggin outsmarted us by dying of his heart attack while we were on the voyage,” she said. “But now his brother and sister have come to us. How can you pass up what fate has brought into your hands?”

“I’m not a murderer, Mother.”

“Vengeance for your father’s death is not murder. Who do you think you are, Hamlet?”

And on and on she went.

Usually when she went off like this, Achilles only half-listened. But now the words dug at him. It really did feel like some kind of portentous fate that brought Wiggin to him at this very time. It was irrational—but only mathematics was rational, and not always at that. In the real world, irrational things happened, impossible coincidences happened, because probability required that coincidences rarely, but not never, occur.

So instead of ignoring her, he found himself wondering: How could I arrange for Ender Wiggin to die without having to kill him myself?

And from there, he went on to a more subtle plan: I have already half destroyed Ender Wiggin—how could I complete the process?

To murder him would make a martyr of him. But if Wiggin could be provoked into killing again—killing another child—he would be destroyed forever. It was his pattern. He sensed a rival; he goaded him into making an attack; then he killed him in self-defense. Twice he had done it and been exonerated. But his protectors weren’t here—they were almost certainly all dead. Only the facts remained.

Could I get him to follow the pattern again?

He told his idea to his mother.

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“If he murders again—this time a sixteen-year-old, but still a child, no matter how tall—then his reputation will be destroyed forever. They’ll put him on trial, they’ll convict him this time—they can’t believe he just happened to kill in ‘self-defense’ three times!—and that will be a far more thorough destruction than a merely ending the life of his body. I’ll destroy his name forever.”

“You’re talking about letting him kill you?”

“Mother, people don’t have to let Ender Wiggin kill them. They just have to provide him with the pretext, and he does the rest quite nicely by himself.”

“But—you? Die?”

“As you said, Mother. To destroy Father’s enemies is worth any sacrifice.”

She leapt to her feet. “I didn’t give birth to you just so you could throw your life away! You’re half a head taller than him—he’s a dwarf compared to you. How could he possibly kill you?”

“He was trained as a soldier. And not that long ago, Mother. What have I been trained as? A farmer. A mechanic. Whatever odd jobs have been required of a teenager who happens to be preternaturally large and clever and strong. Not war. Not fighting. I haven’t fought anyone since I was so tiny and had to battle constantly to keep them from picking on me.”

“Your father and I did not conceive you so that you could die at the hands of a Wiggin, like your father did!”

“Technically, Father died at the hands of a Delphiki. Julian to be precise.”

“Delphiki, Wiggin—sides of the same coin. I forbid you to let him kill you.”

“I told you, Mother. He’ll find a way. It’s what he does. He’s a warrior.”

“No!”

It took two hours to calm her down, and before that he had to put up with crying and screaming—he knew the neighbors had to be listening and trying to make sense of it. But finally she was asleep.

He went to the stock control office and used the computer there to send Wiggin a message:

I believe that I’ve misjudged you. How can we end this?

He did not expect an answer until the next day. But it came before he could log off.

When and where would you like to meet?

Was it really going to be this easy?

The time and place didn’t matter much. It had to be a time and place where they couldn’t be stopped by Virlomi and her minions; but there had to be enough light to make a vid. What good would it be to die for his father’s sake, only to have the deed unrecorded, so that Wiggin could spin it however he wanted, and thus get away with yet another murder?

They made the appointment. Achilles logged off.

And then he sat there, trembling. What have I done? This really is Ender Wiggin. I really have set up my own death. I’m bigger and stronger than he is—but so were the two boys he already killed. The hive queens were stronger, too, and look what that got them. Ender Wiggin did not lose.

This is what I was born for. This is what Mother has instilled in me from infancy. I exist to vindicate my father. To destroy the Hegemony, to bring down all the works of Peter Wiggin. Well, maybe that’s not possible. But bringing down Ender Wiggin—I can do that merely by getting him to kill me and letting the world see how it happened. Mother will grieve—but grief is her lifeblood anyway.

If he’s so smart, he must know what I’m planning. He can’t believe that I’d suddenly change my mind. How could I fool Ender Wiggin with such an obvious plan? He must guess that I’ll be having everything recorded.

But maybe he doesn’t think he’ll have to kill me. Maybe he thinks I’m such an easy opponent that he can defeat me without killing me. Maybe he thinks I’m such a giant oaf that I’ll never even land a blow.

Or maybe I’m overestimating his cleverness. After all, he went through a whole war against an alien enemy and never once suspected that it wasn’t a computer or his teachers playing a simulation with him. How dumb is that?

I’ll go. I’ll see what happens. I’m ready to die, but only if it will bring him down.

They met two days later, at first light, behind the composting bins. No one would come here—the smell made people avoid it when they didn’t have to go there, and vegetative waste was dumped only at the end of a day’s work.

His friends had rigged the cameras to cover the whole area. Every word would be recorded. Ender probably guessed that this would be the case—hadn’t Achilles done all his work with propaganda on the nets?—but even if Ender walked away, the confrontation would probably be rancorous and work against him. And if he didn’t, Achilles simply wouldn’t use it.

Several times during the previous day, Achilles had thought of the possibility of dying and each time it was like a different person was hearing the news. Sometimes it seemed almost funny—Achilles was so strong, so much taller, with so much greater a mass and reach. Other times it seemed inevitable but pointless, and he thought: How stupid am I, to throw my life away on an empty gesture toward the dead.

But by the end of the day, he realized: I’m not doing this for my father. I’m not doing it because my mother raised me for vengeance. I’m doing it for the sake of the human race as a whole. The great monsters of history were almost never held accountable. They died of old age, or lived out their lives in pampered exile, or—faced with defeat—they killed themselves.

Being Ender Wiggin’s last victim is worth it, not for some private family quarrel, but because the world must see that great criminals like Ender Wiggin did not go unpunished. Eventually they committed one crime too many and they were brought to account.

And I will be the last victim, the one whose death brought down Ender the Xenocide.

Another part of him said, Don’t believe your own propaganda.

Another part of him said, Live!

But he answered them: If there’s one true thing about Ender Wiggin, it’s that he cannot bear to lose. That’s how I will tempt him—I will make him stare defeat in the face, and he will lash out to avoid it—and when he kills me, then he really will be defeated. It is his fatal flaw—that he can be manipulated by facing him with defeat.

Deep inside him, a question tried to surface where he would have to deal with it: Doesn’t this mean that it’s not his fault, because he really had no choice but to destroy his enemies?

But Achilles immediately tamped down that quibble. We’re all just the product of our genes and upbringing, combined with the random events of our lifetime. “Fault” and “blame” are childish concepts. What matters is that Ender’s actions have been monstrous, and will continue to be monstrous unless he is stopped. As it is, he might live forever, surfacing here and there to stir up trouble. But I will put an end to it. Not vengeance, but prevention. And because he will be an example, perhaps other monsters will be stopped before they have killed so often, and so many.

Ender stepped out of the shadows. “Ho, Achilles.”

It took half a second—half a step—for Achilles to realize what name Ender had addressed him by.

“The name you call yourself in private,” said Ender. “In your dreams.”

How could he know? What was he?

“You have no access to my dreams,” said Achilles.

“I want you to know,” said Ender, “that I’ve been pleading with Virlomi to commute your sentence. Because I have to leave on this ship, when it goes, and I don’t want to go back to Earth.”

“I would think not,” said Achilles. “They’re howling for your blood there.”

“For the moment,” said Ender. “These things come and go.”

No apparent recognition that Achilles was the one who had made all this happen.

“I have an errand to run, and taking you back to Earth as an exile will waste my time. I think I’ve almost got her persuaded that the Free People of Earth never gave governors the right to throw back colonists they don’t want.”

“I’m not afraid to return to Earth.”

“That’s what I was afraid of—that you did all this in hopes of being sent there. ‘Please don’t throw me in the briar patch!’”

“They read you Uncle Remus stories at bedtime in Battle School?” asked Achilles.

“Before I went there. Did your mother read those tales to you?”

Achilles realized that he was being led off on a tangent. He resolutely returned to the subject.

“I said I’m not afraid to return to Earth,” said Achilles. “Nor do I think you’ve been pleading for me with Virlomi.”

“Believe what you want,” said Ender. “You’ve been surrounded by lies all your life—who could expect you to notice when a true thing finally came along?”

Here it came—the beginning of the taunts that would goad Achilles into action. What Ender could not understand was that Achilles came here precisely so that he could be goaded, so that Ender could then kill him in “self-defense.”

“Are you calling my mother a liar?”

“Haven’t you wondered why you’re so tall? Your mother isn’t tall. Achilles Flandres wasn’t tall.”

“We’ll never know how tall he might have grown,” said Achilles.

“I know why you’re as big as you are,” said Ender. “It’s a genetic condition. You grow at a single, steady rate all your life. Small as a child, then about normal size when suddenly all the other kids shoot up with the puberty growth spurt and you fall behind again. But they stop growing; you don’t. On and on. Eventually you’ll die of it. You’re sixteen now; probably by twenty-one or twenty-two your heart will give out from trying to supply blood to a body that’s far too large.”

Achilles didn’t know how to process this. What was he talking about? Telling him that he was going to die in his twenties? Was this some kind of voodoo to unnerve his opponent?

But Ender wasn’t through. “Some of your brothers and sisters had the condition; some didn’t. We didn’t know about you, not with certainty. Not until I saw you and realized that you were becoming a giant, like your father.”

“Don’t talk about my father,” said Achilles. Meanwhile, he thought: Why am I afraid of what you’re saying? Why am I so angry?

“But I was so glad to see you, anyway. Even though your life will be tragically short, I looked at you—when you turned around like that, mocking me—I saw your father, I saw your mother in you.”

“My mother? I don’t look anything like my mother.”

“I don’t mean the surrogate mother who raised you.”

“So you’re trying to get me to attack you by goading me exactly the way Virlomi did,” said Achilles. “Well it won’t work.” Yet as he said it, it was working; and he was willing to have the wrath rise within him. Because he had to make it believable, that Ender goaded him into attacking, so that when Ender killed him everyone who saw the vids would know that it wasn’t really self-defense at all. They’d realize it had never been self-defense.

“I knew your father best of all the kids in Battle School. He was better than I was—did you know that? All of the jeesh knew it—he was quicker and smarter. But he always was loyal to me. At the last moment, when it all looked so hopeless, he knew what to do. He virtually told me what to do. And yet he left it to me. He was generous. He was truly great. It broke my heart to learn how his body betrayed him. The way it’s betraying you.”

“Suriyawong betrayed him,” said Achilles. “Julian Delphiki killed him.”

“And your mother,” said Ender. “She was my protector. When I got put into an army whose commander hated me, she was the one who took me under her wing. I relied on her, I trusted her, and within the limitations of a human body, she never let me down. When I heard that she and your father had married, it made me so happy. But then your father died, and eventually she married my brother.”

Comprehension almost blinded him with fury. “Petra Arkanian? You’re saying Petra Arkanian is my mother? Are you insane? She was the one that first set the traps for my father, luring him—”

“Come now, Achilles,” said Ender. “Surely by the age of sixteen you’ve recognized that your surrogate mother is insane.”

“She’s my mother!” cried Achilles. And then, only as an afterthought, and weakly, he said, “And she’s not insane.”

This is not going right. What is he saying? What kind of game is this?

“You look exactly like them. More like your father than like your mother. When I see you, I see my dear friend Bean.”

“Julian Delphiki is not my father!” Achilles could hardly see for rage. His heart was pounding. This was exactly how it was supposed to go.

Except for one thing. His feet were rooted to the ground. He wasn’t attacking Ender Wiggin. He was just standing there and taking it.

It was in that moment that Valentine Wiggin jogged into the clearing behind the compost bins. “What are you doing? Are you insane?”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” said Ender.

“Get away from here,” she said. “He’s not worth it.”

“Valentine,” he said, “you don’t know what you’re doing. If you interfere in any way, you’ll destroy me. Do you understand me? Have I ever lied to you?”

“Constantly.”

“Neglecting to tell you things is not lying,” said Ender.

“I’m not going to let this happen. I know what you’re planning.”

“With all due respect, Val, you don’t know anything.”

“I know you, Ender, better than you know yourself.”

“But you don’t know this boy who calls himself by the name of a monster because he thinks the madman was his father.”

For a few moments Achilles’ anger had dissipated, but now it was coming back. “My father was a genius.”

“Not incompatible concepts,” said Valentine dismissively. To Ender, she said, “It won’t bring them back.”

“Right now,” said Ender, “if you love me, you’ll stop talking.”

His voice was like a lash—not loud, but sharp and with true aim. She recoiled as if he had struck her. Yet she opened her mouth to answer.

“If you love me,” he said.

“I think what your brother is trying to tell you,” said Achilles, “is that he has a plan.”

“My plan,” said Ender, “is to tell you who you are. Julian Delphiki and Petra Arkanian lived in hiding because Achilles Flandres had agents seeking them, wanting to kill them—especially because he had once desired Petra, after his sick fashion.”

The rage was rising in Achilles again. And he welcomed it. Valentine’s coming had almost ruined everything.

“They had nine fertilized eggs that they entrusted to a doctor who promised he could purge them of the genetic condition that you have—the giantism. But he was a fraud—as your present condition indicates. He was really working for Achilles, and he stole the embryos. Your mother gave birth to one; we found seven others that were implanted in surrogate mothers. But Hyrum Graff always suspected that they found those seven because Achilles meant them to be found, so that the searchers would think their methods were working. Knowing Achilles, Graff was sure the ninth baby would not be found by the same methods. Then your mother spat on Hyrum Graff and he began to look into her past and found out that her name wasn’t Nichelle Firth, it was Randi. And when he looked at the DNA records, he found that you had no genes in common with your supposed mother. You were not in any way her genetic child.”

“That’s a lie,” said Achilles. “You’re saying it only to provoke me.”

“I’m saying it because it’s true, in the hope that it will liberate you. The other children were found and returned to their parents. Five of them didn’t have your genetic disorder, your giantism, and all five of them are still alive on Earth. Bella, Andrew—named for me, I must point out—Julian the Third, Petra, and Ramon. Three of your siblings were giants, and of course they’re gone now—Ender, Cincinnatus, Carlotta. You’re the extra one, the missing one that they gave up looking for. The one they never got to name. But your last name is Delphiki. I knew your parents and I loved them dearly. You are not the child of a monster, you’re the child of two of the best people who ever lived.”

“Julian Delphiki is the monster!” cried Achilles, and he lunged at Ender.

To his surprise, Ender made no evasive maneuver. Achilles’ blow landed squarely and sent Ender sprawling onto the ground.

“No!” cried Valentine.

Ender picked himself up calmly and rose to face him again. “You know that I’m telling you the truth,” said Ender. “That’s why you’re so angry.”

“I’m angry because you say I’m the son of the killer of my father!”

“Achilles Flandres murdered everyone who showed him kindness. A nun who arranged for his crippled leg to be restored. The surgeon who fixed the leg. A girl who took him in when he was the least successful street bully in Rotterdam—he pretended to love her, but then he strangled her and threw her body in the Rhine. He blew up the house where your father was living, in the effort to kill him and his whole family. He kidnapped Petra and tried to seduce her but she despised him. It was Julian Delphiki that she loved. You are their child, born of their love and hope.”

Achilles rushed at him again—but deliberately made it a clumsy move, so that Ender would have plenty of time to block him, to strike at him.

But again Ender made no move to step away. He took the blow, this time a deep punch in the stomach, and fell to the ground, gasping, retching.

And then rose up again. “I know you better than you know yourself,” said Ender.

“You’re the father of lies,” said Achilles.

“Never call yourself by that vile name again. You’re not Achilles. Your father is the hero who rid the world of that monster.”

Again Achilles struck at him—this time walking up slowly and bringing his fist hugely into Ender’s nose, breaking it. Blood spurted from his nostrils and covered the front of his shirt almost instantly.

Valentine cried out as Ender staggered and then fell to his knees.

“Fight me,” hissed Achilles.

“Don’t you get it?” said Ender. “I will never raise my hand against the son of my friends.”

Achilles kicked him in the jaw so hard it flung him over backward. This was no staged fight like in the silly vids, where the hero and the villain delivered killing blows, yet their opponent got up to fight again. The damage to Ender’s body was deep and real. It made him clumsy and unbalanced. An easy target.

He’s not going to kill me, thought Achilles.

It came to him as such a relief that he laughed aloud.

And then he thought: It’s Mother’s plan after all. Why did I ever imagine I should let him kill me? I’m the son of Achilles Flandres. His true son. I can kill the ones who need killing. I can end this pernicious life, once and for all, avenging my father and the hive queens and those two boys that Ender killed.

Achilles kicked Ender in the ribs as he lay on his back in the grass. The ribs broke so loudly that even Valentine could hear them; she screamed.

“Hush,” said Ender. “This is how it goes.”

Then Ender rolled over—wincing, then crying out softly with the pain. Yet he managed, somehow, to rise to his feet.

Whereupon he put his hands in his pockets.

“You can destroy the vids you’re recording,” said Ender. “No one will know that you murdered me. They won’t believe Valentine. So you can claim self-defense. Everyone will believe it—you’ve made them hate me and fear me. Of course you had to kill me to save your own life.”

Ender wanted to die? Now? At Achilles’ hand? “What’s your game?” Achilles asked.

“Your supposed mother raised you to take vengeance for her fantasy lover, your fraudulent father. Do it—do what she raised you to do, be who she planned you to be. But I will not raise my hand against the son of my friends, no matter how deluded you are.”

“Then you’re the fool,” said Achilles. “Because I will do it. For my father’s sake, and my mother’s, for that poor boy Stilson, and Bonzo Madrid, and the formics, and the whole human race.”

Achilles began the beating in earnest then. Another blow to the belly. Another blow to the face. Two more kicks to the body as he lay unmoving on the ground. “Is this what you did to the Stilson boy?” he asked. “Kicking him again and again—that’s what the report said.”

“Son,” said Ender. “Of my friends.”

“Please,” begged Valentine. Yet she made no move to stop him. Nor did she summon help.

“Now it’s time for you to die,” said Achilles.

A kick to the head would do it. And if it didn’t, two kicks. The human brain could not stand being rattled around inside the skull like that. Either dead or so brain-damaged he might as well be. That was how the life of Ender the Xenocide would end.

He approached Wiggin’s supine body. The eyes were looking up at him through the blood still pouring from his broken nose.

But for some reason, despite the hot rage pounding in his own head, Achilles did not kick him.

Stood there unmoving.

“The son of Achilles would do it,” whispered Ender.

Why am I not killing him? Am I a coward after all? Am I so unworthy of my father? Ender is right—my father would have killed him because it was necessary, without any qualms, without this hesitation.

In that moment, he saw what all of Ender’s words really meant. Mother had been deceived. She had been told the child was Achilles Flandres’s. She had lied to him as he grew up, telling him that he was her son, but she was only a surrogate. He knew her well enough by now to recognize that her stories were shaped more by what she needed the truth to be than by what it actually was. Why hadn’t he reached the obvious conclusion—that everything she said was a lie? Because she never let up, not for an instant. She shaped his world and did not allow any contrary evidence to come to light.

The way the teachers manipulated the children who fought the war for them.

Achilles knew it, had always known it. Ender Wiggin won a war that he didn’t know he was fighting; he slaughtered a species that he thought was just a computer simulation. The way that I believed that Achilles Flandres was my father, that I bore his name and had a duty to fulfil his destiny or avenge his murder.

Surround a child with lies, and he clings to them like a teddy bear, like his mother’s hand. And the worse, the darker the lie, the more deeply he has to draw it inside himself in order to bear the lie at all.

Ender said he would rather die than raise his hand against the son of his friends. And he was not a lunatic like Achilles’ mother was.

Achilles. He was not Achilles. That was his mother’s fantasy. It was all his mother’s fantasy. He knew she was crazy, and yet he lived inside her nightmare and shaped his life to make it come true.

“What is my name?” he whispered.

On the ground at his feet, Ender whispered back: “Don’t know. Delphiki. Arkanian. Their faces. In yours.”

Valentine was beside them now. “Please,” she said. “Can this be over now?”

“I knew,” whispered Ender. “Bean’s son. Petra’s. Could never.”

“Could never what? He’s broken your nose. He could have killed you.”

“I was going to,” said Achilles. And then the enormity of it washed over him. “I was going to kill him with a kick to the head.”

“And the stupid fool would have let you,” said Valentine.

“One chance,” said Ender. “In five. Kill me. Good odds.”

“Please,” said Valentine. “I can’t carry him. Bring him to the doctor. Please. You’re strong enough.”

Only when he bent down and lifted Ender up did he realize how badly he had damaged his own hands, so hard had been his blows.

What if he dies? What if he still dies, even though I don’t want him dead now after all?

He bore Ender with studied haste along the ragged ground and Valentine had to jog to keep up. They reached the doctor’s house long before he was due to leave for the clinic. He took one look at Ender and had him brought in at once for an emergency examination. “I can see who lost,” said the doctor. “But who won?”

“Nobody,” said…Achilles.

“There’s not a mark on you,” said the doctor.

He held out his hands. “Here are the marks,” he said. “I did this.”

“He never landed a blow on you.”

“He never tried.”

“And you kept on beating him? Like this? What kind of…” But then the doctor turned back to his work, stripping the clothes off Ender’s body, cursing softly at the huge bruises on his ribs and belly, feeling for the breaks. “Four ribs. And multiple breaks.” He looked up at Achilles again, this time with loathing on his face. “Get out of my house,” he said.

Achilles started to go.

“No,” said Valentine. “This was all according to his plan.”

The doctor snorted. “Oh, yes, he plotted his own beating.”

“Or his own death,” said Valentine. “Whatever happened, he was content.”

“I planned this,” said Achilles.

“You only thought you did,” said Valentine. “He manipulated you from the start. It’s the family talent.”

“My mother manipulated,” said Achilles. “But I didn’t have to believe her. I did this.”

“No, Achilles,” said Valentine. “Your mother’s training did this. The lies Achilles told her did this. What you did was…stop.”

Achilles felt his body convulse with a sob and he sank to his knees. “I don’t know what to call myself now,” he said. “I hate the name she taught me.”

“Randall?” asked the doctor.

“Not…no.”

“He calls himself Achilles. She calls him that.”

“How can I…undo this?” he asked her.

“Poor boy,” said Valentine. “That’s what Ender’s spent the past few years trying to figure out for himself. I think he just used you to get a partial answer. I think he just got you to give him the beating that Stilson and Bonzo Madrid both intended. The only difference is, you’re the son of Julian Delphiki and Petra Arkanian, and so there’s something deep inside you that cannot do murder—cold or hot. Or maybe it has nothing to do with your parents. It has to do with being raised by a mother who you know was mentally ill, and feeling compassion for her—such deep compassion that you could never challenge her fantasy world. Maybe that’s it. Or maybe it’s your soul. The thing that God wrapped in a body and turned into a man. Whatever it was, you stopped.”

“Arkanian Delphiki,” he said.

“That would be a good name,” said Valentine. “Doctor, will my brother live?”

“He took blows to the head,” said the doctor. “Look at his eyes. There’s serious concussion. Maybe worse. We have to get him to the clinic.”

“I’ll carry him,” said…not Achilles…Arkanian.

The doctor grimaced. “Letting the beater carry the beaten? But I don’t want to wait for anyone else. What a hideous time of day for you to have this…duel?”

As they walked along the road to the clinic, a few early risers looked at them quizzically, and one even approached, but the doctor waved her off.

“I meant for him to kill me,” said Arkanian.

“I know,” said Valentine.

“What he did to those other boys. I thought he’d do again.”

“He meant for you to think he’d fight back.”

“And then the things he said. The opposite of everything.”

“But you believed him. Right away, you knew it was true,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Made you furious.”

Arkanian made a sound, somewhere between a whimper and a howl. He didn’t plan it; he didn’t understand it. Like a wolf baying at the moon, he only knew that the sound was in him and had to come out.

“But you couldn’t kill him,” she said. “Because you’re not such a fool as to think you can hide from the truth by killing the messenger.”

“We’re here,” said the doctor. “And I can’t believe you’re reassuring the one who beat your brother like this.”

“Oh, didn’t you know?” said Valentine. “This is Ender the Xenocide. He deserves whatever anyone does to him.”

“Nobody deserves this,” the doctor said.

“How can I undo this,” said Arkanian. And this time he did not mean Ender’s injuries.

“You can’t,” said Valentine. “And it was already there, it was inherent in that book, The Hive Queen. If you hadn’t said it, somebody else would have. As soon as the human race understood that it was a tragedy to destroy the hive queens, we had to find someone to blame for it, so that the rest of us could be absolved. It would have happened without you.”

“But it didn’t happen without me. I have to tell the truth—I have to admit what I was…”

“No you don’t,” she said. “You have to live your life. Yours. And Ender will live his.”

“And what about you?” asked the doctor, sounding even more cynical than before.

“Oh, I’ll live Ender’s life, too. It’s so much more interesting than my own.”

CHAPTER 23

To: ADelphiki%Ganges@ColLeague.Adm, PWiggin%ret@FPE.adm

From: EWiggin%Ganges@ColLeague.Adm/voy

Subj: Arkanian Delphiki, behold your mother. Petra, behold your son.

Dear Petra, Dear Arkanian,

In so many ways too late, but in the ways that count, just in time. The last of your children, Petra; your real mother, Arkanian. I will let him tell you his story, and you can tell him yours. Graff did the genetic testing long ago, and there is no doubt. He never told you, because he could never bring you together and I think he believed it would only make you sad. He might be right, but I think you deserve to have the sadness, if that’s what it is, because it belongs to you by right. This is what life has done to the two of you. Now let’s see what YOU do for each other’s lives.

Let me tell you this much, though, Petra. He’s a good boy. Despite the madness of his upbringing, in the crisis, he was Bean’s son, and yours. He will never know his father, except through you. But Petra, I have seen, in him, what Bean became. The giant in body. The gentle heart.

Meanwhile, I voyage on, my friends. It’s what I already planned to do, Arkanian. I’m on another errand. You did not deflect me from my course. Except that they won’t let me go into stasis on this ship until my wounds are healed—there’s no healing in stasis.

With love,
Andrew Wiggin

In his little house overlooking the wild coast of Ireland, not far from Doonalt, a feeble old man knelt in his garden, pulling up weeds. O’Connor rode up on his skimmer to deliver groceries and mail, and the old man rose slowly to his feet to receive him. “Come in,” he said. “There’s tea.”

“Can’t stay,” said O’Connor.

“You can never stay,” said the old man.

“Ah, Mr. Graff,” said O’Connor, “that’s the truth. I can never stay. But it’s not for lack of will. I have a lot of houses waiting for me to bring them what I brought you.”

“And we have nothing to say to each other,” said Graff, smiling. No, laughing silently, his frail chest heaving.

“Sometimes you don’t need to say a thing,” said O’Connor. “And sometimes a man has no time for tea.”

“I used to be a fat man,” said Graff. “Can you believe it?”

“And I used to be a young man,” said O’Connor. “Nobody believes that.”

“There,” said Graff. “We had a conversation after all.”

O’Connor laughed—but he did not stay, once he had helped put the groceries away.

And so Graff was alone when he opened the letter from Valentine Wiggin.

He read the account as if he was hearing it in her own voice—that was her gift as a writer, now that she had left off being the Demosthenes that Peter made her create, and had become herself, even if she did still use that name for her histories.

This was a history that she would never publish. Graff knew he was the only audience. And since his body was continuing to lose weight, slowly but surely, and he grew more feeble all the time, he thought it was rather a shame she had spent so much time to put memories into a brain that would hold them for so little time before letting all the memories go at once into the ground.

Yet she had done this for him, and he was grateful to receive it. He read of Ender’s contest with Quincy Morgan on the ship, and the story of the poor girl who thought she loved him. And the story of the gold bugs, some of which Ender had told him—but Valentine’s version relied also on interviews with others, so that it would include things that Ender either did not know or deliberately left out.

And then, on Ganges. Virlomi seemed to have turned out well. That was a relief. She was one of the great ones; it had turned to ashes because of her pride, yes, but not until after she had singlehandedly taught her people how to free themselves of a conqueror.

Finally, the account of Ender and the boy Randall Firth, who once called himself Achilles, and now was named Arkanian Delphiki.

At the end of it, Graff nodded and then burned the letter. She had asked him to, because Ender didn’t want a copy of it floating around somewhere on Earth. “My goal is to be forgotten,” she quoted Ender as saying.

Not likely, though whether he would be remembered for good or ill, Graff could not predict.

“He thinks he finally got the beating Stilson and Bonzo meant to give him,” Graff said to the teapot. “The boy’s a fool, for all his brains. Stilson and Bonzo would not have stopped. They weren’t this boy of Bean’s and Petra’s. That’s what Ender has to understand. There really is evil in the world, and wickedness, and every brand of stupidity. There’s meanness and heartlessness and…I don’t even know which of them is me.”

He fondled the teapot. “I don’t even have a soul to hear me talk.”

He sipped from the cup before the teabag had really done its job. It was weak, but he didn’t mind having it weak. He didn’t really mind much of anything these days, as long as he kept breathing in and out and there was no pain.

“Going to say it anyway,” said Graff. “Poor fool of a boy. Pacifism only works with an enemy that can’t bear to do murder against the innocent. How many times are you lucky enough to get an enemy like that?”

Petra Arkanian Delphiki Wiggin was visiting with her son Andrew and his wife Lani and their two youngest children, the last ones still at home, when the letter came from Ender.

She came into the room where the family was playing a card game, her face awash with tears, brandishing the letter, unable to speak.

“Who died!” Lani cried out, but Andrew came up to her and folded her into a giant hug. “This isn’t grief, Lani. This is joy.”

“How can you tell?”

“Mother tears things when she’s grieving, and this letter is only wrinkled and wet.”

Petra slapped him lightly but still she laughed enough that she could talk. “Read it aloud, Andrew. Read it out loud. Our last little boy is found. Ender found him for me. Oh, if only Julian could know it! If only I could talk to Julian again!” And then she wept some more, until he started to read. The letter was so short. But Andrew and Lani, because they had children of their own, understood exactly what it meant to her, and they joined her in her tears, until the teenagers left the room in disgust, one of them saying, “Call us when you get some control.”

“Nobody has control of anything,” said Petra. “We’re all beggars at the throne of fate. But sometimes he has mercy!”

Because it was not carrying Randall Firth into exile, the starship did not have to go back to Eros by the most direct route. It added four months to the subjective voyage—six years to the realtime trip—but it was cleared at IFCom and the captain didn’t mind. He would drop off his passengers wherever they wanted, for even if no one at IFCom understood just who Andrew and Valentine Wiggin were, the captain knew. He would justify the detour to his superiors. His crew had started when he did, and also remembered, and did not mind.

In their stateroom, Valentine nursed Ender back to health between shifts of writing her history of Ganges Colony.

“I read that stupid letter of yours,” she said one day.

“Which? I write so many,” he answered.

“The one that I was only supposed to see if you died.”

“Not my fault the doctor put me under total anesthetic to reset my nose and pull out the shards of bone that didn’t fit back in place.”

“I suppose you want me to forget what I read.”

“Why not? I have.”

“You have not,” she said. “You’re not just hiding from your infamy, with all this voyaging, are you?”

“I’m also enjoying the company of my sister, the professional nosy person.”

“That case—you’re looking for a place where you can open it.”

“Val,” said Ender, “do I ask you about your plans?”

“You don’t have to. My plan is to follow you around until I get too bored to stand it anymore.”

“Whatever you think you know,” said Ender, “you’re wrong.”

“Well, as long as you explain it so clearly.”

Then, a little later: “Val, you know something? I thought for a minute there that he was really going to kill me.”

“Oh, you poor thing. It must have been devastating to realize you had bet wrong on the outcome.”

“I had thought that if it came to that moment, if I really knew that I was going to die, it would come as a relief. None of this would be my problem anymore. Someone else could clean up the mess.”

“Yes, me, I’m so grateful that you were going to dump it all on me.”

“But when he was coming back to finish me off—I knew he planned a kick or two in the head, and my head was already so foggy from concussion that I knew it would finish me—when he came walking up to me, I wasn’t relieved at all. I wanted to get up. Would have if I could.”

“And run away, if you had any brains.”

“No, Val,” said Ender sadly. “I wanted to get up and kill him first. I didn’t want to die. It didn’t matter what I thought I deserved, or how I thought it would bring me peace, or at least oblivion. None of that was in my head by then. It was just: Live. Live, whatever it takes. Even if you have to kill to do it.”

“Wow,” said Valentine. “You’ve just discovered the survival instinct. Everybody else has known about it for years.”

“There are people who don’t have that instinct, not the same way,” said Ender, “and we give them medals for throwing themselves on grenades or running into a burning house to save a baby. Posthumously, mind you. But all sorts of honors.”

“They have the instinct,” said Valentine. “They just care about something else more.”

“I don’t,” said Ender. “Care about anything more.”

“You let him beat you until you couldn’t fight him,” said Valentine. “Only when you knew you couldn’t hurt him did you let yourself feel that survival instinct. So don’t give me any more of this crap about how you’re still the same evil person who killed those other boys. You proved that you could win by deliberately losing. Done. Enough. Please don’t pick a fight with anybody again unless you intend to win it. All right? Promise?”

“No promises,” said Ender. “But I’ll try not to get killed. I still have things to do.”

AFTERWORD

I never meant this book to go this way. I was supposed to spend a few chapters getting Ender from Eros to Shakespeare and on to Ganges. But I found that all the real story setting up the confrontation on Ganges took place earlier, and to my own consternation, I ended up with a novel which mostly takes place between chapters 14 and 15 of Ender’s Game.

But as I wrote it, I knew this was the true story, and one that had been missing. The war ends. You come home. Then you deal with all the things that happened in the war. Only Ender doesn’t get to come home. He has to deal with that, too.

Yet none of this material was “missing” from the original novel, any more than anything was missing from the novelette version before the novel was written. If, at the end of chapter 14, we had then had Ender in Exile, neither story would have worked. For one thing, Exile is partly a sequel to Shadow of the Giant—that’s where Virlomi’s, Randi’s, and Achilles/Randall/Arkanian’s stories are left hanging, in need of this resolution. For another, Ender’s Game ends as it should. The story you’ve just read works better as it is here—in a separate book. The book of the soldier after the war.

Except for one tiny problem. When I wrote the novel Ender’s Game back in 1984, my focus in the last chapter, chapter 15, was entirely on setting up Speaker for the Dead. I had no notion of any sequel between those two books. So I was rather careless and cavalier with my account of Ender’s time on the first colony. I was so careless I completely forgot that on all but the last formic planet, there would have been human pilots and crew left alive. Where would they go? Of course they would begin colonizing the formic worlds. And those who sent them would have at least allowed for that possibility, sending people trained to do whatever jobs they anticipated would be necessary.

So while the meat of chapter 15 of Ender’s Game is exactly right, the details and timeline are not. They aren’t what they should have been then, and they certainly aren’t what they need to be now. Since writing that chapter, I have written stories like “Investment Counselor” (in First Meetings), where Ender meets Jane (a major character in Speaker) when he is legally coming of age on a planet called Sorelledolce; but this contradicted the timeline stated in Ender’s Game. All in all, I realized, it was chapter 15 that was wrong, not the later stories, which took more details into account and developed the story in a superior way.

Why should I be stuck now with decisions carelessly made twenty-four years ago? What I’ve written since is right; those contradictory but unimportant details in the original novel are wrong.

Therefore I have rewritten chapter 15 of Ender’s Game, and at some future date there will be an edition of the novel that includes the revised chapter. Meanwhile, the entire text is online for anyone who has ever bought or ever buys any issue of my magazine Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show (oscIGMS.com). I have linked it to that magazine because every issue of it contains a story from the Ender’s Game universe. My hope is that if you buy an issue in order to read that revised chapter, you’ll also sample all the stories in that issue and find out what an excellent group of writers we’ve been publishing there.

But rest assured that nothing significant is changed in that chapter. You have not missed anything if you don’t read it.

In fact, the most important purpose for that revised chapter is to keep people from writing to me about contradictions between the original version of chapter 15 and this novel. So if you’re content to take my word for it that all the contradictions are now resolved, you won’t need to look it up online.

In preparing this novel, I had to venture back into old territory. It’s not just that I had to fit in with Ender’s Game (where that was even possible). This story also had to fit in with every casual decision I made in Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, not to mention all the short stories.

There was no way I had the time or the inclination to reread all those books. It would just depress me to notice all the things in all those books that now, being a better or at least more experienced writer, I would like to change.

Fortunately, I had the aid of people who have read my fiction more carefully and more recently than I have.

First and foremost, Jake Black recently wrote The Ender’s Game Companion, in which he deals with every event, character, location, and situation in all the Ender novels and stories. He was a consultant on this book (as he is on the Marvel Comics adaptation of Ender’s Game) and vetted everything.

And in preparing his book, he also had the help of Ami Chopine, a writer in her own right, who also has been the mother superior and/or nanny of PhiloticWeb.Net, and Andy Wahr (alias “Hobbes” on my website at Hatrack.com), who also helped me directly by answering many questions I had in preparing to write this book. I hope I never have to write an Ender novel without their help; and in the meantime, I count them all as good friends.

I also have the benefit of a community of kind people and friends at http://www.hatrack.com, whom I exploit mercilessly as a resource. As I set out to write this novel, I had several questions I needed to have answered. If I had never addressed the issue in any of the books, I needed to know that; if I had, I needed to know what I had said so I could try not to contradict it.

Here is the original request I posted at Hatrack.com:

I can’t trust my memory about details in Ender’s Game and the Shadow books, and I’m afraid that in writing Ender in Exile I might be contradicting some points in the EG universe. Perhaps someone can help on the following questions:

Who decided Ender should not come back to Earth, and why? Peter was involved, but I think he gives different motives from what Valentine and/or the narrator of EG specifies.

I think there’s already a contradiction between EG and the Shadow books (Giant?) about the circumstances surrounding Ender’s governorship and who commanded the colony ship. But was it already fully resolved? That is, Mazer was announced as commander of the ship, but then didn’t go? I remember that in conversation with Han Tzu, this was solved (after Hatrack citizens helped by pointing out the contradiction in the first place!).

I’m referring to that last chapter in EG, but what I can’t do is ferret out details from the four Shadow books or any stray references elsewhere in EG or the Speaker series. I’ll be grateful for any reminders people can give me of details from this time period—from the end of Ender’s last battle to the arrival on his new colony world, not just what happens to Ender, but what happens to Peter and Valentine, Mazer and Graff, and the world at large.

I had valuable responses to this cri de coeur, from C. Porter Bassett, Jaime Benlevy, Chris Wegford, Marc Van Pelt, Rob Taber, Steven R Beers, Shannon Blood, Jason Bradshaw, Lloyd Waldo, Simeon Anfinrud, Jonathan Barbee, Adam Hobart, Beau Pearce, and Robert Prince. Thank you to all of them for plunging back into the books to find the answers to my questions.

In addition, Clinton Parks found an issue I hadn’t even thought of, and sent my staff this letter:

I know you guys probably got this already, but I wanted to put it out there just in case. Did you remember that there was a discussion in “Shadow of the Giant” where the first colony’s name is revealed as “Shakespeare”? It stuck in my mind cause I wondered why Ender would name his colony that. Anyway, I just wanted to be vigilant and send a reminder. Take care!

This was, in fact, a real contradiction—elsewhere, I definitively stated that the first colony was named Rov. That’s because in writing those earlier books I did not have the resource of a community of generous readers, or didn’t think to ask for their help as I should have, and so thought up cool new ideas for things that I had already dealt with in earlier books, but forgot about in the years that followed.

This, too, I have resolved.

I was once a professional proofreader. I know from experience that even the brightest, most careful readers, working in teams so we could catch each other’s mistakes, still missed errors. A world as complex, with as many stories set in it, as this one is bound to contain other contradictions as yet undetected. Please post any that you find (except the ones from the former chapter 15 of Ender’s Game) at Hatrack.com, and maybe I can find a way to fix them later.

Or take it philosophically, and realize that if these were genuine histories or biographies instead of works of fiction, there would be contradictions between them anyway—because even in factual accounts of the real world, errors and contradictions creep in. There are few events in history that were recounted identically by all witnesses. Pretend, then, that any remaining contradictions are the result of errors in historical transmission. Even if it’s a “history” of events hundreds of years in the future.

Besides these helpful friends, I showed my chapters as I wrote them to my usual crew of unbelievably patient friends. Getting a novel piecemeal is an old tradition—Charles Dickens’s fans always had to read his novels as they came out in installments in the newspaper. But getting a chapter every few days and having to respond quickly because I’m on such a tight writing schedule is making more demands than I should rightly make of friends.

Jake Black was, for the first time, one of those first readers, in order to bring his encyclopedic knowledge of the Ender universe to bear. Kathryn H. Kidd, my longsuffering collaborator on the long-overdue-and-entirely-my-fault sequel to Lovelock, called Rasputin, has been one of my first readers for years. Erin and Phillip Absher have also been longtime prereaders of mine, and Phillip bears the distinction of making me throw out several chapters in order to follow up on a plot thread that I had thought was a throwaway, and he convinced me was at the heart and soul of the story. He was right, I was wrong, and the book was better for it. This time, fortunately, he didn’t make me rewrite whole swaths of my book. But his, Erin’s, Kathy’s, and Jake’s encouragement helped me feel as though I was telling a story that was worth the time spent on it.

My very first reader, however, remains my wife, Kristine, who also bears the brunt of the burden of the family when I’m in writing mode. Her suggestions might seem small to her, but they’re large to me, and if she has any doubts, I rewrite until they go away.

Kristine and our youngest child, Zina, the last at home, have to deal with a father who haunts the house like a distracted, irritable ghost during the writing of a book. But we do have those nights watching Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, where we actually inhabit the same universe for an hour or two at a time.

I have also had the help of Kathleen Bellamy, the managing editor of The InterGalactic Medicine Show—who does not read my books until they are in page proofs, whereupon she reads them for the first time—as our very last proofreader before the book goes to press. That makes her our final line of defense. And our webwright and IT manager, Scott Allen, keeps Hatrack and oscIGMS going so that I have that community to call upon.

On this book, Beth Meacham, my editor at Tor, played a larger role than I usually ask of my editors. Because this book was so quirky—being a “midquel” that overlapped with my most popular novel—I did not want to proceed without her assurance that the book was actually something Tor wanted to publish! Her suggestions and caveats were wise and helpful at every stage of the development and writing of this book.

And I thank the production team at Tor for the sacrifices they had to make because I was so late with this manuscript. That this book still came out on time is owed to their extra work and sharp concern for quality. Even when rushing, they do their work with pride and so I end up with a book I can be proud of. Where would I be, if other good souls did not make up for my shortcomings?

The character of Ender as depicted in the original novel was in some ways drawn from my son Geoffrey, who was five and then six when I was writing that book. He is now thirty years old and the father of two children (with the good offices of his wife, the former Heather Heavener). To my great relief, Geoffrey was never called upon to serve his country in war.

So in examining what Ender’s experience might be like, I have drawn upon much reading, of course, but also from correspondence and conversation with good men and women who have served our country in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other trouble spots where our responsibilities as the only nation with the strength and the will to help beleaguered people against tyranny have been fulfilled. You bear a burden for us all, and I salute you.

I grieve for those who have fallen, or who, surviving with dire injuries or broken hearts, have been deprived of much or most of the future that you once dreamed of. As a citizen of the United States, I bear some of the responsibility for sending you where you have gone, and certainly reap the benefits. Like Ender, I might not have known what was being sacrificed in my name, but I recognize the connection between us.

And for those of you who are visibly whole after your service, but who bear inward changes that no one sees, and carry memories that no one shares, I can only hope that I have done an adequate job of representing, in Ender Wiggin, something of what you feel and think and remember.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ENDER IN EXILE

Copyright © 2008 by Orson Scott Card

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Card, Orson Scott.

Ender in exile / Orson Scott Card.—1st ed.

p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN: 978-1-4299-5570-6

1. Wiggin, Ender (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 1. Title.

PS3553.A655 E498 2008

813'.54—dc22

2008034075