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"Oh, is that what you came for? To find out if I love you?"
He nodded. "Partly."
"I do," she said.
"Then I can stay?"
She burst into tears. Loud weeping. She sank to the ground; he reached through
the plants to embrace her, to hold her, caring nothing for the leaves he
crushed between them. After he held her for a long while, she broke off her
crying and turned to him and held him at least as tightly as he had been
holding her.
"Oh, Andrew," she whispered, her voice cracking and breaking from having wept
so much. "Does God love me enough to give you to me now, again, when I
need you so much?"
"Until I die," said Ender.
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"I know that part," she said. "But I pray that God will let me die first this
time."
CHAPTER 3
 THERE ARE TOO MANY OF US
[Image]
"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
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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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]