Xenocide

Chapter 17

Ender's Children

ai ú as out of chaos. How did he find souls for these?>

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 ai ú a , acting and speaking.>

that will be?>

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 be 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 Estevão. 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."