Children of the Mind

CHAPTER 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 nonhumans 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, light-years 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 nã poso mudar nem você, não 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.